My favorite thing about being the moderator in our new series Swing State Debates is that it’s my job to ask questions—not to have the answers.
I was particularly grateful for my role when we went to Arizona to shoot this week’s episode, which is about immigration—a top concern among voters heading into November, according to poll after poll. It’s an issue that has vexed politicians for decades, and it’s not hard to understand why.
Under the Biden administration, an average of two million undocumented migrants crossed the border annually until this year, recalling levels not seen since the ‘90s. Illegal immigration, and Trump’s promise to “Build the Wall,” were centerpieces of his first, second, and now third presidential campaigns.
I arrived in Phoenix expecting a fiery conversation. And yes, in this debate, among eight participants gathered in a Methodist church, all with different views on immigration, there was plenty of intense disagreement. But there was also a surprising amount of common ground.
For all the divisive rhetoric around immigration, my sense is that most Americans are searching for a middle ground—somewhere between an effectively open border and a system that, long before Donald Trump came along, enacted needlessly cruel policies on some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
The ideologically diverse group on this week’s episode of Swing State Debates includes two DACA recipients, a former border patrol agent, an immigration attorney, and a Trump-supporting advocate for immigrant families. We talked about everything from the moral argument for a “closed border” and the role of drug cartels, to what policies a Trump or a Harris administration might enact vis-à-vis the border.
For all the differences of opinion on these questions there was, at the very least, some mutual understanding. And that, surely, is the point of conversations like this.
This series is presented with support from the David Merage Foundation and Evoke Media. For more information, please visit weareevokemedia.com. Click here to watch episode one of the series, a debate on education in Florida.
As well as hosting Swing State Debates, Ben Kawaller is the host of The Free Press series Ben Meets America! To learn more about that series, click here.
All of the above ignores, the elephant in the room. How many migrants a year, or a decade, are Americans suppose to absorb? What is the number? If 10 million migrants in 4 years, is followed by another 10 million in the next 4 years, Biden/Harris will have created a migrant only, landless 51rst state, bigger than 48 other US states.
Reuters, hardly a bastion and right wing think, has polling showing 750 million to 1 billion world residents, would move to the US , if they could reside here.. For the first time in history, a plane ticket costing a couple of thousands dollars, will place migrants, from anywhere in the world, within a day's walk of US residency.
Lacking sufficient, financial resources housing, healthcare or speciality education, the migrants arrive, mainly, as beasts of burden. Purposefully imported to make the lives of richer Americans more pleasant, and poor Americans more compliant, as their standard of living declines, and they become more government dependent.
The con produces cheap labor for business owners, future Dem voters, while sticking US taxpayers with the tab, and exploiting migrants like farm animals. With a straight face, Dems brag Springfield, Ohio provides good jobs for Haitians, at $12-$15 an hour. At least cattle generally have a barn, fresh water and regular meals. $15 an hour will never produce that in a high cost of living country, like the US.
If the caste system being foisted on Americans, produced desirable living conditions, Mumbai would have a migration problem, not Texas. The current system works only for morally challenged business owners, and Dem politicians . The rest of the US should just say no.
There are two issues that get conflated.
1. LEGAL immigration
2. IL-LEGAL immigration
We're happy to take the best and brightest from all over the world - legally.
To quote the late great singer and congressman Sonny Bono.
Q: What do you think about illegal immigration?
Bono: I think it's illegal.
And lying about asylum status and disappearing into the shadows *is* illegal.