Telling the Migrants' Stories
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker staff writer and the author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis (Penguin Press, 2024), tells the larger story of the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border through the stories of individuals making the journey from Central America -- and talks about the politics of the current crisis, including the bipartisan compromise just negotiated.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Brian Larra Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Hey guess who was working the weekend shift? |
| 0:18.0 | The United States Senate. Did you hear? I guess they did not see their shadows on Friday, so they did not go back into hiding for six more weeks of winter, six more weeks of negotiation on a bill that seemed like it would never come on immigration. |
| 0:33.2 | They actually finalized the long-awaited bipartisan border deal. |
| 0:37.6 | They actually finished it and announced it Sunday afternoon. |
| 0:41.5 | Maybe they wanted to be done on time to watch |
| 0:44.0 | Sizas and Kill Bill at the Grammys. Well maybe not. Well maybe |
| 0:49.3 | Tracy Chapman. Maybe not. Okay Johnny Johnny Mitchell, nothing wrong with that. |
| 0:55.6 | But did they even stay up late enough to see her? |
| 0:58.9 | Did they even know that both sides now is not a song about both sides of the aisle or criticizing both |
| 1:04.7 | sides is them maybe. Anyway the bill is out as described on political it would tighten the standard for migrants to receive asylum, |
| 1:16.7 | automatically shut down the southern border to illegal crossings if migrant encounters |
| 1:21.8 | hit certain daily benchmarks and send billions of dollars to Ukraine, |
| 1:27.0 | Israel, and Taiwan, as well as the border. |
| 1:29.6 | Politico says in addition to mandating a border shutdown at 5,000 daily encounters, Republicans say that's |
| 1:36.8 | too much, the bill would allow the president to invoke that authority at 4,000 per day. |
| 1:42.6 | The bill may or may not have enough votes to pass in the Senate |
| 1:46.6 | with the 60 votes required to stop a filibuster. |
| 1:49.9 | Here's the main Republican negotiator, |
| 1:52.2 | Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, urging his GOP colleagues to vote yes. |
| 1:57.0 | If we have a crisis on our southern border, and we do have a crisis on our southern southern border that is a very real national security problem. |
| 2:05.2 | We should address that and to do what we can to be able to solve that problem, not just hope it gets better or hope that an election |
| 2:11.8 | solves an issue. |
... |
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