This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 15th,

2024. I'm Caleb Brown. The Green Card program is in a word

disastrous. Tens of millions of people are waiting for green cards and the

approval rate for applications is very low. Gators David Beer argues in a new

paper that there's just no reason to turn away people who will contribute

significantly to America's economy and society.

In a lot of the fights that we see about immigration, it seems that the Republicans broadly who are up in arms about the border are

genuinely uninterested in engaging on the substantive issue of immigration.

They want to talk about the border.

They don't want to talk about immigrants coming to the United States and contributing

to our economy and having families and being Americans.

To the extent that there is engagement on that subject, a lot of the discussions, a lot of the proposed

solutions are either fanciful, nonsensical, or dismissive of the desires

of employers, desires of individuals want to come to the United States.

Give me a picture.

Just respect to the Green Card program, what does that program look like and what are the

practical realities of how it works for people who would like to get green cards.

Right, so green cards are the only way to obtain naturalization and citizenship.

It's legal, permanent residents in the United States, and this is really

the only permanent legal immigration that we have

have about 35 million people who are trying to obtain a green card through various programs that we've created categories and of

those people about 1 million will obtain actually get the green card that

...