Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
As one Representative gave Evans from Colorado's eighth congressional District
is joining me by phone in between meetings because he's
very important. Representative Evans, first of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'll always get to be on with you. And I
would say I'm very, very busy would probably be how
I would characterize it.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, okay, busy busy man, let's talk. We're jumping right
in because I know I don't have you for that long.
Let's talk about the Dignity Act for a moment. I've
been lurking in some Republican Facebook groups kind of just
gauging the room right to see as people are discussing this,
and you can imagine, as you've probably already seen, you
(00:36):
have two camps. One camp says this is amnesty hard pass,
never going to happen. And then you have other Republicans
who are saying, look, this is where I am. We
finally got a little modicum of border security. There's never
been a better time in the last twenty five years
when we had decent border security, with more money committed
to border security to really work on immigration reform. Obviously,
(00:58):
you're in the second camp. Let's address that amnesty accusation
that is being made.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, first and foremost, it's absolutely not amnesty. There's no
pass to citizenship in this bill. The end period barnup,
no pass to citizenship, and there's no free handouts in
this bill. What the Dignity Act does is it sets
a hard date. That date is before Biden. It's a
December of twenty twenty. Anybody that was in the country
before that date, and you got to meet a whole
(01:26):
bunch of other criteria. Can't be taking federal benefits. You
have to be willing to pay any back taxes for
anything that you've taken under the table. You have to
pass both a criminal and a security screening. So what
all of these requirements mean is that really the only
people that are even eligible to apply from the get
go are people that, Okay, maybe they're in the country illegally,
but they haven't been committing crimes, they haven't been causing problems,
(01:48):
they haven't been stealing federal welfare dollars. That means they've
been working. And as you said, the immigration system has
been kind of a mess for several decades. I wish
this wasn't the case, but here's some of the numbers,
forty two two percent of the ag labor force in
the United States is illegal. I don't know the percentages
for some of the other big industries, you know, construction, housing,
(02:08):
things like that, but we know there's a significant percentage
of the labor force in these industries that is here illegally.
But other than that, they're working hard, they're supporting American industry,
they're building things here in the United States, and so
how do we soort this problem out? That's what the
Dignity Act says is if you meet all of those
different requirements, you're working hard, not causing problems, willing to
(02:30):
pay back taxes, all these other different things that you
have to do, then no amnesty. Right off the bat.
You got to pay a thousand dollars fine in order
to enter into a seven year program. You can call
it a program. If we're going to talk in terms
of fine here, you can call it something like probation
something like that. But you enter into a seven year
program where you renew every year. So if you're not
meeting these requirements, you start not paying your taxes, you
(02:53):
get in trouble. You're taking money under the table. Guess
what you're tossed out, and every year that you renew
in this program you have to pay another thoughlean dollars.
This program doesn't cost the American citizens anything. Not only that,
when you enter the program, you agree to have your
wages garnished at a one percent rate, and all of
that money then goes directly to American citizen workforce training.
(03:14):
Other things that this bill does national everify, everify as
the federal program by which employers can see if somebody
is legally eligible to work in the United States. Right now,
it's optional. This bill makes it mandatory. This bill puts
into federal law the self deportation mandates. This bill says,
if you do not have legal status to work in
(03:36):
the United States, you have to self deport under penalty
of federal law. So it really gets the conversation going
about what do we do with the folks who are
in the United States, have been here for a while
and again are working jobs, supporting American industries, and want
(03:56):
to have a path forward not for citizenship but for
work visa that they only get by renewing every seven
years in the seven year program, while paying a bunch
of fees and having all sorts of other supervision.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So that was one of my questions that I wanted
to ask because how much of this, if any? Because
I have not read the bill, I figured this is
the jumping off point. I'll read it when it gets
massaged a little bit more by Rudy's input. Does this
do anything about streamlining or updating the legal immigration process?
Because I have a friend whose son in law is
(04:30):
going to miss the birth of his first child because
he can't get his husband visa worked out so he
can come here from the UK Okay. So the legal
immigration system is an abject failure at this moment. Does
this address any of that or is that a situation
for another bill?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It helps, and it helps in a couple of ways.
So in the big beautiful bill that we just passed,
we actually have funding for more immigration judges because we
know there's a massive backlog in the immigration system. Where
the Dignity Act comes in, is it basically also enshrines
in the law, effectively the remain in Mexico policy to
where if and again this isn't federal law, this isn't
(05:09):
executive order like what we've seen with the administration. This
is putting into federal law that if you want to
come to the United States, you want to claim asylum
or anything like that, you have to wait in another
country outside of the United States while that asylum claim
is pending. And so that helps to basically streamline and
give an orderly flow for folks that are claiming asylum
(05:30):
who want to come to the United States. So that,
in conjunction with the additional funding for more immigration judges
that we had in the Big Beautiful Bill, it really
does impose some reforms in the immigration space so you
don't have these major backlogs, you don't have these mass
influxes whenever you have some humanitarian crisis in another country.
It really does set up rules of the road so
(05:51):
that we can have an orderly immigration system and try
to clear a lot of this backlog without big influxes
like what we saw under the mismanagement of the previous administration.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Now, I want to talk about the reality on the
ground politically of a bill like this and the possibility
that as I said, I mean, I think right now
is the best time we've had in a very long
time to talk about serious immigration reform, because politically that
that has turned into quite the political football in terms
of I think that was a huge reason that the
(06:22):
Democrats got walloped in the last election cycle is because
of unfettered immigration. So they've got to be paying attention.
But what does the political reality look like. You're going
to lose some Republicans? Are you going to pick up
Democrats with this? Have you found people across the aisle
that are tired of this just being an ongoing political
football and actually want to solve the problem And are
(06:42):
there enough of them?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah? So, I think there's a couple of really important
things there. First, you mentioned the disaster of the last
four years and what the new administration has done and
what we've actually been able to put into federal law
through the big beautiful bill around I mean forty six
billion dollars for border wall, right, several billion more for
border patrol agent recruiting and retention. So we've put into
(07:05):
federal law a lot of resources to make sure that
the border stays secured. But as you said, that tends
to increase the pressure to Okay, we've stopped the problem
at the border, what do we do with You know,
it's over eight million illegal immigrants are in the United
States and working right now. Not just in the United States,
but they're part of the labor force right now, and
(07:27):
we have to do something with this at some point.
So what better time than right now with the Republican
led House, Senate and presidency that's focused on America first issues,
Because if we punt on this, as you said, the
pressure is only going to build, and if we don't
fix it now, eventually Democrats are going to have some
power again in Washington, d C. And then they're going
(07:48):
to make a complete and total mess of this. So
I say we need to have the conversation, and it
truly is a conversation. This bill hasn't been assigned. Well,
this bill doesn't have a date for a committee hearing
yet definitely hasn't got a date for the House floor.
So we're still having the conversation about this. This is
driving the conversation. But if we don't have that conversation
(08:09):
now with an American first, Republican led House, Senate and presidency,
that doesn't mean that the pressure to fix it is
going to go away. That pressure is still there and
it's going to grow, and if we don't do it,
Gums are going to make a mess of this the
next time they have power in DC.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I agree with that second part. I'm just hoping that
you you know, one of my frustrations and I understand it,
and I'm sure you do too. Representative Evans would people say, Look,
I don't want anybody to skip ahead in the line.
I don't want anybody to get special treatment that other,
you know, people who've immigrated here legally have not gotten.
I understand that argument, but I'm also tired of I mean,
(08:45):
it was like what twenty ten when Obama gave status
to the Dreamers, and they still are just being They're
flapping in the breeze like they still have no solid
footing here in the United States, and it's absurd that
we haven't been able to make this happen.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So I'm going to be this.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Do you think this is a jumping off point for
a bigger conversation or do you think this bill as
it is has a chance of passing as it is?
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well, I mean, no piece of legislation in Congress passes
as it is if you look at the format was
in when it was introduced to when it navigated its
way through the House in the Senate, so I'm sure
it will change. So really both things. Yeah, it's bipartisan.
It's got Republicans and Democrats supporting this, and it's a
broad swath of Republicans. You've got Republicans from very very
(09:32):
moderate districts. We also have a Freedom Caucus member who's
supporting this bill. And so you have the complete range
of Republicans that are supporting this a piece of legislation
because they know the urgency, as you said, that we
have here. And I'm totally sensitive to the argument about
cutting in line. And that's why when you read the bill,
(09:53):
there's a hard date in the bill that this applies to.
It's not a rolling five year period. It's a hard
date that says this does not apply to anybody that
was immigrated illegally to the United States January of twenty
twenty one or later. So when you couple that, you
know you got to go back five years, and the
(10:14):
onus is on the individual to prove that this isn't
government resources that are going to go to proving that
the individual has to prove it, and if they can't
prove it, well, then under the self deportation mandate and
the bill get out.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, and I do think that if you can get
this sorted out, it will it will change public sentiment
about this going forward, in my view, because if you say, look,
we've reformed the system that will allow people to come
over here and work if they just want to work, right,
we reformed that, we reform the legal immigration system, then
the excuse making gets a lot harder to make, simply
(10:46):
because when we make it easier for people who want
to come here and take advantage of the American dream
to do so while making sure we're getting the bad
actors out. I think most Americans are behind that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, I mean that it's literally the national auto of
the United States, e pluribusunem out of many want. And
so we know that there's a lot of very, very
talented people that come to the United States for that
American dream, and so we want to be able to
get those best, those brightest, those hard workers, those people
that come here. I mean, look no further than there's
(11:18):
a there's a great book about Thomas Nelson Publishers, which
is one of the biggest publishers of Bibles in the
in the country. That was that was started by a
Lebanese immigrant who came to the United States and that
was his passion. And so as long as we are
setting a very tough, very rigorous program to be able
to get those hard working, best and brightest people. And
(11:41):
if you're not one of those, then sorry, there's not
a pathway forward. But if you are one of those,
there is. That is something that helps the United States,
not just internally in terms of our you know, our
economy and workforce and stuff like that. But we got
to remember we're not in a vacuum globally. We've got major,
major at at the international level, entities like China that
(12:04):
would very much like to pass up the United States,
and you serve our position of global leadership, and so
we need to make sure that we are maintaining our
position as the global leaders against foreign competitors like China.
And so when you're able to get the best and
brightest people from other places that want to come to
the United States, that gives us a leg up in
(12:24):
making sure that we're able to beat the Chinese.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Representative Gabe Evans, I so appreciate your time today. We
are out of time on late as a matter of fact,
and I hope we can talk more about this in
then your future.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Always enjoy being on with you, all right, Thanks
As one Representative gave Evans from Colorado's eighth congressional District
is joining me by phone in between meetings because he's
very important. Representative Evans, first of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'll always get to be on with you. And I
would say I'm very, very busy would probably be how
I would characterize it.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, okay, busy busy man, let's talk. We're jumping right
in because I know I don't have you for that long.
Let's talk about the Dignity Act for a moment. I've
been lurking in some Republican Facebook groups kind of just
gauging the room right to see as people are discussing this,
and you can imagine, as you've probably already seen, you
(00:36):
have two camps. One camp says this is amnesty hard pass,
never going to happen. And then you have other Republicans
who are saying, look, this is where I am. We
finally got a little modicum of border security. There's never
been a better time in the last twenty five years
when we had decent border security, with more money committed
to border security to really work on immigration reform. Obviously,
(00:58):
you're in the second camp. Let's address that amnesty accusation
that is being made.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, first and foremost, it's absolutely not amnesty. There's no
pass to citizenship in this bill. The end period barnup,
no pass to citizenship, and there's no free handouts in
this bill. What the Dignity Act does is it sets
a hard date. That date is before Biden. It's a
December of twenty twenty. Anybody that was in the country
before that date, and you got to meet a whole
(01:26):
bunch of other criteria. Can't be taking federal benefits. You
have to be willing to pay any back taxes for
anything that you've taken under the table. You have to
pass both a criminal and a security screening. So what
all of these requirements mean is that really the only
people that are even eligible to apply from the get
go are people that, Okay, maybe they're in the country illegally,
but they haven't been committing crimes, they haven't been causing problems,
(01:48):
they haven't been stealing federal welfare dollars. That means they've
been working. And as you said, the immigration system has
been kind of a mess for several decades. I wish
this wasn't the case, but here's some of the numbers,
forty two two percent of the ag labor force in
the United States is illegal. I don't know the percentages
for some of the other big industries, you know, construction, housing,
(02:08):
things like that, but we know there's a significant percentage
of the labor force in these industries that is here illegally.
But other than that, they're working hard, they're supporting American industry,
they're building things here in the United States, and so
how do we soort this problem out? That's what the
Dignity Act says is if you meet all of those
different requirements, you're working hard, not causing problems, willing to
(02:30):
pay back taxes, all these other different things that you
have to do, then no amnesty. Right off the bat.
You got to pay a thousand dollars fine in order
to enter into a seven year program. You can call
it a program. If we're going to talk in terms
of fine here, you can call it something like probation
something like that. But you enter into a seven year
program where you renew every year. So if you're not
meeting these requirements, you start not paying your taxes, you
(02:53):
get in trouble. You're taking money under the table. Guess
what you're tossed out, and every year that you renew
in this program you have to pay another thoughlean dollars.
This program doesn't cost the American citizens anything. Not only that,
when you enter the program, you agree to have your
wages garnished at a one percent rate, and all of
that money then goes directly to American citizen workforce training.
(03:14):
Other things that this bill does national everify, everify as
the federal program by which employers can see if somebody
is legally eligible to work in the United States. Right now,
it's optional. This bill makes it mandatory. This bill puts
into federal law the self deportation mandates. This bill says,
if you do not have legal status to work in
(03:36):
the United States, you have to self deport under penalty
of federal law. So it really gets the conversation going
about what do we do with the folks who are
in the United States, have been here for a while
and again are working jobs, supporting American industries, and want
(03:56):
to have a path forward not for citizenship but for
work visa that they only get by renewing every seven
years in the seven year program, while paying a bunch
of fees and having all sorts of other supervision.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So that was one of my questions that I wanted
to ask because how much of this, if any? Because
I have not read the bill, I figured this is
the jumping off point. I'll read it when it gets
massaged a little bit more by Rudy's input. Does this
do anything about streamlining or updating the legal immigration process?
Because I have a friend whose son in law is
(04:30):
going to miss the birth of his first child because
he can't get his husband visa worked out so he
can come here from the UK Okay. So the legal
immigration system is an abject failure at this moment. Does
this address any of that or is that a situation
for another bill?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It helps, and it helps in a couple of ways.
So in the big beautiful bill that we just passed,
we actually have funding for more immigration judges because we
know there's a massive backlog in the immigration system. Where
the Dignity Act comes in, is it basically also enshrines
in the law, effectively the remain in Mexico policy to
where if and again this isn't federal law, this isn't
(05:09):
executive order like what we've seen with the administration. This
is putting into federal law that if you want to
come to the United States, you want to claim asylum
or anything like that, you have to wait in another
country outside of the United States while that asylum claim
is pending. And so that helps to basically streamline and
give an orderly flow for folks that are claiming asylum
(05:30):
who want to come to the United States. So that,
in conjunction with the additional funding for more immigration judges
that we had in the Big Beautiful Bill, it really
does impose some reforms in the immigration space so you
don't have these major backlogs, you don't have these mass
influxes whenever you have some humanitarian crisis in another country.
It really does set up rules of the road so
(05:51):
that we can have an orderly immigration system and try
to clear a lot of this backlog without big influxes
like what we saw under the mismanagement of the previous administration.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Now, I want to talk about the reality on the
ground politically of a bill like this and the possibility
that as I said, I mean, I think right now
is the best time we've had in a very long
time to talk about serious immigration reform, because politically that
that has turned into quite the political football in terms
of I think that was a huge reason that the
(06:22):
Democrats got walloped in the last election cycle is because
of unfettered immigration. So they've got to be paying attention.
But what does the political reality look like. You're going
to lose some Republicans? Are you going to pick up
Democrats with this? Have you found people across the aisle
that are tired of this just being an ongoing political
football and actually want to solve the problem And are
(06:42):
there enough of them?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah? So, I think there's a couple of really important
things there. First, you mentioned the disaster of the last
four years and what the new administration has done and
what we've actually been able to put into federal law
through the big beautiful bill around I mean forty six
billion dollars for border wall, right, several billion more for
border patrol agent recruiting and retention. So we've put into
(07:05):
federal law a lot of resources to make sure that
the border stays secured. But as you said, that tends
to increase the pressure to Okay, we've stopped the problem
at the border, what do we do with You know,
it's over eight million illegal immigrants are in the United
States and working right now. Not just in the United States,
but they're part of the labor force right now, and
(07:27):
we have to do something with this at some point.
So what better time than right now with the Republican
led House, Senate and presidency that's focused on America first issues,
Because if we punt on this, as you said, the
pressure is only going to build, and if we don't
fix it now, eventually Democrats are going to have some
power again in Washington, d C. And then they're going
(07:48):
to make a complete and total mess of this. So
I say we need to have the conversation, and it
truly is a conversation. This bill hasn't been assigned. Well,
this bill doesn't have a date for a committee hearing
yet definitely hasn't got a date for the House floor.
So we're still having the conversation about this. This is
driving the conversation. But if we don't have that conversation
(08:09):
now with an American first, Republican led House, Senate and presidency,
that doesn't mean that the pressure to fix it is
going to go away. That pressure is still there and
it's going to grow, and if we don't do it,
Gums are going to make a mess of this the
next time they have power in DC.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I agree with that second part. I'm just hoping that
you you know, one of my frustrations and I understand it,
and I'm sure you do too. Representative Evans would people say, Look,
I don't want anybody to skip ahead in the line.
I don't want anybody to get special treatment that other,
you know, people who've immigrated here legally have not gotten.
I understand that argument, but I'm also tired of I mean,
(08:45):
it was like what twenty ten when Obama gave status
to the Dreamers, and they still are just being They're
flapping in the breeze like they still have no solid
footing here in the United States, and it's absurd that
we haven't been able to make this happen.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So I'm going to be this.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Do you think this is a jumping off point for
a bigger conversation or do you think this bill as
it is has a chance of passing as it is?
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well, I mean, no piece of legislation in Congress passes
as it is if you look at the format was
in when it was introduced to when it navigated its
way through the House in the Senate, so I'm sure
it will change. So really both things. Yeah, it's bipartisan.
It's got Republicans and Democrats supporting this, and it's a
broad swath of Republicans. You've got Republicans from very very
(09:32):
moderate districts. We also have a Freedom Caucus member who's
supporting this bill. And so you have the complete range
of Republicans that are supporting this a piece of legislation
because they know the urgency, as you said, that we
have here. And I'm totally sensitive to the argument about
cutting in line. And that's why when you read the bill,
(09:53):
there's a hard date in the bill that this applies to.
It's not a rolling five year period. It's a hard
date that says this does not apply to anybody that
was immigrated illegally to the United States January of twenty
twenty one or later. So when you couple that, you
know you got to go back five years, and the
(10:14):
onus is on the individual to prove that this isn't
government resources that are going to go to proving that
the individual has to prove it, and if they can't
prove it, well, then under the self deportation mandate and
the bill get out.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, and I do think that if you can get
this sorted out, it will it will change public sentiment
about this going forward, in my view, because if you say, look,
we've reformed the system that will allow people to come
over here and work if they just want to work, right,
we reformed that, we reform the legal immigration system, then
the excuse making gets a lot harder to make, simply
(10:46):
because when we make it easier for people who want
to come here and take advantage of the American dream
to do so while making sure we're getting the bad
actors out. I think most Americans are behind that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, I mean that it's literally the national auto of
the United States, e pluribusunem out of many want. And
so we know that there's a lot of very, very
talented people that come to the United States for that
American dream, and so we want to be able to
get those best, those brightest, those hard workers, those people
that come here. I mean, look no further than there's
(11:18):
a there's a great book about Thomas Nelson Publishers, which
is one of the biggest publishers of Bibles in the
in the country. That was that was started by a
Lebanese immigrant who came to the United States and that
was his passion. And so as long as we are
setting a very tough, very rigorous program to be able
to get those hard working, best and brightest people. And
(11:41):
if you're not one of those, then sorry, there's not
a pathway forward. But if you are one of those,
there is. That is something that helps the United States,
not just internally in terms of our you know, our
economy and workforce and stuff like that. But we got
to remember we're not in a vacuum globally. We've got major,
major at at the international level, entities like China that
(12:04):
would very much like to pass up the United States,
and you serve our position of global leadership, and so
we need to make sure that we are maintaining our
position as the global leaders against foreign competitors like China.
And so when you're able to get the best and
brightest people from other places that want to come to
the United States, that gives us a leg up in
(12:24):
making sure that we're able to beat the Chinese.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Representative Gabe Evans, I so appreciate your time today. We
are out of time on late as a matter of fact,
and I hope we can talk more about this in
then your future.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Always enjoy being on with you, all right, Thanks
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