I am dissapointed with the show today. I heard a lot of commentary that was opinion - and little fact.
I listened to both the President and The Democratic response and thought that the President, for once, actually stuck to the script and what appear to be facts (you did not even address that, so I assume it was correct?).
I was, last night, actually looking forward to hearing your podcast go through the facts and report what was not true and what was true...
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Good reporting in this podcast. However, that the podcast framed the episode into a question about whether there is a crisis, a crisis as Trump views it, infuriates me. Asking the question gives some credence to what Trump says. Why must this podcast and other mainstream outlets continue to do this? Just present the story as another example of Trump lying or spreading falsehoods. We all know he's been doing this for quite a while.
I am a very regular listener of The Daily and a big fan of Michael's systematic approach of peeling the onion in all his interviews and reports. However, I felt that today's session side stepped a lot of key questions. (1) Are we all on the same page that we should stop illegal immigration? I hope both parties and in general the public would agree that it should be stopped. (2) Of all the ~10 M illegal immigrants, how many (or percent) have overstayed their visa vs. crossed the border illegally. This will help clarify where the problem is and also give an extent of the problem. Then we can go into solutions. There are more than 70 countries in the world that have border fence/wall of some sort and if a good portion of the problem is due to illegal crossing, then perhaps there "should" be some sort of physical barrier. But if the number if couple thousand who are crossing the border then perhaps a few additional border patrol would be a better approach instead of $5 Bn wall.
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Yes, there is one. And it is fueled by DACA confusion and the Flores Agreement.
After DACA (best way to remove Obama's Deporter-in-Chief moniker for the 2012 election) unaccompanied minors rushed to the border and specifically told officials they thought they now had "permisio" to come to the US. And they did, in a sense. The Flores agreement and other laws limits detention of minors. Show up and you're in. (Not to digress, in many ways, DACA and subsequent rush to border likely cost Hillary the election).
Families realized they could also bring children to exploit these policies. The family of the Guatemalan 8 year old boy brought him along to act as a "child visa."
The first step to the asylum process is not claiming asylum. It is passing the credible fear interview. That gets you in the US. Over half of these people never follow through and claim asylum. For every 10,000 people who pass a credible fear interview, only 4,500 actually claim asylum. And about 450 have legitimate claims. The rest just disappear.
There is no need, or benefit to the US, for an unlimited number of unskilled laborers who even if legally employed, would not make enough to even pay income taxes or pay more than various tax credits potentially received.
As long as Democrats' position is everyone can come to the border, poverty is a legitimate asylum claim, and heck, even if you just sneak in we won't deport you, President Trump has a shot at re-election.
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What to watch for during the Sen. Schumer/Rep. Pelosi self-appointed, unbiased fact-checker response tonight:
Will they mention how many African-American jobs have been lost to illegals having wandered in through our porous Mexico/US border? Look it up and then call this a racist ploy with a straight face;
Will they mention that lifelong border security officers are counting on them to approve the border barrier?
Will they mention how then-Sen. Obama, and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for and openly promoted this very barrier?
Will they include in their likely opposition to this national security necessity that the $5.6B includes massive increases in medical care for migrants, illegal or otherwise, at the border? And more courts to more expeditiously process both illegal, non-asylum cases and asylum applicants?
Will they admit to how many detention centers and pepper-spray defenses President Obama's administration carried out?
Or will this just be another msm/Democrat brainwashing opportunity?
Let's not for get 9/11.
12 suspected terrorist caught at southern border in 2018. How many did it take to change they way we think and now live. For the sake of that alone we should agree.
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I listen to the Daily every week day and appreciate the reporting Michael provides. It's fact based without all the opinions on radio and television and print. I only wish everyone chose to hold journalists to the facts. If not upholding journalism ethics we are left uninformed and or ill-informed.
1. It was not clear to me what your focus information was, and in the course of much repetition, you omitted any response to the major fallback position of wall/Trump supporters, which is of course that 'illegal immigration' takes jobs away from Americans, as the clip of a Trump supporter said just prior to discussion in the show. Your reporter responded to other points, for example, the idea that immigrants were criminals, drug dealers, etc., which, I realize, is Trump's widely articulated view. But even the person on the clip sounds not fully engaged by that point but IS engaged on the 'theft of jobs' point. The omission of any response to this point - in the normal course of reporting - is significant. And perhaps 'theft of jobs' point is important enough to require an entire show (or more). But the lack of response in the normal course of reporting is not trivial, in my opinion.
2. The most disappointing - and dangerous - omission, I believe, is the absence of comment on the ramifications of the use of emergency powers by Trump for something that is clearly not an emergency. You spoke in the show about the absence of a true emergency (was that the point of the show?) but not about using the powers of declaration and the peril that it portends for the nation. Perhaps you will have a show on this in the future but it would have been nice to get ahead of it before what may be the actual declaration later this evening.
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Great coverage by the Daily and others on why the wall is not the correct response. To the extent illegal immigration is a problem, it's not a significant problem at the border. Yes, drugs are not coming in the border. Terrorists are not coming in at the border. Over and over we're hearing this. Here's a new tact.
Even if, as the President claims, illegal immigration were a border issue, walls don't work. No one in the news is talking about the studies at Harvard and elsewhere proving that walls don't work for this purpose and the distinctions in those rare cases when they do work and the US case. PLEASE READ great coverage on why the wall is not the issue, but no coverage so far on why walls don't work even if were the issue. see http://hir.harvard.edu/article/?a=14542 … … and http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration … … studies on efficacies of other countries' walls and why US wall won't work.
a great podcast could be done on this alone. all we get are generalities from the democrats. someone needs to do a deep dive on walls themselves.
The US Customs and Border Patrol statistics show a rise in southwest border apprehension in recent months, including over 62,000 in November. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration Is the podcast saying this is false? I understand that handing large numbers of requests for asylum is a problem, but how can 62,000 apprehensions per month not be difficult itself?
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You are losing voters every day, and for no good reason.
Many of my family and friends claim to be moderates, though left leaning since 2016. But the border issue is viewed differently than how today’s Daily, portray it.
The distinction between legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and asylum seekers is not clearly defined in voters’ minds. You either live here, or you want to live here. You’ve either been born here, or want to come and raise your family here.
The reasons why people want to come here is almost irrelevant to most voters, which is why Democrats are not clearly winning this argument over the wall.
Republicans are prevailing because they have painted the picture of any and all immigrants as illegal, regardless of where, why, or how they arrive on our shores, and if a wall can stop even some immigrants, then we need a wall, or at least some wall at key points along the border.
And finally, why can’t a simple visual, like the distance from Boston to Denver, which is the length of the southern border, help settle the ridiculous argument that a wall is even feasible?
Thank you for this excellent report on the so-called ‘crisis’. This is extremely unsettling because it shows us the beginnings of the first US dictator. Taking a page from dictators handbook - ignore laws because of an imaginary crisis - bring in the military to enforce then jail his political adversaries because they are ‘traitors’. Who will stop him?
@Frank Opolko Scary to think that if a dictator or some other extremely repressive regime were to rise that the wall could also be used to keep us in instead of some "other" out. It probably sounds far fetched, but it happens and we're not immune. Walls work both ways.
Not one number in the entire article. I have read that Mexico offered asylum to the caravan. I wonder if that is true. The author begged the question, substituting cleverness and selectively choosing the nouns to describe the people who want to come into the US. Saying that most illegals ( not migrants?) are people overstaying their visas ignore Trump's declaration that he wants to legally allow many (no number here either) of these bright people to live and work in the USA.
But Trump "doesn't follow the rules" and Democrats talk about using technology and process to create an effective wall. Republicans don't seem to offer much at all. I was around when the whole problem was solved in the Simpson-Mazolli Bill. What it was, was ignored. Who in Congress can be trusted to do what they say? Who in the media will begin to use quantitative analysis to strengthen their essays? Maybe there is no adequate research on not using numbers to understand data. I think I will ask Schrödinger's cat.
The nation needs to understand that these people are feeding us. They are labor on our farms, drive the trucks that move the crops to processors, process the food, move it to cold storage, run the feed lots, man the egg farms, work the vineyards and orchards and work the building trades. Franklin Co. Washington where I live is 70 percent Hispanic and is a thriving growing economy. It is this way because of the availability of people willing to work with their hands. The crisis would be the increase in food prices if these men and women were not here.
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@James Ternes . James there is a nasty underbelly to this rationale that they are doing jobs that Americans don't want to do. What I ask you to consider that putting these people in these jobs is simple labor exploitation. They do these jobs because the employers are paying them wage that is very low (that legal americans would NOT accept).
So we are exploiting these people so our food prices stay low.
What do you guess will happen when we legalize these people working in the US?? My prediction is they will no longer be willing to do the work Americans dont' want. Why would they?
They we need a whole new crop of illegals to take their place.
@James Ternes totally agree. The other side of this equation that must be considered in any sensible immigration policy is that we also NEED legal immigrants. Otherwise, we're throwing the baby out with the bath water. Without legal immigrants, our economy is going to tank. Not only do legal immigrants spend into the economy, they also pay taxes, which substantially contribute to the funding of our social security and other entitlement programs. Further, major companies, e.g., Intel, Microsoft, Apple and others hire brains from all over the world. I work as a lawyer for an extremely large tech company in Silicon Valley. I work mostly with engineers from other countries, most of whose names I can't pronounce and 1/2 of whom are Muslim. And when I can understand their accent, I can't understand them because they are so incredibly brilliant. If you want to lose those people to China, it's at the US' peril. In addition, not only do we need these brains, we need a steady influx of the entrepreneurship, innovation and energy that legal immigrants bring on any level. Without it, we'd never have become the world's greatest economic power, which happened at the turn of the 20th century when we had the greatest influx of immigrants. Simply put, people who are not courageous, entrepreneurial, innovative and energetic STAY HOME. So legal immigrants are the cream of their countries crops and we're lucky they choose to come to the US.
You kept referring to asylum as legal immigration in this podcast, contrasting it with “illegal immigration.” I believe asylum is actually relief from deportation for those with no other legal status. So technically asylum applicants are not legally present, but they’re allowed to stay until their case is resolved. If they don’t get asylum, they have to leave unless they can attain legal status some other way. Legal immigration implies the person has a visa. If you have a visa, you don’t need to apply for asylum.
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He is not fit for office of any kind.
His continual lies and blatant racism are a disgrace to humanity.
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