Fixing Immigration

Latino USA

Futuro Media and PRX

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week Latino USA brings you an episode of Future Hindsight.

Host Mila Atmos is joined by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the Policy Director at the American Immigration Council, a non-profit organization that strives to strengthen the United States by shaping immigration policies and practices. They discuss how out-of-date immigration laws are and why the only cure is comprehensive immigration reform from Congress.

U.S. immigration laws have not changed since the 1990s. The current border enforcement and asylum system dates back to 1996, and in fact, one of the reasons that asylum seekers are living in shelters is because Congress decided in 1996 to make it illegal for them to get a work permit until six months after they apply for asylum. The asylum system is severely underfunded and is a major reason for processing delays. In addition, there are more than 4 million people who have already been approved for visas but the wait time to get the legal status is decades long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, Latino USA listener. It's Maria Inogosa. I know that you're interested in the issue of immigration because you want to cut through and know what's real. So we're going to share an episode with you today from our colleagues at Future Hindsight.
0:22.7	It's going to give you the full historical and complicated picture of our broken U.S.
0:29.2	immigration system, which, by the way, has not been updated since the 1990s.
0:34.4	Host Mila Atmos is joined by Aaron Reischlin Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, which is a nonprofit organization that looks to strengthen our country by shaping immigration policies and practices.
0:48.6	They're going to talk about why they see the only cure to the challenge around immigration is comprehensive immigration reform
0:56.6	coming from Congress. So here you go. Take a listen.
1:04.6	Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy
1:11.5	and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
1:21.0	Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we're here to bring you an independent perspective
1:29.9	about border rhetoric, getting the full attention of the media.
1:33.2	What's actually going on?
1:34.7	To help us better understand American immigration policy and the kind of comprehensive reform
1:40.3	that would be necessary to render a functional system, we're joined by Aaron Reichlin
1:45.0	Melnick.
1:46.0	He's the policy director at the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit organization that
1:51.5	strives to strengthen the United States by shaping immigration policies and practices,
1:57.0	grounded in evidence, compassion, justice, and fairness.
2:00.0	Welcome, Aaron. Thank you for joining us.
2:02.7	Thank you for having me.
2:05.7	We all know that immigration in the U.S. is deeply dysfunctional, and we also know that there are no easy answers.
2:12.4	In fact, it's so complex that it's safe to say that most Americans really don't have a firm grasp on what's happening.
2:19.4	So justice at the stage, how would you describe the state of play when it comes to immigration?
	...

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