Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Immigration reform is one of the hot-button issues of this off-election year and to delve into it in detail, we’ve assembled three experts: Mickey Kaus is a columnist for the Daily Caller and blogs daily — hourly if you count Twitter— on the topic. Mark Krikorian is the Executive DirectorCenter for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., and Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation in Phoenix, Arizona and the co-author (with Jeb Bush) of Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution. Together, they cover all sides of the debate.
The conversation will continue in the comments. Post your questions and thoughts below and we’ll get the panelists to respond.
Help Ricochet by supporting our advertisers!
This podcast is sponsored by Tonx Coffee. For a free sample of the best coffee on earth, go to Tonx.org/Ricochet today.
For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Best Ricochet podcast in months, and the only one devoted to legislation that will change the electorate irreparably — and with it the prospects for conservative governance in the US. Many thanks to all responsible.
Just want to add my thumb (which is up) to a very good discussion. The one problem I have is anyone giving Jeb Bush any credit for ideas to “save” the republican party…if it is in such bad shape you do realize he and his entire family has been a part of it for decades….go..geaux Mickey…and thanks to all.
There’s a lot of Clint Bolick here trashing current American citizens in comparison with just about anybody wanting to come here.Bret Stephens of the Open Borders Wall Street Journal wrote a piece last year in which he quoted Felipe Calderon: “There are 113,000 new engineers graduating in Mexico every single year, which means more engineers in Mexico graduating than in Germany or Canada or Brazil…..and if you establish some kind of rate of engineers per 100,000 people, it’s almost twice the American rate”. Wow, I wonder how they accomplished this without massive, uncontrolled immigration?!
Way to go Mark and Micky! These establishment types like the Clint Bolick, WSJ, Jeb Bush, and John McCain are completely disconnected from their base.
The lack of high tech workers is a canard. There is a lack of high tech workers willing to live in Silicon Valley at wages that may be satisfactory in midwest but not in one of the highest cost of living areas of the country. There are plenty of unemployed and under-employed engineers in fly-over country. The reason why there is a shortage of computer programmers right now is that the dot-com bust scared off a lot of younger people from majoring in computer science. At my university they graduated twice_times_as_many_CS_majors_in_1999_than_last_year.
That said, discussion of immigration reform should include its cultural implications as well as economic, especially the difficulty a multiculturalism-saturated America has in assimilating immigrants into the national life and genuinely achieving e pluribus unim.
Not to sound like a raving Marxist, but I heard very little from Clint about how this would benefit current American workers.
Even if you want to improve/increase the number of visas, why on Earth would you need to tie that to legalization/amnesty?
Clint chuckling while explaining the only way to get a GOP POTUS is to go along with Chuck Schumer was very off-putting.
That being said, I thought he presented the case for his side in the best possible light.
Really enjoyed listening to a podcast where Mickey Kaus was able to get a word in edgewise.
Clint acquitted himself very well.
I’m very sympathetic to Mr. Bolick’s sentiment in many respects.
That said, on the one hand he pressed that the GOP needs to pass this bill in order to gain Asian voters. He then places distinct emphasis on a need to put sharp restrictions on family based immigration–a guaranteed way to make Asian-Americans dislike the party even more. The people pushing this bill need a serious reality check.
After watching Dennis Michael Lynch’s two insightful documentaries on illegal immigration, I’m ready to primary every clueless Republican incumbent who has fallen for the DC disease called “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Secure the borders FIRST like we were promised in 1986, then, after a few years, we might talk.
There’s a lot of cheesed-off people out here…you know…citizens…also a subset of the group called voters.
Clint talked a lot about how jobs are leaving the US because of our immigration policies. I want to see real data to back that up. My first guess would be regulation, corporate tax rates, and government interference in the market are the principle reasons for a loss of jobs in the US.
Clint Bolick put forth one of the most dishonest arguments I’ve heard on this issue in a long, long time. This is a prime example of “With friends like these…”
This is what I’m talking about in regards to the dishonesty of the man’s arguments. It’s not lack of workers, skilled or unskilled, pushing jobs out. It’s the cost of doing business in America. Bringing in millions of immigrants will change precisely squat about that. Further, in states not saddled with big unions and Democratic administrations, job growth has done pretty well. Boeing is moving steadily to South Carolina, foreign automakers are steadily moving south as well. They come here for American workers that don’t have the costs of UAW workers in Detroit. When you come right down to it, people like this guy simply don’t give a damn about Americans that aren’t in a boardroom or executive office.
This was hard for me to listen too. Mr. Bolick is either deranged or dishonest or a bit of both. This was lie after lie, that were either Mr. Bolick’s, or the lies of someone else he was repeating.