This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, December 13, 2022. I'm Caleb Brown.

Joe Biden hasn't done a great job making good on his campaign promise to liberalize immigration so what's he

done right? Cato's David Beer examines immigration policy in recent years in a new Cato

paper we spoke earlier this month. Let's try to start on a positive note, Dave.

What do you say?

I know you don't get a lot of those positive notes

when we're talking about immigration policy

over the last decade or so in the United States.

Things have been pretty much down and bad.

But what has Joe Biden done well with respect to making for a more coherent, rational, and welcoming immigration system in the United States.

I would say from my perspective that 2022 is a much better year for Joe Biden on immigration than 2021.

2021 was it basically in my opinion a wasted year for the administration you You pretty much couldn't tell the difference

between his administration and the prior one in that year. This year we've seen the consulates start reopening all around the world

processing visas for the first time since the pandemic a majority of them this time last year were still closed or an

emergency only status. As a result of the consulate's opening of course many more

visas are being issued we're about

90% of the level of the pre-pandemic level for temporary visitors and temporary

work visas are even higher than that. And then if you look at

permanent residents coming from abroad, mainly family-sponsored visas, we're

actually above the pre-pandemic level now, where they're issuing more visas on a monthly

basis than what we were seeing in 2019.

So a lot of the things in terms of processing that went way down during the

...