Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E7: The Immigration Controversy

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E7: The Immigration Controversy · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
Hey everyone, welcome to the Lila Rose Show.
0:03
I'm Lila Rose, and this week's episode is on something that
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I've gotten a lot of messages about, emails about, and has
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quite frankly been in the news maybe more than almost any other
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issue, or at least it has been one of the top issues in the
0:19
news. Everyone's talking about it.
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Yes, it's immigration. As most of you know, I spent a
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lot of my time on the issue of abortion.
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I did an episode on that recently.
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There are, of course, other big issues out there, but I think
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it's fair to say that people on both sides of the political
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aisle, even people who are typically not very political,
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have been paying attention to and have been talking about or
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at least learning more about this issue.
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And I am presenting this podcast episode because I feel very
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strongly that it's something that needs to be talked about in
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a contextualized way, meaning it needs to be talked about in a
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holistic way. Because I've noticed that there
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is a lot of misunderstanding and disagreement and outright, I
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think misinformation, lies, things being shared that are not
1:08
true and extremes, extremes on both sides.
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So what I'm hoping to do today after a lot of research, talking
1:15
to people, getting some information from people that I
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consider experts or specialists in this space, as well as just
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spending time over the last few years really researching this
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topic. To not present the all the
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answers for the immigration crisis or conflict that we see
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in American politics today, but to present what I think are some
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principles that we can agree on and then some public policy
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solutions that I think perhaps we can also agree on.
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Now this is something that I hope is helpful for everyone,
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whether you're coming at this already with strong position, a
1:50
strong position on this topic, or do you have strong views or
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you're coming at this out of curiosity because you want to
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learn more. I hope that I can present this
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in a way that is helpful. And again, I'm not here to
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answer every question about immigration because there is
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this is a huge topic and I'll talk about about that, how big
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of a topic it is. I do plan to do future episodes
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on this and also what we can do to get involved in a way that
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actually is loving and in service of others.
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But what I'm going to do in this episode is 4 things.
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I'm going to share some opening thoughts about the context of
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this problem, the landscape of this not just problem, but this
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issue. I'm going to share 3 principles
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or values that I hope that we can all agree on that I hope
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that people, whether you're conservative or you're saying
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we're more progressive or you're faith-based or you're not
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faith-based, whatever you are that I hope you we can all agree
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on those those, those 3 principles.
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Then I'm going to share what I see as extremes in the political
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debate that I think are harmful. I'm going to point those out.
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And then I'm going to talk about a few common ground public
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policy solutions that I've learned about that I think
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people on both sides can agree on as long as we agree on those
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3 principles. So a little bit of background
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here for me, first of all, for opening thoughts.
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You know, you guys have seen there's a ton of media chatter
3:13
about this and a lot of it is really heated.
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And I think a lot of it is good in the sense that people are
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paying attention to what I think is a humanitarian crisis, not
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just at our border, but in the long track before migrants get
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to our border. Because the reality is there are
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people fleeing their countries are just looking for better
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opportunities. And the whole journey of
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somebody coming from their origin country, whether it's in
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Central America or even far or there is often full of dangers
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and full of a lot of abuses. And they're also many of these
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people, like I said, are fleeing abuses or they're just looking
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to make a better life for themselves because their
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families might literally be malnourished or facing violence
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or bad opportunities in their origin country.
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So in the whole reporting on this, I will first note that I
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think there is a lot of bias out there because, and I'll talk
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about this more under extremes, but I'm saying this now because
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I think it's really important for anybody who's looking at the
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immigration issue to not get your news from one source.
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I said this when I talked about the tech censorship issue and
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talked about the suppression of technology companies like
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Facebook and Twitter and even the bias of media companies when
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it comes to certain ideas. If they're more left-leaning
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reporters biased and the opposite, they can be biased.
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It's just the important having diverse a divorce diverse set of
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sources that you look at. So if you're studying an issue,
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particularly immigration issue, to read a lot about it and not
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just read it from sources that are more left-leaning or only
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reading about it from Fox News read a a wide swath of sources.
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I will say that most of the media today is very
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left-leaning. I I would guess about 90% of
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media today is left-leaning, especially traditional media.
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This I face a lot with the pro-life issue.
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It kind of amazes me how many people are pro-life in our
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country, how many people consider themselves pro-life,
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are against abortion, want abortion restrictions despite
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the fact that virtually, not virtually all, but most.
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And again, I would, I would venture 90% or so of media
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groups today are in support of abortion as somehow a woman's
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right on the issue of immigration.
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I do think a lot of the media tends to learn more on the left
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side of the spectrum. I will talk about that more
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late, more later. Well, but of course, there are
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other media groups that do not. And you know, Fox News is the
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most obvious one because there aren't many others besides it.
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But but I'll be talking about the extremes in a few moments.
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I think the next thing I want to share in opening thoughts is
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that, look, in order to really even talk about the issue of
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immigration, we do need to come around the same shared values,
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because I think we're never going to reach public policy
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solutions. You know, what to do with
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migrants coming in, what to do with immigration, how to change
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or not change refugee or asylum process, what to do with our
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borders. We're not really going to have a
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solution for any of these questions on a policy front
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unless we have shared values. We have to be coming from the
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same place of shared values. So for example, with the
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pro-life issue, it's the same thing.
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I can't really make common ground with somebody who is in
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support of abortion rights, quote, UN quote, because they
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absolutely do not share the same values that we share on the
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pro-life side, which is that all human beings, no matter how
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small, no matter how underdeveloped or pre developed,
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I should say, no matter how little, no matter how young, no
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matter even their disability, no matter how they were conceived,
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no matter how poor they might be.
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Every single human being from the moment of their existence,
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from the moment of fertilization deserves legal protection.
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And if you don't agree with that principle that all humans have
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human rights, then I'm going to have a really hard time
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persuading you that abortion is a bad thing because you have to
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agree that all humans have human rights and that first human
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right is life. And we can't every law should
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protect human beings equally. We should not just protect a
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born child, but then moments before birth, that child has no
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legal status, no protections. And therefore be killed by his
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or her mother or or an abortionist or whoever else
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might be killing him or her. So that is the common ground of
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the pro-life issue is do we believe humans have human rights
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and do all humans have human rights?
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Because science is very clear about when human life begins.
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It begins at the moment of fertilization.
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Any other line to begin life at is arbitrary.
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When we say a baby is 9 months old in utero or a baby is 3
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months old in utero, it has to start from what?
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It starts from that moment of fertilization when you have a
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unique individual single cell human embryo that is distinct
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from his or her mother, that just needs time and nourishment
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to grow. Why do I say this?
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I say this because look, we need to have shared fundamental
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principles when it comes to the topic of immigration.
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And that's what I'm going to present next is 3 principles
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that I hope we can all agree on, which I think can guide our
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discussions on immigration and guide our public policy when it
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comes to immigration. So what are those 3 principles?
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And if we can share these, then we can make progress on this
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issue and we can cut past some of the sensationalism, the
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anger, the extremes, and actually go to helping people
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and helping make our country and helping make and serve people
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not just in our country, but beyond.
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So number one of these three principles, and by the way,
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these principles I spent a lot of time researching, they, I
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think, are very intuitive, but they also come from the teaching
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of the Catholic Church. And it's also, I think, found in
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the teaching of the Bible. And a lot of evangelicals, I
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think, can agree with what I'm about to share.
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And I think it's also found in the teaching of some of our own
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founding documents, including our Declaration of Independence.
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So I'm gonna reference these things when I go through the
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principles. But I'm one of the reasons I
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some of you guys have heard me share a little bit about this.
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I'll be sharing more in the future and future episodes.
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But you know, one of the reasons that and I even became Catholic
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was because I had spent a lot of time studying the church's
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teachings over 2000 years of its teaching since Jesus Christ.
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And I was so convicted and so moved by how holistic and
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comprehensive its teachings are to under to not only tell us
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about God. And a lot of that's through the
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Bible, but it's also through the traditions of the of the church
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and it's through the Magisterium or the surrounding explanations
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of the Bible of the church over the last 2000 years.
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And the teachings on immigration particularly are really really,
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I think beautiful and profound. So that's what this is come.
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This is actually 33 principles are actually listed on the
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website for the US Catholic Council, for the US Council of
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Catholic Bishops. And these are also principles
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found in the Catholic Catechism, but they are also, I think,
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again, principles that you can find in our founding documents.
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And I think people can agree with whether you're not Catholic
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or not, but I think that they're very profound and beautiful.
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All right, so that's my little I'm proud to be Catholic blurb
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right there. I don't hold back on that.
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You guys know where I stand on it.
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But of course, respect and appreciate people coming from
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different perspectives and am eager to dialogue.
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That's why you can always e-mail me thoughts@roadshow.com or of
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course, message me on Instagram. So OK, 3 principles #1 The first
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principle is that we are all people, us included.
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All people have the right, the natural right to travel, to
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migrate is another word in order to sustain their lives and the
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lives of their families. So what does this mean?
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It means that everybody has the right to attempt to seek to at
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least try to better their lives in order to really in many ways
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save their lives or improve their lives for themselves and
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their families. People have that right as a
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human being to try to improve their lives and that lives of
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their family, and that includes traveling to do so.
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Now, this is not saying that anywhere they travel, the person
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or the place that they travel to has the obligation necessarily
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to welcome them. I'll talk about that more in a
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moment, but that people have the right to seek a better life for
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themselves and in and in, and that includes migrating or
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traveling in order to find that. This is very biblical.
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For example, in the Bible, you know the story, of course, of
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Mary and Joseph fleeing Herod. Ultimately, who is going to kill
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all the newborn baby males, baby infants who are male in order to
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try to kill Jesus? And they fled to Egypt.
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And this is not to say Egypt had to welcome them, but they had
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the right to try to flee. And that's true for all of
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humankind, is that we have the right to try to better our lives
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for ourselves and our families. This is actually in our
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Declaration of Independence and our Declaration of Independence,
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it talks about how we're endowed by our Creator with certain
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inalienable rights. And among these are the right to
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life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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And this Declaration of Independence, yes, it was for,
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you know, it was by the early Americans, you know, developing,
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creating the United States of America.
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But it's not just saying this is rights for American citizens,
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but this is universal human rights for all human beings.
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All human beings have the right to life, liberty, and the
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pursuit of happiness. And part of the pursuit of
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happiness is trying to pursue a better life for yourself.
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And that can include, and that most fundamentally can include
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leaving a place that's dangerous for you or crippling to you and
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your family and your lives. So again, these are universal
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human rights. And just like in a family,
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family has the right to and, and the obligation to care for its
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children and to make life better for its children.
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It's in many ways the responsibility of parents to try
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to make a better life for their children.
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So that's the first principle that people have the right to
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migrate, to travel, to strive to seek better lives for themselves
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and their families. And that includes sustaining
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their lives, include when there's maybe even lethal danger
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that is posed to them. And these are universal human
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rights. All right.
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So how does that fit then with the second value?
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The second value is in some ways it might seem like it conflicts
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with the first, but it doesn't conflict directly.
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It just is another, you can consider it a a counter value,
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meaning both these things are true at the same time.
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The second principle is that a country, so any nation has the
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right to regulate your its borders and to control
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immigration. So any sovereign nation and
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virtually every nation in the world does this.
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They have borders, they attempt to control immigration.
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I think the only nations that don't really have borders are a
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subset of the European Union, which allow free migration
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between the countries without any border checks.
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And that's very, very rare. That's because that's something
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that they decided on. But throughout the entire world
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and from the beginning of human history, borders have existed,
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the control of immigration has existed.
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This has to do with the principle of national
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sovereignty. And to think about national
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sovereignty in a more maybe relatable way.
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We have the right to have a door in our house and to lock our
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doors, and we don't have to allow anybody in at any time.
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This is our home, this is our property, and we have the right
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to monitor who enters our home. And it's actually a
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responsibility to protect their families to do that.
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Now, this doesn't mean that we should never open our homes,
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that we actually don't have a responsibility to help others,
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and I'm going to talk about that in a moment.
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But the basic principle here is national sovereignty and that a
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country has the right to regulate its borders and to
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control immigration. This is.
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And then the final principle is where it gets, I think, tricky
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for people. The final principle is basically
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the meeting of the first two values, and it is that a country
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must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
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So a country has the obligation to regulate its borders, to
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control immigration with justice and mercy.
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So what this means here is it acknowledges, look, people have
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the right to try to migrate or improve their lives and the
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lives of their families. The earth is all of humankind.
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It doesn't just belong to one person.
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We have the right to try to mete out the best part of the
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resources we can for ourselves and our families.
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But people have the right to have their national sovereignty,
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to have their their walls, to have their homes.
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But we also have the responsibility to regulate our
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homes and our borders with justice and mercy.
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And the implications here are really big for the United States
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because while we have poor in the United States, while we have
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a lot of problems in the United States that we have to solve,
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abortion, of course, is a huge one.
16:07
It is the greatest human rights issue, I believe in the United
16:09
States. The fact that 2500 children are
16:11
killed legally every single day by abortion in the United
16:15
States. We have low income in struggling
16:19
communities in the US. We have a lot of problems here.
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Despite that fact, the reality is in the United States, we are
16:26
actually one of the wealthiest nations in the entire world, and
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we are doing better off than virtually almost all most
16:36
nations in the world. We're definitely one of the
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biggest and richest in the world, and we are.
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We have a lot of overflow. There's a lot of wealth here.
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A person living this is, according to Business Insider, a
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person living at the poverty line in the United States
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actually belongs to the richest 14% of the world population.
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So despite our challenges and problems, we're doing very well
16:58
in the United States. So what does this mean for us?
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It means a lot of things. It means that we have to do our
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best to be generous, well, at the same time responding to the
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needs of our own citizens, our own residents, that people
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already in this country. And therein lies the big
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conflict. Therein lies the big question
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for public policy about how do we do that, what does it look
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like, etcetera, etcetera. But I believe that if we can all
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agree on these three principles, and then if we can avoid the
17:25
extremes on both sides, which I'm going to talk about in a
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minute, I think it will be much easier to resolve some of the
17:32
crises and the problems associated with immigration and
17:36
our borders today. So I'm going to talk about
17:39
extremes next. Then I'm going to go to the
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public policy solutions. It's been really interesting
17:45
watching extremes happen in the immigration debate.
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I've always kind of intuited it and seen it, but it's been
17:51
really blatant in the last several months, especially with
17:55
the a lot of the information that's being reported on about
17:58
border communities, about detention centers.
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I'm going to go into that in a moment.
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I think that there are two major extremes that I've seen with the
18:10
abortion with not the abortion with that too, but with the
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immigration debate. Two big extremes #1 is what I'm
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going to call xenophobia. I'll explain that in a second.
18:20
And a poverty mindset. And then number 2 is call is
18:24
selective outrage slash Trump hate and open borders.
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So first of all, xenophobia. Xenophobia is a fancy word
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rooted in fear phobia, fear of the other Zeno, like the
18:37
immigrant, the other, the person that looks different than you.
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So xenophobia is the fear of the other, which is very, I think it
18:44
can be a human instinct to fear the unknown, to fear the
18:47
foreign. And it is a real problem that
18:50
this fear of the others, what are they going to do?
18:52
Where are they coming from? And then the poverty mindset,
18:55
which says we need to just completely shut off all
18:58
immigration because the United States can't take more people.
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If we have more people in our country, it's going to make us
19:04
poorer. It's going to make lower income
19:06
people fight for those existing jobs.
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This is this limited mindset of we only have so many resources
19:11
and they're going to run out, which by the way, is connected
19:15
to the same ideology that population controllers have.
19:19
Population controllers are the people that founded Planned
19:21
Parenthood, the biggest abortion chain, and this idea that the
19:24
world is going to run out of resources.
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More people equals bad. We can't handle more people.
19:30
So this is a bit of an oversimplification because these
19:32
things are very complex and there's a lot of nuances here.
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But the reality is there does exist in the political
19:37
discussion fear of the other. So there's this fear of like,
19:41
you know, and a lot of this you'll see in reporting on
19:43
immigrant crime rates, saying that undocumented immigrants
19:47
commit crime at a much higher rate than any other native born
19:51
population. When in reality, groups even
19:53
like the the Cato Institute, a more libertarian think tank, say
19:56
there's no evidence for that. It's actually not true that
19:58
there absolutely are criminals among undocumented immigrants,
20:01
but they are not at a higher rate than the native born
20:04
population. So they they do exist.
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Obviously, criminals do exist. Rapists do exist, you know.
20:10
Murderers do exist, but it's not at some higher rate than native
20:13
born population. And then the poverty mindset
20:16
saying that we are going to be hurt economically by immigrants.
20:20
And I think that the yes, there are some economic drawbacks and
20:23
there are economic advantages, but ultimately I think the
20:27
mindset of people are good. And if we have just economic
20:32
systems, we can actually and people are educated and they
20:35
have good opportunities. Ultimately, my belief is that
20:38
the world can sustain us and we will work together to improve,
20:42
improve our our outcomes, to improve our futures for our
20:46
children and our families. As a general principle, I know
20:48
it's complex. There's a lot more to say there.
20:49
But anyways, that's one extreme. The extreme of the immigrants
20:53
are out to get us or you know, undocumented people are going
20:56
to, they're illegals, they're breaking the law and they're
20:58
just going to break the law when they get here and do horrible
21:01
things. And then the poverty mindset of
21:03
we can't take any more immigrants.
21:05
We have to close the borders. Now this is an extreme.
21:07
I'm not saying most people believe this, because they
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don't. I don't think most people
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believe this. Very few people do.
21:13
But it is an extreme that exists in part of the political
21:16
discussion, OK. The other extreme on the other
21:21
side is, first of all, the selective outrage.
21:25
This really drives me crazy because it is probably the
21:28
loudest voice right now. Like if you hear one voice on
21:31
the immigration issue, it is the voice of I think the media and
21:36
some politicians who are saying that, you know, Trump
21:39
administration and the Republicans are the evil ones.
21:43
They hate immigrants and they are just doing horrific things,
21:46
you know, concentration camps for migrants, etcetera, at the
21:50
borders. But the conditions in detention
21:54
centers have been the same, existed before the Trump
21:57
administration, they existed during the Obama administration.
22:01
And almost none of the media groups reporting on it now
22:05
reported on it then. So it seems like it's more, it's
22:09
less about them maybe suddenly caring about the issue.
22:12
And although some I think are sincere for sure, but it's also
22:15
about wanting to just hate on Trump, which I totally
22:19
appreciate and understand people who have disagreements with the
22:21
president, I do have them myself.
22:23
Obviously I'm grateful for his pro-life positions.
22:25
But when you accused the Trump administration of having poor
22:30
conditions for migrant children and you're literally using
22:34
pictures from 2014 during the Obama administration to prove
22:38
your point and you don't even you're so you're ignorant.
22:41
This has happened, by the way, by by mainstream journalists.
22:43
You don't even realize your pictures are from the Obama
22:45
administration, but you're using them to accuse Trump of doing
22:48
it, then we've got a problem. And unfortunately, this has
22:51
happened a fair amount because a lot of these poor conditions in
22:55
detention facilities, the crisis of having so many migrants
22:59
entering an asylum, seekers entering the country trying to
23:02
get help, who are then put in detention.
23:04
That was happening before the Trump administration.
23:07
That was happening long before. It's happening under the Obama
23:09
administration. It was happening under the
23:10
Clinton administration, and it was happening under the Bush
23:12
administration. So a difference is it has
23:16
increased under the Trump administration, but it has not
23:20
increased in a way that is the conditions are then different
23:24
than under the Obama administration.
23:25
The numbers have increased. So there's more people in
23:27
detention now, but it's not, I think it's by 15,000 a day,
23:32
15,000 more people a day are in detention under Trump and Obama,
23:36
but it's still in the 10s of thousands as it was under Obama.
23:39
This is a really important point.
23:42
It's also an important point. The family separation issue that
23:44
was, was horrific. I, I was very opposed to that.
23:47
Unfortunately, the Obama administration also separated
23:52
migrant parents from their children in 2013 by deporting
23:56
parents who had native born children here.
23:58
So family separation did happen under Obama.
24:02
It wasn't as dramatic as under Trump because of the way the
24:04
media was focused on it and it was family separation at the
24:07
border as opposed to from someone's home.
24:09
But it also happened under Obama.
24:10
So these are really important things to note, not because I'm
24:12
saying it's right that either administration did this, but I'm
24:15
saying it because a lot of the media outcry and the attacks on
24:20
Trump and the Republicans, etcetera.
24:22
I find that sometimes even insincere or disingenuous
24:26
because it's ignoring that these problems were not rooted in
24:30
Trump, but we're actually rooted in a system that was long in
24:32
existence before Trump. The second part of I think the
24:36
extreme on the other side and, and by the way, I will say that
24:39
part of the I think the accusation towards people who
24:43
have this really double standard is that, you know, this kind of
24:46
comment that will the Democrats only care about immigrants when
24:49
the elections come around because that way that hopefully
24:52
they can get the immigrants to them become Democratic voters.
24:56
So there is that accusation out there.
24:57
You know, I'm not saying every Democratic politician believes
25:01
that are is behaving that way, but I do think there's something
25:03
to that where there's a lot of this selective outrage and it's
25:07
used in order to try to win ultimately more more of a voting
25:10
bloc in the US once they can hopefully cater to that
25:13
community. So there's that element.
25:16
The last element though here is this idea of open borders.
25:20
And there's a lot of nuance here and a lot to discuss here.
25:23
But ultimately when I talk to people on the left on the
25:27
immigration issue and I say, OK, well, what is the solution to
25:30
immigration? Do we just let people freely
25:31
come here without any, you know, any checks, checks in in the
25:36
system? Or how would how do we even
25:37
process them? I'm still finding a real public
25:40
policy solution for people that, for example, don't want to have
25:44
a stronger and more secure border.
25:47
So I do think that there is an ideology out there which kind of
25:50
sees America's resources without, without appreciating
25:54
our national sovereignty, meaning we we kind of owe it to
25:58
the rest of the world more than I think even the principles that
26:01
I said earlier are to allow anyone to come here at any time.
26:05
And again, I know people would say, well, that's not really
26:08
what we believe. Just like on the right, people
26:09
would say we're not really racist.
26:11
We just don't want more people here.
26:13
So there's obviously arguments to defend the either either
26:18
extreme that I'm calling out. I think they would defend
26:19
themselves and say, well, we're not actually extreme.
26:21
But this is what I see as extremes on both sides.
26:24
So I wanted to say that because I think it's really important
26:28
when we're consuming media on this, when we're trying to learn
26:30
about this issue, to acknowledge that there are extremes out
26:33
there, that there are forces working, which I think are kind
26:36
of globalist forces wanting just open borders.
26:39
There are xenophobia fears out there that are maybe looking at
26:44
the other in a in a hateful or negative way and not really
26:47
checking that fear. There is the poverty mindset to
26:50
be mindful of. And then there is a selective
26:52
outrage that we're seeing a lot of from a lot of media groups
26:54
today. All right, that being said, and
26:56
I'm sure some of you guys are listening like, well, I agree or
26:59
I disagree and tell me, I mean, send me a message, send me an
27:01
e-mail. Thoughts at lilarocher.com.
27:03
This is not the last episode I'll be doing on this
27:06
fascinating and important topic. And I will be interviewing other
27:09
people on both sides on this topic in the future as well.
27:12
All right, public policy solutions, the good stuff.
27:15
And thanks for listening to this because I know this is it's a
27:19
little bit heavy and it's also public policy.
27:23
When you talk about that, it can be a little bit wonky.
27:25
It's it's, it's a serious topic, but it's also a kind of heady
27:29
topic. And, but I really appreciate
27:32
anyone who's listening because, listen, I think this is where
27:35
the rubber meets the road. It's not in these, you know,
27:38
shocking headlines and these heartbreaking stories.
27:41
It's about what are the solutions?
27:42
How do we actually, instead of just pointing the finger at each
27:45
other and saying, it's your fault, You're you, you want to
27:48
hurt people, you want to hurt immigrants or, you know, you
27:50
just want to destroy the country, whatever it is, we
27:53
actually come together on the shared principles and then we
27:55
come together on shared public policy solutions.
27:58
So here's my kind of initial proposal for some public policy
28:03
solutions. I did not come up with these.
28:05
These are not Lila Rose public policy solutions.
28:08
These are a lot of other smart people have come up with these
28:10
and recommended them over the years.
28:12
And they, they're what I think sound really good.
28:14
This is also not a holistic, comprehensive immigration
28:17
policy. There's a lot more to go and to
28:20
discuss here. One of the big things, for
28:22
example, to look at is something called pull factors.
28:25
Why are so many people leaving their origin countries to come
28:29
to the United States? What do we do with the world's
28:32
poor? What do we do with the poorest
28:34
of the poor? How do we serve them and help
28:36
them? How do we make conditions better
28:38
for them in their country? And how much of A, of a
28:39
responsibility or how much practically can the United
28:42
States even do to help those other countries?
28:44
Or what is the United States doing or what is the United
28:48
States doing right now that might be harming other countries
28:51
in the way we do our our foreign policy?
28:52
So those are all really big questions.
28:54
I could do an episode on each one of them and bring in experts
28:57
and discuss it and debate it. And we will be talking about
28:59
some of that in the future. But here are some immediate
29:02
public policy solutions that I think sound really good, and I
29:05
hope you'll agree with me. Number one, I think there should
29:08
be 0 family separation unless there's clear indication that
29:11
this is not a family member, this is a sex trafficker or some
29:14
kind of a criminal. And this is something that
29:17
ultimately the Trump administration has said they
29:19
agree with. They stopped separating families
29:21
after a few months of outrage last year.
29:24
And I think that this should be kept to, I think separating
29:28
children from their parents is terrible.
29:31
I think that at the border when they're seeking asylum or
29:34
they're even trying to cross without documentation, I think
29:38
that it is not kind. It's not just, it's not
29:42
merciful. It goes against the violates
29:44
principle 3, being just and merciful.
29:46
And I don't think it should ever happen.
29:47
And I think most people agree on the left and the right.
29:49
Most people agree with that. The one caveat is I do think
29:52
Border Patrol should be trained and many of them are.
29:54
They're trained to recognize trafficking because there are
29:57
cases where traffickers present themselves as a family member,
30:01
or there are cases where kids actually are just abandoned at
30:04
the border or sent back to the border by traffickers or by even
30:07
their parents in an attempt to find safety or to obviously
30:10
build a new life. So there is a lot of nuance
30:13
here. But the bottom line is, if, when
30:16
at all possible, zero family separation #2 I think that
30:20
conditions for those that are detained should be increased
30:23
dramatically. There have been reports about
30:27
bad conditions and detention centers.
30:28
These existed before Trump. I think there's arguments being
30:31
made that they're worse under Trump, but they were definitely
30:34
bad. Overcrowding, lights remaining
30:37
on 24/7, you know, during the temporary state detention
30:41
centers before the kids were moved to shelters, poor
30:44
nutrition. I mean, a lot of these detention
30:47
centers are not designed, at least the ones on the border.
30:49
They're temporary holding spaces.
30:51
And then families are meant to be sent to shelters, which have
30:54
better care and better, better conveniences or at least better
30:58
facilities. But because there's so many
31:01
immigrants coming to the border, they're overfilling.
31:04
I mean, there's there's an overfill flow.
31:06
And this is at least the debate and the argument of a lot of
31:08
those in Border Patrol and the Trump administration.
31:10
And then, of course, people on the other side are saying there
31:13
are more places for them. What are you saying?
31:15
But I think we can all agree that there are more migrants
31:18
coming to the border now. There's there's a spike right
31:20
now. And the facilities, many of the
31:23
facilities we do have are not equipped to deal with the amount
31:26
of immigrants coming. So there's two solutions here.
31:29
Number one is improved attention.
31:31
Make these centers and these holding places better and make
31:34
them more humane. The second thing is, and this is
31:37
a public policy solution recommended by an organization
31:41
my sister-in-law runs called Freedom for Immigrants,
31:43
Christina Fialo, Freedom for Immigrants, as well as the US
31:48
Conference of Catholic Bishops, that we should try to have
31:52
community based alternatives to detention.
31:54
So if you're an asylum seeker, an asylum seeker is somebody who
31:57
is comes to the border, they, they have to come to a point of
32:02
entry for them to be able to ask for asylum.
32:05
Asylum means it's basically a saying you're a refugee.
32:08
It's saying, look, I and I've fled my country because of
32:12
serious discrimination. It can be a religious
32:14
discrimination, fear of death. And I am here political asylum.
32:19
You know, they're, they're political dissident.
32:21
You know, they're the, the people in power.
32:23
The dictator doesn't approve of them, wants to kill them, wants
32:25
to harm them or their families. So they're declaring asylum and
32:29
it's the United States law that anybody who declares asylum
32:32
needs to be given a fair shot, that they need to be given a
32:35
place to stay temporarily until proceedings can be done to
32:38
determine if they're actually are are an asylee.
32:41
And if they are, then they're supposed to be allowed here.
32:42
And there's actually no cap or limit on the amount of asylees
32:45
that the United States takes in. It's an unlimited amount as long
32:49
as they are actually proven to be asylees and they declare
32:52
themselves at the border. That's different than a refugee
32:54
because a refugee is someone who's in their native land and
32:57
they're basically signing up to get access to the United States
33:00
from their origin country or from another country.
33:03
And they do all the paperwork in the filing before coming to the
33:06
border. They don't actually make it to
33:07
the US border in a port of entry.
33:09
And we actually do have a cap on refugees, which I will talk
33:13
about in a moment because I think we should increase that
33:15
and improve that cap. All right.
33:17
So that being said, according to Freedom for Immigrants and
33:21
USCCB, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, we should also
33:25
look into detention alternatives.
33:26
If you you are a family who comes to the border and you
33:29
declare that you're seeking asylum at a port of entry, there
33:33
are communities and at the border and even beyond the
33:36
border. And there are basically host
33:39
families who would be and nonprofits who would be willing
33:42
to house you, to shelter you, to help you make your court
33:45
appointments and help you make your court hearings with the
33:47
judge determine your status. And that would be a humane and
33:51
less expensive alternative to detention.
33:55
So those I think are two good things that we should do #1
34:00
improve conditions for detainees, especially children,
34:03
and #2 look at it detention alternatives which might be more
34:06
humane and less expensive. The second thing that or the
34:10
third thing public policy solution that I think we need to
34:12
do is improve the asylum seeking process.
34:15
So there are some proposals being batted around on both
34:18
sides of or in both the Senate and the House here because of
34:23
politics, very few, almost nothing is happening.
34:26
So for example, the House and the Senate that has the Senate
34:29
had a bill to increase funding to the border to improve
34:33
detention. And because of politics in the
34:36
House, it was shut down. So that's one of the sad things
34:39
here is that it's like it's like locked nothing, nothing is
34:41
moving. Nothing is happening on the
34:42
public policy front because the Democrats and the Republicans
34:45
are not working together and because there's there's
34:47
motivations being assigned. I mean, especially right now, I
34:50
think amongst a core and sort of extreme in the House of
34:53
Representatives like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and others, they,
34:56
they don't even support sending beds to the border to detention
35:00
Centers for children because they see it as supporting
35:03
detention. But what that means is kids
35:04
don't have beds. They don't support sending money
35:06
there. They're saying it's enabling a
35:07
bad system. Well, what is the better system
35:10
and how do we actually achieve that policy result?
35:12
And meanwhile children are suffering.
35:14
So that to being said, I think we need to improve the asylum
35:16
seeking process. We need to streamline it and we
35:18
need to increase refugee quotas because right now I think our
35:21
quotas are way too small. We need to not just increase the
35:25
quota, but improve the process. It's a lot of bureaucracy.
35:28
It's really hard to apply for a refugee status, just like it's
35:32
really hard to apply for a worker visa or just to apply for
35:35
for entry into the country, period.
35:37
I would like to see us find ways to limit as much as possible the
35:41
bureaucracy and make it more streamlined.
35:44
The 4th principle or the 1st 4th public policy solution I'd like
35:47
to see is kind of what I just said added on to helping asylees
35:51
and refugees, but improving legal paths to immigration for
35:54
workers and other migrants. I think it is important to find
35:58
ways, especially for people that want to come here for like a
36:00
shorter stay, to improve, improve their lives, make some
36:05
money, send it back home, and ultimately they do want to
36:07
return to their origin countries.
36:09
Find ways to open avenues as best we can for that option.
36:13
And then the final thing is securing the borders.
36:17
So this is the fifth public policy idea that I think is
36:21
important is securing our borders.
36:23
Right now, we have some border wall, but there are a ton of
36:27
poorest parts of our border where they're more rural parts,
36:30
so they're more like connected to ranches and farmland, or
36:35
they're just brush, wild brush. And these are the places where
36:39
coyotes or traffickers take migrants, many of them children
36:43
and are vulnerable women. This is where a lot of sex
36:45
trafficking happens and rapes and abuses happen and people are
36:49
dying literally in some of these places on the border.
36:52
And it's a porous border right now.
36:54
We have these ports of entry. We have some walls set up, we
36:57
have some barriers set up. But then we have other places
37:00
where there's no barriers whatsoever.
37:01
There's no ports of entry whatsoever.
37:03
So I think that that needs to be fixed because right now we're
37:07
not actually, it's not effective.
37:08
It's not an effective solution. The cartels, traffickers are
37:12
just, you know, these really abusive coyotes are taking these
37:16
migrants, these hurting people across in a very dangerous way.
37:21
Many of them are being abused. They're not going to a port of
37:24
entry. And, and one of the reasons for
37:25
that is because the ports of entries are dysfunctional too,
37:28
because we don't have enough. We, we have, they're being
37:31
overcrowded, so we're not able to process all these asylum
37:33
seekers. So these problems bleed into
37:35
each other. But I'd like us to see us have
37:37
more secure borders, improve our ports of entry so that people
37:41
can be go there safely and have the opportunity to seek asylum
37:44
or even to become an immigrant to the into the country legally.
37:49
And all this comes back to not just the securing of the
37:52
borders, but also cracking down on the cartels and the
37:56
traffickers, which are hurting so many people in getting them
37:59
into the United States, are attempting to get them on a very
38:01
perilous, dangerous journeys from their origin countries in
38:04
Central America through Mexico into the United States in order
38:09
to crack down on cartels. That takes a lot of work, not
38:12
just with the United States, but with Mexico and other countries.
38:15
So that's a whole other discussion.
38:16
We can have another day. But I think the bottom line is
38:19
we need to have secure borders. So those are my ideas or some
38:23
thoughts. They're not my ideas.
38:25
Other people have said these many times before, but what I
38:28
think may sound like some of the most humane and smart and
38:31
practical ideas for how to improve our public policy, our
38:37
policy on immigration, in order to achieve those 3 principles.
38:41
And those 3 principles, as you might remember, is people have
38:44
the right to migrate, to try to protect their lives and sustain
38:47
their lives and lives of their families.
38:49
A nation has a right to control its borders and immigration, and
38:52
a nation has a responsibility to do that with justice and mercy.
38:57
So I think those public policy concepts are ways to do that.
39:02
Thank you guys for listening to this.
39:03
I am, of course, eager to hear your thoughts and your ideas.
39:09
Or if there are other things you're researching, articles
39:12
you've read, and people you recommend that I talk to about
39:15
this, I want to hear from you. You can obviously message me on
39:19
Instagram for those who are on the Insta.
39:21
I love getting your messages and I try to respond to most of
39:24
them, if not all. And then I also love getting
39:27
your emails. And you can e-mail me at
39:28
thoughts@lilaroseshow.com. Thanks again for being part of
39:32
this conversation and such an important topic right now.
39:35
I think at the end of the day, we all want to and we should all
39:39
want to live lives of justice and mercy and to be very
39:43
practical and realistic about the problems that are happening.
39:47
And instead of spending a bunch of time blaming one another and
39:50
blaming one side of the aisle or another side of the aisle trying
39:53
to find out, OK, what are our shared principles that we can
39:56
agree on, that we must agree on? And then what are the public
39:59
policy solutions that we need to achieve?
40:01
All right, thanks again, guys. If you enjoyed this episode, if
40:05
you found it interesting, helpful, please leave a review
40:08
or a rating. This will help the podcast reach
40:11
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whoever you listen to your podcast, but mostly I think it's
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on Apple and I'm looking forward to talking to you all next week.