This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 31st, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

The comparisons between new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and our current president are at times

appropriate, but there's one issue where Johnson differs rather strikingly from the US

president. His immigration policy could easily be described as anti-Trump.

Cato's Alex Narasta comments.

Boris Johnson is often compared to Donald Trump, their sort of demeanor and the rough outlines of their looks seem to be somewhat

similar, but on immigration he seems to be fundamentally different than Donald Trump.

That's right Boris Johnson has been a classical liberal on the issue of Donald of

immigration for a very long time. He has supported an amnesty in

the United Kingdom for illegal immigrants that could legalize about half a

million people. He supports expanding legal immigration. He opposed

Theresa May's plan to cut legal immigration of tens of thousands of people per year in the UK and is instead supporting a points-based

system that would remove numerical caps as part of how he supports it no matter what

but as sort of an addendum to any deal or as an add-on to

British policy after they leave the EU. So this word amnesty has taken on sort of a negative connotation in the United States

but that hasn't always been the case. It hasn't always been the case. No we we've had amnesties on lots of different legal areas in the past from from taxes to land use policies and numerous

amnesties on immigration about half a dozen major ones in the 20th century for illegal

immigration, but it sort of became a rallying cry for those opposed to liberalize immigration

beginning around the year 2000 or so until today.

In the United Kingdom, they still do not have that negative association

with the word amnesty over there. It still means, you know, what it technically

means on the books over here, which is a forgiveness for people breaking laws that

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