Biden's Immigration Mess
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pro-immigration advocates had high hopes when the Biden administration came to office that some of the harsher policies imposed by Trump would ease. Instead, immigration policy has been a mess inside the White House. The move to rescind Title 42 – a health policy that the Trump administration used to restrict migration at the U.S.-Mexico border is now further dividing Democrats.
Guest: Tyler Moran, former deputy assistant to President Biden and senior advisor for migration. Moran co-founded the Immigration Hub and has 20 years of experience developing and implementing immigration policy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tyler Moran can describe President Trump's immigration policies in one word, cruel. |
| 0:10.9 | We had four years of President Trump and that administration put in place approximately 1,000 policies that were all intended to gut the immigration system. |
| 0:25.1 | Tyler has spent the last 25 years working on immigration, both in and out of government. |
| 0:30.9 | When she joined the Biden administration in 2021, she was on a mission to undo what Trump's |
| 0:36.7 | White House had done. |
| 0:40.9 | And President Biden ran on restoring order and fairness to the immigration system. |
| 0:47.7 | And I volunteered on the transition team, and it was exciting to think about things like |
| 0:53.1 | turning back the Muslim and the refugee |
| 0:56.1 | ban, reuniting children, sending a bill to Congress that reformed our immigration system |
| 1:02.3 | once and for all. There have been some genuine accomplishments on President Biden's |
| 1:08.2 | watch, but the fundamental problems haven't been fixed. |
| 1:12.3 | Right now, attempted crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border are at their highest level in decades. |
| 1:18.2 | There are also reports of infighting within the administration about the proper response, |
| 1:23.5 | what to do, how fast to do it, what the politics look like. |
| 1:28.0 | Even Democrats have lately criticized the president's approach. |
| 1:32.3 | Tyler Moran left the White House earlier this year, but she hasn't stopped looking for solutions. |
| 1:38.3 | Immigration is this big, huge, complicated problem that never seems to get solved and is always full of frustrations. |
| 1:46.8 | I wonder why you keep working at it for year after year. |
| 1:52.8 | Because we have to. |
| 1:56.1 | I believe that we have to solve the system. |
| 1:59.0 | I believe it's the right thing to do. |
| 2:01.4 | I hope we look back on this time and feel shame about the way we are treating people in this country that simply are coming to seek a better life. |
... |
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