Separating Fact From Politics In The Immigration Debate

Diane Rehm: On My Mind

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🗓️ 26 January 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

A record surge of migrants at the U.S.- Mexico border has pushed politicians on both sides of the aisle to look for ways to ease pressure on what many consider to be an overloaded, out-of-date, and needlessly bureaucratic immigration system.

Yet, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Molly O’Toole says the focus of negotiations misses the mark when it comes to finding real solutions to the current crisis at the border.

“We first need to understand who is coming, why they are coming, and where they are coming from,” she explains, adding that the demographics of the migrants crossing into the United States over the southern border has changed dramatically since the 1990s, but the proposed solutions have not.

In the latest episode of On My Mind, O’Toole outlines what she thinks is missing from the country’s current immigration debate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, the immigration debate, a record surge of migrants prompted calls from the GOP to secure the border.
0:17.0	Republicans in Congress held up military aid to Ukraine until the White House met their demands. But now
0:27.0	Republican leadership is backing away from a deal they previously praised.
0:34.0	Meanwhile, nine blue state governors say their cities have been overwhelmed by migrants,
0:41.0	buzzed in from Texas and Florida.
0:45.0	They're asking the federal government for support.
0:48.8	We're seeing that global refugee crisis start to come to the U.S. southern border really for the first time.
0:54.4	Molly O'Toole is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who wrote about immigration for the
1:01.3	Los Angeles Times. She's currently working on a book about
1:06.0	global migration. She joined me Thursday morning to separate fact from rhetoric when it comes to immigration.
1:17.0	Molly, despite everything we've been through on this immigration issue and Republicans saying this is the best
1:27.8	bill we're going to have yesterday. Mitch McConnell said,
1:33.0	he's not going to bring it to the floor.
1:36.0	What happened?
1:38.0	It's hard to say, but really from the beginning,
1:41.0	despite all the attention given to these negotiations,
1:45.0	despite the urgency presented around these negotiations
1:49.3	from the White House, really the urgency being focused on the fact that the White House itself which they
1:54.9	perhaps regretting tied this supplemental funding on on the border and on immigration
2:02.0	tied to other national security funding that they view as really critical Ukraine
2:07.4	Israel Taiwan there's actually a lot tucked into this supplemental bill and the republicans saying well there's such urgency around
2:13.9	the border this is such an emergency we have to actually do that first despite all
	...

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