You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI A six forty.
Oh. So much is happening. The tariffs against China and Canada and Mexico were to click in take effect tomorrow. And what Donald Trump had said, you know what, until you deal with the border Mexico, among other things, you're gonna get hit with these tariffs. So he's accused of swinging his big schwants. He just swung his big schwants. Mexico just caved and is sending ten thousand troops to the northern border of THEIRS, the National Guard to deal
with immigration. And you know this president, it's, you know, as crazy as I think he is. Man, he's crazy like a fox. I'm not a big fan, but you know, I gotta tell you.
How do you argue with that? How do you argue with that? He got exactly what he wanted.
So he's held off the tariffs for thirty days, and now the next move dealing with fentanyl. Okay, you better deal with it Mexico, or we keep the tariffs in place, or we kick him back in.
All right, So.
T all right, let me go to what's happening with the World Cup in the La Olympics and how it could be a little bit troubling here in the United States.
And let me explain.
The World Cup twenty twenty six kicks off in five hundred days, less than five hundred days, and there is a lot of concern that the US is not ready to welcome the six million visitors that will come into the United States for the World Cup. He got fans, politicians, stakeholders, including FIFA, which runs the World Cup. It the fear is that our newly rigid immigration rules and long visa weights are going to make it difficult for supporters, even
players to enter the US. It's going to be a massive program problem, according to David Beer, Associate director for Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, and he says there's no one paying attention to this. Wait times for interviews for businesses and tourists visas, and those wait times started building up during the Biden administration, so this is not just the Trump administration. They now top three hundred and
thirty days at US embassies and consulates. It's almost a year to get an appointment to get a visa for countries that need visas, and some of the longest waits are coming in India, Columbia, Peru, Honduras. And since the World tickets aren't expected to go on sale until late this year, most fans coming into the US for the Games will have less than six months to secure the necessary paperwork.
And can you imagine the gridlock on that one.
It's you know, I tell you, we don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. One of the things about this administration, which I hate some of the time and I love some of the time, is you just don't know what's coming tomorrow. Athletes coming in they need documents too, and athletes from different countries, if those are visa countries, well they're gonna have to stand in line with everybody else. But wait a minute, isn't
there aren't they giving preference to athletes that are coming in. No, Nope, the US is not. And the US is preparing to host seven major global sporting events in the next decade. We've never had this done the world, including the World Cup and the twenty twenty eight Olympics.
Here in town. Now, lots and lots of delays.
Because this has to do with the Trump's administration to curtail immigration. Now we're talking legal immigration here.
These are visas. This is not illegal immigration. These are visas that are trying.
To be obtained by athletes. This for example, World Cup, the Olympics, by sponsors, by people involved, and wait times for just interviews for business and tourist visas with consulates built up under the Biden administration. These wait times started under the Biden administration three hundred and thirty days now at eighteen USMB.
Around the worldy, I tell you it's a problem.
I mean what happens and what they would think the economic costs would be. Sofi Stadium right is hosting eight World Cup games. That's one hundred and eighty thousand visitors, the largest in World Cup history. Forty eight teams, one hundred and four matches. He's going to draw twice as many as the previous one. Seventy eight of those matches will be played in eleven US cities, where everybody involved has to get a visa if they come from visa countries.
Now here's the interesting one.
During his first term, when the US and Canada Mexico were bidding to host the World Cup, Trump promised FIFA that the World Cup organizations and the fans would not face restrictions coming into the US for the tournament.
Trump said and.
Wrote, all eligible athletes, officials, and fans from all countries around the world will be able to enter the US without discrimination. Well, there is discrimination, and certain countries, you know what, they're never gonna make.
It because it's going to take too long to get the visa.
Now, a quick personal story, as I have mentioned before, my father who was in Europe during the war and he ended up in Italy after the.
War where he worked. He applied to come to the United States.
That was his dream and he went ahead and made his application. It was an eleven year wait for him to get his visa. Now he got his visa and his green card at the same time, because that's what happened in those days, how they did it, and he went to the American consulate in Brazil Somempollo. His application transferred from when he applied in Italy to Brazil and it only took eleven years and he came into the country nineteen fifty six. He applied in nineteen forty five.
Very few athletes and people involved with the World Cup that are coming in next year are going to have to wait eleven years.
And still make it.
It's just and this is the Trump administration part of its anti immigration philosophy, and it is no one can argue that it's predicated on illegal immigration. And he's just made it more difficult for asylum holders, people coming over the border illegally and claiming asylum, which was allowed under the Biden administration. And he's just saying, no, remain in Mexico. You apply, You're going to stay in Mexico until we grant you your visa.
You make an.
Application for asylum, it's going to be in Mexico over the border. For example, on Sunday this past Sunday, remember he had a standoff with the Columbian president. Neil pointed that out. And what ended up happening is Trump simply suspended the processing of visas, canceled all the appointments of the US embassy in Bogata, where the weight was already two years, and he just canceled it. That's it. We're gonna get what we're gonna get. That just happened with
Mexico today. Mexico caved. Now the State Department run by former Senator Marco Rubio, who's our new State Department head. It has managed visa processing and has pledged to lower weight times, but will not treat soccer fans preferentially. Huh, how does that work? The President just signed the Lake and Riley Act. That was the nursing student who was killed by an illegal Venezuelan immigrant who was convicted of murder.
The bill, approved by Congress signed by the President, gives individual states the power to demand the government withhold visas from citizens of countries that refuse to accept the return of deported nationals. The states now have the ability to do that and force the deportation.
That's going to court.
Why because immigration is a federal issue, the states shouldn't be involved at all, which has been upheld by the courts.
But we're going to see. It is really difficult.
By the way, if you want to get a visa, if you're coming from a visa country, some you don't need. England you don't need a visa. You got most of Europe you don't need visas. But here's how you get the visa. You first fill out a form DS one six takes about ninety minutes to complete. Also documentation, extensive documentation about someone's personal lives, education, employment history, where are you going to visit in the US. And it all has to be done in.
English, which is a little difficult for some people.
And one hundred and eighty five dollars non refundable fee, and it's just much more difficult.
It just happened to me.
I'm trying to get Polish citizenship because my dad was actually born in Poland, because I want to be able to go to the EU and when I retire, I want to live there several months a year, and it's Italy where I plan on doing that, and so I want European I want a European passport.
So I applied one hundred dollars.
The administration shut down that website. I think they shut it down for two days. They opened it up again, and my one hundred dollar fee was five hundred dollars close for a day, open next day five hundred bucks instead of one hundred dollars. It's a really interesting situation going on. I'm gonna have so much fun with this, as I said, man, for the next four years, this is gonna be utterly delicious for anybody involved in news talk. Anybody enjoy the ride. I sure as hell am going
to okay. Also, you know, let me go into the topic because this is actually kind of fun, all right. It's all about relationships, and I always think of fun relationships because they're all horrible. I've never actually had a good relationship in my life, but then that's a.
Given, right, Neil.
So what is happening to relationships, adult relationships?
We're not talking about kids.
Well, we are less likely to be married or live in a part with a partner than we used to. It's an article in The Atlantic. A study just came out. The national marriage rate is hovering near an all time low.
We're just not getting married, we're not even living together.
The share of women under sixty five who aren't living with the partner has grown since the nineteen eighties and has grown precipitously. We're just at a different mindset in the United States, and, by the way, around the world too.
This is not just the US.
This is same symptom, if you will, same syndrome, The same philosophy is around the world. And so this study looked at it pretty carefully, and here are some conclusions. People's lives are diverse. We just have more stuff going on, We have more things to do. We have more avenues that we can go down. And so what happens is our wants and desires and certain ccumstances just grow. And what does that do. It affects marriage and affects living together.
And I'll connect the pieces in the morning in a moment. According to Lyman Stone, the researcher who is involved with this, the Institute for Family Studies, the most important reason marriage and couples and coupling living together are declining.
And I'm going to throw this at you.
Why are people living together less and marrying less?
Amy? What do you think because they don't have to?
Okay, that's brilliant. That's actually a pretty good which I'll tell you about in a minute. That actually makes a lot of sense.
Neil. Why are people not living together or getting married?
Well, I think people are more selfish, Okay, focused on and being married.
You have to compromise.
Yeah, I hate that, you know, and you know being selfish is just part of who I am.
All right, let me give you the number one reason. It's about money. It's about money.
If you look at what's happening even geopolitically, and.
Certainly what's happened in the United States.
Many young men are falling behind economically. Guys are falling behind economically. And how does that connect with marriage and living together? Oh, that is the number one reason of what is going on. Study just came out that American adults, we are less likely to be married or live with a partner than we used to buy a long shot, the rates of marriage and cohabiting, cohabitating or yes, it's called cohabiting.
I have declined.
Absolutely well, precipitously and why, Well, people's lives are diverse or wants, desires, But the.
Big one is economics. It's money.
Now, the study showed and it asked people, you look at a marriage or a romantic partnership, it's going to be a bunch of stuff. And I've had a couple of romantic partnerships before. Friendship No, not in my case.
Love who are kidding? Sex? Very very occasionally.
That's only when my partner is very drunk or asleep. Someone to gossip with. Now by that someone to remind you to take out the trash, Yeah, way too often. But the response is, if you want it out, take it out yourself.
But here's what it is.
Historically, women have relied on men to act as insurance policies.
That's what it's about.
Against the threat of violence, against the risk of poverty. Men's odds of being in a relationship today are still highly connected to their income. Women do not typically invest in a long term relationship with a man who has nothing to contribute economically. It's not just you go ahead and marry someone rich so you can have a good lifestyle.
It is way beyond that for a woman.
In the past few decades, young and especially less educated men's income has stagnated or dropped.
Women have gone the other way.
They have become a big part of the workforce. Their college graduation rates sore. And I've heard this over and over again. A lot of young men today just don't look like what women have to come to think as marriage material. How often have you heard of that he's not marriage material? In January, the Financial Times published its study and analysis of quote the relationship ship recession. Why these white people are marrying.
Less and living together less and less?
And everybody thought declining fertility in the US is about happily childless dinks do what income no kid couples right, child free And that was the reason for the most part, fertility.
Has gone down.
Nope, the drop in relationships really has more to do with economics than the dinks and the poor people.
I love that. Are you a dink? I'm a dink? Do you dnk?
It could also be a verb he has danked, We have danked. It's dnkiosity. Huh.
Don't we have engaged in dinkiosity? I'm sorry, Neil, I have been donked.
Yes. So it turns out that there is so much more than just being child For three, here's another reason, contraceptive technology that may play a role. Before cheap birth control became widespread in the seventies, sexual activity was generally connected connected commitment.
Here is a story.
I was in junior high school and one of my friends, one of my buddies, was a woman whose older sister got pregnant. She was eighteen, the boyfriend was nineteen. She got pregnant, They got married automatically. It was just you did one one happened, the other one was automatic. And those days are long gone. So we look around the world, cohabitation declining through Europe. In Iran, annual marriages plummeted by forty ten years.
Why well, Islamic authorities are.
Blaming Western values and social media, and they may have a point too. When women are exposed to more Western media, their life expectations expand they realize that the men they are being forced to marry or a bunch of losers, and life changes.
So guys, if you don't want to get married, just stay poor. You'll do just fine.
No one will be harping at you for a marriage.
Wait wait, wait, wait, you're getting remarried. That's for love though, right, No, it's for finances. But it's the other way. She doesn't know how much you make, does she? No? No, good, Yeah, no, we know it's for love.
Yeah, and she does very well on her own, by the way, So it's economics for me because I just want someone to make money and I'm entering a dink relationship.
We don't we d word on the street. That's the word on the street. Anyway. Let let me finish it up and I'll do this really quickly.
Is on Fridays at eight thirty, we have a new segment and it's called Ask Handle Anything, And I just answer questions and you record them. And it's just fun because I get personal and it's insane and I get humiliated.
And so here's what you do. During the course of this show.
You go to the iHeart app, go to the KFI page and the right hand corner you'll see a microphone. Hit the microphone and you have fifteen seconds to record your question and it can be anything. I just don't want your opinion. I don't want political opinion, but you know, questions.
I constantly when I'm out there and I run into people, people who have who listened to the show over the years and years, will always ask me a question about my kids, about you know, living, about you know, what I do, and so we get to I get to share that with you because that's just fun.
That's it. It's just fun.
It's an ability for me to be completely embarrassed, which succeed admirably every single week. So go ahead, record the question. Neil and Ann choose the questions. I have no idea what they are, none, and we just have a great time. At eight thirty Friday, after the Footy Friday Report with Neil. Okay, we're done, guys, this is KFI AM six.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle show.
Catch my show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am. And anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.