I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now.

Today on the show, we are talking about the history of immigration policy in the United States

with Yael Shacher. This is obviously an important issue with the election coming up, and I feel

like there's an incomplete story being told by both major

parties. And I think this is something that both for the sake of our own country and for the

sake of humanity in general, we need to wrap our heads around. So I spent a lot of time trying

to find someone who could speak intelligently on this, looking at it from a comprehensive

perspective.

And Yael turned out to be what I thought was the ideal guest.

She not only has a PhD in immigration history.

She also works for Refugees International, where she serves as director for the Americas in Europe.

This conversation goes from policy to the origins of American immigration policy

through the ways that the Cold War shaped our current policy. And it is really, to me,

as good as an episode could be. Now, let's be clear up front. This is a topic that people

disagree on. And so maybe you're going to listen to this and you're going to say, hey, this was left out or, hey, I don't agree with this. That's okay. What I want to do here is go through this story from someone who is dealing in facts, from someone who is not in politics, and from someone who has looked at this from a variety of angles. If you listen to this and you think there's

someone else we should talk to, please let us know. Email us at Road to Nowcast at gmail.com.

Give us a good guest. And hopefully we can follow up with episodes that make a more comprehensive

picture. And hopefully we can start a conversation featuring guests who are not in politics and have little

to gain personally from this, aside from trying to actually help our country and help those

who are often running for their lives.

We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Patrons, we always thank you for your service.

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