Here's what you're really asking. See, you're not asking what scholarly work some reading. You were saying, are you reading Saint Basil the Great? Yes? Yeah, are you reading that right? John Chris System on wealthy poverty? Yes? These are all libs. By the way, like there's not one of these guys that isn't I mean, it's not one of them.
Well, I've been saying for a long time the only people who can rightfully talk about social justice or the medieval Catholics and everyone else should shut up.
These are late antiquity right, lovely apostolic bothers. You know, that's good one. That's that's a pastern.
Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country, mister Gorbachew, Tear down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Hayward and Rob Long. I'm James Lilex. Today we're going to talk to Mark recorying about of course immigration exilettes I was a podcast.
You say to those that you're using a two hundred year old door, it's a circumvent you an.
Old law not as well as constitution. We still pay attention to that, don't we. But someone take this man.
We're going to be returning education very simply back to the states where it belongs.
And this is a.
Very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it's a common sense thing to do and it's going to work.
Absolutely, it's going to work.
Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred and thirty three. And do we have a surprise for you today?
Yeah.
Yeah, you got me James Lodax in Minneapolis. You got Stephen Hayward probably in California. But we have Rob Long, who I guess has come out of the monastery on the East coast. Tom Seward in his robe with a little you know, white.
Benefiting belt and the rest of it.
Welcome back, Rob, It's always good to see you.
And you know, I have to say, it's like I know that says seminary is a Princeton theological seminary, and so people have this idea of it like that, you know, we're walking around in robes. When I had dinner I don't know last year round this time with Greg Gottfeldt on our one of our regular dinners, and I was like, hey, listen, by the way, I'm just going to this Prinson Theological Seminary, and he's like, really, wow, it's amazing. So what does
that mean for the show. You can't do the show anymore? I said, no, I can, Greg, I can do the show. It's Princeton, it's not that far away. So they'll they'll let you out for the show. Say well, Greg, isn't like you. They don't let you out like you. I can leave anytime. It's a school. As I'm getting a graduate, it's a graduate school. Oh okay, But even now he doesn't quite figure out. When I show up at the show, He's like, so, like, are you like out now? How does that work?
Like?
No, So, yes, it's a normal graduate school in the sense that I'm surrounded by younger, young people, and I'm learning that I.
Would never assume, even in an old monastery, that they would keep them on the grounds. I mean they were not. It's not like they were forbidden to go out. It's just for to stay where they were made their job, their life, the contemplation easier. But yes, of course you can go. I mean it is a bit red. Does he think perhaps that you would be chained to a desk, you know, doing an illuminated manuscript with a quill or something like that.
I think he was hoping for that, and I think he could kill That was his goal, like to like to have me come a bald head except for one little thing of hair coming out? What do you mean? That was my goal too.
We're going to trouble you with worldly matters now and Stephen, any worldly matters or the last oh, I don't know, seventeen minutes they're broken or something like that.
The place right well, I have refresh Twitter about every thirty seconds to see the latest federal judge imposing some kind of restriction on the Trump administration, because they seem to come at about.
Three or four a day. Right now, Well, are they going to stand up? Is Robert's going to say? And you know the guy, he's got a point. What is going to be the end result of all this? Are the judges discovering brave, bold, new powers previously not allocated.
Or is this something that they are entirely entitled to do?
Well? For a very quick points, one is Trump has had more I think federal judges interfering with his plans than happened in the entire twentieth century. In other words, temporary restraining orders or injunctions. Second, there's three parts to it. One is his power to fire people in the executive branch.
That's one of the legal issues. The second one is his power over spending, and that has many parts to it as well that depend a lot on what the specific language of a congressional statute might be, so that gets tangled in a hurry. Then the third is, and this is the most controversial part, is can a federal judge who's supposed to just be a trial judge in their district, can they issue nationwide injunctions and restraining orders? And this has never been reviewed by the Supreme Court.
Several justices have said they don't like this practice. And so I think that's the big question right now, and I think that's the one that they're going to have to confront at the Supreme Court. Yeah, very soon.
Actually, I think it's also the good I mean, all these things aren't the same. I mean, I really don't think that the chief executive has the right or the power to to change the way Congress has chosen to spend money. I mean, in a way, Congress has got to do that. I think, on the other hand, why the chief executive can't hire and fire everybody in the executive branch of government is baffling to me. That's the that has to be one of the chief definitions of
a chief executive of a branch. Right, you get to like pick who your staff is, all the way down to the guy who, like, you know, I don't know what makes the coffee. So that so all these things need to be teased out. We have been so lazy as a country for so long and basically allowing if you're on the left, you think it's great that the president has all these powers because he's my guy. And then if you're on the right, like it's great at
the president of lege powers because he's my guy. In the minute that changes, everbody acts like, my god, how did this happen? You fascist dictator? You know, it'd be good for us to sort these things out. And I think sort them out along the lines that you know the founders originally did, which is that, yes, you know, you got a bunch of people elected, did they get to choose how they're going to spend, raise and spend your money? And then you have an executive chief executive
who gets to you know, CEO, the whole thing. I don't know that that system seemed to work. I mean, people blaming Trump for this, as much as I would love to blame Trump for everything bad, it's like, no, he's this is the logical conclusion of a thing that began in nineteen thirty when was that FDR elected whenever?
Yeah, thirty three act pretty much, but it is some that's older than that, though, Rob. I mean, the question about whether the president could withhold funds that Congress had appropriated starts with Thomas Jefferson, so and it has never
been entirely sorted out. A simple way I think for listeners to think about it, because it can't get technical, is to say the Constitution says that, or we say that the Constitution says that Congress has the power of the purse, and what that really means is the power to put money in the purse, and the president is the one who takes it out of the purse and spends it for the purposes to which it's been appropriated.
If the appropriation is.
Vague, and many of them are, then I think there's more latitude for a president to say, no, I'm not going to spend it on this or that or this is a mistake or something like that. That's what Jefferson did two hundred plus years ago. If Congress is specific and we're all familiar with the scandals of earmarks, you know, a clauset a bill that says I want six million dollars for a post office in my district. That's specific
enough that the president has less discretion. And so it's somewhere in between heres where we are a bit of a no man's land. And finally, after as I say, two hundred years of intermittent empowerments by presidents, I think we're now going to finally clarify this and Congress will either have to do this job better or you know, we're going to have to sort it out.
Yeah. I mean everyone's afraid of the answer, right, and the left is afraid of the answer, and the right is afraid of the left is afraid that the answer is going to be the people don't want to need this, and the right is going to be is afraid the answer is going to be the people want all of it. They want all of it, And that is that's why
we kept a murky for so long. I mean, I would actually be willing my grand bargain to everybody is to say, look all earmarks, pork barrel spending all okay, fine, go right ahead, one knock yourself out, in exchange for never writing in any spending or spending authorization bill to phrase the Secretary shall or at the Secretary's discretion check
that to me is I'll I'll give you. I'll give you the Robert Byrd Memorial Traffic Safety Building Members one through ninety seven in West Virginia, in exchange for never ever saying again the Secretary shall right.
People don't in general want all of it. They want their part. They want the part that comes to their community. Perhaps they want their social security, their Medicare, and the rest of it. But when it comes to many the things that we learn government are spending on, I don't think they're very popular. And I'm very happy that the other side has chosen a variety of hill on which to die which are not particularly attractively aesthetically, politically, intellectually.
You want to make the argument that it is necessary for somebody to work half the year so that the entirety of the money they contribute to the tax coffers should go to an agency. On the other side of the globe, which then pumps it into an NGO that is studying disinformation technique in Scotland. No, not going to happen, And when people realize this is what's going on, we think, well, how.
Did this happen?
Exactly? Well, because we haven't had specific budgets, but we've been ruled by continuing resolutions, which is like stuff in a burritle full of something, eating it halfway and then putting it aside, and then restuffing it next year, and everything gets rolled over and rolled over until the ingredients are all intermingled and it's a mess and no one knows. Burn it down and then build it up. That seems
to be the idea. Now, no one's ever tried this before, but if they, you can actually find speeches by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama talking about the need to go through government line by line. You, I mean, Bill Clinton was all about that government efficiency project. Barack Obama said he was going to go line by line. Is it only bad when the other side does it well? Or did you just know that nobody really meant it at all in the first place, which I think is the case.
But you know, we'll see education department is going to be the big argument now, and this one is shaping up to be as clearheaded and as non inflammatory, and it's rhetoricaus everything else. I love the fact that people say seventh graders can't read, fourth graders can't count beyond five, college students can't write a paragraph, and this is the time to destroy the Department of Educators. That well, no, actually, that's the argument for perhaps changing what we've been doing
thus far. Where do you think this is going to go?
Guys?
Well, I think there are many programs in that the Department of Education oversees that are driven by statute. So Trump can't just wipe those away at the stroke of a pen or with Obama's phone if he borrows in. But he could move them to other departments. I think that's what's happen in the executive orders. Let's move certain student loan programs and certain other grants and aids to other departments and break up the monopoly the Department of Education.
By the way, the rump you leave behind is some of the really bad and ideological stuff, and that might make it easier for Congress then to kill it. Or the latest idea is see if you can't wrap getting rid of the Department of Education in the reconciliation budget process later in the year, that will require only fifty one votes, so it will get around the inevitable democratic filibuster. Maybe that will work and we'll just have to see
how it goes. As Trump likes to say, but I think Trump as usual is on the attack and has the back on their heels, and that's fun to watch.
I haven't heard anything you said since you use the phrase of the rump you leave behind. Yeah, well he was actually a torch song from nineteen forty two.
Rob. Yeah. I think it's I mean, look, it's this is a thing that I mean, this is a thing that conservatives have been like about, like this is crazy, and then and now that it's happening, it's like, well, wait a minute, is it really happening. I mean, I kind of don't I kind of I will not believe it's happening until the I see the for rent you know,
office space sign in the building. But it's you know, and I have no doubt and no lack of confidence that the Trump administration can fumble this and make this a disaster for them, and also not accomplish it just toxify the topic, because they're toxic in a lot of ways. But this simple argument is, you know, is your child, is your children, as George W. Bush said, is your children being educated?
Is it?
Is it better or worse? Do you think that it's better for there to be a pot of money in DC that's sort of sprinkled around the nation, or you think it's better for all that to go back to your neighborhood and your school. And I just don't think anybody. I mean, if you look at all the surveys and people and their education, they generally believe in school choice. Like that's actually a very popular idea at school choice
school vouchers. That tends to be popular. And then when you say to those parents who are in favor of it, okay, it's going to be a little chaotic. Obviously for the first two three four years, they always say, well that I'm against it because I have jury rigged and sorted out my kids school and I don't want to mess it up because I figured it out and I don't want to mess it up. And then that's usually when
the school choice of initiatives go down. Arizona is a big, big Arizona is a fantastic you know, Governor, do you see in Arizona's great hero for this right? So the question is whether people are going to have that psychology is going to be applied to this too. Like I generally agree with your idea, say some voters, and the Department of Education is foolish and hasn't really accomplished the mission. But I'm not sure I want to throw it away.
And I think there's subtle argument that the Trump people are gonna have to make.
It's something that I see all the time on Twitter. There are two ideas. One in the Department of Education is a tremendous waste of money and we should give it back to the localities. And two, when you look at these craziest school boards and the things they're saying, so okay, right, fine, so we'll have to do something
about the local school boards then too. If they really, if the Trump administration really wanted to get everybody on board with destroying the dismantling the Department of Education, they would push through an America first, classical Western aesthetics, patriotic agenda that must be filtered down to every single school district and taught and the follicles on fire would be
extraordinary all across the spectrum. This would be seen as another attempt Nazi like to take the culture and indoctrinate it from the top down winds. I tend to suspect is to being done nowadays anyway, just from a different direction. Stephen anything, before we go to the guest portion of our piece.
Well, let's just remember that federal aid education didn't start till the nineteen sixties, which is relatively.
Recent, when it had started getting really better.
Yeah, well, and I mean, how do generations of American children ever get educated without federal dollars? Then? Second, I sometimes challenge people or defy people. Tell me one thing about public education that the Department of Education has improved with data, right, They've like lots of data, and you can't They've had no effect on it. And finally, the constitutional point, you know, the point that's starting in the sixties.
It was the late James COO. Wilson used to say, because there's nothing in the Constitution about education, it's not in the enumerated powers of Congress, it was left to the states. And that was he said. That was the moment when we crossed the line constitutionally to saying Congress can now appropriate money for anything and blur, and it
wrote federalism further and so forth. So I think it's long overdue to get rid of the department, and then it will get better, as I think, for all the reasons Rob knows and has advocated for so long.
True, well, at least in bluryers will be happy about it because they'll get better workers. And doesn't that sound like some horrible thing you just want a bunch of drones. No, they just want people who can make change without having to consult an app on their phone. I mean, if you're a business owner, for example, you might have felt frustrated with hiring, or you just might feel totally lost completely when it comes to be.
Gone so long, I forgot how these these segways go.
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the Parsing Immigration Policy podcast. A lot of plosives in that one, and you can find that excellent series right here on the Ricochet Audio Network. Mark, how are you.
I'm doing very well.
Thanks for having me speaking of plosives and peas and all the rest of these things. We have a new paradigm in town. It seems Customs Border Protection released report seventy percent drop and encounters at the southern border. What massive government program was put into place that did that? Did they actually build a wall that we were looking?
Well?
No, a climate change ended, poverty, all of those things ended, and magically the flow just stopped. In fact, what happened was the policy changed. The reason people were coming is because they could get away with it, and they could succeed under Biden. It was worth paying smugglers, it was worth taking the risk of going through Mexico because your odds of being released into the United States were very high. Now they're not. So why, you know, why spend the money,
Why take the risk? I mean it's in fact, we had a couple of guys to go down to different parts of the border last week and there were parts of the border where there were days where there were zero got aways, zero attempts to cross, you know, particular sections of the border.
Zero.
It's not clear that's ever happened, at least not in the twenty first or twentieth century. So it's a huge change, There's just no question about it. And it's you know, elections of consequences. Market's Steve Hayward.
Actually, James, I'm in Dallas today, I'm on the move as always, So Mark, I actually want to do it, say congratulations, this is your moment. You've been toiling away on this issue for as long as I can remember, and I'm sure all kinds of frustrations over the years with both parties, but especially the last administration. One question just for information, because I do tend to leave this
to you and don't chase the numbers myself. How has the composition of illegal immigration changed over the last ten twenty years. I mean years ago it used to be we thought, anyway Mexicans. Because in the last few years it's been people from all over the world right who managed to get themselves first to Central America and the
Darien Gap and then caravan up to the US. I was always amazed by the way that the media wasn't more curious as to what that was all about and who was organizing and paying for that, because that did not happen spontaneously. But anyway, I mean, what is the composition and how has it changed over the years, and what should we learn from that?
I mean, the stock of illegal aliens here are still mostly Mexican, just because a lot of them came a long time ago. But the new illegal flow is actually less than half Mexican. There's still some Mexican illegal immigrants coming, still a significant number, but you know, there's no it's just not that many people left in rural Mexico. The transition from the countryside to the city has now they've
gone through that. Now half of those people came to our cities but the fact is that transition is done, and so the Central Americans obviously made up most of the flow at one point, and it's diversified beyond that. Now we've got South Americans, Caribbeans, and we have increasing numbers of people, or we did under Biden coming from what they call extra continentals, you name it, they were coming from there. I mean, one of our guys went down to various parts of Central America over the past
few years. He was running into people from Tajikistan and Eritrea and you name it, large numbers of people from China and India, just because there's a lot of people there. But yeah, they're coming from all over in a way that really wasn't the case before.
Yeah. I mean the reason I thought to ask that is I recall, gosh, thirty years ago now around the time of Prop one eighty seven in California, some economists.
At Stanford forty years almost right time, man, Yeah, feel yesterday.
I remember some economists that I think at Stanford maybe at Hoover saying as Mexico economy grows and their people moved from the rural areas in the cities, Mexican illegal immigration will will will diminish thought. Well, maybe that's happened, and that's why I asked that question. The second one is, as I say, in general, you must be looking with some satisfaction at an administration determined to do something about this. So give us, you know what we're at day sixty,
Give us a balance sheet. What do you think that Trump people are doing well? What do you think they should do better or differently?
Well, I mean, if you ever have a problem like this, the first thing is you turn off the faucet before you start mopping up the floor, and they've done that very well. At the border, I mean, that's just the border crisis is over. It doesn't mean no one that was ever going to cross illegally, but the border crisis is over. The jobs that are now ahead of them, and it's not so much that they've fallen down on the job. It's just sort of like the next steps
is and this is something people don't think about. New illegal immigration is now going to be mainly visa overstairs, and so dealing with that issue of people coming in legally and then just never leaving is something that one administration after another has never really grappled with. These guys are going to have to and then the people who are here illegally. Can you unwind you know, eight to well, probably more like nine, ten eleven million illegal immigrants that
the Biden people let in. I don't think they're going to be able to unwind all of it, but the point is unwind as much as you can. And this is where the challenge is going to be. Not just looking for the rapists and murderers, because you know they're bad, every one of them should go. But most illegal immigrants are just working stiffs. They're not rapists and murderers. That's why what they need. Work site enforcement has to be stepped up significantly, and part of that needs to be universal.
Everify the online systems.
When you hire.
Somebody, you actually check whether they're telling you the truth about who they are and what their Social Security number is. Those are the jobs ahead of them. It's not that they have fallen down on the job because they just started, but those are the things that they're now going to have to grapple with.
Yeah. I'm really glad you mentioned the visa overstairs, because one of the terms that's driven me nuts for years now is no, no, we can't call them illegal immigrants, they're undocumented it and I always raise my hand and say, wait a minute. Many of them have documents. They're in violation of those documents. That's called illegal. Okay, let me shift gears for a minutes, because I know Rob wants to get in with some more general questions. I want
to take us overseas for a minute. And I don't know how closely you follow the immigration controversies in Europe, but it seems to me they're behind us. But I just read the headlines and I see that. I think, is it right that Sweden last year had net out migratory outflow. You see various countries starting to realize, boy, we've made a big mistake. We have we can't assimilate all these all the people we've let in. Some of these cultures are actively hostile, whereas you know, I mean
Mexican immigrants. They may not speak English, but they're kind of from a Christian or American, you know, American continental culture. So we have it a little bit better off than than Europeans do. But are you involved at all or following in Europe? And what do you how do you expect that story is going to unfold? Is it going to follow ours.
Yeah, I mean I always tell Europeans, look, we have real problems in the United States, but holy moly, I'd rather have our problems than your problems. Yeah, we actually have a network of restrictionist think tanks. We've got one in Paris, one in Jerusalem, one in Budapest. And yeah,
so we do follow it. And the interesting thing is the one country in Europe, well, yeah, the one Western European country that does not have a kind of so called far right whatever however you wanted to find that movement is Denmark because the left of center government there is actually restrictionist. So, in other words, they co opted the issue that the and look, I'm a right winger. I mean I'm not capolic, but I'm saying, you know, they don't have They've taken it with oxygen out of
the room for those guys. And you would think that, you know, the British and the French and the Germans would understand, and they just they just don't seem to yet. And I got to say, if you're Victor Orbon, you're saying, fellas I told you so, hey, go listen to me, and you didn't, I think how much just.
A concrease of weird alphabets that they seem to get it right.
You must have seen that New York Times story that noted the Denmark experience and saying, huh, maybe Democrats should take a look at that anyway, Sorry, Rob, go ahead.
I was to say, you know, Mark was going to get on here with his socialist Scandinavian axe to grind you love Denmark so much. I got to quit some over a general question because it just, I mean, it seems to I mean, although it has been exhausting and it feels like it's been ninety thousand years. Trump has only been president for two months, right, right? How does that?
How does it work? Just in terms of the hose where I just get this idea that you know, there's a it's a you know, it's a garden hose with a big sprinkler on one end, and that's the north, that's the border of the Rio Grande, and that people come up and how where do they hear and how do they hear and how and what effect does it have on them when they are or wherever they are trying to make the decision. I'm really just speaking about just to just about people in Mexico and Latin American
South America. I don't. I don't the other people. I'm assuming you're a sort of a longer tail, right, How do what? What is it that discourages them? Is it that they see something in that they read the news? Is it? Is it rumor? How does that work? Well?
I mean, look, every single one of these people has a smartphone, so that you know, word travels fast. I mean, it doesn't. It's not that hard to send out a message to people that the party is you know, the
party is over. And in fact, when Trump took over, there were a lot of people kind of in the pipeline coming up to take advantage of Biden had created these, frankly i think unlawful programs to corroll people into the United States, so that, in other words, instead of them jumping the border illegally, the Biden administration admitted them illegally. And so a lot of these people had appointments and
what have you. But then that was just canceled. They stopped at all at twelve oh one on inauguration Day, and you know they're going.
Back if you could, if you could, you know, there's an unfair question about percentages to what percentage? What percentage of the problem is solved by boots on the ground, actual border enforcement, the things that physical things happening IRLA
and yeah, walls, And to what extent is it? Can you leverage the smartphones and the rumors and the fact that, like, if I'm in some village somewhere and I'm not going to take a chance to come all the way to the warder and not get in, and I'm not going to give them some coyote five thousand dollars of my hard earned money because he thinks he can. Maybe what I'm hearing is that I'm not going to get in. To what extent are you does that have an effect?
Just the fact that the federal government has made a credible argument no more, and is that going to step on the hose? Now, what percentage of that is going to stop the flow?
I can't come up with a percentage, but you can't have one without. They're both necessary and they're but neither is sufficient. Because if you just tell people, Okay, you're not going to get in, but then if they walk, they can just wander across the river or wait across the river. I mean, I've waited across the real grand into the United States. Myself. It's not that difficult to do. There are parts of it there's no water at all. You just walk over a dry riverbed depending on the
time of the year. So you need you need.
But you did it just as an experiment, right, that's exactly Okay.
Actually I stopped right. I didn't go into the Mexican side because there was border patrol agents watching, and I might have had that.
You may have made me.
Go to the port of entry all the way and across anyway. But the fact is you need to have that. But on its own it's not going to do it. There is this idea as well, we just build a wall tall enough and to moat deep enough and all the rest of it, and it'll all work. No, you need to have all of it. You need to have enforcement outside the country where the state Department makes it
tough to get a visa and all of that. You need to have enforcement at the border, and you need to have enforcement inside the country too, so that for those people who do get by, they make it as difficult as possible to live a normal life here. You can't get a job, you can't get a bank account, can't get a driver's license. You need to do all of that stuff. I can't come up with a percentage. Let's just say it's thirty three and a third percent each.
You know it's pretty good though.
Yeah.
So my other question was that I remember when all of these arguments are happening, this is the pre Trump right and the immigration hawks, and you said something like e verify, they would kind of roll their eyes again.
No, no, no.
No, that Jesus you slow down, my friend, has Trump in a way kind of cut the Gordian knot here by being incredibly tough both verbally and also you know, administratively on border crossings, And has that given him, or given the Trump administration the kind of I don't know, leverage or credibility among the other folks to say, okay, now we actually do need everifying, because I can remember.
I'm old enough to remember that when you people talking about everify were like, you guys are that that's it sounds like amnesty to me? Is that is that helped politically? Are we are we really in a different moment or or is it just a moment? I don't mean.
Look, the point of everify is to keep people from getting jobs. I mean, in a sense, what potentially could happen the kind of thing you're talking about, where do you build up credibility so that you can then be Nixon and going to China kind of thing, you know what I mean, that's sort of the issue. And we are just you know, we're not We're nowhere near that.
We're not even at the beginning of the end where that may be the end of the beginning, you know, as Churchill said in other words, the kind of thing where And I look, I'm a squish on amnesty, honestly, I mean, I'm not as much of a squish as you are in a lot of things, but I am just.
You know, Rober talking about there no one really is. So they get close, I get it, I get I go farther. So it doesn't mean it's no way to win.
But but the point is you can't do it until you've solved the problem. And we haven't solved the problem. We've just literally we literally just stopped making it worse and are beginning to solve the problem. So I actually the way I would kind of game it out in my head is that in the second jd Vance administration, after the illegal population cut and shrunk by half or more.
The earth is lava again and a smoking ruin, and.
We have in place. We have in place the enforcement systems necessary, not just everify, but like a checkout system for foreign visitors we don't have. It's amazing we've tamed sanctuary cities. And then is the time for a Nixon going to China deal. But the deal is not the deal that they've always talked about, where we promise to
enforce the law tomorrow for a Hamburger amnesty. Today the deal is we amnesty the people who are left, rip off the band aid, not a lot of bs about thirteen years of jumping through hoops, just get it over with in exchange for deep permanent cuts in legal immigration.
So I guess my question is, like, if you split it into two groups, right, there's the I mean not the one is more legal or more illegal than another, but there are the visa overstayers, And that seems to me to be that's actually where Europe and all those lacks European countries seem to be excelling. They are really really strict about that stuff, and they're really really strict about where you can work and where you can't work. That doesn't seem like the hardest problem for us to solve.
The factually seems like the easiest, like low hanging fruit. Right, it's basically a computer. I mean, it's you know, you know, and and then some kind of government you know, oversight on employment and payroll attack, which they already do. Like it. It doesn't seem like like it should be. I mean, obviously it's a greater higher scale than say what happens in France, but it's basically what the French do. You cannot work here?
Yeah, I mean, yes, we're a bigger country, our rules are looser, we have a more decentralized system, so it is harder for us to deal with. But yes, the key is employment, making it as difficult as possible to live a normal life here as an illegal alien. And jobs are number one, but also driver's license and what
have you. Look, states are authorized to give driver's licenses to illegals, they just have to be different from the ones acceptable for federal purposes, you know, getting out your plane, for instance. So are the challenges are are different here, but and it's not quite you know, Belgium or whatever is just easier to control even though they don't have the will to control their own country. We're a bigger place. It's harder to control. Have you been to the border.
I mean, holy moly, there's no way you can stop everybody everywhere from coming across. I mean, it's a gigantic thing.
So that's always been the argument about employment control. But I just mean that the the spicott of airport arrivals, right, that hose is so much narrower. Yeah, And it just feels to me like that shouldn't be that hard.
It shouldn't be because and we have done better since nine to eleven at the check in part, at screening people before they get in and knowing who people are. Really is the checkout part that's the problem, because they've done some experiments on when you would check people out when they're leaving. Do you do it at the Jetway? Do you do it at TSA? It's not in Superbowl problem. No one has really ever wanted to bother with it.
In fact, Janet Napolitano, who was Obama's first DHS scretary, actually testified that, yeah, you know, we really don't care. We're not working on that. Even though Congress has mandated I don't know nine times now that they come up with an electronic checkout system for visitors. So yes, it's not that hard, but you have to have the will
and want time and the money into doing it. And that's my point to Steven's question, is that that's a challenge that is lying down the road for this administration.
Let's talk about the deportations which have been very high profile. Put a bunch of guys on a plane, taking them off, shackling them, shaving their head, and shoving them in an Al Salvadoran prison. The effect of this perhaps has been to concentrate the mind of people who might otherwise have just lulled around the country and thought they wouldn't be
caught or not. Do you think they're just going to be better about not being caught or is this one of those things that encourages self deportation on a with alacrity but the quick.
Hopefully it will. And but the thing is the president always is talking about getting you know, gang members, rapists, criminals out of the country. It's all good, obviously, everybody's for that, but most illegal aliens are not you know, raping gang members. And so if you're not a criminal. You figure, okay, well, you know, I'm okay, I'll just keep my head down and it's not going to be
a problem. That's my point about why you need work site enforcement, because if you raid, first of all, you get much higher numbers because you send five ICE agents to go after one criminal because it's labor intensive. The same five ICE agents raid a warehouse or something like that, you can come up with twenty illegal aliens and most of them are going to be normal people, I mean gang members. You'll still find some criminals because gang members often have day jobs as well, but most of those
people are going to be ordinary folks. That's how you can get some self deportation going, not if you're just talking about TDA.
You know, gang.
Members and rapists and murderers. So that's the challenge that's ahead of them.
And we're told constantly that if we do do that, then we're going to suffer a labor shortage. That means the vegetables and the fruits will rot in the fields, and that nobody will be able to get anything from the back of the store because there's nobody back there to stock it in the first place. It doesn't even particularly compelling argument for unlimited, untrammeled immigration. But is that
the case too. We have a period ahead where we have to adjust and figure out new ways to do things because the pool of illegals can be paid under the table quietly and not enough is going to shrink.
No, I mean on a national scale, that's a ridiculous argument. There will be particular places, particular companies that will be I mean, somebody is going to be inconvenience frankly, by trying to change the way we're doing things. But the idea, first of all, this is a process. It's not an event. There was this movie number of years ago, a day without an immigrant, and everybody wakes up one day and
all the immigrants are gone. I think maybe it was just in California, and they're joking about people in alleys with raincoats selling vegetables secretly, you know, under the cable, all that kind of nonsense. It's that's I mean, it was a funny movie, but it's not the way things work. You would have a gradual process of shrinkage of the illegal workforce, and you know, the market would adjust. And I know that because Uncle Adam Smith told me that's
the way things work. And you know, we've seen that in all kinds of areas where let's say, you know, there's fewer people working, you know, available for a bakery to hire. In Chicago, that happened there was a raid, they got a lot of illegal aliens out. Well, guess what. They hired locals who were in this case were black who weren't able to get hired because the workers were all Mexican. They raised the wages, they passed the net wider for looking for employees, and they look into new,
less labor intensive ways of doing their work. It's this isn't rocket science. And so I yes, if eleven million twelve well actually now it's more like sixteen million illegal aliens if they disappeared tomorrow, Yeah, absolutely, it would be enormously disruptive. There's literally no way that's going to happen. And so it's one of those things that you know, it's a hypothetical that's irrelevant to even respond to because it can't and won't happen.
Mark, thanks for joining us again, and would you please come up with a book or something so we can push it here. Yeah.
I got to come up with a new one. I have a book from before, but it's too old and Penguin ran away from it. So maybe when, maybe when Rob gets ordained, because I outrank him now I'm a deacon, but if he gets ordained, then.
I'll be a You're digging to the Armenian Church, so right.
Yes, I am, but we're all part of the Holy Apostolic and you know, right, yeah, you guys have that those great hats.
Though I might be I might be looking at that. You got better outphabits. I know that's a reason to do it, but you know it's not not a reason put it that way exactly.
Although I don't have to wear one of those. I'm just a deal.
Okay, thank you, Deacon Mark, and we look forward to talking to you again about something that will no doubt be four front for the next two, three, four five years. Marcu, Corny and ladies and gentlemen, see you later.
Thank you.
Oh it's a pleasure. The Armenian apple. Okay, let me get this straight. Is there an Armenian Orthodox Church that is separate from other? Correct me, Rob, No, I don't know much.
I don't know much about the I mean, I mean all the Armenian churches I've ever heard of are pretty Orthodox, but it's a different from the Orthodox Church.
Yes, yeah, okay, all right, because I know that, you know, there's the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and I think recently, if I remember correctly, they did some calendar adjustments so that Easter was not as far off. You know, am I right there? And I think it the same with with Christmas.
I think they adjusted it so that it's a little closer to the to the Western traditions because you know, all the Yukes I know would say Merry Christmas and then they'd have their own like fourteen fifteen days later. Same thing with yeah.
Yeah.
The Easter. Orthodox Easter, though, is actually one of the great chaotic scenes in world religious sort of celebration. You know, they are now on the show like scenes from Devali or something, or the water festival in Vietnam or even you know, parts of Ramadan. I e to the end of Ramadan. And I mean it looks crazy, but if you've never seen you go on YouTube the Orthodox Easter in Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that the banana's quality of that is so incredibly inspiring. Crazy.
It's like this fire everywhere. The idea that nobody dies, nobody gets immolated multiple times in that celebration is just crazy to me, and somehow it all works.
Well, you mentioned these other, these other ceremonies and celebrations in other religions around the globe, you know, roughly the same time. Why do you think that is? I mean, you go back to Roman times and you will find that there's particular, you know, celebrations around at that particular time.
What do you mean you mean spring or spring? Yes, spring, well, I mean it's a there are I mean, first of all, everybody has a different kind of spring, right, so if you're in the Southern hemisphere, Global South, your spring is different from our spring. It's a different month. So it doesn't really work in the same time of year. But we as Christians believe that the year, the Church year, is both symbolic and meaningful, and that it coincides with equinoxes.
Right that aren't necessarily on the twenty fifth of December or the or the twenty first of March, whenever the spring one is. But they're meaningful. I mean there's a the actual day, specific days, sick days of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are they're not consistent in the Gospels, right, but you know how you read it? Good Friday could be Thursday.
I think it's in John well what but but it all appears it's all within the same time. It's all these equinoxes, it's all the shifts. There are things globally experienced. You know, spring for example, it's got massive temperature swings at least up here, and that can leave you waking up with the sweats.
I knew it.
I knew it.
I was just I was searching for this and I was looking through that one like going with it, strolling me and I is this an episode of the Prisoner where we don't know who is Dan?
Who's to dance?
I threw that five minutes ago, and I've been.
Just man, sinker. Good for you. I knew what was going on, but I kind of was looking at you, Steve, like what Steve's face is there?
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to discuss amongst yourselves. Let's see, Oh war, that's right, one of the old hoothis, didn't we How is that ongoing at the moment? Don't think so? Was the point made? Doesn't seem so because they're still saber rattling. And but there's a space two or three days ago where people were convinced that something big was going to happened to Iran, and there was the usual contingent of people who say, no, sorry, nothing ever happens. And when it comes to Iran, what do you guys think?
Well, Okay, this hoothy business is tiresome. At this point, remember that the Biden administration came in took the Hoothies off the terror sponsored list of our State Department because we thought if we were nice to them, maybe they behaved better.
They didn't.
Biden escalated a little, but it seemed like Vietnam style. Let's shoot a few rockets at them and a couple of bombs and maybe they'll behave better. And they didn't. Israel has struck some hard blows against them several times now following rocket attacks, and now Trump seems to be saying we've had it with the disruption of shipping there
around the Red Sea. So and then supposedly people say, what Trump is really doing is signaling the Iranians, because Trumps keeps saying the Huthians, the Cuthians, right Uthians, and the blowfish or the blow of Heart's eye anyway, that they're the cat's paw for Iran. And look, James, I do think that if there's an attack on it run. It's going to come out of the blue. And whether it's going to be Israel or Israel and US or
Israel with our help, who knows. But I think that will be at a time of hour in Israel's choosing because left out of course, and I know you know about it is the Israel has turned the guzz of war back on in a big way in the last seventy two hours or so.
Did they turn it back on or do they just resume the I mean, if Gaza had released all the hostage, if the if the Hamas had released everybody, do you think that would be resumption of the hostilities or do you think this is a reaction to Hamas not doing.
Oh well, I think it's the latter, I think. But they've sent troops. Ground troops are back in Gaza. It's not just air strikes. So I think it's it's on again. And yeah, I mean, there was some possibility that if the Hamas had released all the hostages, that we might have made a ceasefire stick and postponed it for another day. That's unpopular in Israel, but Hamas is so determined to go down with all fours flying and all people dying, that Israel had no choice but to start it up again.
Yeah, I also figure that they know more now. I mean there's every single one of those hostages that's given them intelligence, and they have a better map of Gaza now and they have a better understanding where to look for hostages. So they may be going in to perform you know, some percentage of rescues, and which would be a disastrous for Hamas, right, I mean, like you you have you every every rescued hostage is one chip you can't bargain with. And that is clearly, that's clearly the
the the Israelis preferred position, which is understandable. The strangest thing here is that I feel like we we we keep getting into this strange trap as Americans, sort of American policymakers for foreign policymakers, where we think that the people who are orchestrating the terrorism, you know, Hamas or Hoodies or whoever, or Iran, they what they have an agenda of policy, positions have goals, they need to be addressed, and the problem with that is that they don't when
the reason the Whodi's attacked is because we haven't been paying attention to them for a while, and they want some attention. And it's not just the childish attention kind is that those those organizations only work if their own population is subdued and cheering for them, so they need to be attacked. I mean, Hamas doesn't see this disaster in Gaza as a disaster for Hamas. It's exactly what they want. They don't care that all these Gosins are dead.
They really don't care. It wasn't the point that those have always been pawms that you sacrificed for a larger point, which is power. So when we when we treat them as we say them, treat them with respect, or when we try a different diplomatic attack on all of these groups, we actually end up encouraging them to be more and
more incendiary. And then the only alternative really is to attack them with They also makes them stronger, but that is or makes them feel stronger, but that is That's been the Israeli position all along, is that you have to you have to keep going. You know, the blood, the cold blood at Israeli position is Hamas and its members must be destroyed, All of them must be destroyed.
And we don't like to say that. It just doesn't sound right, but their argument, and you talk to Israeli politicians, really policymakers, and they're almost always go to a kind of a public health metaphor, a viral metaphor. The virus has to be destroyed. And unfortunately that's us people, and it's horrible to hear, it's horrible to think. It's a horrible position to be in. But the people that you're dealing with aren't operating under any other set of priorities.
So you know, if you're playing a game and the person you're playing with is playing by different rules, guess what, you're playing their game because they're playing by different rules. That's how that works. And there's no there's no effort on the yet I don't know, or no public effort on the part of Hamas's paymasters to change that.
Yeah.
Sorry, it's not very uplifting.
And Steve and you are.
Well sorry, Well, I don't know if we want to continue on this or not. James, I'll just chime in this way. You know, the mistake that the American foreign policy makers have been making for decades with with just about everybody is we think that everybody is going to be rational in more or less the same way we are, and I think we're very slow to realize that while people can make rational calculations in the ordinary sense, there's
often much deeper currents of thinking. So I could go back and give you examples from the Middle East for years. But what's on my mind right now is you may have caught the story a week or so ago where Trump sent some new guy with no experience in foreign policy and negotiation to meet with Hamas in Qatar, and he said publicly, gosh, they turned out to be really nice guys, really foolish, stupid things, and in fact that Trump people have since pulled this guy back because he
was an embarrassment. But you know, I can give you lots of examples where people in the Middle East to Hamas Amas thought, by the way October sixth, that hes blow is going to come in from the north, the West Bank would rise up, and they were going to crush Israel at a stroke.
That's sort of their view of how the world would work, or should work.
I could easily imagine some Hamas people thinking, ah, Trump secretly wants to put distance between himself and Israel. We're not on the ropes, after all. All we need to do is hold out and we're going to win. Or and as I say, this is the sort of a deep conspiratorial thinking, or deep sort of perverse contrarian thinking that's very deeply embedded in a lot of these really cult like groups of people like Hamas and so forth.
So and by the way, gee, Trump is't He's easily capable of confusing people on purpose or quite by accident, or both. Right, So I got to think that the Hamas people are they say, I mean, we think, and I think it's right that Trump is very pro Israel, very supportive of net and Yahoo. But I could easily imagine certain certain precincts of the radical air of mind thinking, no, there's something else going on here, and it's all very strange and byzantine.
Yeah, well, yes, it makes me think that if you stuck a Queers for Palestine bumper sticker in the back of a tesla, right when I make some people's heads, smoke would come from their collar like a computer that Kirk could arg get into an a logical position. I mean, this is one of the more interesting developments in the last week is the is the transfer of hatred of everything Doge related and Musk related onto the vehicles of
the car company. So that now what used to be a sign a virtue that I care about the earth, I am not consuming the awful hydrocarbons. Look at me, I'm electric, is now proof that you somehow are that you are, if not a Nazi sympathizer or tall, an actual Nazi yourself. And when you have these coordinated protests apparently, I I forget what days is it, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Everyone is going to rise up and go to the deal to They're going to go protest at the car dealership,
which I find an odd thing. Now I can imagine if this was Ford in the nineteen twenties and people were concerned about some of his policies in regards to the Holy Land.
You know, but this is ridiculous, Well, James, I mean, this just shows you Trump's genius. Trump has accomplished one thing that Republicans have tried without success for sixty years, and that's get Democrats to hate the Kennedys, or at least one Kennedy right. And it's now managed to get many people on the left to hate and get rid of their electric cars. Was that Senator Mark Kelly dumped his test life and bought a Chevrolet Suburban?
I mean, I love it.
I was reading we had there was apparently there was a Tesla charge at charging station around Fargo or something that was vandalized, and the people on the reddit were saying, yeah, it's really weird, man. I mean a couple of years ago, as all the rednecks who were vanalyzing the EV charging station and wait a minute, did I miss that part? Yeah, I don't think they cared one bit of the other. They laughed at them. Laughterism vandalism, unless, of course it's language in case by violence.
But I don't.
I can't know. I think the people who were probably chopping it up were going for the copper. And I don't see the good old boy sitting around saying, well, we're done, We're done being sarcastic about bud Light. Why don't we go vandalize a test list. I just don't see it, No, I don't. What I do see is that all of you are going to go to Apple Podcasts didn't give us five reviews. What I do see is that you're going to go to ricochet dot com and click on the member feed. Oh you can't. Sorry,
that's right, you can't because you're not a member. But if for just you know coins, for just a pittance, you can find out exactly what you've been missing all these years, and the same civil center rights something else with a sibilants know home on the internet. That's ricochet dot com.
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Main page and listen to the podcast all you like, but you join and there's lots of stuff, including the right to comment.
That's right.
As Rob has said for seven hundred and thirty two podcas asked, you get skin in the game, and that means a place where people are invested in the community, working, and that's why it's a great place exactly.
So.
Also cozy Earth for the sheets. You want to regulate your temperature and make for a nice spring and bamboo hr which will help you with the difficult parts of running a business. You really don't want to think about what you got to do anyway, Stephen, thank you, Rob, always a pleasure yourself. Give regards to everybody back in the you know, in the monastery, in the cloisters, and we'll see everybody. We'll see everybody in the comments at
Ricochet for point. Oh good aye, thanks Fellows, Ricochet, Yeah, Join the conversation.