Mark Krikorian - Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six point two our time here on Houston's Morning News. Right,
there probably are some people that will head back to
the Mexico border to go back once President Trumpey is
in office. We certainly know we're already seeing results as
far as people headed from Mexico to the United States.
Mark Krian joins, US executive director of the Center for
Immigration Studies. This isn't surprising, is it.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, it isn't. Uh. In fact, we saw something like
this the first time Trump was elected. To call it
the Trump effect, where people were like, oh my god,
you know, what's what's this guy gonna do. Let's uh,
let's let's hold off and wait and see what happens.
The key, though, is to make sure that once he
takes office that he actually follows up and we see real,

(00:46):
you know, real results in enforcing immigration law. To make
sure that the you know, the initial Trump effect doesn't
just dissipate and people figure, oh, I'm gonna go give
it a try anyway, because it was all talk. Uh,
it's not likely to be all talked, but that is
the one thing that they have to worry about.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think the selection of Tom Holman tells us all
we need to know about whether it's all talk or not,
don't you.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, clearly, I mean, and that's part of the reason
he's been so visible, because you know, the point is
to try to, you know, make clear to people things.
Are you know, winter is coming as they said in
that in the Game of Thrones, and you know, get
ahead of it now. And do you know, we're not
going to know right away whether people have in fact left,

(01:34):
you know, sort of packed their bags as he said,
and left, but I expect at least some share of
people are likely to be doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Not that this should matter, and quite frankly, for me,
it doesn't matter because if you're here illegally, you're here
illegally and you got to go. But there are a
fair amounts of businesses here in the United States that
have employed people who quote unquote won't do American jobs
at Americans, you know, we'll do it, I guess jobs
Americans won't do, like working in their chain and processing plant,
for example. Are we going to see do you think

(02:03):
an immediate impact on jobs and those types of businesses.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I think you're going to see. You might well see
an immediate impact, but it's not going to be the
doomsday scenario that the lobbyists for these businesses are saying now,
because it's not as though you wake up one day
and every illegal alien is gone. It's a process that
will take time, and the number of people, say working

(02:30):
in chicken plants, will start decreasing. And in a market economy,
what that means is that the employer will respond by
you know, making changes, offering more money to try to
get legal workers, of offering for instance, a free you know,
shuttle service, a van service from farther away to hope

(02:54):
to kind of expand the number of people who could
work there. We've seen this at other you know, in
other instances. Last time Trump was president, there were raids
like this and the responses were exactly what you would expect,
and it wasn't the end of the world. That actually
worked out pretty well.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Here in Texas, we've already begun a construction on our
own border wall and that continues. I would expect that
at the federal level there will be an effort to
get Trump's wall back up. Do you think this time
that job is going to get done to its entirety, Well.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I mean yes and no, because entirety is sort of
a hard thing to say. You know, are you going
to build a wall along all two thousand miles of
the border. Probably not, but there's going to be a
lot more of it constructed. And the thing is, though,
that's just one piece of what they need to do.
And I've been to some of a lot of a

(03:50):
wall in Texas and because of the river, you have
to build it back from the border, so people are
already in the United States once they to the wall,
and you know, and if they say I want asylum,
then the border patrol sometimes has to go through the
wall and get them and bring them in. So the
wall is important, but it's you got to make sure

(04:13):
you don't sort of make it a bigger deal than
it really is. It's just one tool. You have to
mainly change the policies that make it worth trying to
do this. Because of the Biden catch and release policies,
it's worth trying to come through. If those catch and
release policies are ended, it's not as beneficial to try

(04:36):
to get over the wall in the first place.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, Marco is always good to talk to you, sir,
Thank you appreciate it. Mark grec gorein YEP Executive Director
of the Center for Immigration Studies. It's six twenty seven