April 9, 2025 • 69 mins
Recorded April 9, 2025
In this captivating Part 3 of our Immigration Series episode, Jamie and Jennifer welcome the remarkable Roy Beck, founder of Numbers USA, to explore the complex realm of immigration policy in America. They unravel the historical tapestry of immigration, revealing its impact on economic inequality, while showcasing the power of visual aids to illuminate these vital issues. Roy shares intriguing insights from his journey as a journalist and immigration advocate, emphasizing the urgent need for policy reform that balances compassion with economic reality. Together, they confront the harsh truth for American workers striving for decent jobs amid the influx of non-legal immigrants willing to work for less. The discussion also ventures into the future of immigration policy and the challenges facing American laborers.
@NumbersUSA #JobHunting, #ImmigrationPolicy, #EconomicInequality, #RoyBeck, #NumbersUSA, #AmericanWorkers, #IllegalImmigration, #PolicyReform, #JobSecurity, #ImmigrationSeries, #WorkforceChallenges, #EconomicReality, #ImmigrationAdvocacy, #USJobs, #PodcastEp3, #ImmigrationSeriesEp3, #JobHuntingNotYourFault, #ImmigrationTalks2025 #safeactSources
Thanks to our advertiser – Bern Bear Koffee – https://www.bernbearkoffee.com/
Roy Beck – Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs - https://youtu.be/LPjzfGChGlE?si=SL8niGtxYFVlHB2T
Roy Beck - EMANCIPATION RECLAMATION (2024) - The 1924-65 immigration reductions that propelled African Americans into the Great Migration and the middle class - (Read)
Roy Beck - BACK OF THE HIRING LINE (2021) - A 200-year history of immigration surges, employer bias & depression of Black wealth - (Audiobook) (Paperback) (Media Attention)
NumbersUSA - https://www.youtube.com/@NumbersUSA
NumbersUSA - https://www.numbersusa.com/
How to contact Roy Beck – Roy@numbersusa.com
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Announcements
02:43 Roy Beck and the Gumball Video
05:44 Books and Historical Context of Immigration
08:50 Roy Beck's Journey into Immigration Advocacy
12:28 Current Immigration Statistics and Trends
20:47 The Impact of Immigration on American Society
26:58 Solutions to Illegal Immigration
30:27 Wage Growth and Job Competition
33:24 The Dignity of Work and Immigration's Impact
36:03 Humane Immigration Policies: Balancing Compassion and Economics
39:08 The Consequences of Brain Drain on Sending Communities
43:42 Comparative Immigration Challenges: A Global Perspective
45:01 Future of Immigration: Momentum and Practical Solutions
52:21 The Complexities of Birthright Citizenship and Guest Worker Programs
01:00:08 Finding Common Ground: The Path to Immigration Consensus
CONTACT US
Newsletter - https://substack.com/@reasonablearguments
Website - https://reasonablearguments.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:57):
Hey, babe.
We are back in the saddle.
We had about a week hiatus.
Jennifer's been working hard on getting our studio ready, which is what we're going to berecording from next time after we have this wonderful guest today.
But first, you have a big announcement, Jennifer.
You like started this whole thing.
I'm supposed to start the whole thing
(01:20):
well go ahead.
That was actually really good.
We may keep it, we'll see.
All right, so we are back for our third installment of the Immigration series that wehave, which is being brought to you today by,
(01:52):
There we go.
Koffee just made history.
Don't you love it?
I love it.
All right.
So this episode we have Roy Beck and I when I was doing research on Roy, I am such avisual person and one of the things that he does with gumballs is was just completely
(02:12):
intriguing to me and I loved it.
So let's talk about who Roy is.
He is a former journalist.
author and the founder of Numbers USA.
His notable works are The Case Against Immigration.
His most recent books are The Emancipation, Reclamation, and Back of the Hiring Line.
But we have to talk about this gumball video that he did on poverty and immigration.
(02:36):
So let's bring Roy to the stage.
Hello, Roy.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Great to be here.
I loved this gumball video.
can't even tell you.
Like I said, I am a visual person.
So watching this and you showing it like that just made the difference for me.
I can't even tell you.
(02:57):
You know, I put that together when I was asked by my son, who at the time was in theseventh grade, this is back in the 1990s, to do a little demonstration.
I won't say about how it came about, other than the fact that we're here in Arlington,Virginia.
The kids in these schools all have parents that tend to have interesting jobs, you and soyou could bring parents in to talk.
(03:24):
They have two weeks every year where they do that.
And so this was put together along with something else I did for seventh graders to helpseventh graders understand proportionality, numbers, you this kind of thing.
And when I was showing this, a few weeks later in an office to some, some sort of hardenedcynical government people, one of the things they said was, one fellow says,
(03:54):
did the students understand us?
And yeah, they understood it fine.
They looked at another person in the hallway and says, well, maybe members of Congresscould understand this.
know, seventh graders could, but it is interesting.
I was taught in University of School of Journalism, and I don't think this is unusualthere, for us to write at a seventh grade level, not like a seventh grade level of
(04:19):
experience, but a seventh grade level of reading comprehension.
because people read fast and all that kind of thing.
Well, so I think that Gumballs has been a hit because it had a seventh grade audience inmind.
And you know what the crazy thing is, is that it's been put up by so many people on theirown platforms through the years, but the ones we've tracked add up to more than 200
(04:41):
million views.
Can you believe that?
Just think if we had monetized that, but 200 million views and all over the world.
And there's a lot of reasons for that, but the fact that it got your attention is theexample of, it just happened to be something that worked.
Now we re-recorded it in 2010, but it's still the 2010 version that's out there right now.
(05:06):
Yeah, it just, you know, but I think that that's one of the things like Jamie and I hadtalked about on one of our other podcasts about, you know, with Doge coming in and
cleaning up all of the money that was just going everywhere.
And one of the things that I said is, you know, people, maybe we need to have like avirtual wallet that shows us how much money we get at the beginning of an administration,
(05:27):
and then watch that money dwindle because I think having something visible makes it awhole lot easier to understand than words, right?
so okay, so you have the two new books out, the two newest books that are, assuming we canget these on Amazon.
Yeah, the hiring line is on Amazon, easy to get, and you can read some, people can readsome good reviews.
(05:54):
There's also a segment of the audio book that's available as well.
it's back of the hiring line.
200 year history of immigration surges, employer bias and depression of black wealth.
I wanted to get the right words there.
But so that sounds a little provocative there.
(06:16):
And then the second one is not on Amazon because it's actually a 60 page booklet that isdone in kind of, I'd say high school style with lot of vintage pictures and all.
it's the Emancipation Reclamation.
the key point of that is that the 1965, yeah, the 1925 or 1924,
(06:38):
to 1965 period in which Congress kept annual immigration low was the only great period ofeconomic advancement for the descendants of American slavery.
And so it's actually, it's quite exciting because it's like there is really something thatcan be done that can work with the whole underclass of America, but particularly the black
(07:05):
underclass, which is larger.
percentage-wise and it's happened before it's it's an amazing story that you know, franklyI don't know if it's ever been taught in history and history classes, but it's the the
civil rights Advances of the 1960s and beyond would not have happened.
It's certainly that soon without the 1924 Act that reduced immigration by over two-thirdsand really the kind of the
(07:35):
bottom line case for what we do at Numbers USA is that if we would do that again, andwe're not even even talking about two-thirds, you could cut annual legal immigration in
half and basically stop any growth in illegal immigration, we would see incredibleeconomic benefits, a society of much less income disparity.
(07:57):
It'd just be a much better society.
And that's what happened in those 40 years.
Everything wasn't perfect in those 40 years, but
Everything was getting better.
That's the thing.
We became a more and more egalitarian, a more cohesive country because the have-nots weregaining faster economically than the haves.
And it wasn't at the expense of the haves.
(08:19):
That's the thing.
didn't, it wasn't taking money away from the wealthy or the fluid or the upper middleclass.
They were still actually gaining too.
But in those years, the people in the bottom were gaining much faster.
It was just a much fair world.
And there were different things going on, but the lowered immigration rate was asignificant part of it.
(08:43):
So that is that booklet.
And of course, that story is contained in the Back of the Hiring Line book as well.
so I have one more question for you because I know Jamie's chopping at the bit to ask youquestions, but I have to ask you, how did you get into immigration?
Well, I was a newspaper reporter from the late sixties until 1990.
(09:08):
And I covered all kinds of things.
I, but I did specialize in environmental and conservation reporting in the sixties andseventies.
So I was early on in that, that, that field.
I covered everything I covered, you know, I worked for newspapers in Missouri, dailynewspapers, Missouri, Michigan, Cincinnati.
(09:28):
and, you know, I covered a lot of the.
the urban renewal issues, the economic issues, covered crime, police, you know, the kindof things that happens when you're not on the gigantic newspapers, covered a little bit of
everything.
And starting in the early 80s, I was made aware of the fact that immigration policy hadbeen radically changed by a law in 1965, and it took a while for it to
(10:01):
have its major effects.
by 1980, it was really having some major effects.
And I just, what I found as I looked in more at it was that almost all the issues that Iwas covering that I cared about, you know, not as a reporter, I was kind of old style 20th
century American journalism.
(10:22):
It wasn't that I was taking a stand on what the solutions were, but I was taking a standon things that concerned me, you know,
I reported on those things and then tried to report fairly from all types of sides.
People are trying to find solutions.
I just found that our immigration policy, the changes were making almost everything harderto improve.
(10:47):
It was the numerical level had so, it tripled by the 80s, it quadrupled by the 90s.
And that numerical level had really changed things.
And by 1990,
I was here in Washington, D.C.
I'd spent actually a few years in Dallas, not on daily newspaper, but a weekly UnitedMethodist paper covering religion and the intersection of religion and public policy and
(11:13):
social issues.
And then I came to Washington and covered Congress for a chain of newspapers.
And in 1990, I covered the hearings.
on them deciding to increase immigration from about $600,000 a year to about a million ayear.
just a couple of weeks after they passed that law, thought, you know, I don't think I canbe an observer anymore.
(11:37):
I think I don't see media.
I just don't see most institutions, people really paying attention to what's happeninghere.
And so I was concerned.
I was concerned in terms of its effect on our becoming a
a more and more unequal type of society.
I was concerned about what it was doing in terms of the racial relations in this country.
(12:01):
I was concerned about how it was affecting the large increase in population growth havingto do with quality of life issues, congestion, habitat protection.
In other words, all these things that I was concerned about, immigration connected to it.
So I, after 20 some years, left the profession of daily journalism and
(12:22):
Begin writing magazine articles and books.
Wow, that's amazing.
So, you you mentioned that we're the kind of the linchpin for you was when we reached amillion people of illegal immigrants per year.
And that's about where we are now, a little bit more than a million.
Yeah, which almost seems insignificant compared to what we've had in illegal immigrationover the last four years, which is this explosion.
(12:52):
how do you, what's the best way to frame
you know, number one, the long-term implications of having, you know, more than a millionpeople come here legally and also kind of balance that with, hey, if we cut out all
illegal immigrants, which was somewhere between 10 and 20 million or whatever that numberactually is who came across the border over the last four years, you know, a lot of people
(13:16):
might see that as, we're having this really low immigration rate at this point becausewe're down to a million.
So how do you...
you how do you balance that, you know, kind of public perception with the reality of, youknow, that the million has been significant and you even suggest that that's probably
twice as many as we should be allowing in each year.
(13:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Now, all good points and it's, you got to get to some numbers to put these in proportion.
And I want to, I actually got a few numbers here beside me because I want to use the realnumbers.
The estimates based on the government data and the Center for Immigration Studies, I thinkyou're familiar with them.
(14:02):
They've worked with this and they're very trustworthy than this, but these are from theCensus Bureau.
data.
it looks like that something like, let me get this straight, was, yeah, between 11 and ahalf and 12 and a half million new arrivals, foreign arrivals, in the four years of Biden.
(14:27):
So, it's both.
So, 11 and a half to 12 and a half million, about four million of that was legal.
We know what's legal because legal you're
You're following us, you know who's...
So that means that between seven and a half and eight and a half million came in illegallyor illegally or just turned himself in at the border and Biden had him waved in and gave
(14:55):
him work permits.
The point is they were uninvited and they're for the most part unvetted.
But again, so that many people.
it took...
Our organization really feels that we should not have an increase, a net increase offoreign born in the country at all.
We should have basically same number coming in as die or leave the country each year.
(15:18):
That's one way of looking at it.
Right now, it looks like we have 53 million foreign born in the United States.
So 330 million plus people in the country and 53 million of them were born
citizens of another country.
And I believe what are they saying now?
(15:40):
looks like, estimate now is about 15 million of them.
That's when you have real numbers to crunch.
Looks like about 15 million of them are illegal.
53 million foreign born.
Now, even if all 53, yeah.
you know, 17, 18%.
And even if every one of them was legal, every one of them brought in with them a foreignexperience, an experience of a different political system, a different culture, usually a
(16:14):
different language, often a different religion.
In other words, there's all of these major differences that you've got 53 million who arenot anchored in having grown up.
in the American society.
America, there's no question in my mind, America has tremendous assimilative capacitycompared with most countries.
(16:39):
But there are thresholds.
We passed that threshold long ago.
We've done that before.
A hundred and some years ago, during the Ellis Island period, we overwhelmed thatthreshold back then too.
So it doesn't matter.
You know, then they were mainly coming from Europe.
It still was too much.
It overwhelmed our...
our cultural systems.
So you are deciding to fundamentally change the country if you allow 53 million peoplecome in.
(17:09):
Now 15 million of them are here illegally, uninvited, et cetera.
That is an incredible thing.
let's just say that the President Trump is able to move all
looking at it and say eight and a half million.
(17:31):
Well, there was an eight and a half million increase, but the thing is that there weremore than that that came in illegally.
It's just like some illegals left and some died and some became legal.
But the thing is, let's just say we get rid of 10 million.
We move 10 million illegal aliens out.
It only puts us back to where we were at the beginning of the Biden administration.
(17:56):
It also
doesn't even push back to where we were at the beginning of the Trump administration,because the first Trump administration, the foreign born population still grew.
The illegal population did have some drop.
That was good.
the thing is, that Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 because of the immigrationissue.
(18:20):
Now there were other issues and people can argue, look, this is kind of thing you can havea bar room argument about, but
My contention is Donald Trump never would have been the nominee.
He would never have gotten, he would never gotten traction in 2015 if he, if he hadn't hadthe immigration issue to jump on and be able to, through Jeff Sessions, prove to the
(18:45):
immigration restrictionists that he was serious about it.
That made him viable as a nominee.
And the people's feeling of distress of the government comes from a lot of different ways.
But I'm not, I'm certainly not the first person to say this and not even the person saidit the loudest.
But most Americans are pretty much aware that since 1986, the government, Republican,Democrat presidents, Republican and Democrat members, leaders of Congress have lied to the
(19:14):
American people.
They've constantly said, let's give out some more benefits.
Let's have some, let's have this amnesty, that amnesty.
And we're gonna, we're going to control illegal immigration.
They give the benefits, they give the amnesties.
There were six amnesties, one in 86, but there were five more that happened, small ones,in the 90s.
then Republican or Democratic presidents, administrations, never gave the people what theypromised, which was that they would enforce the law.
(19:42):
They haven't done it.
And so that built up such a feeling that Donald Trump became possible.
He would not have looked possible.
Nobody thought it was possible in 2014, right?
So the thing is, that
If we succeeded in getting 10 million, Biden's 10 million illegal aliens out of thecountry, we're only back to the point where we still have the problem.
(20:03):
And our point is, that we don't really need any more immigrants right now, but there arereasons to continue to have immigration, mainly because you think people, American
citizens ought to be able to, they ought to be able to marry and adopt overseas as they,as they choose.
That is a, there's a right that
(20:25):
we think that Americans ought to have.
We also believe that when immigrants come in for whatever reasons that they ought to beable to bring their minor children in there and their spouses.
But beyond that, there's not much legal immigration that you could really say the Americanneeds right now.
When you've got even you take 10 million away and you have got 43 million foreign born inthe country already.
(20:47):
So do you think that this is based on voters?
That Biden opened the borders for that?
You know, there's, of there's lots of speculation what's in people's minds.
The thing is, that I'm of view and we're of view that illegal voting is not a major issuein this country, that most of the illegal, I mean, almost all of the illegal aliens aren't
(21:11):
succeeding in voting or changing elections.
We are in favor of the SAVE Act, which requires voter ID to vote.
And that back, we're recording this today, but
We think that's going to be voter in the House tomorrow.
And we hope it'll go to the Senate.
We'd like to see it because Americans deserve to have a sense of that we can count on thevoting process.
(21:34):
So I don't think it's so, if people think that they're bringing illegal aliens becausethey can get them to throw the elections, I don't think that's going to work very well.
However, some people have a long view and they know one amnesty after another, you changethings.
I do think that
in the 90s and really, I think maybe up until four or eight years ago, there was thisfeeling that you're going to bring enough illegal aliens in, enough of them would
(22:05):
eventually be amnestied in one way the other.
They would vote and they would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
But look what's happened with Hispanic voting.
mean, it turns out
It turns out that immigrants, whether they're from Latin America or whether today, orwhether they're from Italy 100 years ago, once immigrants are here for a generation,
(22:35):
especially you get the second generation, they do start to think more like this is theircountry.
And they're hurt by too much immigration, not because immigrants are bad people.
It's not, know, that has nothing to do with it.
It's not about the value of the person.
It's just that we have economics that are, you know, labor economics.
(22:56):
That's the biggest thing as far as we're concerned.
It just undermines the people here, the workers that are here and their families.
So I think it's the people who are doing this to the country because they think thatsomehow they're going to get a vote advantage.
They're kind of
really undermining the country for something that's probably not even gonna work for them.
(23:17):
I do think that the, I mean, I think that probably the number one reason we have thislevel of immigration is on the right, cheap labor.
Now I'm talking about the business right.
They want high immigration to keep wages there.
They don't wanna go back to the 50s and the 60s when workers had much more of a fair,
(23:42):
not equality, less of a divide between the workers and the owners of capital.
So that's one reason we have it.
On the left, and this is the real left, I don't want to call them liberals, but the left,they want to destabilize America.
mean, that's the way the left has tended to work all over the world.
You destabilize a society in order to turn it into a different kind of society.
(24:06):
And there's no question that
this high level of immigration, especially this crazy illiterate immigration level, isdestabilizing.
without question.
I would like to say one thing, Roy, that in 2011, I did predict a Donald Trump presidency,but I predicted in Variety Magazine of all places that Donald Trump would run against and
(24:32):
beat Barack Obama in 2012 because I thought that at that time, Republicans would nominatea businessman.
They just nominated the wrong one in Mitt Romney.
So I think I'm the second person after the Simpsons who predicted it.
So.
Well, I did not know that about you, but I have to put you up on my shelf as 10 or 12 fornarcissators.
(25:02):
So yeah, I always like to throw that in there because it's one of my little claims to famethat I like to throw out.
So Jennifer, how well does that work whenever you're having like a domestic argument forhim saying it?
no idea.
It's very short, Roy.
Domestic arguments here are so short, I can't even tell you.
(25:22):
Bye.
I will say when we first started dating, he would throw facts at me and I didn't believehim.
So I would have to Google a lot.
Like it was stupid facts.
Like band-aids are, other than Johnson Johnson band-aids, all other band-aids are made inSarasota.
Like number one, who even knows that?
(25:44):
who brings it up in conversation?
So yeah, so I had to Google.
bet it's apparently a great date bait.
yeah.
It worked.
true story.
of my homework assignments was he gave me a list of YouTube speeches, his favoritepresidential, not presidential, political speeches in history.
(26:12):
And he has since wrote a book about it, but he gave me links to every single one of thespeeches and had me watch them and basically report back.
titled American Speeches That Changed History.
that, I always say my next.
him.
helped you get your woman.
Yeah, my next book is Dating for Nerds.
(26:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, but you, we're gonna, so I have one question and then we want to get to the meat ofone of your major things that you wanted, that you're talking about today.
But if you could change one thing about illegal or legal immigration today that wouldimpact border security or visa overstays or whatever it is.
(26:58):
What is the one thing that if you could whisper in Donald Trump's ear that you think wouldbe a generational difference, what would it be?
Yeah, that's good.
I like it.
There's so many things.
There's so many answers to illegal immigration, but our position has always been take awaythe jobs magnet.
(27:26):
You don't have to have as many people coming in if you didn't have the jobs magnet becausethat's what most of them come in from.
So we have the e-verify system.
It's been being perfected since the 90s, expanded.
The majority, not the vast majority, but majority of all hires in America are run throughthe Verify system, have been for years.
(27:52):
just to mandate it.
It's not mandated except for federal workers.
And then in some states, there are several states that mandated it for state workers.
Some of them are wider and for all employers.
more than 25, whatever.
But if you have a verification system, it's been around for almost 30 years now.
(28:13):
know this has been a debate in Florida for a long time.
I'm not sure exactly where we ended up.
what's getting better in Florida.
Florida is one of the leaders in.
but we've had a, has obviously been one our three legs of our stool here in Florida for avery long time.
Tourism and I like to say senior citizens are the other two.
(28:38):
So, but yes, to mandate that, there are bills in every Congress to do that.
It has to be done by Congress.
It's not something that the president can do.
And just do it.
(28:59):
you take away the jobs magnet.
And then, this is what's interesting.
sounds a little like the main people that are
be coming in, there'd be two different kinds of people that would still be trying to getin.
Young adventurers that just want to make for some reason can't get in legally and theywant to travel around the country and all that kind of stuff.
(29:23):
Like a lot of Americans are illegal travelers in other countries too.
They overstay their visas and stuff.
But then the bad guys, the bad guys should still be trying to get in.
your border patrol, everybody else, wouldn't be having sift through tens of millions ofpeople every year.
You know, they'd just be dealing with bad guys.
(29:44):
So, I mean, the president has really done an amazing job, right?
I mean, immediately on the border right now.
We'll see whether it holds.
mean, right now it's scared of the illegal business, know, the cartels and all back.
We'll see.
They usually find ways to get around, but if he keeps his nerve, he can really controlthat border.
(30:05):
people have to remember that
majority until Biden, the majority of illegal aliens in this country arrive onvisceravises and then they don't leave.
So, you know, that's why the e-verify at the workplace is that and I would do it.
It would deal with most of the issue.
(30:27):
So how does high immigration, particularly low skill immigration, affect wage growth andjob competition for American workers?
Yeah, we.
There's a number of economists that have done a lot of really great work on this issue.
(30:49):
We know without having any studies, we know that the inflation adjusted wages foreverybody that every part of the American workers who have less than a college degree has
declined over the last 30 years.
(31:12):
That's after, for the most part, the whole history of rising.
So it's declined.
And for some parts, some segments, it's declined just precipitously, especially for peoplewho at the lower education levels.
There's been recent studies in the last couple of years that have discovered that half ofAmericans who graduate have college degrees that
(31:41):
their wages are going down too.
It turns out that only the top half of the college grads in country have seen real wageincreases since then.
it's very clear that mass immigration creates a less egalitarian society.
(32:05):
It makes it harder for people, you know, the whole idea that people, they work hard andplay by the rules.
Remember that was Bill Clinton's
That was his mantra.
Well, you know, that people work hard and play by the rules, have a chance to get ahead.
They can move.
can, there's class movement, but we've seen less and less of that.
I'm sorry.
I may not, I may not have answered your whole question there.
(32:26):
I think that's perfect.
know, but that leads into kind of what is the argument of immigrants do the jobs thatAmericans won't do.
When I was a kid, I grew up in rural Florida and we would pick cantaloupes during the day,load them on a truck and then go take the tomatoes and work in the packing house until
three in the morning and then start the next morning at 7 a.m.
(32:49):
I was doing that from the time I was 13.
So,
I'm not somebody who buys into Americans aren't willing to work, but what's your opinion?
How many cantaloupes did you eat during the day or did you get tired of them?
you
Well the problem is there's enough of them rotting out there in that field that they'renot very appetizing.
(33:12):
I found whatever I never worked on.
I just had some cantaloupes in my my agriculture work, but I that's what I did instead ofdrinking water.
I'd open up and eat a cantaloupe every once in a while.
The watermelons I would eat, the cantaloupes, I went decades without eating cantaloupes.
Like those things, they were just horrible once they were rotten.
(33:33):
good for you.
of course, you bring up, you know, you bring up something that...
Look, our philosophy is that there should be no job in America that is an undignified job.
You know, if it's a job needs to be done, a person shouldn't be living in poverty to doit.
(33:56):
But, you know, the immigration just messes up the free market.
on what happens with wages and everything else.
And of course, some of these jobs are not all that attractive and that's why teenagersused to do most of them.
And as they're seasonal and yeah, I grew up in the Ozarks.
And so for me, was more like it was cutting, raking and baling hay.
(34:24):
That was what I got through.
anyway, these are...
I use the people who say that their jobs in America that Americans won't do even thoughAmericans used to do them are basically saying that they don't believe in they don't
(34:44):
believe in free market economics anyway, and they're basically saying
A lot of the American people should live on a style of living that is based on semi-slavelabor.
They're longing for the days to bring back some kind of slavery.
It's like they don't really want to be slaves, but they want people to work for slavewages.
(35:06):
They want to have benefits that really they haven't earned, they haven't deserved.
And I really don't think, I think there are very few Americans who when you really put itto them will say,
that they think that the people who are doing those jobs that illegal aliens are doingright now, that the people that are doing those jobs should live in poverty.
(35:28):
I mean, if you just put it to them, do youth, especially since the biggest protector ofillegal immigration are liberals.
It's like, that really what they believe is liberals?
That there ought to be a surf class in the United States?
Absolutely not.
So I think this may be the foundation, this next question may kind of swing us backtowards the gumball video a little bit, but can immigration policy be both compassionate
(36:00):
and economically responsible?
Yeah.
Well, I've been giving occasionally some guest lectures in colleges since the 90s whensomebody gets brave enough to invite me in.
(36:22):
That basically looks at what is it to have a humane immigration policy?
And the problem is that
The people who have made the decisions for mass immigration think that mass immigration,the humanity, the only humane issue is what's humane toward a person who wants to move
(36:45):
here.
But there are four types of people you have to consider.
you know, one of them is how does that affect the people in the bottom?
You know, they're already here.
I mean, what's humane for them?
And that's the thing that's lost most.
is that the people who make the decisions, who run the government, who are working in thelegislatures, they, for the most part, are out of touch.
(37:12):
Not attached with the people who are working at these less than sustainable type wages.
you know, that's part of the question of what is a moral position.
Another thing that's missed is what does it do
to people in the sending community to take these people out of those communities.
(37:38):
Because there's a lot of literature that says, by the way, we do not get the, you know, Idisagree with people who look at illegal aliens as being like the dregs of society.
I mean, yeah, some of them, know, the criminals and stuff, but no, the illegal aliens thatcome to this country tend to be very, they're hardworking.
I mean, and they're driven.
(38:01):
Otherwise, they wouldn't make this effort.
It's not necessarily easy to get here illegally.
It's not easy to get started and all that stuff.
These are energetic people.
But they are the potential change agents in those other countries.
basically, our illegal immigration system is constantly a release valve on the pressuresin those sending countries to improve their conditions.
(38:29):
So what about
no matter how many illegal aliens we take, the vast majority of people who are like thoseillegal aliens are still in those countries.
And so for me, the people who try to make a moral argument that we owe it to these peoplebecause of why I hear this a lot.
Well, the thing is, is that they're still worse off than our poorest people.
(38:54):
Actually, that's not actually true for all of them, but some of them are.
They are living conditions that are worse off than our
poorest people.
So that's to them, that makes it okay.
But the thing is, what about the people, what about all those other people left behind andyou're taking your
a perfect example today.
was speaking at a Rotary Club and prior to that, evidently this Rotary Club is doing kindof a series on immigration.
(39:19):
And so the person who spoke before me was an OBGYN from Guyana.
And he gave this stirring story of his track to America, how he got here and how fortunatehe is to be here and how generous our community is to he.
you know, his wife and his family.
(39:40):
you know, I didn't put him on the spot publicly, obviously, but afterwards I went up andasked him, like, he talked about he came from a village of 200 people and his mother had
to go to a village 10 miles away to deliver him and his nine brothers and sisters.
And so I just went up to him afterwards.
I was like, well, who's delivering babies in your village in Guyana?
And he's like, I don't know.
(40:03):
And I'm like, well, you know, I was like, I'm so glad you're here.
Like I'm genuinely glad you're here, but I'm also sad for the people who you left behindin need of your services.
And he was just kind of taken aback.
He was like, wow, that's a great way to put it.
And he just, you know, we kind of left the conversation there.
(40:23):
We didn't argue about it.
We were just kind of making a couple of points to each other.
But, you know, just today I had that experience of somebody,
You know, and it's just incredible to me that here he is, you know, know, in Guyana, theymust need OBGYNs, you know, and, and so he's left.
here's the other thing.
(40:44):
We have American-born kids who can pass the entrance exams, but they still don't get intomedical school because there's not enough slots for them.
It's not like in a country of $333, $335 million, whatever we are right now, we canproduce enough doctors.
(41:07):
We can produce enough doctors.
And we're stealing these people from enticing them from these other countries that needthem so badly.
know, occasionally you get somebody who has gone forward and gotten into a highly skill,specific skill that isn't really needed in their home country.
(41:28):
You know, that happens.
But for the most part, what are we doing?
You know, that's part of the, this is part of the ethics of the whole thing.
It's like, so,
Basically, the way I see it is that we are trying to be humanitarian to the people whowant to come to this country at the expense of usually the poorest, least advantaged
(41:51):
people in our country in taking away some of the most skilled and certainly the mostdriven people from those countries where there are so many people that need that
leadership.
It's just, to me, there's just very, very little ethical
basis for having the high immigration program that we have today.
(42:14):
it's, and whereas in most of the mass media, what you hear is, is that there's thishumanitarian, if you're moral, you're ethical, you're humane, you want to bring in as many
people as possible.
And it's, it's like, it's such a superficial look at the overall situation.
(42:37):
And why is that prevailed for so many decades?
Well, I think it's prevailed partly because a lot of the people who control the media andlots of other things are people who themselves benefit from having cheaper labor.
And let's face it, about a third of the United States are college-educated people, collegedegree people.
(43:06):
People at the top do have lot of benefits from having so many people working for lessmoney.
And where's the morality in that?
think we should have like an adopt an illegal alien or illegal immigrant program.
So if you are for letting these people in, let them come live with you.
(43:28):
You can take care of them and see how that works out.
And I just have one more question.
Is there any other country that has to deal with immigration issues like we do?
Well, there are some other countries that have some similar issues, and especiallyproportionately, Canada, Australia, there's much smaller countries.
(43:54):
They actually take in proportionately more than we do, and it's having the same effect inthose countries.
Australia is becoming more and more less like us.
They're trying to protect...
They're trying to protect their way of life.
(44:14):
also they have a little bit more of an egalitarian past to protect.
Canada is kind of in an uproar back and forth right now because they've just gone througha period where it's almost like they're...
I hate to...
I don't want to seem like I'm speaking ill of Canada because there's so many Canadians Iknow who don't have this problem, but it's just almost like they don't have a sense of
(44:39):
identity.
and they're just willing to become a sort of a, just a, some kind of a global workforce orsomething.
But there's, you know, it's, they're a different kind of country and there's very, andthey're also very small population, but we're, we're, we're pretty unique in what we've
done.
And just think of it.
I mean, we just, we'll get back to it.
(44:59):
have 53 million foreign born people in this country.
have, how does that not totally, well, not totally, but.
very, very significantly changed the whole nature of a country.
So looking forward to the next 10, 20 years, what does that look like?
Does either side have momentum?
(45:20):
We certainly have seen the immediate success of just saying, we're not going to let youjust come in carte blanche.
We're not going to give you money.
We're not going to give you apps to get here.
And it seems like some of the NGOs had money cut off that was helping them get here.
I always argued like,
Who's paying for the band-aids and a thousand mile trek of people, you know, who's buyingthe food?
(45:45):
What are you doing with the human waste?
What are you like?
I've always asked these questions and nobody could answer these practical applicationquestions of, how is this even happening to move millions of people a thousand miles to
our border?
You know, that's not done for free.
You know, that, mean, that is costing money.
People are breaking their legs and twisting their ankles and minor injuries that have tobe taken care of.
(46:07):
Who's paying for all that?
And evidently we were probably, we probably were through the American Red Cross, but youknow, what does the next 10 or 20 years, I kind of went on a tangent there with you Roy.
So Jennifer's used to it.
But what do the next 10 or 20 years look like and does either side have momentum?
And you know, can we have, can we solve it without, you know, people claiming, you know,xenophobia and bigotry?
(46:34):
You know, I put it back a lot into that one, but.
I know we only have you for a little bit more time and we would like to get through a fewlightning round questions, but if we have time to do that.
Yeah, well, so I've been working on this full time for 35 years now.
And my wife's father, when I left the newspaper business, he confided in my wife.
(47:01):
Of course, my wife is totally capable.
She has a career.
She's able to take care of herself.
But he was old fashioned.
He goes, I'm worried about you, Shirley.
mean, what's he going to do when this immigration problem gets solved?
was 1990.
So, I'll just say.
talk to him today.
(47:21):
so simple, right?
If it was only that simple, right?
did live to 101, but he still didn't live nearly long enough.
the, no, I mean, I have no idea.
Because of that experience, it's like, are we going to be at in 20 years?
(47:41):
The problem, you know, we've been at loggerheads for really 30 years because the otherside, you know, the open borders people, they're totally frustrated too.
Because basically, numbers you say, we've been one of the leaders in grassrootsmobilization.
pretty well, you know, after the year 2000, we pretty well stopped.
We stopped all the new amnesties.
(48:03):
We stopped all kinds of things until Biden came in.
And then it's like, no idea somebody would just break the law.
universally like he did on the border.
That's amazing, you know, to just flag through another 10, 12 million people.
So in some ways it's like, it's going to take everything possible in the Trumpadministration to just clean up the mess.
(48:29):
know, and I can't, firstly, I can't imagine getting 10, 12 million out of the country.
And that just gets us back to where we were at the beginning of the Biden administration.
It's another practical application issue.
How do you move 10 million people?
Like, what's the...
How do you even do it?
And the people, you know, the people I've worked with for years have been inside DHS, beenoutside, know, 600,000 a year, maybe about as many as you can deport.
(48:54):
Most we've ever deported is less than 300,000 a year.
Okay.
Well, let's do the math.
Let's just say it's 600,000 and he's waved through, you know, 10 million, 10 or 12million.
However,
What we do know, and this is what we believe, and that is, say that you do, youaggressively double it and you do remove 600,000 and you mandate, you verify, you take
(49:23):
away the jobs magnet over the next two years.
Those two things together, the fear factor, the harder and harder to get a job, or atleast a legitimate job, a legal job.
We know that, I mean, even in the Trump administration, people were going,
The first one, people are going home.
But he wasn't very aggressive actually.
We feel like he really way underperformed on his promises.
(49:47):
We feel like it's a better Trump this time, it's like he's Trump and he gets off onsidetracks.
for us, it's like, I wanna see the things that move the most numbers.
I wanna see the most illegal immigrants leaving, which is not gonna be based on.
a few plane loads of Venezuelans that you're putting in this El Salvador prisons.
(50:09):
It's big news, but that's not what we're looking for.
We're looking for looking, we need to be moving hundreds of thousands of people out ofthis country before they're very rooted.
These 10 million that Biden let in, they're not that rooted yet.
And that's really got it.
That's what's gotta happen these next four years is moving that out.
(50:29):
And that's not gonna just, here's the thing.
The 10 million that are,
that have been here a long, quite a long time now, 15, 20 more years.
It is more disruptive as they're moved out.
So what's the, but these first 10 million, let's get them out fast before they get rootedin.
(50:51):
Could the economy, how would the economy do if we moved out all, you know, 15 million, theofficial 15 million?
It'd be a kind of, it would be, it'd probably be too much.
I'd probably be opposed to it.
What we want is a more functioning society and I don't want something that is going toimmediately create prices.
(51:12):
So that means, I don't really have to worry about it.
There's no way anybody's gonna get 15 million people out of this country in the next fouryears.
But we can be moving them fast and I think that sends the message, people stop moving in,especially if you verify you can't get a decent job.
I think we sort of.
solve most of the intake.
(51:38):
that's, mean, Biden, in a way, it's like, it's almost like he deliberately thought, I'mgoing to make sure that the people who wanting to tighten the labor market and improve
wages for the workers, American workers, I'm going make sure they can't do it for another10 years, because they're going to have all these illegal aliens they've got to deal with.
(51:59):
So I'm not
I'm not very optimistic about where we're gonna be in the next 10 years, I don't knowabout 20, in terms of where I hoped we would be four years ago.
But I am optimistic that we can be a whole lot better than we are right now.
Good.
Okay, so if you have enough time, we'll just do a couple of these are supposed to be quicktakes.
(52:22):
None of these are.
I can tell you're nervous because you're thinking, I don't think this guy answers thingsin.
listen, Roy, you and I sing off the same, you know, same hymn book, you know, but you cantake as much time to answer.
We're not trying to finish you here.
So we just kind of do this at the end.
So, but these are complex issues.
(52:44):
So take the time that you want to answer.
There's only four of them.
So should birthright citizenship be reevaluated?
Absolutely.
There's only one other country, advanced economy in the world that offers it, and that'sCanada.
It's a medieval concept.
(53:06):
Yeah, I agree with you.
There's no way that we can, it's ridiculous because now we have people from China flyinghere to have a baby, have a dual passport, only to be taken back to communist China, be
raised there as a communist.
And then 20 years from now, I mean, it's a page right out of Sun Tzu, you know, that 20years from now, or now it's probably 15 or even 10 years.
(53:35):
in the future that this is because it's been going on for a decade already.
Is this still the lightning round?
Jeez.
He talked longer than you did, Roy.
(53:55):
Yeah, least, yeah, just go like this.
That's right, that's right.
Okay, Jennifer, what's your view on guest worker programs?
Helpful solution or policy trap?
No, it can be a helpful solution.
And there are ways to create a guest worker programs that would be fair, where they wouldbe used for truly for short term, a kind of emergency situations.
(54:24):
But Congress has never passed anything that has those kinds of rules.
So right now there's no guest worker program that should be kept as it is.
But if we can get the legal immigration, by the way,
Our positions are would reduce legal immigration from a million a year to half million ayear.
(54:45):
A half million year is still double what it was in the 60s.
It's about what it was in the 80s.
We are not a very extreme organization, but it would make a ton of difference to bring itback to half million.
And if we did that, then I think there might be some short-term shortages and it'd be okayto have some guest worker programs, very short-term.
(55:08):
So we kind of talked about this, but one policy change you would enact tomorrow outside ofe-Verify, let's say.
What's the next one on your list?
One policy change, if you could whisper in Donald Trump's ear.
Well.
(55:29):
Yeah, the big thing is putting it into chain migration as we know it.
And that was started in 1965, really, basically in 65.
And it's just the thing that says it turns our immigration system over to the immigrants.
The American people don't really have any say who comes in most for the most part.
(55:51):
We bring an immigrant in and then the immigrants choose the next immigrants.
we believe in the nuclear family.
including not only the husband or wife you have and the children you have, but you come inand you marry somebody, that's fine.
That's it.
Nuclear family, minor children, a spouse.
(56:13):
Everything else, no.
Parents, not, there's a carve out in the sense that we are dealing, there's bills forthis.
And the parents can be here on visitor visas.
That means they can't take American jobs.
They can come here and live with their children.
and take care of their grandchildren and absolutely not be eligible for any governmentsupport.
(56:36):
Either children take care of them.
But that's the big thing.
That would change everything.
That's what the Jordan Commission, the Bipartisan Jordan Commission under PresidentClinton, that's what they recommended, stop chain migration.
It's the accelerator that moved us from a half million to a million.
Well, I'm weak.
third he's the third one to tell us that right?
(56:56):
Yeah.
two said that they predicted over 10 or 20 years that every immigrant represented 12 more.
And so it's going to multiply at a factor over the next 10, 20 years that we just can'thandle.
(57:16):
Well, now you mentioned it, but the legal level has been between 900,000, 1.2 million forabout 30 years because there are some limits.
What happens though is you build up the expectation.
So you've got millions and millions of people who are in line and you will find thenewspapers are terrible about this.
(57:40):
As a former newspaper man, I just hate to see this kind of, as you see, reporters willsay,
This person, somebody that got deported recently, and it's a big deal, they're justwaiting for their green card.
Waiting for the green card means that there are six million people ahead of them in lineon the chain migration thing.
(58:02):
So what happens is people then come on as illegal aliens and think of themselves as, I'mjust waiting.
I come on in waiting.
yeah, it's...
You should be waiting on the other side of the board.
so, but last question, what gives you hope that we can have consensus on this issue or isthere no hope?
(58:23):
Well, the immigration issue that I've been in for 35 years is, look, I don't wanna suggesttoo much here, but I sort of feel like I know what it was like to be involved in World War
I.
during that four year war, you know, right?
(58:45):
They're just kind of fighting back and forth over I don't know how many miles of land.
That's what it's been like the whole time I've been in here.
basically, groups like Numbers USA, other people involved, same thing.
We stopped all the amnesties.
We stopped for the most part the increases.
But we haven't gotten, we have no offensive victories.
(59:09):
We haven't reduced anything.
But the other side is fighting.
So we've just been World War I, trench warfare, or football, which maybe is a littlebetter, between the 40 yard lines.
Nobody's getting anything.
the hope, I think for the American people themselves and the workers, is that the peoplethat are of some goodwill, so I'm not talking about, I'm sorry, I'm gonna offend some, I
(59:35):
know I'm gonna offend some people, but I'm not talking about the crazy edge of thelibertarians who kind of think that
national borders don't matter.
And I'm not talking about the leftists.
I'm just talking about liberal to centrist Republicans and centrist to conservative, Imean, liberal to centrist Democrats and centrist to conservative Republicans is to say,
(59:59):
let's come to some kind of agreement.
The agreement is probably going to another amnesty.
probably gonna mean that.
I can't think of anything else that can be given to what's by the other side for me.
Because of what's happened, you've got people who have been here so long.
(01:00:20):
I don't think the fact they've been breaking the law for 30 years or 20 years says thatnow they deserve to be legal, but they've been here so long that it's harder and harder to
move them out.
And it may be that that's the price, that you have some kind of amnesty.
But the amnesty, unlike the previous amnesty, the amnesty comes only after you've got to,you've totally resolved the illegal immigration situation and after you've put in place
(01:00:48):
all these cuts on future legal immigration.
Something like
I've kind of actually argued something like that.
I know I was quoted in the AP probably prior to Trump, probably during the Obamaadministration is, you know, when people say, let's round them up and send them home.
I was like, well, what if somebody's home was around the corner from your house for thelast 20 years?
(01:01:09):
And, you know, so it comes, try to, we try to look at things from a practical application.
It sounds like you do as well where, you know, kind of, you know, are we really, I,
I don't believe that we are a country that's gonna round people up, put them on trains andship them across borders the way, you know, Nazi Germany did.
who people who've deep in the thing is is there's they have no legal they have no to me nolegal no moral argument for Mercy in that sense But They they do I mean it's hard right I
(01:01:47):
mean, but the deal is It's a bit and yeah, and the thing is is that we're
we're in between the 40 yard lines.
If we actually want to both, if both sides want to score a goal, we've got to give upsomething.
And I think that's probably what we're going to have get up something like that.
And the other side is going to have to give up this idea of flooding the labor markets.
(01:02:10):
And I think a lot of people on the liberal side, some or another, they do think that theyare importing democratic voters and they are right.
in the short term, but as we've seen what's been happening with Hispanics and Democratsare starting to lose black men, not in the same proportion, Democrats are losing
(01:02:35):
Hispanics, the proportion of black men that are moving toward Republicans and Trump havegone from like 10 % to 20%.
That's pretty significant.
it was worse than that.
went from 8 % in 2020 to almost 25 % in 2024.
So you're talking about a triple in four years of support.
(01:02:56):
Now granted, he was at 8%, so you could argue the numbers that it's easier to move thosepercentages.
of course, if you multiply it by three again, he gets 75%.
I don't know that that's going to happen in four years, but it's certainly, I agree withyou.
that Democrats obviously can't lose 25 % of African American men and still win electionswithout importing new voters.
(01:03:21):
And I've also said and written in our newsletter that's named Reasonable Arguments as wellthat eventually folks, like you mentioned, the people who are coming here for the most
part want to work.
They want to achieve the American dream.
They are...
(01:03:41):
They want to have lower taxes and all of those things.
And so they're not coming here to pay taxes.
They're coming here to live the American dream.
And so I think eventually that's what I agree with you that that's eventually what's goingto happen.
This is where I wish the president would focus more on what I think are the main issues,which is that he tends to be most interested in the criminal aliens.
(01:04:06):
And I can understand why that's so important.
But the fact is that most illegal aliens, I mean, they're not committing fiscal crimes andall that kind of stuff.
They're here to work.
They just don't obey the immigration laws.
It's not that these are bad people.
I think once you get your head around the fact that we are not, the most part, trying tokeep bad people out of the country, we're trying to say that you can have too much of good
(01:04:33):
thing.
Anybody that has immigrant neighbors, including illegal aliens, and here in Arlington,Virginia, my kids went to school with lot of illegal aliens.
That's the way is in Arlington, Virginia.
They're nice kids.
Yeah, exactly.
and every school in Florida.
think, but I think this comes down to where we need another visual because, you know, youdid you did the gumball example with poverty and immigration, but maybe we need to do the
(01:05:02):
same thing with jobs, or something like that, where people literally see how many jobs arebeing taken away from the American people for these aliens that are coming in.
And it's absolutely that's to say visually see it because the fact is, is that SteveCamarado, we're at the Center for Immigration Studies, does a great job on putting these
(01:05:25):
charts together.
But, you know, the workforce participation of the native born Americans has been goingdown for 30, 40 years while we've been bringing in all these foreign workers.
So we're following out the work ethic.
And we're hollowing out partly because the jobs at the bottom are paying so much less inreal wages than they used to and because employers they just They're kind of doing the
(01:05:51):
right thing in terms of just the bottom line because they've got these these people comeacross the border They they're they're driven to work for a lot less working conditions
wages you name it So we've got a you know, we've just got we've got it.
It's it's it's not personal that by the way
You know, I'm in a situation where the Numbers USA is a truly bipartisan organization interms of our staff, our board, our funders, you name it.
(01:06:19):
We don't see this as being a conservative or liberal or Republican or Democraticsituation, although we have to say that over the last 15 years, it's been almost entirely
Republicans that have been, as far as we're concerned, doing the right thing.
At some point Democrats, and there are a lot of Democratic...
an analyst now, they're speaking up and saying, we've got to change our position onimmigration because we are taking the anti-work, you know, for the Democratic Party to
(01:06:45):
continually take the anti-worker position and really the anti-black position.
It's just killing the non-college educated black male working class.
That's, you know, this has got to stop.
So I see this in many ways.
I can make the case that
(01:07:07):
You know some kind of a compromise would finally get an answer.
would do a wave chain migration, get overall legal immigration down to half a million.
It has some amnesty in it.
You could almost not do, there's almost no better pro-black underclass thing you could dothan that.
(01:07:28):
So why wouldn't liberals jump onto that?
Well, I think we all want to see Americans succeed, right?
And so when we see fellow Americans, you know, I don't think supporting poor people isdemocratic alone.
I mean, I think, you know, Republicans want to see people be able to through up classes aswell.
(01:07:52):
And, you know, we may have a different way of skinning that cat because we believe inteaching somebody to fish rather than giving them a fish.
But
you know, that's probably for another podcast.
Well, and immigration, but the immigration has just made it where you've you just drive somany people out of the labor market.
And it's really hollowing out America.
(01:08:19):
That's the reason as far as I'm concerned, it's important to look for some kind ofcompromises to get us.
mean, what does it do any of us any good to fight between the 40 yard lines for another 25years?
You're great.
Well, Jennifer, do you want to close this out?
Roy Beck from numbersusa.com.
(01:08:40):
Thank you for joining us.
If you enjoy this episode, we want to make sure you subscribe, like, share with yourfriends, put up posts on social.
And Jennifer, do you have key takeaways or?
No, think we're good.
Roy, do you have a way for people to contact you if they want to get in touch?
They can contact me at Roy at numbersusa.com.
(01:09:05):
All right, that's perfect.
Well, thank you, Roy, so much for joining us today.
What a great discussion.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, babe.
We are back in the saddle.
We had about a week hiatus.
Jennifer's been working hard on getting our studio ready, which is what we're going to berecording from next time after we have this wonderful guest today.
But first, you have a big announcement, Jennifer.
You like started this whole thing.
I'm supposed to start the whole thing
(01:20):
well go ahead.
That was actually really good.
We may keep it, we'll see.
All right, so we are back for our third installment of the Immigration series that wehave, which is being brought to you today by,
(01:52):
There we go.
Koffee just made history.
Don't you love it?
I love it.
All right.
So this episode we have Roy Beck and I when I was doing research on Roy, I am such avisual person and one of the things that he does with gumballs is was just completely
(02:12):
intriguing to me and I loved it.
So let's talk about who Roy is.
He is a former journalist.
author and the founder of Numbers USA.
His notable works are The Case Against Immigration.
His most recent books are The Emancipation, Reclamation, and Back of the Hiring Line.
But we have to talk about this gumball video that he did on poverty and immigration.
(02:36):
So let's bring Roy to the stage.
Hello, Roy.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Great to be here.
I loved this gumball video.
can't even tell you.
Like I said, I am a visual person.
So watching this and you showing it like that just made the difference for me.
I can't even tell you.
(02:57):
You know, I put that together when I was asked by my son, who at the time was in theseventh grade, this is back in the 1990s, to do a little demonstration.
I won't say about how it came about, other than the fact that we're here in Arlington,Virginia.
The kids in these schools all have parents that tend to have interesting jobs, you and soyou could bring parents in to talk.
(03:24):
They have two weeks every year where they do that.
And so this was put together along with something else I did for seventh graders to helpseventh graders understand proportionality, numbers, you this kind of thing.
And when I was showing this, a few weeks later in an office to some, some sort of hardenedcynical government people, one of the things they said was, one fellow says,
(03:54):
did the students understand us?
And yeah, they understood it fine.
They looked at another person in the hallway and says, well, maybe members of Congresscould understand this.
know, seventh graders could, but it is interesting.
I was taught in University of School of Journalism, and I don't think this is unusualthere, for us to write at a seventh grade level, not like a seventh grade level of
(04:19):
experience, but a seventh grade level of reading comprehension.
because people read fast and all that kind of thing.
Well, so I think that Gumballs has been a hit because it had a seventh grade audience inmind.
And you know what the crazy thing is, is that it's been put up by so many people on theirown platforms through the years, but the ones we've tracked add up to more than 200
(04:41):
million views.
Can you believe that?
Just think if we had monetized that, but 200 million views and all over the world.
And there's a lot of reasons for that, but the fact that it got your attention is theexample of, it just happened to be something that worked.
Now we re-recorded it in 2010, but it's still the 2010 version that's out there right now.
(05:06):
Yeah, it just, you know, but I think that that's one of the things like Jamie and I hadtalked about on one of our other podcasts about, you know, with Doge coming in and
cleaning up all of the money that was just going everywhere.
And one of the things that I said is, you know, people, maybe we need to have like avirtual wallet that shows us how much money we get at the beginning of an administration,
(05:27):
and then watch that money dwindle because I think having something visible makes it awhole lot easier to understand than words, right?
so okay, so you have the two new books out, the two newest books that are, assuming we canget these on Amazon.
Yeah, the hiring line is on Amazon, easy to get, and you can read some, people can readsome good reviews.
(05:54):
There's also a segment of the audio book that's available as well.
it's back of the hiring line.
200 year history of immigration surges, employer bias and depression of black wealth.
I wanted to get the right words there.
But so that sounds a little provocative there.
(06:16):
And then the second one is not on Amazon because it's actually a 60 page booklet that isdone in kind of, I'd say high school style with lot of vintage pictures and all.
it's the Emancipation Reclamation.
the key point of that is that the 1965, yeah, the 1925 or 1924,
(06:38):
to 1965 period in which Congress kept annual immigration low was the only great period ofeconomic advancement for the descendants of American slavery.
And so it's actually, it's quite exciting because it's like there is really something thatcan be done that can work with the whole underclass of America, but particularly the black
(07:05):
underclass, which is larger.
percentage-wise and it's happened before it's it's an amazing story that you know, franklyI don't know if it's ever been taught in history and history classes, but it's the the
civil rights Advances of the 1960s and beyond would not have happened.
It's certainly that soon without the 1924 Act that reduced immigration by over two-thirdsand really the kind of the
(07:35):
bottom line case for what we do at Numbers USA is that if we would do that again, andwe're not even even talking about two-thirds, you could cut annual legal immigration in
half and basically stop any growth in illegal immigration, we would see incredibleeconomic benefits, a society of much less income disparity.
(07:57):
It'd just be a much better society.
And that's what happened in those 40 years.
Everything wasn't perfect in those 40 years, but
Everything was getting better.
That's the thing.
We became a more and more egalitarian, a more cohesive country because the have-nots weregaining faster economically than the haves.
And it wasn't at the expense of the haves.
(08:19):
That's the thing.
didn't, it wasn't taking money away from the wealthy or the fluid or the upper middleclass.
They were still actually gaining too.
But in those years, the people in the bottom were gaining much faster.
It was just a much fair world.
And there were different things going on, but the lowered immigration rate was asignificant part of it.
(08:43):
So that is that booklet.
And of course, that story is contained in the Back of the Hiring Line book as well.
so I have one more question for you because I know Jamie's chopping at the bit to ask youquestions, but I have to ask you, how did you get into immigration?
Well, I was a newspaper reporter from the late sixties until 1990.
(09:08):
And I covered all kinds of things.
I, but I did specialize in environmental and conservation reporting in the sixties andseventies.
So I was early on in that, that, that field.
I covered everything I covered, you know, I worked for newspapers in Missouri, dailynewspapers, Missouri, Michigan, Cincinnati.
(09:28):
and, you know, I covered a lot of the.
the urban renewal issues, the economic issues, covered crime, police, you know, the kindof things that happens when you're not on the gigantic newspapers, covered a little bit of
everything.
And starting in the early 80s, I was made aware of the fact that immigration policy hadbeen radically changed by a law in 1965, and it took a while for it to
(10:01):
have its major effects.
by 1980, it was really having some major effects.
And I just, what I found as I looked in more at it was that almost all the issues that Iwas covering that I cared about, you know, not as a reporter, I was kind of old style 20th
century American journalism.
(10:22):
It wasn't that I was taking a stand on what the solutions were, but I was taking a standon things that concerned me, you know,
I reported on those things and then tried to report fairly from all types of sides.
People are trying to find solutions.
I just found that our immigration policy, the changes were making almost everything harderto improve.
(10:47):
It was the numerical level had so, it tripled by the 80s, it quadrupled by the 90s.
And that numerical level had really changed things.
And by 1990,
I was here in Washington, D.C.
I'd spent actually a few years in Dallas, not on daily newspaper, but a weekly UnitedMethodist paper covering religion and the intersection of religion and public policy and
(11:13):
social issues.
And then I came to Washington and covered Congress for a chain of newspapers.
And in 1990, I covered the hearings.
on them deciding to increase immigration from about $600,000 a year to about a million ayear.
just a couple of weeks after they passed that law, thought, you know, I don't think I canbe an observer anymore.
(11:37):
I think I don't see media.
I just don't see most institutions, people really paying attention to what's happeninghere.
And so I was concerned.
I was concerned in terms of its effect on our becoming a
a more and more unequal type of society.
I was concerned about what it was doing in terms of the racial relations in this country.
(12:01):
I was concerned about how it was affecting the large increase in population growth havingto do with quality of life issues, congestion, habitat protection.
In other words, all these things that I was concerned about, immigration connected to it.
So I, after 20 some years, left the profession of daily journalism and
(12:22):
Begin writing magazine articles and books.
Wow, that's amazing.
So, you you mentioned that we're the kind of the linchpin for you was when we reached amillion people of illegal immigrants per year.
And that's about where we are now, a little bit more than a million.
Yeah, which almost seems insignificant compared to what we've had in illegal immigrationover the last four years, which is this explosion.
(12:52):
how do you, what's the best way to frame
you know, number one, the long-term implications of having, you know, more than a millionpeople come here legally and also kind of balance that with, hey, if we cut out all
illegal immigrants, which was somewhere between 10 and 20 million or whatever that numberactually is who came across the border over the last four years, you know, a lot of people
(13:16):
might see that as, we're having this really low immigration rate at this point becausewe're down to a million.
So how do you...
you how do you balance that, you know, kind of public perception with the reality of, youknow, that the million has been significant and you even suggest that that's probably
twice as many as we should be allowing in each year.
(13:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Now, all good points and it's, you got to get to some numbers to put these in proportion.
And I want to, I actually got a few numbers here beside me because I want to use the realnumbers.
The estimates based on the government data and the Center for Immigration Studies, I thinkyou're familiar with them.
(14:02):
They've worked with this and they're very trustworthy than this, but these are from theCensus Bureau.
data.
it looks like that something like, let me get this straight, was, yeah, between 11 and ahalf and 12 and a half million new arrivals, foreign arrivals, in the four years of Biden.
(14:27):
So, it's both.
So, 11 and a half to 12 and a half million, about four million of that was legal.
We know what's legal because legal you're
You're following us, you know who's...
So that means that between seven and a half and eight and a half million came in illegallyor illegally or just turned himself in at the border and Biden had him waved in and gave
(14:55):
him work permits.
The point is they were uninvited and they're for the most part unvetted.
But again, so that many people.
it took...
Our organization really feels that we should not have an increase, a net increase offoreign born in the country at all.
We should have basically same number coming in as die or leave the country each year.
(15:18):
That's one way of looking at it.
Right now, it looks like we have 53 million foreign born in the United States.
So 330 million plus people in the country and 53 million of them were born
citizens of another country.
And I believe what are they saying now?
(15:40):
looks like, estimate now is about 15 million of them.
That's when you have real numbers to crunch.
Looks like about 15 million of them are illegal.
53 million foreign born.
Now, even if all 53, yeah.
you know, 17, 18%.
And even if every one of them was legal, every one of them brought in with them a foreignexperience, an experience of a different political system, a different culture, usually a
(16:14):
different language, often a different religion.
In other words, there's all of these major differences that you've got 53 million who arenot anchored in having grown up.
in the American society.
America, there's no question in my mind, America has tremendous assimilative capacitycompared with most countries.
(16:39):
But there are thresholds.
We passed that threshold long ago.
We've done that before.
A hundred and some years ago, during the Ellis Island period, we overwhelmed thatthreshold back then too.
So it doesn't matter.
You know, then they were mainly coming from Europe.
It still was too much.
It overwhelmed our...
our cultural systems.
So you are deciding to fundamentally change the country if you allow 53 million peoplecome in.
(17:09):
Now 15 million of them are here illegally, uninvited, et cetera.
That is an incredible thing.
let's just say that the President Trump is able to move all
looking at it and say eight and a half million.
(17:31):
Well, there was an eight and a half million increase, but the thing is that there weremore than that that came in illegally.
It's just like some illegals left and some died and some became legal.
But the thing is, let's just say we get rid of 10 million.
We move 10 million illegal aliens out.
It only puts us back to where we were at the beginning of the Biden administration.
(17:56):
It also
doesn't even push back to where we were at the beginning of the Trump administration,because the first Trump administration, the foreign born population still grew.
The illegal population did have some drop.
That was good.
the thing is, that Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 because of the immigrationissue.
(18:20):
Now there were other issues and people can argue, look, this is kind of thing you can havea bar room argument about, but
My contention is Donald Trump never would have been the nominee.
He would never have gotten, he would never gotten traction in 2015 if he, if he hadn't hadthe immigration issue to jump on and be able to, through Jeff Sessions, prove to the
(18:45):
immigration restrictionists that he was serious about it.
That made him viable as a nominee.
And the people's feeling of distress of the government comes from a lot of different ways.
But I'm not, I'm certainly not the first person to say this and not even the person saidit the loudest.
But most Americans are pretty much aware that since 1986, the government, Republican,Democrat presidents, Republican and Democrat members, leaders of Congress have lied to the
(19:14):
American people.
They've constantly said, let's give out some more benefits.
Let's have some, let's have this amnesty, that amnesty.
And we're gonna, we're going to control illegal immigration.
They give the benefits, they give the amnesties.
There were six amnesties, one in 86, but there were five more that happened, small ones,in the 90s.
then Republican or Democratic presidents, administrations, never gave the people what theypromised, which was that they would enforce the law.
(19:42):
They haven't done it.
And so that built up such a feeling that Donald Trump became possible.
He would not have looked possible.
Nobody thought it was possible in 2014, right?
So the thing is, that
If we succeeded in getting 10 million, Biden's 10 million illegal aliens out of thecountry, we're only back to the point where we still have the problem.
(20:03):
And our point is, that we don't really need any more immigrants right now, but there arereasons to continue to have immigration, mainly because you think people, American
citizens ought to be able to, they ought to be able to marry and adopt overseas as they,as they choose.
That is a, there's a right that
(20:25):
we think that Americans ought to have.
We also believe that when immigrants come in for whatever reasons that they ought to beable to bring their minor children in there and their spouses.
But beyond that, there's not much legal immigration that you could really say the Americanneeds right now.
When you've got even you take 10 million away and you have got 43 million foreign born inthe country already.
(20:47):
So do you think that this is based on voters?
That Biden opened the borders for that?
You know, there's, of there's lots of speculation what's in people's minds.
The thing is, that I'm of view and we're of view that illegal voting is not a major issuein this country, that most of the illegal, I mean, almost all of the illegal aliens aren't
(21:11):
succeeding in voting or changing elections.
We are in favor of the SAVE Act, which requires voter ID to vote.
And that back, we're recording this today, but
We think that's going to be voter in the House tomorrow.
And we hope it'll go to the Senate.
We'd like to see it because Americans deserve to have a sense of that we can count on thevoting process.
(21:34):
So I don't think it's so, if people think that they're bringing illegal aliens becausethey can get them to throw the elections, I don't think that's going to work very well.
However, some people have a long view and they know one amnesty after another, you changethings.
I do think that
in the 90s and really, I think maybe up until four or eight years ago, there was thisfeeling that you're going to bring enough illegal aliens in, enough of them would
(22:05):
eventually be amnestied in one way the other.
They would vote and they would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
But look what's happened with Hispanic voting.
mean, it turns out
It turns out that immigrants, whether they're from Latin America or whether today, orwhether they're from Italy 100 years ago, once immigrants are here for a generation,
(22:35):
especially you get the second generation, they do start to think more like this is theircountry.
And they're hurt by too much immigration, not because immigrants are bad people.
It's not, know, that has nothing to do with it.
It's not about the value of the person.
It's just that we have economics that are, you know, labor economics.
(22:56):
That's the biggest thing as far as we're concerned.
It just undermines the people here, the workers that are here and their families.
So I think it's the people who are doing this to the country because they think thatsomehow they're going to get a vote advantage.
They're kind of
really undermining the country for something that's probably not even gonna work for them.
(23:17):
I do think that the, I mean, I think that probably the number one reason we have thislevel of immigration is on the right, cheap labor.
Now I'm talking about the business right.
They want high immigration to keep wages there.
They don't wanna go back to the 50s and the 60s when workers had much more of a fair,
(23:42):
not equality, less of a divide between the workers and the owners of capital.
So that's one reason we have it.
On the left, and this is the real left, I don't want to call them liberals, but the left,they want to destabilize America.
mean, that's the way the left has tended to work all over the world.
You destabilize a society in order to turn it into a different kind of society.
(24:06):
And there's no question that
this high level of immigration, especially this crazy illiterate immigration level, isdestabilizing.
without question.
I would like to say one thing, Roy, that in 2011, I did predict a Donald Trump presidency,but I predicted in Variety Magazine of all places that Donald Trump would run against and
(24:32):
beat Barack Obama in 2012 because I thought that at that time, Republicans would nominatea businessman.
They just nominated the wrong one in Mitt Romney.
So I think I'm the second person after the Simpsons who predicted it.
So.
Well, I did not know that about you, but I have to put you up on my shelf as 10 or 12 fornarcissators.
(25:02):
So yeah, I always like to throw that in there because it's one of my little claims to famethat I like to throw out.
So Jennifer, how well does that work whenever you're having like a domestic argument forhim saying it?
no idea.
It's very short, Roy.
Domestic arguments here are so short, I can't even tell you.
(25:22):
Bye.
I will say when we first started dating, he would throw facts at me and I didn't believehim.
So I would have to Google a lot.
Like it was stupid facts.
Like band-aids are, other than Johnson Johnson band-aids, all other band-aids are made inSarasota.
Like number one, who even knows that?
(25:44):
who brings it up in conversation?
So yeah, so I had to Google.
bet it's apparently a great date bait.
yeah.
It worked.
true story.
of my homework assignments was he gave me a list of YouTube speeches, his favoritepresidential, not presidential, political speeches in history.
(26:12):
And he has since wrote a book about it, but he gave me links to every single one of thespeeches and had me watch them and basically report back.
titled American Speeches That Changed History.
that, I always say my next.
him.
helped you get your woman.
Yeah, my next book is Dating for Nerds.
(26:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, but you, we're gonna, so I have one question and then we want to get to the meat ofone of your major things that you wanted, that you're talking about today.
But if you could change one thing about illegal or legal immigration today that wouldimpact border security or visa overstays or whatever it is.
(26:58):
What is the one thing that if you could whisper in Donald Trump's ear that you think wouldbe a generational difference, what would it be?
Yeah, that's good.
I like it.
There's so many things.
There's so many answers to illegal immigration, but our position has always been take awaythe jobs magnet.
(27:26):
You don't have to have as many people coming in if you didn't have the jobs magnet becausethat's what most of them come in from.
So we have the e-verify system.
It's been being perfected since the 90s, expanded.
The majority, not the vast majority, but majority of all hires in America are run throughthe Verify system, have been for years.
(27:52):
just to mandate it.
It's not mandated except for federal workers.
And then in some states, there are several states that mandated it for state workers.
Some of them are wider and for all employers.
more than 25, whatever.
But if you have a verification system, it's been around for almost 30 years now.
(28:13):
know this has been a debate in Florida for a long time.
I'm not sure exactly where we ended up.
what's getting better in Florida.
Florida is one of the leaders in.
but we've had a, has obviously been one our three legs of our stool here in Florida for avery long time.
Tourism and I like to say senior citizens are the other two.
(28:38):
So, but yes, to mandate that, there are bills in every Congress to do that.
It has to be done by Congress.
It's not something that the president can do.
And just do it.
(28:59):
you take away the jobs magnet.
And then, this is what's interesting.
sounds a little like the main people that are
be coming in, there'd be two different kinds of people that would still be trying to getin.
Young adventurers that just want to make for some reason can't get in legally and theywant to travel around the country and all that kind of stuff.
(29:23):
Like a lot of Americans are illegal travelers in other countries too.
They overstay their visas and stuff.
But then the bad guys, the bad guys should still be trying to get in.
your border patrol, everybody else, wouldn't be having sift through tens of millions ofpeople every year.
You know, they'd just be dealing with bad guys.
(29:44):
So, I mean, the president has really done an amazing job, right?
I mean, immediately on the border right now.
We'll see whether it holds.
mean, right now it's scared of the illegal business, know, the cartels and all back.
We'll see.
They usually find ways to get around, but if he keeps his nerve, he can really controlthat border.
(30:05):
people have to remember that
majority until Biden, the majority of illegal aliens in this country arrive onvisceravises and then they don't leave.
So, you know, that's why the e-verify at the workplace is that and I would do it.
It would deal with most of the issue.
(30:27):
So how does high immigration, particularly low skill immigration, affect wage growth andjob competition for American workers?
Yeah, we.
There's a number of economists that have done a lot of really great work on this issue.
(30:49):
We know without having any studies, we know that the inflation adjusted wages foreverybody that every part of the American workers who have less than a college degree has
declined over the last 30 years.
(31:12):
That's after, for the most part, the whole history of rising.
So it's declined.
And for some parts, some segments, it's declined just precipitously, especially for peoplewho at the lower education levels.
There's been recent studies in the last couple of years that have discovered that half ofAmericans who graduate have college degrees that
(31:41):
their wages are going down too.
It turns out that only the top half of the college grads in country have seen real wageincreases since then.
it's very clear that mass immigration creates a less egalitarian society.
(32:05):
It makes it harder for people, you know, the whole idea that people, they work hard andplay by the rules.
Remember that was Bill Clinton's
That was his mantra.
Well, you know, that people work hard and play by the rules, have a chance to get ahead.
They can move.
can, there's class movement, but we've seen less and less of that.
I'm sorry.
I may not, I may not have answered your whole question there.
(32:26):
I think that's perfect.
know, but that leads into kind of what is the argument of immigrants do the jobs thatAmericans won't do.
When I was a kid, I grew up in rural Florida and we would pick cantaloupes during the day,load them on a truck and then go take the tomatoes and work in the packing house until
three in the morning and then start the next morning at 7 a.m.
(32:49):
I was doing that from the time I was 13.
So,
I'm not somebody who buys into Americans aren't willing to work, but what's your opinion?
How many cantaloupes did you eat during the day or did you get tired of them?
you
Well the problem is there's enough of them rotting out there in that field that they'renot very appetizing.
(33:12):
I found whatever I never worked on.
I just had some cantaloupes in my my agriculture work, but I that's what I did instead ofdrinking water.
I'd open up and eat a cantaloupe every once in a while.
The watermelons I would eat, the cantaloupes, I went decades without eating cantaloupes.
Like those things, they were just horrible once they were rotten.
(33:33):
good for you.
of course, you bring up, you know, you bring up something that...
Look, our philosophy is that there should be no job in America that is an undignified job.
You know, if it's a job needs to be done, a person shouldn't be living in poverty to doit.
(33:56):
But, you know, the immigration just messes up the free market.
on what happens with wages and everything else.
And of course, some of these jobs are not all that attractive and that's why teenagersused to do most of them.
And as they're seasonal and yeah, I grew up in the Ozarks.
And so for me, was more like it was cutting, raking and baling hay.
(34:24):
That was what I got through.
anyway, these are...
I use the people who say that their jobs in America that Americans won't do even thoughAmericans used to do them are basically saying that they don't believe in they don't
(34:44):
believe in free market economics anyway, and they're basically saying
A lot of the American people should live on a style of living that is based on semi-slavelabor.
They're longing for the days to bring back some kind of slavery.
It's like they don't really want to be slaves, but they want people to work for slavewages.
(35:06):
They want to have benefits that really they haven't earned, they haven't deserved.
And I really don't think, I think there are very few Americans who when you really put itto them will say,
that they think that the people who are doing those jobs that illegal aliens are doingright now, that the people that are doing those jobs should live in poverty.
(35:28):
I mean, if you just put it to them, do youth, especially since the biggest protector ofillegal immigration are liberals.
It's like, that really what they believe is liberals?
That there ought to be a surf class in the United States?
Absolutely not.
So I think this may be the foundation, this next question may kind of swing us backtowards the gumball video a little bit, but can immigration policy be both compassionate
(36:00):
and economically responsible?
Yeah.
Well, I've been giving occasionally some guest lectures in colleges since the 90s whensomebody gets brave enough to invite me in.
(36:22):
That basically looks at what is it to have a humane immigration policy?
And the problem is that
The people who have made the decisions for mass immigration think that mass immigration,the humanity, the only humane issue is what's humane toward a person who wants to move
(36:45):
here.
But there are four types of people you have to consider.
you know, one of them is how does that affect the people in the bottom?
You know, they're already here.
I mean, what's humane for them?
And that's the thing that's lost most.
is that the people who make the decisions, who run the government, who are working in thelegislatures, they, for the most part, are out of touch.
(37:12):
Not attached with the people who are working at these less than sustainable type wages.
you know, that's part of the question of what is a moral position.
Another thing that's missed is what does it do
to people in the sending community to take these people out of those communities.
(37:38):
Because there's a lot of literature that says, by the way, we do not get the, you know, Idisagree with people who look at illegal aliens as being like the dregs of society.
I mean, yeah, some of them, know, the criminals and stuff, but no, the illegal aliens thatcome to this country tend to be very, they're hardworking.
I mean, and they're driven.
(38:01):
Otherwise, they wouldn't make this effort.
It's not necessarily easy to get here illegally.
It's not easy to get started and all that stuff.
These are energetic people.
But they are the potential change agents in those other countries.
basically, our illegal immigration system is constantly a release valve on the pressuresin those sending countries to improve their conditions.
(38:29):
So what about
no matter how many illegal aliens we take, the vast majority of people who are like thoseillegal aliens are still in those countries.
And so for me, the people who try to make a moral argument that we owe it to these peoplebecause of why I hear this a lot.
Well, the thing is, is that they're still worse off than our poorest people.
(38:54):
Actually, that's not actually true for all of them, but some of them are.
They are living conditions that are worse off than our
poorest people.
So that's to them, that makes it okay.
But the thing is, what about the people, what about all those other people left behind andyou're taking your
a perfect example today.
was speaking at a Rotary Club and prior to that, evidently this Rotary Club is doing kindof a series on immigration.
(39:19):
And so the person who spoke before me was an OBGYN from Guyana.
And he gave this stirring story of his track to America, how he got here and how fortunatehe is to be here and how generous our community is to he.
you know, his wife and his family.
(39:40):
you know, I didn't put him on the spot publicly, obviously, but afterwards I went up andasked him, like, he talked about he came from a village of 200 people and his mother had
to go to a village 10 miles away to deliver him and his nine brothers and sisters.
And so I just went up to him afterwards.
I was like, well, who's delivering babies in your village in Guyana?
And he's like, I don't know.
(40:03):
And I'm like, well, you know, I was like, I'm so glad you're here.
Like I'm genuinely glad you're here, but I'm also sad for the people who you left behindin need of your services.
And he was just kind of taken aback.
He was like, wow, that's a great way to put it.
And he just, you know, we kind of left the conversation there.
(40:23):
We didn't argue about it.
We were just kind of making a couple of points to each other.
But, you know, just today I had that experience of somebody,
You know, and it's just incredible to me that here he is, you know, know, in Guyana, theymust need OBGYNs, you know, and, and so he's left.
here's the other thing.
(40:44):
We have American-born kids who can pass the entrance exams, but they still don't get intomedical school because there's not enough slots for them.
It's not like in a country of $333, $335 million, whatever we are right now, we canproduce enough doctors.
(41:07):
We can produce enough doctors.
And we're stealing these people from enticing them from these other countries that needthem so badly.
know, occasionally you get somebody who has gone forward and gotten into a highly skill,specific skill that isn't really needed in their home country.
(41:28):
You know, that happens.
But for the most part, what are we doing?
You know, that's part of the, this is part of the ethics of the whole thing.
It's like, so,
Basically, the way I see it is that we are trying to be humanitarian to the people whowant to come to this country at the expense of usually the poorest, least advantaged
(41:51):
people in our country in taking away some of the most skilled and certainly the mostdriven people from those countries where there are so many people that need that
leadership.
It's just, to me, there's just very, very little ethical
basis for having the high immigration program that we have today.
(42:14):
it's, and whereas in most of the mass media, what you hear is, is that there's thishumanitarian, if you're moral, you're ethical, you're humane, you want to bring in as many
people as possible.
And it's, it's like, it's such a superficial look at the overall situation.
(42:37):
And why is that prevailed for so many decades?
Well, I think it's prevailed partly because a lot of the people who control the media andlots of other things are people who themselves benefit from having cheaper labor.
And let's face it, about a third of the United States are college-educated people, collegedegree people.
(43:06):
People at the top do have lot of benefits from having so many people working for lessmoney.
And where's the morality in that?
think we should have like an adopt an illegal alien or illegal immigrant program.
So if you are for letting these people in, let them come live with you.
(43:28):
You can take care of them and see how that works out.
And I just have one more question.
Is there any other country that has to deal with immigration issues like we do?
Well, there are some other countries that have some similar issues, and especiallyproportionately, Canada, Australia, there's much smaller countries.
(43:54):
They actually take in proportionately more than we do, and it's having the same effect inthose countries.
Australia is becoming more and more less like us.
They're trying to protect...
They're trying to protect their way of life.
(44:14):
also they have a little bit more of an egalitarian past to protect.
Canada is kind of in an uproar back and forth right now because they've just gone througha period where it's almost like they're...
I hate to...
I don't want to seem like I'm speaking ill of Canada because there's so many Canadians Iknow who don't have this problem, but it's just almost like they don't have a sense of
(44:39):
identity.
and they're just willing to become a sort of a, just a, some kind of a global workforce orsomething.
But there's, you know, it's, they're a different kind of country and there's very, andthey're also very small population, but we're, we're, we're pretty unique in what we've
done.
And just think of it.
I mean, we just, we'll get back to it.
(44:59):
have 53 million foreign born people in this country.
have, how does that not totally, well, not totally, but.
very, very significantly changed the whole nature of a country.
So looking forward to the next 10, 20 years, what does that look like?
Does either side have momentum?
(45:20):
We certainly have seen the immediate success of just saying, we're not going to let youjust come in carte blanche.
We're not going to give you money.
We're not going to give you apps to get here.
And it seems like some of the NGOs had money cut off that was helping them get here.
I always argued like,
Who's paying for the band-aids and a thousand mile trek of people, you know, who's buyingthe food?
(45:45):
What are you doing with the human waste?
What are you like?
I've always asked these questions and nobody could answer these practical applicationquestions of, how is this even happening to move millions of people a thousand miles to
our border?
You know, that's not done for free.
You know, that, mean, that is costing money.
People are breaking their legs and twisting their ankles and minor injuries that have tobe taken care of.
(46:07):
Who's paying for all that?
And evidently we were probably, we probably were through the American Red Cross, but youknow, what does the next 10 or 20 years, I kind of went on a tangent there with you Roy.
So Jennifer's used to it.
But what do the next 10 or 20 years look like and does either side have momentum?
And you know, can we have, can we solve it without, you know, people claiming, you know,xenophobia and bigotry?
(46:34):
You know, I put it back a lot into that one, but.
I know we only have you for a little bit more time and we would like to get through a fewlightning round questions, but if we have time to do that.
Yeah, well, so I've been working on this full time for 35 years now.
And my wife's father, when I left the newspaper business, he confided in my wife.
(47:01):
Of course, my wife is totally capable.
She has a career.
She's able to take care of herself.
But he was old fashioned.
He goes, I'm worried about you, Shirley.
mean, what's he going to do when this immigration problem gets solved?
was 1990.
So, I'll just say.
talk to him today.
(47:21):
so simple, right?
If it was only that simple, right?
did live to 101, but he still didn't live nearly long enough.
the, no, I mean, I have no idea.
Because of that experience, it's like, are we going to be at in 20 years?
(47:41):
The problem, you know, we've been at loggerheads for really 30 years because the otherside, you know, the open borders people, they're totally frustrated too.
Because basically, numbers you say, we've been one of the leaders in grassrootsmobilization.
pretty well, you know, after the year 2000, we pretty well stopped.
We stopped all the new amnesties.
(48:03):
We stopped all kinds of things until Biden came in.
And then it's like, no idea somebody would just break the law.
universally like he did on the border.
That's amazing, you know, to just flag through another 10, 12 million people.
So in some ways it's like, it's going to take everything possible in the Trumpadministration to just clean up the mess.
(48:29):
know, and I can't, firstly, I can't imagine getting 10, 12 million out of the country.
And that just gets us back to where we were at the beginning of the Biden administration.
It's another practical application issue.
How do you move 10 million people?
Like, what's the...
How do you even do it?
And the people, you know, the people I've worked with for years have been inside DHS, beenoutside, know, 600,000 a year, maybe about as many as you can deport.
(48:54):
Most we've ever deported is less than 300,000 a year.
Okay.
Well, let's do the math.
Let's just say it's 600,000 and he's waved through, you know, 10 million, 10 or 12million.
However,
What we do know, and this is what we believe, and that is, say that you do, youaggressively double it and you do remove 600,000 and you mandate, you verify, you take
(49:23):
away the jobs magnet over the next two years.
Those two things together, the fear factor, the harder and harder to get a job, or atleast a legitimate job, a legal job.
We know that, I mean, even in the Trump administration, people were going,
The first one, people are going home.
But he wasn't very aggressive actually.
We feel like he really way underperformed on his promises.
(49:47):
We feel like it's a better Trump this time, it's like he's Trump and he gets off onsidetracks.
for us, it's like, I wanna see the things that move the most numbers.
I wanna see the most illegal immigrants leaving, which is not gonna be based on.
a few plane loads of Venezuelans that you're putting in this El Salvador prisons.
(50:09):
It's big news, but that's not what we're looking for.
We're looking for looking, we need to be moving hundreds of thousands of people out ofthis country before they're very rooted.
These 10 million that Biden let in, they're not that rooted yet.
And that's really got it.
That's what's gotta happen these next four years is moving that out.
(50:29):
And that's not gonna just, here's the thing.
The 10 million that are,
that have been here a long, quite a long time now, 15, 20 more years.
It is more disruptive as they're moved out.
So what's the, but these first 10 million, let's get them out fast before they get rootedin.
(50:51):
Could the economy, how would the economy do if we moved out all, you know, 15 million, theofficial 15 million?
It'd be a kind of, it would be, it'd probably be too much.
I'd probably be opposed to it.
What we want is a more functioning society and I don't want something that is going toimmediately create prices.
(51:12):
So that means, I don't really have to worry about it.
There's no way anybody's gonna get 15 million people out of this country in the next fouryears.
But we can be moving them fast and I think that sends the message, people stop moving in,especially if you verify you can't get a decent job.
I think we sort of.
solve most of the intake.
(51:38):
that's, mean, Biden, in a way, it's like, it's almost like he deliberately thought, I'mgoing to make sure that the people who wanting to tighten the labor market and improve
wages for the workers, American workers, I'm going make sure they can't do it for another10 years, because they're going to have all these illegal aliens they've got to deal with.
(51:59):
So I'm not
I'm not very optimistic about where we're gonna be in the next 10 years, I don't knowabout 20, in terms of where I hoped we would be four years ago.
But I am optimistic that we can be a whole lot better than we are right now.
Good.
Okay, so if you have enough time, we'll just do a couple of these are supposed to be quicktakes.
(52:22):
None of these are.
I can tell you're nervous because you're thinking, I don't think this guy answers thingsin.
listen, Roy, you and I sing off the same, you know, same hymn book, you know, but you cantake as much time to answer.
We're not trying to finish you here.
So we just kind of do this at the end.
So, but these are complex issues.
(52:44):
So take the time that you want to answer.
There's only four of them.
So should birthright citizenship be reevaluated?
Absolutely.
There's only one other country, advanced economy in the world that offers it, and that'sCanada.
It's a medieval concept.
(53:06):
Yeah, I agree with you.
There's no way that we can, it's ridiculous because now we have people from China flyinghere to have a baby, have a dual passport, only to be taken back to communist China, be
raised there as a communist.
And then 20 years from now, I mean, it's a page right out of Sun Tzu, you know, that 20years from now, or now it's probably 15 or even 10 years.
(53:35):
in the future that this is because it's been going on for a decade already.
Is this still the lightning round?
Jeez.
He talked longer than you did, Roy.
(53:55):
Yeah, least, yeah, just go like this.
That's right, that's right.
Okay, Jennifer, what's your view on guest worker programs?
Helpful solution or policy trap?
No, it can be a helpful solution.
And there are ways to create a guest worker programs that would be fair, where they wouldbe used for truly for short term, a kind of emergency situations.
(54:24):
But Congress has never passed anything that has those kinds of rules.
So right now there's no guest worker program that should be kept as it is.
But if we can get the legal immigration, by the way,
Our positions are would reduce legal immigration from a million a year to half million ayear.
(54:45):
A half million year is still double what it was in the 60s.
It's about what it was in the 80s.
We are not a very extreme organization, but it would make a ton of difference to bring itback to half million.
And if we did that, then I think there might be some short-term shortages and it'd be okayto have some guest worker programs, very short-term.
(55:08):
So we kind of talked about this, but one policy change you would enact tomorrow outside ofe-Verify, let's say.
What's the next one on your list?
One policy change, if you could whisper in Donald Trump's ear.
Well.
(55:29):
Yeah, the big thing is putting it into chain migration as we know it.
And that was started in 1965, really, basically in 65.
And it's just the thing that says it turns our immigration system over to the immigrants.
The American people don't really have any say who comes in most for the most part.
(55:51):
We bring an immigrant in and then the immigrants choose the next immigrants.
we believe in the nuclear family.
including not only the husband or wife you have and the children you have, but you come inand you marry somebody, that's fine.
That's it.
Nuclear family, minor children, a spouse.
(56:13):
Everything else, no.
Parents, not, there's a carve out in the sense that we are dealing, there's bills forthis.
And the parents can be here on visitor visas.
That means they can't take American jobs.
They can come here and live with their children.
and take care of their grandchildren and absolutely not be eligible for any governmentsupport.
(56:36):
Either children take care of them.
But that's the big thing.
That would change everything.
That's what the Jordan Commission, the Bipartisan Jordan Commission under PresidentClinton, that's what they recommended, stop chain migration.
It's the accelerator that moved us from a half million to a million.
Well, I'm weak.
third he's the third one to tell us that right?
(56:56):
Yeah.
two said that they predicted over 10 or 20 years that every immigrant represented 12 more.
And so it's going to multiply at a factor over the next 10, 20 years that we just can'thandle.
(57:16):
Well, now you mentioned it, but the legal level has been between 900,000, 1.2 million forabout 30 years because there are some limits.
What happens though is you build up the expectation.
So you've got millions and millions of people who are in line and you will find thenewspapers are terrible about this.
(57:40):
As a former newspaper man, I just hate to see this kind of, as you see, reporters willsay,
This person, somebody that got deported recently, and it's a big deal, they're justwaiting for their green card.
Waiting for the green card means that there are six million people ahead of them in lineon the chain migration thing.
(58:02):
So what happens is people then come on as illegal aliens and think of themselves as, I'mjust waiting.
I come on in waiting.
yeah, it's...
You should be waiting on the other side of the board.
so, but last question, what gives you hope that we can have consensus on this issue or isthere no hope?
(58:23):
Well, the immigration issue that I've been in for 35 years is, look, I don't wanna suggesttoo much here, but I sort of feel like I know what it was like to be involved in World War
I.
during that four year war, you know, right?
(58:45):
They're just kind of fighting back and forth over I don't know how many miles of land.
That's what it's been like the whole time I've been in here.
basically, groups like Numbers USA, other people involved, same thing.
We stopped all the amnesties.
We stopped for the most part the increases.
But we haven't gotten, we have no offensive victories.
(59:09):
We haven't reduced anything.
But the other side is fighting.
So we've just been World War I, trench warfare, or football, which maybe is a littlebetter, between the 40 yard lines.
Nobody's getting anything.
the hope, I think for the American people themselves and the workers, is that the peoplethat are of some goodwill, so I'm not talking about, I'm sorry, I'm gonna offend some, I
(59:35):
know I'm gonna offend some people, but I'm not talking about the crazy edge of thelibertarians who kind of think that
national borders don't matter.
And I'm not talking about the leftists.
I'm just talking about liberal to centrist Republicans and centrist to conservative, Imean, liberal to centrist Democrats and centrist to conservative Republicans is to say,
(59:59):
let's come to some kind of agreement.
The agreement is probably going to another amnesty.
probably gonna mean that.
I can't think of anything else that can be given to what's by the other side for me.
Because of what's happened, you've got people who have been here so long.
(01:00:20):
I don't think the fact they've been breaking the law for 30 years or 20 years says thatnow they deserve to be legal, but they've been here so long that it's harder and harder to
move them out.
And it may be that that's the price, that you have some kind of amnesty.
But the amnesty, unlike the previous amnesty, the amnesty comes only after you've got to,you've totally resolved the illegal immigration situation and after you've put in place
(01:00:48):
all these cuts on future legal immigration.
Something like
I've kind of actually argued something like that.
I know I was quoted in the AP probably prior to Trump, probably during the Obamaadministration is, you know, when people say, let's round them up and send them home.
I was like, well, what if somebody's home was around the corner from your house for thelast 20 years?
(01:01:09):
And, you know, so it comes, try to, we try to look at things from a practical application.
It sounds like you do as well where, you know, kind of, you know, are we really, I,
I don't believe that we are a country that's gonna round people up, put them on trains andship them across borders the way, you know, Nazi Germany did.
who people who've deep in the thing is is there's they have no legal they have no to me nolegal no moral argument for Mercy in that sense But They they do I mean it's hard right I
(01:01:47):
mean, but the deal is It's a bit and yeah, and the thing is is that we're
we're in between the 40 yard lines.
If we actually want to both, if both sides want to score a goal, we've got to give upsomething.
And I think that's probably what we're going to have get up something like that.
And the other side is going to have to give up this idea of flooding the labor markets.
(01:02:10):
And I think a lot of people on the liberal side, some or another, they do think that theyare importing democratic voters and they are right.
in the short term, but as we've seen what's been happening with Hispanics and Democratsare starting to lose black men, not in the same proportion, Democrats are losing
(01:02:35):
Hispanics, the proportion of black men that are moving toward Republicans and Trump havegone from like 10 % to 20%.
That's pretty significant.
it was worse than that.
went from 8 % in 2020 to almost 25 % in 2024.
So you're talking about a triple in four years of support.
(01:02:56):
Now granted, he was at 8%, so you could argue the numbers that it's easier to move thosepercentages.
of course, if you multiply it by three again, he gets 75%.
I don't know that that's going to happen in four years, but it's certainly, I agree withyou.
that Democrats obviously can't lose 25 % of African American men and still win electionswithout importing new voters.
(01:03:21):
And I've also said and written in our newsletter that's named Reasonable Arguments as wellthat eventually folks, like you mentioned, the people who are coming here for the most
part want to work.
They want to achieve the American dream.
They are...
(01:03:41):
They want to have lower taxes and all of those things.
And so they're not coming here to pay taxes.
They're coming here to live the American dream.
And so I think eventually that's what I agree with you that that's eventually what's goingto happen.
This is where I wish the president would focus more on what I think are the main issues,which is that he tends to be most interested in the criminal aliens.
(01:04:06):
And I can understand why that's so important.
But the fact is that most illegal aliens, I mean, they're not committing fiscal crimes andall that kind of stuff.
They're here to work.
They just don't obey the immigration laws.
It's not that these are bad people.
I think once you get your head around the fact that we are not, the most part, trying tokeep bad people out of the country, we're trying to say that you can have too much of good
(01:04:33):
thing.
Anybody that has immigrant neighbors, including illegal aliens, and here in Arlington,Virginia, my kids went to school with lot of illegal aliens.
That's the way is in Arlington, Virginia.
They're nice kids.
Yeah, exactly.
and every school in Florida.
think, but I think this comes down to where we need another visual because, you know, youdid you did the gumball example with poverty and immigration, but maybe we need to do the
(01:05:02):
same thing with jobs, or something like that, where people literally see how many jobs arebeing taken away from the American people for these aliens that are coming in.
And it's absolutely that's to say visually see it because the fact is, is that SteveCamarado, we're at the Center for Immigration Studies, does a great job on putting these
(01:05:25):
charts together.
But, you know, the workforce participation of the native born Americans has been goingdown for 30, 40 years while we've been bringing in all these foreign workers.
So we're following out the work ethic.
And we're hollowing out partly because the jobs at the bottom are paying so much less inreal wages than they used to and because employers they just They're kind of doing the
(01:05:51):
right thing in terms of just the bottom line because they've got these these people comeacross the border They they're they're driven to work for a lot less working conditions
wages you name it So we've got a you know, we've just got we've got it.
It's it's it's not personal that by the way
You know, I'm in a situation where the Numbers USA is a truly bipartisan organization interms of our staff, our board, our funders, you name it.
(01:06:19):
We don't see this as being a conservative or liberal or Republican or Democraticsituation, although we have to say that over the last 15 years, it's been almost entirely
Republicans that have been, as far as we're concerned, doing the right thing.
At some point Democrats, and there are a lot of Democratic...
an analyst now, they're speaking up and saying, we've got to change our position onimmigration because we are taking the anti-work, you know, for the Democratic Party to
(01:06:45):
continually take the anti-worker position and really the anti-black position.
It's just killing the non-college educated black male working class.
That's, you know, this has got to stop.
So I see this in many ways.
I can make the case that
(01:07:07):
You know some kind of a compromise would finally get an answer.
would do a wave chain migration, get overall legal immigration down to half a million.
It has some amnesty in it.
You could almost not do, there's almost no better pro-black underclass thing you could dothan that.
(01:07:28):
So why wouldn't liberals jump onto that?
Well, I think we all want to see Americans succeed, right?
And so when we see fellow Americans, you know, I don't think supporting poor people isdemocratic alone.
I mean, I think, you know, Republicans want to see people be able to through up classes aswell.
(01:07:52):
And, you know, we may have a different way of skinning that cat because we believe inteaching somebody to fish rather than giving them a fish.
But
you know, that's probably for another podcast.
Well, and immigration, but the immigration has just made it where you've you just drive somany people out of the labor market.
And it's really hollowing out America.
(01:08:19):
That's the reason as far as I'm concerned, it's important to look for some kind ofcompromises to get us.
mean, what does it do any of us any good to fight between the 40 yard lines for another 25years?
You're great.
Well, Jennifer, do you want to close this out?
Roy Beck from numbersusa.com.
(01:08:40):
Thank you for joining us.
If you enjoy this episode, we want to make sure you subscribe, like, share with yourfriends, put up posts on social.
And Jennifer, do you have key takeaways or?
No, think we're good.
Roy, do you have a way for people to contact you if they want to get in touch?
They can contact me at Roy at numbersusa.com.
(01:09:05):
All right, that's perfect.
Well, thank you, Roy, so much for joining us today.
What a great discussion.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
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