Hello, I'm Dennis Michael Lynch and I thank you for joining me.

For the next few Fridays, and I guess you'll listen to this on Friday or Saturday, Sunday,

I'm going to be putting together a bunch of short podcasts, ranging between 10 to 15 minutes.

Each will have a theme and each will teach a lesson. In this first episode, I talk with

Michael Cutler. He is a former INS agent, basically an immigration guru. INS has sort of changed into ice,

best way of saying it.

And the intent here is so this way you could learn everything you need to know about topics that are very, very important to all U.S. citizens.

In this first episode, Michael Cutler explains the origin of Ellis Island and how it is that the Great Wave

started mass immigration to the United States. It lasts about 10 to 12 minutes. Sit back, enjoy,

and learn. So immigration has gone from this thing of beauty to this thing of ugly. It seems to be the

number one chaotic issue in the country. And so what I want to do is I want to take you back.

I want you to explain what was the great Wave and what was the significance of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty?

Absolutely. Well, let's start with the idea that when America was first founded, we had a huge need for manual labor.

Nothing was automated. Think about it. There were no cars.

There were no tractors. Any work that was done was literally manual labor. Manual comes from

the hands. The hands did the work. You needed a labor force of unskilled and semi-skilled

workers. And we had an insatiable appetite. And especially as we moved from the

East Coast to California, we moved west. Again, as that movement West happened, we needed more people,

more settlers, more construction builders, more factory workers, more farmhands. I mean, think of how

many people were working in the fields.

And so America wanted a massive influx of people, and there's never a shortage of people

who are living in poor conditions in their home country, facing tyranny, facing persecution.

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