On this episode of The Middle we'll be asking you about one of the top issues that will factor into the election this November: immigration. We're joined by Yuma, Arizona Mayor Doug Nicholls and journalist Ray Suarez. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #immigration #deportation #border #Mexico #Harris #Trump #election
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by building connections between donors.
And news organizations.
More information on how you can support the Middle at Listen tooth Middle dot com.
Welcome to the Middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson along with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver we have new listeners this week.
Yeah, in two different parts of the country. We welcome the listeners of Texas Public Radio in and around San Antonio, and also folks listening and ka ZU in Monterey, Selinas and Santa Cruz, California.
Santa Cruz, California and two border states there.
So maybe they'll want to participate in our conversation this hour about immigration and what's at stake in this election. Of course, as we do this show, our thoughts are with everybody in Florida who's dealing with Hurricane Milton. A special thank you to our colleagues at WUSF in Tampa and WGCU and Fort Myers and other public radio stations keeping everyone informed under really diff circumstances. So this hour we want to hear from you about immigration. What do you want the next president to do about it. Both former President Trump and Vice President Harris have called for tougher border security, but Trump wants to deport the millions of Americans who are undocumented in this country, while Harris has talked about an earned pathway to citizenship.
By the way, a recent.
Gallup poll finds a majority of Americans now favor less immigration to the United States.
So where does that leave you?
What do you want the next president to do about immigration and deportation.
We'll get to your.
Calls in a minute at eight four four four middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three. But first, last week, we asked you what the top issue for you is in this election, and here are some of the calls that came in after the show.
Hi there, my name is Greg Reloo from Denver, Colorado.
Hey, I am Michal Escaio or Mick and I'm in Chicago, Illinois.
My name is Larry Michael. I'm calling from Massachusetts.
Hi.
My name is Marianna Eddie. I'm in Murphy's Borough, Tennessee, outside of Nashville. I'm Colin as an Independent. To me, the two most important issues right now are abortion, and gun control.
Number one issue for me in this election is definitely the economy and affordable housing. I have had to relocate because housing and deppor has just become so ridiculously high.
My comment is about the Middle East, SASA and now Lebanon, and we cannot twin a blind eye to what is going on in the Middle East. This is a really big issue for me in this election.
The issue I'm concerned about is immigration. I do not think illegal immigration should be allowed.
What a perfect segue to our show this hour, Tolliver, thanks to everybody who called in. By the way, you can hear that entire episode on our podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, on the iHeart app or wherever you listen to podcasts. So now to our topic this hour, what do you want the next president to do about immigration and deportation?
Tolliver the number again, please.
It's eight four four four Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three or write to us that listen to the Middle dot.
Com and let's meet our panel.
Doug Nichols is the mayor of Yuma, Arizona, situated very close to the border.
Mayor Nichols welcome to the middle.
Thank you very much for having me on. I mean and enjoy looking forward to the conversation.
It's great to have you.
And Ray Suarez is with us as well, veteran public media journalist and author. His new book on immigration is called We Are Home, Becoming American in the twenty first Century.
Ray. Great to have you back as well.
It's good to be with Jeremy.
And before we get to the phones, let me just ask each of you a couple of things.
Mayor Nichols. Back in December, there was a record number of border encounters in the country, about two hundred and fifty thousand, and then in August that number had fallen to about fifty eight thousand, which is a seventy seven percent decline. Why do you think that happened and how is it playing out where you are in Yuma.
Well, I think there's a lot of factors that build into that. I know the President had issued an executive order and I think that did have an impact on the reduction of the numbers some But I think we always need to remember that this wave of illegal immigration is.
A business model for the cartel, and.
So they're always going to EBB and flow bit just like any business based upon risk and cost and what's going on. And there's been a lot of internal struggles within the cartels recently, a lot of infighting and I think that's frankly hampering their business model, which has helped reduce the numbers. Now in perspective, per seventy seven percent reduction is big, but compared to.
Where we are under normal times, it's still significantly high along the.
Border race wise, What do you think about that?
And one of the things that President Biden did in his executive order is he made it much more difficult for people to seek asylum in the United States, and he made it even more difficult last month. Is that progress as or is it a band aid solution or what do you think?
I do think it's a band aid, but it is part of why the flow has been reduced. That and increased cooperation with the government in Mexico City. Secretary of State Blincoln Secretary of Homeland Security Majorcas both went down and saw Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and basically asked for more significant, more consistent help with slowing the number of people who were heading to the border, and he got it. That along with the heightened enforcement is pushing down the numbers.
So that's the government of Mexico obviously having an impact. Mayor Nichols, you bring up the cartel. If these two entities have such power, how does does the US president have that much power over reducing the flow of illegal immigration If it's the cartel that has so much control here.
Well, to me, that's the battle, right, that's the struggle.
You know, the United States does participate quite heavily economically with Mexico, and President Trump did a similar thing that the Secretary just did here this year and said, hey, you know, we really like supporting Mexico, we really like having you as a trading partner, but we need to be we need to have you as a partner for everything, including this. And so I think it's again incremental. We have different elements and different forces pulling on how things are impacted.
But I definitely believe the.
Administration making a statement like that does have an impact on Mexico. Now, Mexico at this point, you know, they're in transition for their presidential administration and all that.
So we'll see where we go here in the future.
But it's definitely has to be part of the conversation as we deal with this as a country.
I want to ask one more thing, Ray Sooairez.
People might not want to talk about this, but how much of our economy relies on people who are in the country.
Illegally more than you'd like to hear as an answer, And in businesses of all kinds, whether it's pounding roof shingles in a new subdivision outside Atlanta, bussing tables in Chicago, picking crops in the Imperial Valley in California, doing the electric wiring in a subdivision in Texas, it's across the economy, and unlike in earlier decades, it's across the country. The people who are now here illegally, the new people who are coming here are now part of the story of the economy in all kinds of places that they weren't before. A lot of the country never experienced in Ellis Island moment or an Ellis Island era. But now immigration is a more broadly felt part of the American economy, a more broadly experienced part of the American economy.
A lot of calls coming in, So let's get to the phones. Ub is in Aurora, Colorado. You be welcome to the middle What do you want the next president to do about immigration?
Hi, Jeremy.
I have three things that I want the president to do. I want them to encourage bipartisan cooperation in Congress because we need to pass laws on the federal level about this. I want them to help businesses understand how much we need foreign workers here in the United States. And I want doctor recipients to get a pathway to citizen citizenship US citizenships because they were brought to the US outside of their control. They've been paying their taxes, They're contributing members to our society. They deserve that.
And do you have a stake in this yourself? Are you an immigrant? Are you were you born in the United States.
I do have a stake in this. I'm from Madagascar. I grew up in Cameroon, and I came to the US for college and began working here. So I went from visa to visa to become a Green card holder. Now this is a very important topic to me, so much so that I began working in immigration law as a paralegal. And my family and my partner can attest to how much effort we've put into being here. And also that we want to park our achievements in the United States, not just doom and gloomy and trauma with immigrants. We are some high achieving people. We're the new Americans, and so I think people should remember that.
You'd be thank you very much for that call, Mayor Nichols. Let me go to you on the first part of what she said, which is she wants five partisan action in Congress. There was a bill that was out there. President Trump didn't want it passed, and it didn't get past But what do you think about that?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, the the endgame here has to be a congressional action. Unfortunately, that's going to be more than one session. It's going to be more than one bill. That bill, too, was a bit of a band aid in a lot of ways, so the President was able to accomplish almost.
The exact same thing through an executive order. But moving forward, the only way we get.
Immigration discussion as well as an effective change to our laws is through by partisanship. And it'll take a very strong leader not just in the White House, but in the in the House and in the Senate to really bring that discussion to a fruitful discussion and get away from the headlines and the and the talking points and get down to brass tax on how we can have an immigration set of laws that take us into the future and not hold us in the past.
A reminder that you can reach us at eight four four four Middle or at our website Listen to the Middle dot com tolliver. This issue of immigration is playing out all over the country, not just in the presidential race, but also in state and local races as well.
Yeah, that's right. Here are just a few examples from Senate campaign commercials in Nevada, Texas and Florida.
Biden and Kamala have failed Nevada families, creating sky high inflation.
And opening our border to illegal immigrants.
Jackie Rosen, Robert Stamp the Biden Harris.
Agenda when it comes to the border.
Ted Cruise's all hat and no cattle calling, allret It's tough.
He's standing up to extremist in both parties, both parties, when there was actually a good plan backed.
By sheriff and border officers.
Republicans and Democrats.
Ted Kruz said, we do.
I'm Scott and I approve this message.
Congresswoman Debbie mukerself Powell has a silly socialist plan for the border. She wants to give illegal immigrants a tax break. Ridiculous.
By the way, for those of you in swing states, you only have like a couple more weeks of that and then all those ads are going to go away.
Oh my god, And I said Nevada, how bears.
Oh, and we're on across the state of Nevada. So you can write your emails directly to Tolliver.
If you're no longer welcome.
Yeah, we'll be right back with more of your calls on the Middle. This is the Middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking you what do you want the next president to do about immigration and deportation? Tolliver, what is the number to call in?
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four sixty four three three five three. You can also write to us a Listen to the Middle dot com or on social media.
I'm joined by Yuma Arizona Mayor Doug Nichols and Ray Suarez, longtime public media journalist and author. And let's get right back to the phone lines because they are full randal is in San Antonio, Texas. Randall, welcome to the middle Go ahead.
Good evening, Thank you.
I am just us to San Antonio and home construction is exploding out here. This is a problem that goes back to the Eisenhower administration. Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in nineteen eighty six. President Clinton established the US Commission on Immigration Reform in nineteen ninety four. Tap one of our greatest Texans, former Congressman Barbara Jordan, to head that commission. Top quiz, who can remember what former President George W. Bush was doing the first week of September in two thousand and one.
Think about that. We need to do something.
We have never done before. We need to put the heat on corporations, businesses, and industries that knowingly, flagrantly, repeatedly higher undocumented workers. We need to put an end to the rampant abuse of the hanging courts in the air independent contractor scheme. It's devolved to the level of organized crime in the construction industry. We need to raid businesses, arrest the owners and managers that repeatedly knowingly hire undocumented workers, charge them with tax evasion and financial treason. And if they are convicted, what's the penalty for treason the end of.
The Okay, okay, I think we've got we've got your gooing there. Let me take it.
Let me take it to one of our brand new listeners outside of.
Yeah, I know, thank you, Randall. Welcome San Antonio listener. Race Warez.
Though, what about this idea of going after the companies that hire people who are in the country without documentation?
Well, as your caller noted, Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of nineteen eighty six, and one of the provisions of that law was to redirect enforcement to employers, because it was felt by the Republicans and Democrats who signed on to that law that one of the things that continued to spur illegal migration to the United States was easy in deployment. And the idea was if you crack down on the employers, there won't be a great big neon blinking help wanted sign over the United States at the border. Except in practice, when enforcement went to employers. Employers called their congressmen and said, hey, you got to let up on me. This is too much in all kinds of industries, in meatpacking, in the chicken slaughter houses in Arkansas, all over the country. And yeah, Congress did let up on the enforcement, and that part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act never lived up to its possibilities, and the fact that we are labor hungry in this country has continued to contribute to levels of illegal immigration.
Let's go to uday. Who's in Princeton, New Jersey. Ou day, Welcome to the middle.
Go ahead, Oh hi, can you hear me?
I can hear you? Yeah, go ahead, Yes.
So the question was that what should we do about our immigration policy, and particularly about deportation. I myself am an immigrant. I came here, oh maybe forty years ago through the legal immigration system.
But I feel that border security is a prerequisite to any immigration policy whatsoever. A country is defined by its borders. If there is no border, you don't know where the country begins or ends. If you want to have any immigration policy, you must first be able to enforce it, and you can only do so by having a secure border and some sort of a system you know, whether it is a Canadian merit based system or some compassionate system or a combination. If it's not enforceable, it's nearly pointless to have a discussion about what kind of system to have. Unfortunately, the whole immigration issue has become politicized so that the only thing that we hear from lawmakers are suggestions that are politically experient. But the underlying problem remains, you know, by both parties have to get together to do something to secure the border to the extent possible and then have a combination system where our economic needs are met and our human values are maintained.
Let me take that to the Mayor Nichols.
Interesting perspective there from because we always hear about this people that went through the process the legal way, but want a secure border, don't want people coming in without going through the proper process.
Yeah, this is a new days right right on Mark.
You know here living on the border, it creates a very unsettling environment when essentially you can just walk across across the river. And so when you get this discussion happening, people are focusing on that. So just from a discussion standpoint, that's one hundred percent true in my mind that you have to have ability to control it. Otherwise you're talking about something you can't you don't have the ability to actually affect. But beyond that, I think the border represents a lot more than even just immigration. It represents the ability to control what comes into the country and what leaves the country. For instance, veetanol, the crisis we're at right now. It is crazy, and it's coming through the border, and it's not coming through the poor. It's coming through the border, and that's because it's not secure movement of traffic, of drugs and money. It crossed both ways in the border, same thing. All that is part of the discussion of how you have a secure nation, So then you can talk about how do we make sure we have the right workforce, how we're protecting the right situations on human rights, and how we be that good global partner to those that are truly in need.
Christina is in Birmingham, Alabama. Christina, what do you think the next president should do on immigration?
Hi, thank you for having me. I'm myself. I'm a naturalized citizen. I'm proud to be a youth citizen for over five years now. My process took sixteen years. I was completely documented the whole time. But to me, I would also like my partisan corporation. I also would like the fousehoods to stop about the immigration process. It seems like we have to become the beyond of the politicians, and it's very terrifying to see how people are attacking folks about even eating their pets and their animals and just spreading falsehoods. I would like to see a through change in immigration too, because the process is very expensive and very longsome and cumbersome. It should not take this long for someone that is trying to remain undocument documented to be in this process. It should be easier so that there's some sort of control and that the people that are wanting to do things the right way can and are.
Able to Christina, thank you and congratulations on becoming a citizen of the United States.
I really appreciate your call.
Ray Suarez a couple of things there, but she actually brings up something that we heard from the previous caller, which is we've got to take the politics out of this, stop with the falsehoods. Is that possible with an issue like immigration.
Not in a closely divided country. I'm afraid I used to be optimistic and somewhat idealistic about the ability of Congress to hammer something out, And when people on both sides of the aisle talked about comprehensive immigration reform, I would think, yeah, overall, that would be better for the country. But when the country is as closely divided a sixty to forty country could work it out. You lure a couple of people over from the other side, you make bipartisan legislation, you make some compromises. A fifty to fifty country is really hard to do something as big as heavy a lift as comprehensive immigration reform. To me, it looks like they should break it into pieces, because what to do about twelve million people who are here already and have been here an average of ten years is totally different than the question of what to do about someone who presented themselves at the border this morning with a passport and says, if I go home, they're gonna kill me. Why do we have this idea that we have to have this enormous bill that takes care of both of their problems when it's so hard even to get the small things done right now, Congress in the shape that it's in right now, can hardly name post offices they're gonna they're gonna do comprehensive immigration reform. Really, I don't think so.
Mayor Nichols, you agree with that.
Yeah, it's it's I've never heard of put that way before. Nice job, right, but you know it's it's true. H two A visas is one of the visas that the agriculture community in Yuma, which I'll just put this out there. We feed the United States and Canada. Ninety percent of the leafy greens you consume during the winter. Over fifty percent of that workforce is foreign labor. That workforce is let's say the farmers desire that workforce to be completely legal because it's it's more reliable and you know you can year after year you have the same skilled labor coming back.
There's some dramatic reforms that need to be made in H two A.
And you talk about labor being something everybody understands we need to fix. There are no fruitful discussions currently happening on that, and they just can't seem to get together on that.
As soon as you bring that up, then someone else is bringing up.
Something and and you get into the comprehensive reform, build discussion, which then sends everybody.
Their own corner and nothing happens.
But if you want to start addressing labor concerns and how to bring people into the country legally to address the dramatic labor needs, that to me is the starting point because we get that going after obviously the borders secure, but we get labor to start, discussion starts happening, and then you can start taking out some of the excuses big industry has, as well as making sure when people come they do have a way to earn, earn a living and settle down correctly.
Tolliver, I know some comments are coming in online.
Yeah, I'm gonna start with the super flattering one.
Okay.
Eric in Minnesota says, I love this show. The middle is the most important place to be. I do want to say that the middle ground between the truth and a lie is not in okay place to make policy, specifically about immigration. I think we need to find a way to agree on the truth about the benefits of legal immigration and stop the fear mongering. Laura in gree League, Colorado says, I would like the next president to humanely and respectfully treat all immigrants equitably. Push the legislation that Biden supported and get that bill signed. I would also like them to deal with the situation so it stops being a talking point, but it needs to be humane. M Yeah, thing, we heard, great.
And you can reach out at listen to the middle dot com. But let's go to the phones right now. John is in ann Arbor, Michigan. John, what do you think the next president should do about immigration?
Good evening, and thank you for taking my call. I mean, I'm going to go very old school here. I'm going to go back to like Ellis Island whatnot. And my family is an immigrant family from Poland after World War Two, from concentration camp, survivors Blitzker attacks. I mean we came here. We an X on the my family grandmother put an X down waiting and quarantine, got her shot. Then we became hard working citizens. I mean what we're dealing with now. Yeah, we've got a mass wave, but we have a mass wave of needed labor throughout our country. Yeah. You, like we said earlier, by one of the points, we've got ten years of legal immigrants here that are working in our system. You know what if we would have just made them systems citizens when they came here, you know, tax paying.
Is that what you think, is that what you think should happen.
They come across the board, they signed their name, go to quarantine waiting period, get their shots if they have something on them when they get here, and then they're released. Like hundreds of hundreds of generations of families that are here in the United States, it's in an X in a book, and now they're sitizen.
John.
Thank you for that interesting perspective, Rayceoirez. Probably not a lot of people, or so many people might disagree with that and think that if you were to allow that to happen, it would depress wages hugely across the country if you had so many people easily able to come in and get their documentation right away.
You know, the.
United States is just one country among many that is experiencing a worldwide crisis of migration. And instead of making it all about us, why don't we ask ourselves whether we really thought one of the biggest, richest, most powerful, and influential countries on the planet was just going to whistle calmly by while Germany and Greece and Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon and Kenya and Congo. Countries all over the world are home to millions of people who are on the move. Twenty five percent of the population of Venezuela has left the country. Pull out a map. Venezuela is a big country. Eleven million people out of forty four million have left, fifteen percent of the entire population of Cuba, and because of the visa free access to Central America from Cuba, they buy a one way ticket, fly from Havana to Managua and begin walking north. The idea that we were just going to escape this while one hundred million people are on the move was naive and I fault both parties for not contextualizing this in the broader world that's wrestling with this same problem at the moment.
Let's go to Dan, who's in York, Pennsylvania. Dan, what do you want to next president to do about immigration?
Oh, he's just made the point I was going to make. I said, sorry, can't solve it from our side. We can't solve this from our side. We need to deal with the flood that is coming our way, not just at the borders, but support the borders and deal with the flood. Throughout the US and do our best to help the countries where the people are running away. Most people want to stay home and only leave when the conditions are such that they can't survive.
There, Dan a great point, and Mayor Nichols, I'll take that to you. This is one of the things that Kamala Harris in her role, you know, early on as quote Borders Are, was supposed to work on. Was was the the problem in the countries in Central America where a lot of people are coming from.
Yeah, and that's right. I mean earlier we were talking about, you know, the global place that we play as far as.
As a country. This isn't a simple solution to anything. And if we're not going to address immigration protection in all the countries we have great partner countries to the perspective of, you know, we need to make sure that we take in everyone who needs asylum when there's so many other countries that people pass by, pass through, pass over to get here, where if we worked together to try to find provisions that really made sense to protect those that are that are in need, that would be I think a better holistic solution.
Tolliver, as we heard from a caller earlier. It has been a while since we've seen any real immigration reform in this country.
Yeah, you'd have to go back to nineteen eighty six, when President Ronald Reagan passed a bipartisan immigration reform package.
This bill, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of nineteen eighty six, that I was signed in a few minutes, is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since nineteen fifty two. It's an excellent example of a truly successful bipartisan effort. The administration and the allies of immigration reform on both sides of the Capital and both sides of the aisle work together to accomplish these critically important reforms to control illegal immigration.
By the way, Telliver, you know how they dealt with most of the people who are in the country illegally with that bill.
They legalize them. They just legalized them for real. That's the easiest way to deal with the problem. I guess Magic Wand Yeah, Well, we'll be right back with more of your calls coming up on the middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
This hour, we're asking you what do you want the next president to do about immigration and deportation.
You can call us.
At eight four four four Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three. You can also reach out to us at listen to Themiddle dot com. I'm joined by Ray Suarez, longtime public media journalist and author at Uma Arizona Mayor Doug Nichols, And let's get right back to the phones. And Kathy, who is in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Kathy, Welcome to the Middle.
Go ahead.
Hey, so you covered a lot whatever was going to talk about. But the point is I work with immigrants, people who are refugees coming here legally and coming from other countries, and it's ridiculous what they have to go through. It is they could be in a refugee camp for over seven years before they have a chance to make it here. They have to have so much.
Money, I mean it, I mean we're talking like over ten thousand dollars. Sometimes they have to deal with lawyers, immigration lawyers, and fees for all sorts of stuff and pain for testing and everything like that. And we're these people who are in a refugee camp that have have no way of getting it so and it's so hard for them to do that. They're doing it step by step, and they have a lot of help. But if you make the immigration process more streamlight as you were talking about earlier, or more simpler or less expensive, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be happy to sign up and do it legally because it'll be easier and cheaper to do.
Kathy, thank you very much for that call. Mayor Nichols. What about that? Just streamlining the process, It's been talked about for years, it never really seems to get done.
Yeah.
I agree, that's the big thing. That's the endgame we need to get done. Tolliver's piece about President Reagan, if in fifty three was the previous reform and then in eighty six, I think it was.
We were due for another word due.
We're way overdue, way overdue, right, And that would be the essence of immigration reform.
What worked in eight in the eighties. He wasn't cutting it today.
So we need to figure out how do we do that better and cheaper, not make it so lealistic, but make it effective so that people can can come in and still have, you know, things that they can engage in. You know, it's not like I just have to wait till I get enough money. Money seems to be like the final thing you.
Need to have to worry about.
Let's get you here, Let's get you to the point where you're contributing and you've settled down into a strong life, and that's the strongest thing, not just for the people, but also for our country.
Let's go to Daniel, who's in Kansas City, Missouri. Daniel, what do you think the next president should do about immigration?
Hey, Jamie, thanks for taking the call.
I think the next president needs to take on a certain tone about integration. And I think I think we've seen it before. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when in school we would talk about America was a melting pot, and I think we've lost sight of that fact. And I know legal immigration is important and that there are more illegal immigrants these days, but I think the fact that we have our own refugee camps at the border is not showing us as a sign of, you know, being the most powerful, wealthy country in the world, and it's showing us as a xenophobic and potentially you know, dangerous country in the world. If we an't helped the people that are coming here to immigrate and get a better life. For themselves. That's the American promises to get a better life for yourself, and they want to work for it. Everybody here wants to work for that. So why is this that we deemonize immagerance at this point in time? And I think it's a certain person making those statements and bringing up those old, hired enophobic fears of the Phats that you know, have have played out so horribly in the past. We're talking about mass importations. That's scary. That is scary to many many Americans who think that immigrants are the soul of this country.
Yeah, Daniel, thank you very much for that Raceuirez Is it's kind of you tell the story in your book about people who have gone through this process, and yeah, what do you think about what Daniel said there?
Well, several of your callers have alluded to the rules, and I don't think a lot of people realize just how difficult and expensive and complicated and cumbersome and almost it seems to the immigrants like it's designed to trip them up, not to find a way for this to work for them. And when we're talking about mass deportations, I think a lot of people may think in the abstract well, these people are breaking the law, let's get them out of the country. And in the abstract it sounds like a decent proposition. But I guarantee that when you turn on your late local news and you see uniformed people dragging others into vans, with kids standing on the curb and crying and watching their parents being taken away, if you see that on the news enough, it's not going to be abstract anymore, and you're going to wonder whether this is really the look that you want the United States to have in the rest of the world.
Well, mayor Nichols, what do you think about that?
This is the proposal of Donald Trump right now is to deport everyone who's in the country illegally, starting the Trump campaign says, with people who've committed other crimes in addition to crossing the border illegally, but eventually getting everybody out. Is that in any way realistic in your view?
Well, I don't think it's practical.
There's people that are in process already to have a legal process or legal status, So I mean, I don't know that that is anything more than just a strong talking point. But from the reality of what is happening and the illegal immigration movement is I think what we missed frequently is that process just to get to the border is a humanitarian disaster, and the longer we leave that border open, the longer we are inadvertently contributing to that disaster.
And people are raped and abused.
You talk about money to come into this country legally, it's about the same cost to come into this country illegally. So I think there is quite a bit of a discussion to try to discourage people and shut down that process, and I kind of my personal opinion is that's what that discussion is about about deportations, is more about trying to change the narrative globally.
And when you say leave the border open, I assume you can't anywhere near youma just across the border without anybody stopping you.
Well, without anyone stopping you. What. Here's how it works.
Most of the people who have come through the border, We've had about fifty four thousand come through the UMA sector this year this last fiscal year, they cross the border and then they wait for border trol to come pick them up. They're not it's not what you expect. Where they're they're trying to evade.
Running across the desert country.
Right, They're not running across the desert or hopping in a van unless they're bringing fatanyl or they're a convicted felon.
Then they know they're going to get bounced and that kind of thing.
So you know, from that perspective, yes, people do walk across the border, but they look to get picked up. They're not looking to get evaded to evade.
Okay, Mac is in Wanaki, Wisconsin.
Mac, I hope I said the name of that, right, I probably didn't, But anyway, go ahead with your.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate you taking the call very much.
Thank you.
Yeah, go ahead. What do you think?
Sure?
Well, you know, I'm a worker myself, I'm a student myself, and I believe that a lot of times the powers that.
Be are often trying to create a division between us and the people who are trying to come into this country, even.
Illegally or legally coming to this country.
Just as immigrants, and regardless of parties conserving or liberal, they've been labeling these people as an outgroup. And I really do not believe that that's fair. Because US foreign policy throughout not just our history but even our recent history, it's in like since the new millennia has come in, has been a policy of error, has been a policy of exploitation, has been a policy of colonialism even and we've seen this with how we treat our third world country. They are one of the rich as countries in the world due to their resources that they have, but they do not have the labor source that's organized enough, nor the political autonomies that are organized enough to extract that and to maintain their wealth. Because first world countries like Europe and like the United States are going and they're extracting their wealth for our own gain, and I think oftentimes we take that for granted.
So so your point, just briefly, what would you like the next president to do about immigration?
Sure, I think personally I'd like to see less of a division between us and them.
We need to have more.
More literature and more policy about treating them as human beings. You know, seeing these kids in cages with poor living conditions, you know, like these people are just trying to seek better lives. They do what you and me would do.
Thank you for that, Resoirez, your thoughts. I mean, we've we've heard this in a couple of different ways. This hour from from different callers, just more humanity to the situation.
Just a couple of days drive from the Texas border is the coffee zone of Guatemala, and the climate is changing there and changing rapidly. And if you're a young worker, not a plantation owner, but just a teenager or a young adult who helps in the coffee industry in Guatemala, when the rains fail or two years of rainfall in the course of a couple of weeks making it impossible to bring in a crop. There's no welfare structure, there's no job reassignment mechanism. You either walk and go somewhere where you can work and eat, or you stay there and stop. All over the world there are people making choices like that. A lot of people are heading to our border from places where they've just decided they.
Can't make a go of it anymore.
And I sympathize with the caller's point, But right now the United States doesn't have the mechanics to address that either, not in the short term anyway. But we really should recognize that there are many countries in crisis, and part of the problem is politics. If an American president try to stanch the flow of immigrants from Venezuela. That person, a woman or a man, would be accused by the opposite party of coddling the regime in Caracas. How come you're a friend of the Venezuelans when actually you're just trying to slow down that human tide that's making things not only difficult in the United States, but in Colombia and Ecuador and Peru and other places. This is a crisis, and we're not treating it that way. We're treating it as some sort of political slanging match in Washington, d c. And it's not working out, either for native foreign Americans or for the people who are coming here.
Jeremy, we have so much coming in can I sneak?
Okay, yeah, go for it real quick.
Forest and Golden Colorado says mass immigration cannot be sustained. It's not sustainable as to water, energy resources, quality of live climate change acceleration. We need to stop all immigration if we hope to survive the twenty first century as a sustainable civilization. Last one, Shelley says, why do we have this crisis in the first place. Isn't the United States responsible for establishing policies that created our immigration crisis. I feel like if we had another hour we can get into that.
Yeah, I mean, we do need to do another hour on this, because there's the lines are completely full right now. But I want to get to another caller, Brett, who has been on the line waiting from Tetonia, Idaho. Brett, go ahead, welcome to the middle.
Thank you very much.
AI. First and foremost want to thank you guys for the forum that you provide. And I really find it enlightening the lot of the people I've been listening to sort of cover that middle gamut and really give a real clear you know there. It sounds like there's a lot of people on both sides that all have really fine points, and so I want to thank you for that.
Thank you, thank you.
Yes, and so the one thing first and foremost I want to at least try to agree upon is that when you travel the world country to country, border to border, that there are rules and permission needed to do those. And it's been very disheartening to see that we've allowed so many illegal folks to come into this country, understanding that they come from situations that are probably deplorable and as well, though a caller mentioned something about how that this country is very labor starved. And I work in the construct construction industry, and I can tell you that that's very clear that there are a lot of jobs that are taken up by folks who are traveling into our country, whether it's legal or illegal, that are providing labor, and they aren't jobs that are being challenged. It's not like people are not getting jobs because they are taking jobs. They're taking jobs that.
Are nobody wants.
That no either nobody wants or no one has the skill set four. And they're very fine paying jobs, you know, that require a skill, So it's obvious we need them. I do somewhat agree, having traveled a lot in South America and knowing that if you were in if you were from Argentina and you were in Chile and you were cross there without a stamp to be there, you're sent back home. Yeah, And I really think that's something that we need to address in this country, and that if we do how we run across them. We don't need to go looking for people, but when we run across them, maybe they need to go back home. And if they do and are providing a service in this country, we give them the ability to be able to come back quickly. We need to clearly.
I think we've got it there, and let me take that to the mayor and I will say he brought up South America. I do remember being in the Eusu Waterfalls, which is on the border of Argentina and Brazil, and as an American in this group of tourists, I was the only one who wasn't allowed to go to Brazil because to the Brazil side, because I didn't have a visa. But they Brazil gave all the European tourists that were there, they let them cross over, but Americans aren't allowed because we do it to them. But anyway, what Brett said there, it is true that the ability of somebody to go into another country like the United Kingdom for example, is much more difficult than it is in some ways to come into the US.
Yeah, and that's true.
I think it's really starts with that discussion that Bi Potterson, that sit down adults in the room, kind of discussion on what do we want as a country, what are those rules in those parameters, and then enforce them without enforcing them. You know, we could have this conversation and we will have this conversation until infinity, But we need to have that conversation about you know what is we can't assume we can't absorb everybody into this country that wants to come, So how do we make sure we're approaching it from an equitable standpoint? I think those are the conversations we need to have, and then you can talk about, Okay, what laws make that happen and what policies from the administration make that happen.
I'm going to ask each of you just for a five second answer, do you think whoever wins the election, that we're going to get significant action on immigration?
Mayor Nichols, you will.
I think you will under the Trump administration.
I'm not quite as confident under the Harris race Warez.
There's never been as stark a difference between two major party candidates as there is now on immigration.
Ever.
Yeah, well, I want to thank my guest, Racewarez, a longtime public radio host, journalist and author of the book We Are Home, Becoming American in the twenty first Century, and the mayor of Yuma, Arizona, Doug Nichols.
Thank you both so much.
Thank you great to be with you, Jeremy, and.
Next week, we'll be asking you what you want the next president to do about another top issue, the economy.
Be sure to call in at eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three, or you can reach out at Listen to the Middle dot com, where you can also sign up for our free weekly newsletter.
Also this program.
Note, on Sunday, October twentieth, The Middle will have a live cross border election special, not the border we've been talking about tonight, but Canada can Canadian and American callers from across the continent. If you want to be on that show and let Canadians know what you're thinking about as.
You vote, go to CBC dot caa slash air check.
The Middle is brought to you by Longnook Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media and Arvana Illinois and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmisdas, and John barth. Our intern is Annikadessler. Our technical director is Jason Croft.
Thanks to our podcast audience and the more than now four hundred
And twenty public radio stations making it possible for people across the country to listen to the Middle, I'm Jeremy Hobson and I'll talk to you next week.