Checks and Balance: No vacancy
Checks and Balance from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Don’t come over” is Joe Biden’s message to migrants. Rumours that it’s easier to enter the United States since he became president are fuelling a humanitarian crisis at the southern border. The president needs a firmer grip on the issue, but his favoured centre ground is barren. How should he respond?
The Economist’s Alexandra Suich Bass reports from South Texas, we look back on Ronald Reagan’s big immigration reform, and speak to Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum.
John Prideaux, our US editor, hosts with New York bureau chief Charlotte Howard, and Jon Fasman, US digital editor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns, now picture you, zooming past |
| 0:12.4 | it all, light and breezy, ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic. |
| 0:21.0 | Make your train journey via vantewescoast.co.uk, a vantewescoast, feel good travel. |
| 0:34.5 | To her supporters, Ilan Omar represents the American dream. |
| 0:38.7 | Born in Somalia, her family fled to a refugee camp in neighbouring Kenya before securing |
| 0:43.1 | asylum in America when she was 12. |
| 0:46.6 | Two years ago, she arrived in Congress. |
| 0:50.5 | Here in Minnesota, we don't only welcome immigrants, we send them to Washington, she said |
| 0:55.1 | in her victory speech in Minneapolis. |
| 0:58.0 | Congresswoman Omar was the first member to wear a hijab, overturning a ban on headwear |
| 1:02.1 | in the chamber as she was sworn in. |
| 1:05.1 | To Donald Trump and his loyalists, Omar herself and the policy she supports represent the |
| 1:10.5 | risk of immigration run a muck. |
| 1:13.6 | Omar wants to scrap the immigration enforcement agency. |
| 1:16.9 | She's also been accused of using anti-Semitic tropes. |
| 1:21.0 | In one of the ugliest moments of a presidency filled with them, Trump suggested that she |
| 1:25.4 | go back to Somalia. |
| 1:28.3 | Was exactly the kind of innovating social media fight Joe Biden hopes to banish from |
| 1:32.4 | Washington to focus on practical solutions that can win broad support. |
| 1:37.0 | But he now faces a very real emergency on the Mexican border. |
| 1:41.5 | Congresswoman Omar is among those urging him to do more to transform America's immigration |
| 1:45.9 | system. |
... |
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