Linda Chavez: The Border, the Biden Administration, and Immigration Reform

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2021

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

In recent years, immigration has become a major flashpoint in our politics. Our increasingly rancorous quarrels often serve to obscure rather than clarify policy choices, and make it more difficult to achieve sound policies. As a result, even as attention is given to problems at the border, surprisingly little attention is paid to reforming our broken immigration system. In this Conversation, Linda Chavez, a longtime analyst of immigration and immigration policy, explains that our outdated laws are urgently in need of repair. Chavez points out key areas where the nation as a whole would benefit from new policies, and discusses the obstacles to legislating or implementing them. In particular, President Trump campaigned on immigration restriction and pressed federal agencies to curb immigration in various ways, policies that candidate Biden opposed—but to this point the Biden administration mostly has avoided coming to grips with many aspects of the immigration issue. As a result, important questions like the status of those who were brought to the US as children (DACA), backlogs, delays, unused slots for green cards, problems at the border, and other issues remain unresolved. Chavez outlines an approach to immigration that rejects any idea of open borders but recognizes the value of immigration to the long-term success of the United States—and encourages a streamlining of the immigration process that is beneficial for the economy, good for Americans, and good for immigrants.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend
0:20.6	and colleague and recent conversationalist Linda Chavez. We had a good conversation very
0:27.5	ago, and I think honestly on immigration three years ago, and I think you laid out the
0:32.0	issue in a way that's extremely useful for people, and I recommend that they go back and watch
0:37.4	it or listen to it or read the transcript. But I thought we should update to say at least
0:43.3	our conversation today. On immigration, Linda has had many positions in government and
0:49.1	think tanks and knows this issue particularly well. That was generally wise commentator
0:55.8	on public affairs. Linda senior fellow with the National Immigration Forum and a colleague
1:01.0	of mine at Defending Democracy Together. So Linda, thanks for joining me today. It's great to
1:05.8	be with you. So immigration, you know, when we discussed it three years ago, it was a hot topic,
1:11.2	Donald Trump, he ran out of it, he was governing in certain ways, the Democrats were and others were
1:15.7	fighting back. And then what's happened, I mean, just spent a year since Joe Biden almost exactly
1:21.6	year, right? One of the presidency and the issue, it's disappeared exactly, but it's, I don't
1:26.8	know, it's sort of odd what's happened seems to be in terms of policy and politics. So anyway,
1:30.8	tell us, where are we at immigration? It is very odd. You know, the only time we seem to be
1:36.8	focused on it is when we have, you know, thousands, even tens of thousands of people at our southern
1:42.6	border trying to get in. But on the day to day, once we sort of clear people from under the bridge,
1:49.9	the Haitians were the most recent group that tried to come in back in September. And once,
1:55.2	once we, you know, deal with that immediate problem, we go back to ignoring it. And that means that
2:02.0	nothing changes, nothing gets better. And, you know, we don't deal with the underlying problems,
2:08.0	which is what we need to restructure our immigration laws. And I think politicians on both the left
2:14.9	and the right, wish this issue would just go away. The right, I think many people on the right
	...

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