First things first, what are you doing to me?
I have a family.
I have a life.
This is a very long book.
You don't have to read the notes.
The end notes you can skip.
JON STEWART: Oh, I didn't have to read the whole--
- No, that's fine. - Oh, son of a bitch.
Yeah, yeah.
What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes
of the immigration crisis, the discussions
that have been going on through multiple administrations.
In your mind, what has us trapped in this sort
of Sisyphusian nightmare?
Yeah.
I mean, for years and years, we've
watched kind of in this loop as politicians in Washington say,
we can't pass comprehensive immigration reform because of
the situation at the border.
And yet the situation at the border is in a state of chaos
because we have not passed comprehensive
immigration reform.
And as a result, the asylum system at the Southern border
has borne the brunt of the otherwise failing system.
And so we're stuck in this loop where lawmakers in Washington
point to the border to justify their inaction.
And the border is in the state of chaos
that it is because of inaction in Washington.
Right.
I almost never hear politicians talking about how
many people can you absorb.
I mean, when you tell me there's
going to be 2 million people coming through the Southern
border, and they are just being kind of logged and released,
that sounds utterly chaotic and a recipe for disaster.
But how many people can this country absorb?
What do we need for economic growth?
What is a better system?
I feel like we never talk about that.
We just react to images of chaos.
Absolutely.
I mean, we can't talk about one aspect
of the immigration system without view of the other.
And so if we're only ever talking
about the Southern border, we're
missing the entire kind of picture
that we need to better understand.
But just as an example, you know, right now, the--
and you don't take my word for it.
I mean, the chairman-- JON STEWART: No, I do.
You're-- - You should.
You should go. - You're the only one.
Until you read the footnotes.
You know, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you know,
economists across the country, everyone
has pointed to the fact that immigrant labor has
essentially kept this country's economy afloat
following the COVID years.
And so, you know, this is the engine of growth.
The population is getting older.
JON STEWART: Now, what about that immigrant labor can be
more easily exploited, is paid less,
starts to depress wages for a lot of other people?
Is that not accurate?
I don't-- I don't think it is entirely.
I think it's a much murkier picture.
JON STEWART: So it's somewhat accurate.
Reasonably accurate.
Well, until there are ways of absorbing an immigrant labor
force legally into the country, there
are always going to be opportunities for employers
to exploit the undocumented.
And in the process, to drive down working wages.
And so the idea is there needs to be a thoroughgoing
reform of the system.
And the problem is, of course, that in Washington, that's
been dead on arrival now for decades.
And so we're kind of in this doom loop
where the border is the symbol of everything.
But, obviously, in a kind of commonsensical way,
the only way to approach this broader problem
is to deal with every aspect of the system.
This is where you drop us, like,
a little drop of sunshine.
And you say, but here's the good news.
- Yeah. - Go.
Go.
[LAUGHS] What's in here?
No!
I would say the good news is that from a policy
perspective, at least doing some of the things
to relieve pressure at the Southern border are
no great mystery to lawmakers.
I mean, the problem, of course, is the politics.
But it doesn't require any great feat of the imagination.
JON STEWART: This is not a complexity
beyond the imagination of human beings.
Correct.
And we don't have to restabilize
areas we destabilized to really get a handle on it.
It's about fixing the system of--
of influx.
I mean, I think, overall, the only way
to kind of deal with migration trends in the world
is to understand the forces in a global context.
And that means that the United States
has to be more mindful of the consequences
of its foreign policy.
It has to work with partners in the region,
you know, all very realistic things.
I'm sorry. I blacked out when you said--
you said something about mindful foreign policy.
And--
Yeah, exactly.
--I just started thinking about U2 in the sphere.
I don't know what's going on now.
[LAUGHTER]
But I will say this.
You know, one of the way-- you know,
reforming the asylum system specifically
is a complex task.
And I do think some hard decisions have
to be made about kind of reckoning with the population
of people showing up at the Southern border
and kind of understanding what the limits are of the asylum
system as we know it.
But before we get to a point of having to make these major
sacrifices to a system that I think really should be a core
part of American policy for ethical
reasons and just for straight-ahead
policy reasons--
JON STEWART: Branding for god sakes.
To say nothing else.
There are things that could be done, basic things
like sending more money to the government
to hire more asylum officers, more immigration judges.
These things sound boring.
They sound wonky.
And very specifically, Republicans in Congress
are trying to block these very straight-ahead,
basic measures from taking place,
just basic funding measures.
Because they benefit from increased
chaos at the Southern border. JON STEWART: Right.
And so there are things that could be done that would not--
they're not a silver bullet.
JON STEWART: So until the election--
there is no hope until after the election
to even address any of it.
I mean, it's pretty overwhelming
to see right now Republicans in Congress basically say,
we're not going to touch this.
I mean, they've said it explicitly.
This isn't my interpretation.
JON STEWART: Well, saying this is the greatest danger
to America, you know, maybe ever,
and we're not going to do anything because we
think it's a great issue.
I mean, that's truly devious.
Yeah, well, and the plot of that playing out
was the administration, the Biden administration,
went to Congress and said, we need
more money to increase resources
at the Southern border. And--
JON STEWART: They were slow on the uptake as well.
Absolutely, and there's plenty
that the Biden administration could be faulted for.
They go to Congress.
They ask for money.
That doesn't work because Republicans say, no, no, no.
We want to see further changes to the asylum system
as we know it.
The administration goes to the negotiating table,
makes a series of compromises that Democrats were not
comfortable making years ago.
I mean, pretty significant changes
just in their own orientation in this conversation.
And they finally brokered this deal.
I mean, this isn't just a Democratic effort.
This is a bipartisan group in the Senate doing this.
Yeah.
Before the terms of the deal are even announced,
you have Mitch McConnell saying to his Senate members,
listen, you know, the politics of this--
I think the phrase he used as it was reported was,
"the politics have changed."
And the politics haven't changed were Trump came
out against this negotiation.
JON STEWART: Wow.
And so it was very clear--
I mean, a very clear calculation
was made that we benefit from this situation getting worse.
It's so tough because, you know,
McConnell is usually so idealistic.
It's just hard to see.
I was shocked. I was shocked.
It's shocking because you think,
jeez, self-serving politics, that's not the guy I know.
[LAUGHTER]
Everyone Who is Gone is Here available, Jonathan Blitzer.