March 13, 2025 • 44 mins
Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Rosemary Jenks, co-founder and policy director of the Immigration Accountability Project, as she dives deep into the complexities of U.S. immigration policy. With over 35 years of experience, Rosemary reveals the hidden costs of open borders, the shocking realities of chain migration, and why current policies may not serve America’s national interest. From the human toll of smuggling and trafficking to legislative efforts like H.R. 2 and the RAISE Act, this interview uncovers the facts mainstream media often overlooks. Learn how the Immigration Accountability Project is working to hold Congress accountable and reshape the immigration debate.
Immigration Accountability Project - https://iaproject.org/
#ImmigrationPolicy #BorderSecurity #ChainMigration #OpenBorders #NationalInterest #ImmigrationReform #LegalImmigration #HR2 #ImmigrationCrisis #AmericanWorkers @ImmigrationAccountabilityProj #tomcotton @SenatorMarcoRubio @MarcoRubio @howardw.lutnick #trump #donaldtrump #news
immigration policy, border security, chain migration, open borders, national interest, immigration reform, legal immigration, H.R. 2, immigration crisis, American workers, Rosemary Jenks, Immigration Accountability Project, illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, economic impact, deportation, U.S. citizenship, RAISE Act, congressional accountability, human trafficking,
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Immigration Policy and Personal Journey 03:21 The Human Cost of Immigration Policies 08:45 Incentives and Consequences of Open Borders 10:19 The Immigration Accountability Project 13:46 Legal Immigration Process and Challenges 17:20 Economic Implications of Immigration Restrictions 19:06 Legislative Efforts for Border Security 22:49 Sanctuary Policies and Community Safety 24:26 The Search for Missing Children 25:26 Deportation and Family Separation 27:07 The Role of Immigrants in Society 28:58 Legal Immigration Numbers and Policies 30:22 Concerns Over the EB-5 Investor Visa Program 34:21 Visa Holders and National Security 35:52 Immigration Policy and National Interests 36:52 Ending Chain Migration 38:29 The Selection Process of Immigrants 39:13 Future Goals for Immigration Policy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:52):
Hey, what a special day we have today.
What a great episode we have in line.
We have Rosemary Jenks, the co-founder and policy director of the ImmigrationAccountability Project.
And I think we're bringing her on.
She could tell us a little bit about herself and...
Rosemary, you've been on the cutting edge of legal immigration reform and policy since1990.
(01:16):
That's right.
I've been banging my head against the wall for 35 years.
Well, someone has to.
It's really a pleasure to be on with you, Jamie and Jennifer.
I started in the immigration field right after college.
I just kind of fell into it and have never escaped.
So here I am still trying to get an immigration policy that serves the national interestand
(01:41):
you know, 35 years later, we still don't have that insight, but it is, know, things areobviously getting better now than they were for the last four years.
I went to law school in the middle of my immigration career to try to get out ofimmigration.
That obviously failed.
And I came right back into it.
And you were no slacker in college.
You graduated with honors from Harvard with your JD.
(02:05):
I did and it was a ginormous waste of money.
At least I was there before it got completely crazy.
So I ask you, how do you fall into immigration?
So, know, it's interesting because my mother was actually a legal immigrant fromAustralia.
And when I was young, we used to make fun of her because her green card said she was analien.
(02:30):
So, you know, we thought it was hysterical that she was an alien.
But I had never really thought much about immigration until I graduated from college inColorado and moved to D.C.
to save the world.
And the first interview I went to was with an environmental nonprofit group.
and I got the job there and they dabbled in immigration issues.
(02:53):
And so I started learning about it and realized just how fascinating it was.
And a year later, I applied for a job at the Center for Immigration Studies and the restis very long history.
That is falling into it.
Yep.
on our show, we try to look at things from all angles, Democrat, Republican, andlibertarian.
(03:14):
your career has centered on policy details.
How do you respond to those who feel this overlooks the human side?
too deep into policy.
we saw over the last 12 or 15 years, children who came across the border and were in cagesand things like that.
And there's a big brouhaha over two different presidents about kind of turning their backon the human side of immigration.
(03:38):
So it is interesting when you start looking at the human side of immigration, becauseparticularly with open borders, we saw during the last four years that the Biden
administration actually incentivized parents to put their children in the hands ofsmugglers and cartels and send them north.
And the result is that it's estimated that a third of women and girls making that journeyare raped along the way.
(04:06):
the mothers of very young girls give their daughters the day after pill for the tripbecause they know they're gonna get raped.
And still these parents put their kids in the hands of smugglers and cartels.
There are hundreds of deaths along the border each year.
The cartels kill people.
If you can't pay the cartel fee, and believe me, every single person who crosses thatsouthern border pays the cartels.
(04:33):
either through the smuggler or directly to the cartels because the cartels control theentire southern side of that border.
So if you can't pay the fee, they kill you.
They're not gonna wait around for the money.
If they don't like the amount of the fee that you've paid, they'll kidnap you and hold youfor ransom to your family and start cutting off body parts to send to your family members.
(04:54):
That is inhumane.
So an open border policy is the worst thing that we can do because it gives people in therest of the world the sense that if I can just get there, I can get in and whatever I have
to go through to get there will be worth it because then I'll have a job and I'll have theAmerican way of life and I'll get to stay.
(05:17):
And setting up that false expectation is just horrifically inhumane, especially when weknow what they're going to go through.
in the process.
So I have to ask you, you said that they were incentivized.
What was it?
So the first thing is, of course, when Biden was campaigning, he announced, want asylumseekers to surge to the border.
(05:40):
So he invited this surge.
But then every step the administration, his administration took to try to gain control,they exempted children.
So the message to the world was, okay, well, we may not be able to get in, but if we sendour children, the children are being let in.
So, you it was clearly an incentive.
(06:03):
remember, the Biden administration has lost 300,000 unaccompanied alien children.
They lost them.
That takes some doing,
and it's because they didn't care about them as people.
They didn't think of them as humanity.
What they did when the unaccompanied alien children come across the border, the borderpatrol has to turn them, by law has to turn them over to Health and Human Services.
(06:29):
When Secretary Becerra was at Health and Human Services, he told his staff, our job is toprocess them out, get them out of here as soon as possible.
So they stopped vetting the sponsors.
They were sending 20, 30 kids to a single sponsor.
In a lot of cases, those sponsors were sex traffickers or labor traffickers.
(06:50):
the Labor Department actually found some of those kids working the night shift in meatpacking plants or chicken processing plants, dangerous places where they're not legally
allowed to work anyway.
And yet they're working the night shift and not going to school because they're here topay.
for their sponsor's way of life because they're being labor trafficked.
(07:13):
It's disgusting.
It's not humane in any way.
Wow.
that is so astounding.
And some of those stories, certainly the day after pill, I've always said, who's payingfor these folks to travel thousands and thousands of miles?
Who's paying for the healthcare?
Who's paying for the lost shoes?
we see them at the Southern border and it appears like they're in clean clothes and thingslike that.
(07:35):
But if they really track a thousand or more miles,
to get to the southern border, there's a whole ecosystem in place of first aid, of food,restrooms, all those things have to take place, logically, but nobody ever talks about it.
you're absolutely right.
And the fact is, we United States taxpayers pay for most of that.
(07:59):
We contribute to the United Nations.
The United Nations has an organization called the International Organization forMigration.
They're the ones who set up camp in Panama to pass the people through the Darien Gap.
Their last step before they go through the Darien Gap is at the IOM office where they geta little bag full of goodies, food and water and clothing and so on.
(08:21):
The Red Cross has been producing maps showing illegal aliens how to get to a port of entryor to between the ports of entry at the United States border.
The many, many non-governmental organizations that we funded over the past decades, it'snot just in the Biden administration, it's been going on for decades.
They're all actually facilitating illegal immigration into our country.
(08:45):
And again, it acts as an incentive.
If the message goes out, hey, you're going to get free transportation, free food, freeshelter, come on in, that's what they're going to do.
As long as the risk assessment is that the reward is greater than the risk, they'll keepcoming.
And I think we've seen over the last two months, all of a sudden, the risk is greater thanthe reward, and they've stopped.
(09:11):
But then what is the point?
What is the point of bringing them here?
Is it just, you know, I've heard that it's to help with voting and stuff like that.
Is that what it is?
It's a couple of things.
It's cheap labor.
And there are a lot of both Republicans and Democrats who want the cheap labor.
It's also potential new voters.
(09:31):
If you're unhappy with the current electorate, what you do is replace them with a newelectorate.
And I think that part of the thinking for some of the Democrats, not all of them,
is that if you overwhelm the system and bring in enough people, eventually Congress isjust going to throw up its hands and say, okay, well, there's nothing we can do about
(09:54):
these people.
They're already here, so we'll just give them amnesty and then they become voters.
that's just crazy.
That's just, I am too.
For Jennifer and I both to be speechless takes some doing Rosemary.
So that's just crazy.
the next question is about the Immigration Accountability Project.
(10:15):
what are the priorities of the project that you're working for now?
What are your responsibilities and let's talk a little bit about what you do and yourorganization.
So the Immigration Accountability Project is a new organization.
We started it in October of 2023.
We're a 501c3 organization.
(10:36):
Our mission is to educate the public, members of Congress, Hill staffers on the entireimmigration issue, know, whatever part of it they're interested in, whatever part we think
they need to be interested in, and to thereby hold members of Congress accountable.
for their actions on immigration because as we all know, politicians a lot of times sayone thing and then do the exact opposite or campaign on one thing and then do the exact
(11:03):
opposite.
And so on the immigration issue, we wanna be able to hold them accountable for what theyactually do in terms of votes and bills, not just what they say on the campaign trail.
Because I mean, basically at this point, if you're a Republican running for office,
you're going to sound like Donald Trump on immigration, but that is not what happens whena lot of them get into office.
(11:26):
So our goal is to make sure that their constituents know exactly what they're doing,whether they've kept their campaign promises and can vote accordingly.
As, and just as you were talking, in Florida, we had the kind of, I don't want to saycontroversy, but between governor DeSantis and the legislature, we're based in Sarasota,
(11:47):
obviously.
does your organization get involved when states decide to take the lead or in, we're nowseeing sanctuary cities and sanctuary States kind of putting up roadblocks to what the
president wants to do.
Do you all get involved in any of that?
We do to some degree, we actually started the immigration accountability projectspecifically to focus on Congress because the Constitution says that Congress is in charge
(12:13):
of setting immigration policy.
so there are very few organizations that are actually focused exclusively on gettingCongress to change immigration policy.
And so that's where we thought the focus was needed.
We do kind of get sucked into things like sanctuaries.
policies and all that because it does kind of involve a federal and state coordination,cooperation thing.
(12:37):
But we do our best to let other folks who actually focus on the states work on the states.
I mean, we have six people now at our organization, so there's just no way to do that.
So are you recruiting people from the public?
are you trying to get the word out?
It's largely through social media.
(12:58):
we have our government relations director worked with me for, I think about 12 years atNumbers USA.
And so we have 30, 40 years worth of relationships that we've built on Capitol Hill and inthe conservative movement.
So a lot of cooperation with other organizations that are bigger and
(13:19):
better funded than we are.
And then social media and just kind of bootstrapping our way into conversations and tryingto be heard.
We're actually hoping to launch an education program specifically for Hill staffers sothat we can kind of bring them in small groups and actually teach them immigration laws so
that they have a better sense of how to approach the issue when their bosses tell themthey want to accomplish one thing or the other.
(13:47):
because it's such a complicated field and there are a lot of landmines in the immigrationissue as you might imagine.
And so that is one of the things that we hope to be doing soon.
How long does it take for somebody to go through the legal immigration process?
I know it's different maybe depending on what your career is or I don't want to get youtoo far in the weeds, but just as a general rule, if someone's trying to come here, how
(14:14):
long does that take?
It depends a lot on what kind of visa you're applying for.
So if you're coming as the spouse or minor child of a U.S.
citizen, it's very fast.
You can have your green card within six months or so.
If you are coming as the adult sibling of an adult U.S.
(14:35):
citizen, if you're from the Philippines, it can take you 40 years because of the backlogfor the visas.
because there's a set number of visas and there's a per country cap on the visas so thatno one country can dominate all of the visas.
And then the same thing in the employment-based visas.
If you are coming as an extraordinary, internationally recognized, super genius NobelPrize winner, you can get in very quickly.
(15:02):
If you're coming as a computer programmer with medium skills,
and you're from India, it's going to take you 30 years.
We had a question from one of our listeners that they have a friend that's planning oncoming from England.
So what would that process look like or timing?
Yeah, there are no per country backlogs for England because England doesn't send us thatmany people anymore.
(15:28):
But again, it would depend on what kind of visa they're seeking because, for example, mostof the family-based visas are capped.
And so once that cap is met, they start a backlog.
And the backlog in some of those categories is pretty long, although less long for
Brits than it is for Chinese and Indians and a couple other nationalities.
(15:48):
So yeah, it would depend.
But I mean, it's at least a six month process.
There are a lot of hoops to jump through.
You have to have a US sponsor who files a petition with the Department of HomelandSecurity and supposedly gets vetted.
then, the applicant has to apply through the State Department's consular office.
and be vetted and approved and meet all the criteria and so on.
(16:10):
And there's a lot of red tape.
A lot of people pay a lot of money in attorney's fees to get through the process.
I haven't experienced the process myself, obviously, so I don't actually know hownecessary the attorneys are, but it's a complicated process.
There's no question.
You took my next question.
how do lawyers fit into it?
Cause I know there's immigration lawyers, but I, you think that more people useimmigration lawyers who are trying to come here legally or illegals who are trying to stay
(16:38):
here?
I think more people use, well, let me put it this way.
I think the immigration lawyers make their money off the people who are trying to come inlegally, especially the people who are trying to come in on a work visa, because a lot of
times the companies that are trying to sponsor them will pay for the lawyer's fees.
The lawyers, immigration lawyers do a lot of pro bono work on the illegal immigrationside.
(17:03):
And sometimes an illegal alien will have enough money to actually pay them.
to represent them, but most of that work is probably pro bono.
in your work with lawmakers, how do you address those who say immigration restrictionscould stifle economic growth?
So there are a couple of issues there.
First of all, I would say that economic growth is a combination of two factors.
(17:28):
It is the size of the population, the number of workers, plus productivity.
So you can increase the number of workers and increase total GDP, or you can increaseproductivity and increase GDP.
If you increase the total number of workers, you're not necessarily increasing per capitaGDP.
(17:50):
And that's what Americans care about.
You know, I want to know how much I'm going to make.
I don't really care how much America makes.
Right?
So that's one consideration.
And there's a lot that we could do to increase productivity without increasing theworkforce.
The second thing is if you flood the labor market because of the law of supply and demand,
(18:12):
you're going to reduce wages for Americans, whether it's at the high skill level or thelow skill level.
So if Biden floods America with 10 million illegal aliens, that means that wages in thelower skill sets go down.
So construction wages go down and, you know, all the meat packing plants and chickenprocessing plants and all of those agriculture, those wages go down or stay steady at a
(18:38):
low rate.
But
If you flood the labor market at the high skill level, say with computer programmers onH1B visas, you have the same effect.
It still reduces wages for American workers and pushes some American workers out of thelabor force altogether.
So we have somewhere around 40 million working age Americans who have dropped out of thelabor force.
(19:03):
We need to get them back in because if they're not in the labor force,
we're paying for them through welfare programs.
So we can either pay for them to be on welfare and not work, or we can incentivizeemployers to bring them back into the labor force.
Now, are all of them gonna come back in the labor force?
No.
But if wages go up and employers have to find American workers to do these jobs,
(19:28):
They will bring back some of those workers into the labor force and give them anopportunity to climb the economic ladder, which is what the American dream is all about.
How have your direct efforts with congressional staff helped advance policies that securethe border and uphold the rule of law?
So one of the things that I'm proudest of is that we helped the House pass H.R.
(19:53):
2 last Congress.
H.R.
2 is the best border security bill that has been introduced in Congress at least since1996.
Probably it's more impactful than the 1996 immigration law, but that's debatable.
But I was around for that one too.
(20:16):
HR2 is a bill that would close all of the loopholes that the Biden administration abusedto open our borders.
And so it would mean, if it were enacted, it would mean that no future president could dowhat he did.
And that's important because as a nation, we can't afford to go through these up and downswings of, borders open, borders closed, borders open.
(20:42):
So we need to have actual laws in place that prevent that.
getting that through the House was pretty miraculous with the tiny majority that they hadand it's an even tinier majority now.
So hopefully we can get it through again this year and then maybe if we're lucky, getseven Democrats to sign onto it in the Senate and get it through the Senate as well.
(21:06):
dangerous is that you know the open closed because it from a layman's point of view itappeared that the spigot got turned off immediately but there had to be a certain number
of probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who were in the pipelinedid they just turn around and go home or what happened
(21:29):
Yeah, actually there is now evidence that a huge number of people who were in Mexico ontheir way to the United States, as soon as that border closed under Trump, they turned
around and went back home to Venezuela and Colombia and all these places where we're told,well, they're never going to return.
But the damage that's done is more about the population that is in the United Statesbecause it is
(21:57):
so much easier to prevent people from coming into the United States than it is to removethem once they're here.
It's harder legally, it's much more expensive, it's more dangerous, you have to actuallytrack them down and apprehend them and get them out.
And we talked about sanctuary cities earlier and that's one of the biggest problems withsanctuary policies is that
(22:23):
In a normal jurisdiction, ICE would actually contact the jail, the local jail, and say,hey, do you have any illegal aliens in your jail who have been convicted of anything?
We'll come pick them up.
And the jail says, sure, come on in.
And ICE goes in and identifies them and picks them up while they're still in the jail, sothey're clearly unarmed and not dangerous at that point, and then can remove them.
(22:46):
But in a sanctuary jurisdiction, the jail releases them
back into the community and ICE has to go track them down in the neighborhood.
So they have to bust into a house that probably has other people in it.
They don't know if the alien is armed and going to shoot at them.
They don't know who else is in the house.
(23:06):
So the other people in the house may or may not be illegal aliens.
If they are illegal aliens, they're going to be collateral damage because they're going tobe arrested too.
So it puts
officers, law enforcement officers in danger, and it puts the immigrant communities wherethey're living in danger because they're going to have these large armed forces coming in
(23:28):
to find the person who they could have really simply picked up in the jail.
So the jail knows that ICE is looking for them and they just release them and then, wow.
I mean, in Boston, it's been amazing over the last year.
A crazy number of child sex offenders who are here illegally have been arrested by theBoston police and then released into the community rather than being turned over by ICE,
(23:56):
even though ICE filed a request to hold them so that they could pick them up.
I mean, can you imagine releasing a child rapist into the community?
I
How are the communities not, I mean, just losing their minds over this?
Like how, I don't understand how they're not protesting and burning stuff and, you know,like people do.
(24:17):
Well, if you think about how often the media covers stories like that, most people justdon't know about it.
I certainly didn't know about the morning after pill of mothers giving that to their minordaughters on the trek to the United States.
That's disgusting on so many levels, and it's mind-boggling.
(24:41):
So guess I have another question about the 300,000 that are missing.
they ever going to be looked for?
Is there anything happening to find them?
Yes, actually Tom Homan announced very early on that he is absolutely determined to findthose 300,000 children and make sure that they are safe and return them to their parents.
(25:03):
So, and that begs a question as well because one of the number one talking points ofpeople who are against deportation is we can't deport families or that we're separating
families.
And so does your organization have an official stance on that or do you have a personalopinion on it?
(25:29):
No, I can speak for the Immigration Accountability Project.
We are absolutely in favor of deportations of illegal aliens.
Whether or not they have family who is legal or illegal, if they have family who isillegal, they should all be kept together as a family and returned to their home country.
But when you think about, this whole argument falls apart.
(25:51):
If you think about what happens,
As an American citizen, if I have children, if I commit a crime, I'm going to jail.
My children aren't coming with me.
Unless I have someone to take care of them, they're going into foster care.
So how is that not separating children?
(26:12):
Of course you separate children from the criminal parent, right?
So, I mean, every one of these illegal aliens made a choice.
They voluntarily, unless they've been trafficked, which is a whole other thing, but theyvoluntarily chose to break our law knowing the consequence.
(26:33):
So I don't have a lot of sympathy.
No, that's a that's a really great point.
just Even if the minor children are US citizens, even if they were born here, you'redeciding to separate your family by not having your child go back to your home country
with you.
So I don't have a whole lot of sympathy either.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
It's their choice.
(26:57):
IAP stresses national interests, and maybe this is kind of what we just talked about, buthow do you factor in positive roles immigrants play in our economy and society?
There is no question that immigrants have played a very positive role in our country, inour history.
The problem comes when you move from controlled immigration to mass immigration.
(27:20):
It's all about the numbers.
We can easily vet a thousand people.
We cannot vet a million people.
We can easily assimilate a thousand people.
We cannot assimilate a million people per year.
And our legal immigration level averages 1.1 million per year and has for the last twodecades.
(27:43):
We have the foreign born population in the United States right now is over 15%, which isthe highest it's ever been, including at the great wave at the turn of the last century.
So, you know, we have unprecedented levels of immigration right now.
And the impact is because of the numbers.
(28:04):
We have housing shortages because we don't have enough affordable housing for our owncitizens plus the giant population of both legal and illegal aliens here.
We have labor disruptions because we're suppressing wages with an increased flow offoreign workers into the country and we're pushing Americans out of the workforce and yet
(28:24):
we have a welfare state that is costing us
billions of dollars a year, and we're going into debt.
So all of these things come from the sheer numbers.
If we reduce the numbers, we can keep the same categories.
You you can still be bringing in spouses and minor children.
You can still be bringing in the exceptional workers, but you reduce the numbers and youreduce the impacts.
(28:51):
Okay.
that, so do you all have a number that you believe is the right balance of legalimmigration?
So we haven't said that there's a magical number, but one of the things that we look at isa bill that Tom Cotton introduced two or three Congresses ago called the RAISE Act, which
(29:13):
President Trump actually endorsed in his first term.
And what that would have done is reduce legal immigration by about half.
And it did that by cutting out chain migration, which is the
immigration of extended family members, not spouses and minor children, kept those thesame.
And then it created a merit-based system for the employment-based workers so that we werebasically letting them in based on their English language proficiency, their skill level,
(29:43):
their education level, and the wages that an employer was offering them.
So the higher the wages, the more points you got.
It also eliminated the
Diversity Visa Lottery, which is the most insane immigration program any country has evercreated.
And so by doing all those things, it reduced legal immigration by about half.
(30:04):
have you all taken a stance on Trump's golden ticket or is that outside your purview orand if, if even if it's outside your purview, can you explain?
Cause that's kind of a new thought for me.
I think I just read about it last week as we kind of are putting this together.
So we have in our current law, the EB-5 investor visa program, which was designed byCongress to allow wealthy investor types to get a green card in the United States by
(30:35):
investing a certain amount of money.
And then we would let them in and they would have to create at least 10 jobs for eitherAmericans or foreign workers or whoever, just 10 jobs.
but not for their family members, and then they would get their green card.
So what has happened through that program is that Chinese nationals with the support ofthe Communist Party of China have come up with the money to invest in these commercial
(31:00):
enterprises in the US.
We have no way to vet the Chinese buyers because of course the Chinese government doesn'tshare information with us.
We have no way to track the money.
that they're investing in, whether it's directly from the Chinese government or whetherit's from drug money or some other illicit scheme.
And so there has been massive fraud in the EB-5 program.
(31:23):
The General Accounting Office has written about it.
The Congressional Budget Office has written about it.
There are reports all over the place about the fraud.
So with the gold card, the idea is that you bypass the, and I should start by saying wedon't have a lot of details on this.
So I'm...
Gleaning what you know from what President Trump has said and what Lutnick has said Butyou would bypass the investment requirement and just essentially sell people a green card
(31:50):
for five million dollars The problem again is First of all, we can't vet the people whoare likely to be able to pay us five million dollars Which would be you know, Russian
oligarchs Chinese?
Saudis
people from Oman, these are the people that we wanna think twice about whether we wantthem in our country for the most part.
(32:12):
And certainly those governments are not going to share criminal information or any otherinformation with us.
We still have the problem that we can't track where the money came from.
are they using drug funds?
Are they using human trafficking proceeds?
We have no idea because we don't have a way to track that.
So there are a lot of...
(32:32):
pitfalls, I also, I just feel like it's kind of objectionable to sell US citizenship.
That's kind of where I come from with it.
kind of understand where the president's coming from.
If they're coming, let's bring wealthy people.
Let's try to pay down the debt.
I think he's trying to solve a major problem we have with our debt, but I'm like you, it'skind of, I'm gritting my teeth as I learn about it because the devil's in the detail.
(32:58):
Thank
Well, the other problem is apparently there have been some kind of quick and dirty studiesdone about how many people in the world would actually be able to afford $5 million.
And most of them are already living in the United States, which says something about theland of opportunity.
But of those who aren't, they're really not the kind of people we want to bring here.
(33:21):
And also, you know, the interesting question in the back of my mind is,
So if somebody is wealthy enough to pay $5 million for a green card, do they really wantto come to the United States and start a business that they're going to get taxed to all
get out for?
Because there are a lot of other places in the world that have much lower business taxes.
(33:42):
So I don't know, is this the place they would want to be?
Yeah, there is a real thing called brain drain where, and you can actually look at thePhilippines and Filipino nurses as one example of this, where we have imported tens of
thousands of Filipino nurses and the Philippines has a nursing shortage because of that.
(34:03):
So, you know, that's kind of a problem in a country like the Philippines, you needhealthcare.
Right.
obviously with the protest with the kid that is for Hamas what happens with that?
his interest is with another country like that, does anything happen?
Can he be deported?
He can absolutely be deported.
Anybody who is here on a visa, whether it's a green card or a non-immigrant visa, and anon-immigrant visa is like the H-1Bs and H-2As and all the letter categories of visas and
(34:34):
tourists and so on.
Yes, until you become a U.S.
citizen, you have conditions set on your stay here.
So the law is very clear that if you support terrorist organizations or contribute toterrorist organizations, you can be deported.
But also there's a provision in the law that allows the president or the secretary ofstate, it's actually two different provisions, but both of them have the power to
(35:03):
determine that a particular alien's presence in the United States is not in the interestsof the US and they can be removed.
So he absolutely can be removed.
It doesn't matter if he's committed a crime or not.
If you're here on a visa, you are our guest and you should act accordingly.
Absolutely.
I just wrote that in my blog, act like a guest, you'll be treated as a guest and let's,continue to have legal immigrants who are happy to be here and want to experience the
(35:32):
American dream and the American experience, not protest America.
And that to me is disheartening that we now have that as part of our DNA or fabric of ourcountry.
If there was one thing that you could say to everybody in the world and have everybodyhear it at one time, what would that be?
(35:52):
that immigration policy is a public policy, just like any other public policy, and itshould be set to serve our national interests, Americans' national interests, not just the
special interests of employers or the big religion or big ag or anybody else, but ourinterests.
And we need to have a national debate about it.
(36:15):
It should be calm and rational, but it is not,
bigoted or racist or any other ist to talk about our immigration policy and to question itand say, you know, is this really helping our country?
Because we have a right to do that with any public policy and immigration is no different.
(36:37):
Okay.
So I guess if you could change one thing, that they would start, like if you could say,hey, Congress, you need to pass this one law or this one provision that gets the right
thing started right now, what would it be?
ending chain migration.
Excellent.
I love that.
that's a great answer.
I didn't know that that was going to be it, but I like it.
(36:59):
Well, because I've heard, and maybe you can correct me for each immigrant who comes,there's so many who trail.
It's
10 or 13 million for $5 million.
It's potentially worse than that.
did a chart several years ago.
I actually wrote a bill that has been introduced each Congress and currently it is beingintroduced by Congressman Eli Crane from Arizona, who is awesome.
(37:25):
But it's called the Nuclear Family Priority Act and it eliminates chain migration.
And the first time that was introduced, I did this chart that showed the potential forchain migration from one
immigrant coming in with a spouse and two children.
And it ended up being, if everyone naturalizes after five years as they're allowed to, andif there's no backlogs and all of that.
(37:49):
So it made some assumptions.
It was up to like 200 and some people that that single alien with his spouse and minorchildren could bring in.
It was insane.
yeah, chain migration is just a terrible thing and is harming us.
You know, the interesting part about our immigration policy is that we don't actuallychoose any of the immigrants.
(38:11):
We don't choose any of them.
Employers choose the worker immigrants.
Other immigrants, previous immigrants choose the family-based immigrants.
The United Nations chooses our refugees.
The asylum seekers choose themselves.
So there's no one we choose, and that should change.
That's an incredibly interesting point that I've never really, I mean, I guess I knewthat.
(38:35):
It's one of those things that I guess I knew, but I never realized.
That's incredibly enlightening.
came across the border.
No
million, 1.1 million coming legally every year on autopilot until it gets stopped.
So if we were to five years from now, we're going to have a new president, Republican orDemocrat.
(38:58):
What would your goals be five years from now in the first year or two of a newadministration, whether it's Republican or Democrat, to look back on this period of time
and say, man, we did a great job.
I would hope that we could get HR2 across the finish line to make sure that no futurepresident can open our borders again and create the unaccompanied alien children crisis
(39:27):
and all of that.
But mostly I would hope that we could end chain migration.
does Secretary Rubio stand on that?
I've kind of cut my teeth over the decades with the secretary.
we have a little bit of an affinity for him.
He has come so far since his Gang of Eight days.
(39:48):
mean, the turnaround has been beautiful to watch.
He has been just fantastic.
And the State Department under his watch is doing great things.
So I'm really excited about how he's been doing, how he has turned around.
He seems to genuinely mean it.
One of the things I should have said and forgot to say was that I also hope that thebirthright citizenship order will be upheld by the Supreme Court because it is long past
(40:14):
time that we join most of the rest of the Western world and end that practice.
And you said, end that practice?
Yes, I go back to old, I forget the 1880s US Supreme Court where that was the case wherethey said, if you are an ambassador, your child's not a citizen.
(40:39):
in that court case, I believe they used the word, allegiant, that they're not allegiant tothe United States.
And we now have members of Congress who are not allegiant to the United States.
So I don't know how they are able to vote, much less sit as a member of Congress and notbe deported themselves, to be honest with you, because to be a citizen, you have to be
(41:00):
allegiance to the United States.
I think that is first and foremost.
Yeah, well, and also marriage fraud means that you committed citizenship fraud, which is,you know, an issue.
But we'll leave that alone.
But yeah, subject to the jurisdiction thereof clause in the 14th Amendment clearly basedon the authors of that amendment means that you have no foreign allegiance, that you have
(41:31):
only allegiance to the United States.
And that obviously can't be said of people who are here illegally or people who arevisitors here.
Yeah, that's the other thing that I kind of asked jokingly of my friends or colleaguesfrom the other side who say, we should just let everybody vote.
I was like, well, we don't let tourists vote.
And if we're allowed to let tourists vote, can I go to Michigan and vote?
(41:54):
Can I go to Wisconsin and vote?
Because if we're let tourists vote, should be able to vote in all 50 states if I can makethe rounds in two weeks.
But that's a story for another day too.
And what's the point of US citizenship if it doesn't have any special rights connected toit?
did,
we really appreciate your participation here.
It's so enlightening and thank you so much.
(42:18):
It well, if, as you get.
eye-opening, which I think is enlightening because you actually hear about what is trulyhappening.
Everybody can think, we're ruining immigration and hurting people's lives and stuff likethat.
But when you put it down the way you are, it's just mind-blowing.
(42:38):
It really is.
And just the unique way in which you shared it.
it's incredibly helpful, I think, to be the lead person in our four-part series.
So we've got a lot to build on.
And so thank you so much for coming.
Do you have anything else you want to share that we missed out or we didn't ask you?
(42:58):
think so.
I would just say thank you very much.
have thoroughly enjoyed this.
Wonderful.
And I wanted to ask you if people wanted to get involved with your organization, what'sthe best way to go about doing that?
go to our website at IAProject.org.
All of our social media is linked from the homepage of the website.
We are particularly active on X, but we've got all of the different social media channels.
(43:22):
we've got a lot of resources on our website, more coming every day.
And so I hope people will check that out.
Hey, what a special day we have today.
What a great episode we have in line.
We have Rosemary Jenks, the co-founder and policy director of the ImmigrationAccountability Project.
And I think we're bringing her on.
She could tell us a little bit about herself and...
Rosemary, you've been on the cutting edge of legal immigration reform and policy since1990.
(01:16):
That's right.
I've been banging my head against the wall for 35 years.
Well, someone has to.
It's really a pleasure to be on with you, Jamie and Jennifer.
I started in the immigration field right after college.
I just kind of fell into it and have never escaped.
So here I am still trying to get an immigration policy that serves the national interestand
(01:41):
you know, 35 years later, we still don't have that insight, but it is, know, things areobviously getting better now than they were for the last four years.
I went to law school in the middle of my immigration career to try to get out ofimmigration.
That obviously failed.
And I came right back into it.
And you were no slacker in college.
You graduated with honors from Harvard with your JD.
(02:05):
I did and it was a ginormous waste of money.
At least I was there before it got completely crazy.
So I ask you, how do you fall into immigration?
So, know, it's interesting because my mother was actually a legal immigrant fromAustralia.
And when I was young, we used to make fun of her because her green card said she was analien.
(02:30):
So, you know, we thought it was hysterical that she was an alien.
But I had never really thought much about immigration until I graduated from college inColorado and moved to D.C.
to save the world.
And the first interview I went to was with an environmental nonprofit group.
and I got the job there and they dabbled in immigration issues.
(02:53):
And so I started learning about it and realized just how fascinating it was.
And a year later, I applied for a job at the Center for Immigration Studies and the restis very long history.
That is falling into it.
Yep.
on our show, we try to look at things from all angles, Democrat, Republican, andlibertarian.
(03:14):
your career has centered on policy details.
How do you respond to those who feel this overlooks the human side?
too deep into policy.
we saw over the last 12 or 15 years, children who came across the border and were in cagesand things like that.
And there's a big brouhaha over two different presidents about kind of turning their backon the human side of immigration.
(03:38):
So it is interesting when you start looking at the human side of immigration, becauseparticularly with open borders, we saw during the last four years that the Biden
administration actually incentivized parents to put their children in the hands ofsmugglers and cartels and send them north.
And the result is that it's estimated that a third of women and girls making that journeyare raped along the way.
(04:06):
the mothers of very young girls give their daughters the day after pill for the tripbecause they know they're gonna get raped.
And still these parents put their kids in the hands of smugglers and cartels.
There are hundreds of deaths along the border each year.
The cartels kill people.
If you can't pay the cartel fee, and believe me, every single person who crosses thatsouthern border pays the cartels.
(04:33):
either through the smuggler or directly to the cartels because the cartels control theentire southern side of that border.
So if you can't pay the fee, they kill you.
They're not gonna wait around for the money.
If they don't like the amount of the fee that you've paid, they'll kidnap you and hold youfor ransom to your family and start cutting off body parts to send to your family members.
(04:54):
That is inhumane.
So an open border policy is the worst thing that we can do because it gives people in therest of the world the sense that if I can just get there, I can get in and whatever I have
to go through to get there will be worth it because then I'll have a job and I'll have theAmerican way of life and I'll get to stay.
(05:17):
And setting up that false expectation is just horrifically inhumane, especially when weknow what they're going to go through.
in the process.
So I have to ask you, you said that they were incentivized.
What was it?
So the first thing is, of course, when Biden was campaigning, he announced, want asylumseekers to surge to the border.
(05:40):
So he invited this surge.
But then every step the administration, his administration took to try to gain control,they exempted children.
So the message to the world was, okay, well, we may not be able to get in, but if we sendour children, the children are being let in.
So, you it was clearly an incentive.
(06:03):
remember, the Biden administration has lost 300,000 unaccompanied alien children.
They lost them.
That takes some doing,
and it's because they didn't care about them as people.
They didn't think of them as humanity.
What they did when the unaccompanied alien children come across the border, the borderpatrol has to turn them, by law has to turn them over to Health and Human Services.
(06:29):
When Secretary Becerra was at Health and Human Services, he told his staff, our job is toprocess them out, get them out of here as soon as possible.
So they stopped vetting the sponsors.
They were sending 20, 30 kids to a single sponsor.
In a lot of cases, those sponsors were sex traffickers or labor traffickers.
(06:50):
the Labor Department actually found some of those kids working the night shift in meatpacking plants or chicken processing plants, dangerous places where they're not legally
allowed to work anyway.
And yet they're working the night shift and not going to school because they're here topay.
for their sponsor's way of life because they're being labor trafficked.
(07:13):
It's disgusting.
It's not humane in any way.
Wow.
that is so astounding.
And some of those stories, certainly the day after pill, I've always said, who's payingfor these folks to travel thousands and thousands of miles?
Who's paying for the healthcare?
Who's paying for the lost shoes?
we see them at the Southern border and it appears like they're in clean clothes and thingslike that.
(07:35):
But if they really track a thousand or more miles,
to get to the southern border, there's a whole ecosystem in place of first aid, of food,restrooms, all those things have to take place, logically, but nobody ever talks about it.
you're absolutely right.
And the fact is, we United States taxpayers pay for most of that.
(07:59):
We contribute to the United Nations.
The United Nations has an organization called the International Organization forMigration.
They're the ones who set up camp in Panama to pass the people through the Darien Gap.
Their last step before they go through the Darien Gap is at the IOM office where they geta little bag full of goodies, food and water and clothing and so on.
(08:21):
The Red Cross has been producing maps showing illegal aliens how to get to a port of entryor to between the ports of entry at the United States border.
The many, many non-governmental organizations that we funded over the past decades, it'snot just in the Biden administration, it's been going on for decades.
They're all actually facilitating illegal immigration into our country.
(08:45):
And again, it acts as an incentive.
If the message goes out, hey, you're going to get free transportation, free food, freeshelter, come on in, that's what they're going to do.
As long as the risk assessment is that the reward is greater than the risk, they'll keepcoming.
And I think we've seen over the last two months, all of a sudden, the risk is greater thanthe reward, and they've stopped.
(09:11):
But then what is the point?
What is the point of bringing them here?
Is it just, you know, I've heard that it's to help with voting and stuff like that.
Is that what it is?
It's a couple of things.
It's cheap labor.
And there are a lot of both Republicans and Democrats who want the cheap labor.
It's also potential new voters.
(09:31):
If you're unhappy with the current electorate, what you do is replace them with a newelectorate.
And I think that part of the thinking for some of the Democrats, not all of them,
is that if you overwhelm the system and bring in enough people, eventually Congress isjust going to throw up its hands and say, okay, well, there's nothing we can do about
(09:54):
these people.
They're already here, so we'll just give them amnesty and then they become voters.
that's just crazy.
That's just, I am too.
For Jennifer and I both to be speechless takes some doing Rosemary.
So that's just crazy.
the next question is about the Immigration Accountability Project.
(10:15):
what are the priorities of the project that you're working for now?
What are your responsibilities and let's talk a little bit about what you do and yourorganization.
So the Immigration Accountability Project is a new organization.
We started it in October of 2023.
We're a 501c3 organization.
(10:36):
Our mission is to educate the public, members of Congress, Hill staffers on the entireimmigration issue, know, whatever part of it they're interested in, whatever part we think
they need to be interested in, and to thereby hold members of Congress accountable.
for their actions on immigration because as we all know, politicians a lot of times sayone thing and then do the exact opposite or campaign on one thing and then do the exact
(11:03):
opposite.
And so on the immigration issue, we wanna be able to hold them accountable for what theyactually do in terms of votes and bills, not just what they say on the campaign trail.
Because I mean, basically at this point, if you're a Republican running for office,
you're going to sound like Donald Trump on immigration, but that is not what happens whena lot of them get into office.
(11:26):
So our goal is to make sure that their constituents know exactly what they're doing,whether they've kept their campaign promises and can vote accordingly.
As, and just as you were talking, in Florida, we had the kind of, I don't want to saycontroversy, but between governor DeSantis and the legislature, we're based in Sarasota,
(11:47):
obviously.
does your organization get involved when states decide to take the lead or in, we're nowseeing sanctuary cities and sanctuary States kind of putting up roadblocks to what the
president wants to do.
Do you all get involved in any of that?
We do to some degree, we actually started the immigration accountability projectspecifically to focus on Congress because the Constitution says that Congress is in charge
(12:13):
of setting immigration policy.
so there are very few organizations that are actually focused exclusively on gettingCongress to change immigration policy.
And so that's where we thought the focus was needed.
We do kind of get sucked into things like sanctuaries.
policies and all that because it does kind of involve a federal and state coordination,cooperation thing.
(12:37):
But we do our best to let other folks who actually focus on the states work on the states.
I mean, we have six people now at our organization, so there's just no way to do that.
So are you recruiting people from the public?
are you trying to get the word out?
It's largely through social media.
(12:58):
we have our government relations director worked with me for, I think about 12 years atNumbers USA.
And so we have 30, 40 years worth of relationships that we've built on Capitol Hill and inthe conservative movement.
So a lot of cooperation with other organizations that are bigger and
(13:19):
better funded than we are.
And then social media and just kind of bootstrapping our way into conversations and tryingto be heard.
We're actually hoping to launch an education program specifically for Hill staffers sothat we can kind of bring them in small groups and actually teach them immigration laws so
that they have a better sense of how to approach the issue when their bosses tell themthey want to accomplish one thing or the other.
(13:47):
because it's such a complicated field and there are a lot of landmines in the immigrationissue as you might imagine.
And so that is one of the things that we hope to be doing soon.
How long does it take for somebody to go through the legal immigration process?
I know it's different maybe depending on what your career is or I don't want to get youtoo far in the weeds, but just as a general rule, if someone's trying to come here, how
(14:14):
long does that take?
It depends a lot on what kind of visa you're applying for.
So if you're coming as the spouse or minor child of a U.S.
citizen, it's very fast.
You can have your green card within six months or so.
If you are coming as the adult sibling of an adult U.S.
(14:35):
citizen, if you're from the Philippines, it can take you 40 years because of the backlogfor the visas.
because there's a set number of visas and there's a per country cap on the visas so thatno one country can dominate all of the visas.
And then the same thing in the employment-based visas.
If you are coming as an extraordinary, internationally recognized, super genius NobelPrize winner, you can get in very quickly.
(15:02):
If you're coming as a computer programmer with medium skills,
and you're from India, it's going to take you 30 years.
We had a question from one of our listeners that they have a friend that's planning oncoming from England.
So what would that process look like or timing?
Yeah, there are no per country backlogs for England because England doesn't send us thatmany people anymore.
(15:28):
But again, it would depend on what kind of visa they're seeking because, for example, mostof the family-based visas are capped.
And so once that cap is met, they start a backlog.
And the backlog in some of those categories is pretty long, although less long for
Brits than it is for Chinese and Indians and a couple other nationalities.
(15:48):
So yeah, it would depend.
But I mean, it's at least a six month process.
There are a lot of hoops to jump through.
You have to have a US sponsor who files a petition with the Department of HomelandSecurity and supposedly gets vetted.
then, the applicant has to apply through the State Department's consular office.
and be vetted and approved and meet all the criteria and so on.
(16:10):
And there's a lot of red tape.
A lot of people pay a lot of money in attorney's fees to get through the process.
I haven't experienced the process myself, obviously, so I don't actually know hownecessary the attorneys are, but it's a complicated process.
There's no question.
You took my next question.
how do lawyers fit into it?
Cause I know there's immigration lawyers, but I, you think that more people useimmigration lawyers who are trying to come here legally or illegals who are trying to stay
(16:38):
here?
I think more people use, well, let me put it this way.
I think the immigration lawyers make their money off the people who are trying to come inlegally, especially the people who are trying to come in on a work visa, because a lot of
times the companies that are trying to sponsor them will pay for the lawyer's fees.
The lawyers, immigration lawyers do a lot of pro bono work on the illegal immigrationside.
(17:03):
And sometimes an illegal alien will have enough money to actually pay them.
to represent them, but most of that work is probably pro bono.
in your work with lawmakers, how do you address those who say immigration restrictionscould stifle economic growth?
So there are a couple of issues there.
First of all, I would say that economic growth is a combination of two factors.
(17:28):
It is the size of the population, the number of workers, plus productivity.
So you can increase the number of workers and increase total GDP, or you can increaseproductivity and increase GDP.
If you increase the total number of workers, you're not necessarily increasing per capitaGDP.
(17:50):
And that's what Americans care about.
You know, I want to know how much I'm going to make.
I don't really care how much America makes.
Right?
So that's one consideration.
And there's a lot that we could do to increase productivity without increasing theworkforce.
The second thing is if you flood the labor market because of the law of supply and demand,
(18:12):
you're going to reduce wages for Americans, whether it's at the high skill level or thelow skill level.
So if Biden floods America with 10 million illegal aliens, that means that wages in thelower skill sets go down.
So construction wages go down and, you know, all the meat packing plants and chickenprocessing plants and all of those agriculture, those wages go down or stay steady at a
(18:38):
low rate.
But
If you flood the labor market at the high skill level, say with computer programmers onH1B visas, you have the same effect.
It still reduces wages for American workers and pushes some American workers out of thelabor force altogether.
So we have somewhere around 40 million working age Americans who have dropped out of thelabor force.
(19:03):
We need to get them back in because if they're not in the labor force,
we're paying for them through welfare programs.
So we can either pay for them to be on welfare and not work, or we can incentivizeemployers to bring them back into the labor force.
Now, are all of them gonna come back in the labor force?
No.
But if wages go up and employers have to find American workers to do these jobs,
(19:28):
They will bring back some of those workers into the labor force and give them anopportunity to climb the economic ladder, which is what the American dream is all about.
How have your direct efforts with congressional staff helped advance policies that securethe border and uphold the rule of law?
So one of the things that I'm proudest of is that we helped the House pass H.R.
(19:53):
2 last Congress.
H.R.
2 is the best border security bill that has been introduced in Congress at least since1996.
Probably it's more impactful than the 1996 immigration law, but that's debatable.
But I was around for that one too.
(20:16):
HR2 is a bill that would close all of the loopholes that the Biden administration abusedto open our borders.
And so it would mean, if it were enacted, it would mean that no future president could dowhat he did.
And that's important because as a nation, we can't afford to go through these up and downswings of, borders open, borders closed, borders open.
(20:42):
So we need to have actual laws in place that prevent that.
getting that through the House was pretty miraculous with the tiny majority that they hadand it's an even tinier majority now.
So hopefully we can get it through again this year and then maybe if we're lucky, getseven Democrats to sign onto it in the Senate and get it through the Senate as well.
(21:06):
dangerous is that you know the open closed because it from a layman's point of view itappeared that the spigot got turned off immediately but there had to be a certain number
of probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who were in the pipelinedid they just turn around and go home or what happened
(21:29):
Yeah, actually there is now evidence that a huge number of people who were in Mexico ontheir way to the United States, as soon as that border closed under Trump, they turned
around and went back home to Venezuela and Colombia and all these places where we're told,well, they're never going to return.
But the damage that's done is more about the population that is in the United Statesbecause it is
(21:57):
so much easier to prevent people from coming into the United States than it is to removethem once they're here.
It's harder legally, it's much more expensive, it's more dangerous, you have to actuallytrack them down and apprehend them and get them out.
And we talked about sanctuary cities earlier and that's one of the biggest problems withsanctuary policies is that
(22:23):
In a normal jurisdiction, ICE would actually contact the jail, the local jail, and say,hey, do you have any illegal aliens in your jail who have been convicted of anything?
We'll come pick them up.
And the jail says, sure, come on in.
And ICE goes in and identifies them and picks them up while they're still in the jail, sothey're clearly unarmed and not dangerous at that point, and then can remove them.
(22:46):
But in a sanctuary jurisdiction, the jail releases them
back into the community and ICE has to go track them down in the neighborhood.
So they have to bust into a house that probably has other people in it.
They don't know if the alien is armed and going to shoot at them.
They don't know who else is in the house.
(23:06):
So the other people in the house may or may not be illegal aliens.
If they are illegal aliens, they're going to be collateral damage because they're going tobe arrested too.
So it puts
officers, law enforcement officers in danger, and it puts the immigrant communities wherethey're living in danger because they're going to have these large armed forces coming in
(23:28):
to find the person who they could have really simply picked up in the jail.
So the jail knows that ICE is looking for them and they just release them and then, wow.
I mean, in Boston, it's been amazing over the last year.
A crazy number of child sex offenders who are here illegally have been arrested by theBoston police and then released into the community rather than being turned over by ICE,
(23:56):
even though ICE filed a request to hold them so that they could pick them up.
I mean, can you imagine releasing a child rapist into the community?
I
How are the communities not, I mean, just losing their minds over this?
Like how, I don't understand how they're not protesting and burning stuff and, you know,like people do.
(24:17):
Well, if you think about how often the media covers stories like that, most people justdon't know about it.
I certainly didn't know about the morning after pill of mothers giving that to their minordaughters on the trek to the United States.
That's disgusting on so many levels, and it's mind-boggling.
(24:41):
So guess I have another question about the 300,000 that are missing.
they ever going to be looked for?
Is there anything happening to find them?
Yes, actually Tom Homan announced very early on that he is absolutely determined to findthose 300,000 children and make sure that they are safe and return them to their parents.
(25:03):
So, and that begs a question as well because one of the number one talking points ofpeople who are against deportation is we can't deport families or that we're separating
families.
And so does your organization have an official stance on that or do you have a personalopinion on it?
(25:29):
No, I can speak for the Immigration Accountability Project.
We are absolutely in favor of deportations of illegal aliens.
Whether or not they have family who is legal or illegal, if they have family who isillegal, they should all be kept together as a family and returned to their home country.
But when you think about, this whole argument falls apart.
(25:51):
If you think about what happens,
As an American citizen, if I have children, if I commit a crime, I'm going to jail.
My children aren't coming with me.
Unless I have someone to take care of them, they're going into foster care.
So how is that not separating children?
(26:12):
Of course you separate children from the criminal parent, right?
So, I mean, every one of these illegal aliens made a choice.
They voluntarily, unless they've been trafficked, which is a whole other thing, but theyvoluntarily chose to break our law knowing the consequence.
(26:33):
So I don't have a lot of sympathy.
No, that's a that's a really great point.
just Even if the minor children are US citizens, even if they were born here, you'redeciding to separate your family by not having your child go back to your home country
with you.
So I don't have a whole lot of sympathy either.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
It's their choice.
(26:57):
IAP stresses national interests, and maybe this is kind of what we just talked about, buthow do you factor in positive roles immigrants play in our economy and society?
There is no question that immigrants have played a very positive role in our country, inour history.
The problem comes when you move from controlled immigration to mass immigration.
(27:20):
It's all about the numbers.
We can easily vet a thousand people.
We cannot vet a million people.
We can easily assimilate a thousand people.
We cannot assimilate a million people per year.
And our legal immigration level averages 1.1 million per year and has for the last twodecades.
(27:43):
We have the foreign born population in the United States right now is over 15%, which isthe highest it's ever been, including at the great wave at the turn of the last century.
So, you know, we have unprecedented levels of immigration right now.
And the impact is because of the numbers.
(28:04):
We have housing shortages because we don't have enough affordable housing for our owncitizens plus the giant population of both legal and illegal aliens here.
We have labor disruptions because we're suppressing wages with an increased flow offoreign workers into the country and we're pushing Americans out of the workforce and yet
(28:24):
we have a welfare state that is costing us
billions of dollars a year, and we're going into debt.
So all of these things come from the sheer numbers.
If we reduce the numbers, we can keep the same categories.
You you can still be bringing in spouses and minor children.
You can still be bringing in the exceptional workers, but you reduce the numbers and youreduce the impacts.
(28:51):
Okay.
that, so do you all have a number that you believe is the right balance of legalimmigration?
So we haven't said that there's a magical number, but one of the things that we look at isa bill that Tom Cotton introduced two or three Congresses ago called the RAISE Act, which
(29:13):
President Trump actually endorsed in his first term.
And what that would have done is reduce legal immigration by about half.
And it did that by cutting out chain migration, which is the
immigration of extended family members, not spouses and minor children, kept those thesame.
And then it created a merit-based system for the employment-based workers so that we werebasically letting them in based on their English language proficiency, their skill level,
(29:43):
their education level, and the wages that an employer was offering them.
So the higher the wages, the more points you got.
It also eliminated the
Diversity Visa Lottery, which is the most insane immigration program any country has evercreated.
And so by doing all those things, it reduced legal immigration by about half.
(30:04):
have you all taken a stance on Trump's golden ticket or is that outside your purview orand if, if even if it's outside your purview, can you explain?
Cause that's kind of a new thought for me.
I think I just read about it last week as we kind of are putting this together.
So we have in our current law, the EB-5 investor visa program, which was designed byCongress to allow wealthy investor types to get a green card in the United States by
(30:35):
investing a certain amount of money.
And then we would let them in and they would have to create at least 10 jobs for eitherAmericans or foreign workers or whoever, just 10 jobs.
but not for their family members, and then they would get their green card.
So what has happened through that program is that Chinese nationals with the support ofthe Communist Party of China have come up with the money to invest in these commercial
(31:00):
enterprises in the US.
We have no way to vet the Chinese buyers because of course the Chinese government doesn'tshare information with us.
We have no way to track the money.
that they're investing in, whether it's directly from the Chinese government or whetherit's from drug money or some other illicit scheme.
And so there has been massive fraud in the EB-5 program.
(31:23):
The General Accounting Office has written about it.
The Congressional Budget Office has written about it.
There are reports all over the place about the fraud.
So with the gold card, the idea is that you bypass the, and I should start by saying wedon't have a lot of details on this.
So I'm...
Gleaning what you know from what President Trump has said and what Lutnick has said Butyou would bypass the investment requirement and just essentially sell people a green card
(31:50):
for five million dollars The problem again is First of all, we can't vet the people whoare likely to be able to pay us five million dollars Which would be you know, Russian
oligarchs Chinese?
Saudis
people from Oman, these are the people that we wanna think twice about whether we wantthem in our country for the most part.
(32:12):
And certainly those governments are not going to share criminal information or any otherinformation with us.
We still have the problem that we can't track where the money came from.
are they using drug funds?
Are they using human trafficking proceeds?
We have no idea because we don't have a way to track that.
So there are a lot of...
(32:32):
pitfalls, I also, I just feel like it's kind of objectionable to sell US citizenship.
That's kind of where I come from with it.
kind of understand where the president's coming from.
If they're coming, let's bring wealthy people.
Let's try to pay down the debt.
I think he's trying to solve a major problem we have with our debt, but I'm like you, it'skind of, I'm gritting my teeth as I learn about it because the devil's in the detail.
(32:58):
Thank
Well, the other problem is apparently there have been some kind of quick and dirty studiesdone about how many people in the world would actually be able to afford $5 million.
And most of them are already living in the United States, which says something about theland of opportunity.
But of those who aren't, they're really not the kind of people we want to bring here.
(33:21):
And also, you know, the interesting question in the back of my mind is,
So if somebody is wealthy enough to pay $5 million for a green card, do they really wantto come to the United States and start a business that they're going to get taxed to all
get out for?
Because there are a lot of other places in the world that have much lower business taxes.
(33:42):
So I don't know, is this the place they would want to be?
Yeah, there is a real thing called brain drain where, and you can actually look at thePhilippines and Filipino nurses as one example of this, where we have imported tens of
thousands of Filipino nurses and the Philippines has a nursing shortage because of that.
(34:03):
So, you know, that's kind of a problem in a country like the Philippines, you needhealthcare.
Right.
obviously with the protest with the kid that is for Hamas what happens with that?
his interest is with another country like that, does anything happen?
Can he be deported?
He can absolutely be deported.
Anybody who is here on a visa, whether it's a green card or a non-immigrant visa, and anon-immigrant visa is like the H-1Bs and H-2As and all the letter categories of visas and
(34:34):
tourists and so on.
Yes, until you become a U.S.
citizen, you have conditions set on your stay here.
So the law is very clear that if you support terrorist organizations or contribute toterrorist organizations, you can be deported.
But also there's a provision in the law that allows the president or the secretary ofstate, it's actually two different provisions, but both of them have the power to
(35:03):
determine that a particular alien's presence in the United States is not in the interestsof the US and they can be removed.
So he absolutely can be removed.
It doesn't matter if he's committed a crime or not.
If you're here on a visa, you are our guest and you should act accordingly.
Absolutely.
I just wrote that in my blog, act like a guest, you'll be treated as a guest and let's,continue to have legal immigrants who are happy to be here and want to experience the
(35:32):
American dream and the American experience, not protest America.
And that to me is disheartening that we now have that as part of our DNA or fabric of ourcountry.
If there was one thing that you could say to everybody in the world and have everybodyhear it at one time, what would that be?
(35:52):
that immigration policy is a public policy, just like any other public policy, and itshould be set to serve our national interests, Americans' national interests, not just the
special interests of employers or the big religion or big ag or anybody else, but ourinterests.
And we need to have a national debate about it.
(36:15):
It should be calm and rational, but it is not,
bigoted or racist or any other ist to talk about our immigration policy and to question itand say, you know, is this really helping our country?
Because we have a right to do that with any public policy and immigration is no different.
(36:37):
Okay.
So I guess if you could change one thing, that they would start, like if you could say,hey, Congress, you need to pass this one law or this one provision that gets the right
thing started right now, what would it be?
ending chain migration.
Excellent.
I love that.
that's a great answer.
I didn't know that that was going to be it, but I like it.
(36:59):
Well, because I've heard, and maybe you can correct me for each immigrant who comes,there's so many who trail.
It's
10 or 13 million for $5 million.
It's potentially worse than that.
did a chart several years ago.
I actually wrote a bill that has been introduced each Congress and currently it is beingintroduced by Congressman Eli Crane from Arizona, who is awesome.
(37:25):
But it's called the Nuclear Family Priority Act and it eliminates chain migration.
And the first time that was introduced, I did this chart that showed the potential forchain migration from one
immigrant coming in with a spouse and two children.
And it ended up being, if everyone naturalizes after five years as they're allowed to, andif there's no backlogs and all of that.
(37:49):
So it made some assumptions.
It was up to like 200 and some people that that single alien with his spouse and minorchildren could bring in.
It was insane.
yeah, chain migration is just a terrible thing and is harming us.
You know, the interesting part about our immigration policy is that we don't actuallychoose any of the immigrants.
(38:11):
We don't choose any of them.
Employers choose the worker immigrants.
Other immigrants, previous immigrants choose the family-based immigrants.
The United Nations chooses our refugees.
The asylum seekers choose themselves.
So there's no one we choose, and that should change.
That's an incredibly interesting point that I've never really, I mean, I guess I knewthat.
(38:35):
It's one of those things that I guess I knew, but I never realized.
That's incredibly enlightening.
came across the border.
No
million, 1.1 million coming legally every year on autopilot until it gets stopped.
So if we were to five years from now, we're going to have a new president, Republican orDemocrat.
(38:58):
What would your goals be five years from now in the first year or two of a newadministration, whether it's Republican or Democrat, to look back on this period of time
and say, man, we did a great job.
I would hope that we could get HR2 across the finish line to make sure that no futurepresident can open our borders again and create the unaccompanied alien children crisis
(39:27):
and all of that.
But mostly I would hope that we could end chain migration.
does Secretary Rubio stand on that?
I've kind of cut my teeth over the decades with the secretary.
we have a little bit of an affinity for him.
He has come so far since his Gang of Eight days.
(39:48):
mean, the turnaround has been beautiful to watch.
He has been just fantastic.
And the State Department under his watch is doing great things.
So I'm really excited about how he's been doing, how he has turned around.
He seems to genuinely mean it.
One of the things I should have said and forgot to say was that I also hope that thebirthright citizenship order will be upheld by the Supreme Court because it is long past
(40:14):
time that we join most of the rest of the Western world and end that practice.
And you said, end that practice?
Yes, I go back to old, I forget the 1880s US Supreme Court where that was the case wherethey said, if you are an ambassador, your child's not a citizen.
(40:39):
in that court case, I believe they used the word, allegiant, that they're not allegiant tothe United States.
And we now have members of Congress who are not allegiant to the United States.
So I don't know how they are able to vote, much less sit as a member of Congress and notbe deported themselves, to be honest with you, because to be a citizen, you have to be
(41:00):
allegiance to the United States.
I think that is first and foremost.
Yeah, well, and also marriage fraud means that you committed citizenship fraud, which is,you know, an issue.
But we'll leave that alone.
But yeah, subject to the jurisdiction thereof clause in the 14th Amendment clearly basedon the authors of that amendment means that you have no foreign allegiance, that you have
(41:31):
only allegiance to the United States.
And that obviously can't be said of people who are here illegally or people who arevisitors here.
Yeah, that's the other thing that I kind of asked jokingly of my friends or colleaguesfrom the other side who say, we should just let everybody vote.
I was like, well, we don't let tourists vote.
And if we're allowed to let tourists vote, can I go to Michigan and vote?
(41:54):
Can I go to Wisconsin and vote?
Because if we're let tourists vote, should be able to vote in all 50 states if I can makethe rounds in two weeks.
But that's a story for another day too.
And what's the point of US citizenship if it doesn't have any special rights connected toit?
did,
we really appreciate your participation here.
It's so enlightening and thank you so much.
(42:18):
It well, if, as you get.
eye-opening, which I think is enlightening because you actually hear about what is trulyhappening.
Everybody can think, we're ruining immigration and hurting people's lives and stuff likethat.
But when you put it down the way you are, it's just mind-blowing.
(42:38):
It really is.
And just the unique way in which you shared it.
it's incredibly helpful, I think, to be the lead person in our four-part series.
So we've got a lot to build on.
And so thank you so much for coming.
Do you have anything else you want to share that we missed out or we didn't ask you?
(42:58):
think so.
I would just say thank you very much.
have thoroughly enjoyed this.
Wonderful.
And I wanted to ask you if people wanted to get involved with your organization, what'sthe best way to go about doing that?
go to our website at IAProject.org.
All of our social media is linked from the homepage of the website.
We are particularly active on X, but we've got all of the different social media channels.
(43:22):
we've got a lot of resources on our website, more coming every day.
And so I hope people will check that out.
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