In recent memory, Democrats have been considered the pro-immigration party in the United States. In California, the Republican’s shameful trumpeting of Proposition 187, which scapegoated undocumented immigrants, has turned the state solid Blue after alienating an otherwise moderate Hispanic population. Yet both parties have been guilty of using the issue of immigration as a political football to score points and claim the moral high ground against the other — all while the very real humanitarian crisis at the border has gotten worse and worse.
I have frequently lamented the terrible treatment by Republicans of immigrants, in whom conservatives and libertarians should see a natural ally. Immigrants are the ultimate entrepreneurs — risking it all for a better life. They commit less crime than native populations. And above all, they work hard.
Daniel Di Martino — a young economist and Young Voices contributor originally from Venezuela -has made a forceful case for the GOP to become a pro-immigration party. While he was fortunate enough to obtain a scholarship that allowed him to come study in the United States in 2016, most Venezuelans have had nowhere to go. Di Martino notes how the Biden Administration’s bumbling bureaucracy has slowed the processing of visa applications to below even Trump era levels. He joined me to offer an alternative to the partisan bickering that has done nothing to alleviate the plight of immigrants.
Can a more immigrant-friendly GOP break the Democratic monopoly on the immigrant vote, and turn the tide of socialism? Find out on the show of ideas, not attitude.
TRANSCRIPT
Bob Zadek 00:13
This morning I’d like to revisit this subject of immigration.
My views are pretty well known to my audience. I used to favor the policy, “Let them all in.” I came to realize there were impracticalities in that. Now, I will modify my position. Instead of letting them all in, I say, “let as many in as we possibly can without suffering measurable, direct adverse consequences.” Frankly, my friends, we are nowhere near that point in time.
To help us learn about the issues, and what is working and what is not working in our United States immigration policy, I’m delighted to welcome to the show Daniel Di Martino. Daniel is a PhD student studying the economics of immigration. He has acquired enormous amounts of data on the subject of the economic effects of immigration on both the immigrant and on our country. To give him even more impressive creds, Daniel himself is an immigrant. He was born in Venezuela to a middle-class family. When he was born, there was no reason on earth why he wouldn’t live a middle-class or higher life in Venezuela. A reason popped up. The Venezuelan government and its extreme tilt towards socialism.
Daniel and his family settled for a while in one of my very favorite Midwestern states: Indiana. He had the good fortune to study at Purdue University. Purdue is one of my favorite universities, both because of it and also because of the head of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, who I many years ago hoped would be a presidential candidate. I would do all I can to get him elected. He decided, for personal reasons, not to make the run. We all are worse for it.
Daniel has lived under the governance of Mitch Daniels, who I wish was my president, but he was the head of the university where Daniel studies. Daniel brings firsthand knowledge, and incredible thought to the surveys of immigration, and the result of all of his studies. Daniel, I hope I haven’t set the bar too high for you. Now that the audience is on the edge of their seats waiting to hear what you have to say, welcome to the show.
Daniel Di Martino 03:56
Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you so much for the kind words. I really look forward to a good discussion about this very important issue.
What is Broken About Immigration
Bob Zadek 04:05
Daniel, you have said that the immigration system doesn’t work. When you say it isn’t working, what are your standards of measuring that? What is not working? What are the goals of immigration in your opinion?
Daniel Di Martino 04:53
I think that it is not working primarily based on the benefit that Americans should be accruing from immigration.
I don’t think Americans are benefiting as much as they should be from immigration to this country.
That is a fault of the immigration system as it is implemented by the executive branch. It is also not working based on what the legislature of this country intended. Most things in immigration right now are simply different forms of interpretation of the law by the executive branch. A lot of the programs were implemented in ways that they shouldn’t be. For example, the green card system. Not as many immigrants as Congress intended are being admitted. The type of immigrant that is being admitted is not the type of immigrant that Congress intended in the law. It is not working for Americans in the way that the US Congress intended.
The Benefits of Immigration
Bob Zadek 05:54
It seems that we can divide the service of immigration into two subcategories. Benefits to the country and benefits to the immigrant. You could have one without the other or you could have both. You and I both believe we should have both. If you want to take the approach that you just have set forth, that the country isn’t getting the benefit from immigration that it could, what is the benefit of immigration, and how is it measurable? How is our bureaucratic, sluggish, poorly thought out, poorly-administered immigration system depriving us of this benefit? Please help us understand the benefits.
Daniel Di Martino 07:04
In the area of high-skilled immigration, the United States has fallen behind most other developed countries. If you are somebody who has a PhD in a STEM area, or if you are someone who is a corporate executive, or if you’re someone who who has a lot of money who wants to invest and create jobs in the United States, it is so much harder to immigrate to this country then say to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand or any of the other developed countries in the Anglosphere. That has resulted in a loss of jobs for Americans. That has resulted in lower wages for middle-income Americans. That has also resulted in less innovation, less entrepreneurship, and a less dynamic United States.
There is also the culture on the family side of this issue. If it sometimes takes years for you to be able to bring your spouse into this country because of bureaucratic delays, is that really a system that Americans should keep as it is? I don’t think so. I think that Americans have the right to marry whomever they want. Once that happens, that person also has the right to come to this country. That shouldn’t be controversial and it should be a speedy process.
Same with the children of Americans. It is an overly bureaucratic system, and that is hurting Americans and immigrants alike in an unnecessary way. In many ways, the system takes so long to respond to people’s requests. No matter whether their standard should be to approve them or not, that uncertainty for years of waiting for your asylum decision and green card decision or a special ability beside assertion, that uncertainty takes away years of your life productivity. It hurts the economy and it hurts Americans. It costs money to the bureaucracy, and therefore the taxpayer. It’s just nonsensical. This is just common sense. I’m not even starting to talk about how many immigrants to admit or which immigrants, and you’re talking about the debureaucratization that needs to happen.
America benefits from high skilled immigrants on the innovation and the job creation part. It also benefits from other immigrants in the cultural side. America wouldn’t have all the diverse forms of food that it has if it hadn’t been for immigration over the centuries. That’s what makes America special. There is this beautiful quote by George Washington that he wrote in a letter to a Dutch pastor after he arrived in America. This was shortly after the independence of the country and winning the Revolutionary War. He said, “I had always hoped that this country became a safe and agreeable asylum to the persecuted and virtuous part of mankind to whichever nation they might belong.” I thought that that quote really should be the guide of what American immigration policy should be. American immigration policies that seek to meet virtuous people and people who are persecuted by authoritarian governments abroad. That’s what would make America a more virtuous nation and a nation that is less likely to fall into the hands of authoritarianism.
“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong” — George Washington
Bob Zadek 10:33
I couldn’t agree more with what you have just said, including that quote from our first President, George Washington. In giving that quote and describing our country as it should be, that tends to combine two issues into one. Sometimes it’s easier to discuss immigration if you keep the issues separate. Number one, a virtuous country is a country that should offer a safe haven to those who are living without safety. Venezuela, your native country is just one of many examples. That has nothing directly to do with a benefit to our country, however. However, I believe that even if the country doesn’t benefit directly from immigration, we owe it to those in the rest of the world to allow them to have a shot at what I have by the accident of birth. That has nothing to do with benefit to the country.
What you have written about with so much data and such objectivity is the benefit to the country itself of having highly skilled immigrants. I would distinguish those seeking asylum who are not per se highly skilled. A lot of what you have written about, high skilled immigrants. Even the low-skilled immigrants provided an economic benefit.
You have taught me in your writings and in our conversations something that seemed utterly irrational, which is the relationship between the STEM related PhD programs in major American universities and immigrants who make up most of the population of those programs. When you explained it, I had trouble even believing it. I do believe it of course. Please help our friends out there understand how we deal with the subject of highly-skilled, highly motivated, highly intelligent PhD students in our major universities and immigration. Tell us about the PhD programs in this country and its relationship to immigration.
The Current Immigration System Explained
Daniel Di Martino 13:33
Let me start by saying the different ways to immigrate to the United States and how to obtain a green card. The green card gets you on the path to citizenship, not just a regular visa. You can either have a direct family member in the United States. For example, you are the spouse, the minor child, or you are the parent of an American. Then there are very small categories that take over 10 years. If you’re the sibling, for example. I’m not going to count that but that’s how you immigrate through the family system. Two-thirds of all people who come here permanently come through that system. Then, you can either request asylum or you are brought in as a refugee through the UN Refugee system. That is a very few people as well. Then you can also win the lottery, which is called the diversity visa lottery, which is only for people from countries where there are a few immigrants in America. Venezuela was just disqualified from the lottery by the way this year because, according to the government, there are too many Venezuelans already.
Now, that is the only other way left. If you don’t have a family member, win the lottery, or be lucky as a highly-skilled person, it is to come through the employment based green card system.
There are several categories. One of them is if you are a millionaire and you invest over a million dollars and create 10 jobs. If you are a high-skilled entrepreneur or a researcher or have a PhD, you are unlikely to be able to do that. You are either a religious worker and you come as a priest, so that is not really high-skill. One is for agricultural workers as well, the EB-3, so that is for low-skilled immigrants and there’s only 40,000 of them a year. Then there are 80,000 green cards a year. Only 80,000 out of 1 million that are given out every year, which are for people who have college degrees at least at the masters level or equivalent. You can also come either as an extraordinary ability and exceptional ability professor, people who come here with national interest waivers, people who are a Nobel Prize winner, an Olympic medalist, in sports and in fashion, for example.. There are only 80,000 of those people a year that are allowed into this country, for a country of 331 million people. It is truly a mess.
Because of that cap and because of how difficult it is, what happens is that most PhD students in this country come from abroad. Most PhD students in this country are foreigners. They have to go back to their home countries not because they want to but because the US immigration system doesn’t allow them to stay. What is the consequence for day to day Americans? They have lower quality education because there are fewer professors. There is less knowledge in this country. They have fewer physicians because many of these people are physicians. That is a horrible problem in our healthcare system. They also result in less innovation, in less business. That is a bad thing for everybody. It is truly a mess. Imagine, I’m talking about 80,000 a year. What happens if you apply for those categories? How long do they take to get back to you?
If you are sponsored by a company it may take less, but the company has to spend tens of thousands of dollars sponsoring one single immigrant. Small businesses are not allowed to sponsor extraordinary-ability people. The system is biased towards big corporations because of the high cost of entry imposed by the government and by the lawyers because the system is so complex that you have to pay money to lawyers. If you want to sponsor yourself as an immigrant because you think you have a high ability, there are categories in which the government can take time to respond to you for up to two years. Imagine waiting two years for your immigration decision with total uncertainty, not knowing what to do in that time.
What do allied countries do? The United Kingdom takes five business days, Australia takes less than a month. The dependents of the highly skilled immigrants who come there, for example, spouses and children, obtain work authorization automatically. Here, they have to apply for it and wait another year, and then pay thousands of dollars more in fees. It is an inefficient system, like everything else this government does. It is a shame because it’s hurting everyday Americans.
Bob Zadek 18:14
What you have explained to us is that most of the stem PhD students in our country are in the Ph. D. program without cost to them. Isn’t that correct? As a PhD student, you don’t pay tuition as such.
Daniel Di Martino 18:39
That’s right. The university is supposed to pay us a salary. That is all financed through the master’s programs, which are very highly profitable.
Bob Zadek 18:52
What you have just said is the programs that produced the most valuable PhD graduates are free for the student. What percentage of the PhD students in the country are immigrants who are not assured of being able to stay here and what percentage are Americans by birth?
Daniel Di Martino 19:33
Most students in STEM are science, technology, engineering and math PhDs including economics are foreigners. So more than half. In some programs it is more than two-thirds.
Bob Zadek 19:49
The universities are paying PhD students a salary and the study is free, which means the country one way or another is paying. Americans pay indirectly to underwrite the PhD program. We are educating high level highly skilled PhD graduates only so they can then be kicked out of the country with the knowledge they have acquired for free to go back to where they came from unless they can make it through the laborious process of getting a green card. It’s almost impossible to believe.
Daniel Di Martino 20:45
In fact, in 2019, President Trump said that we don’t want to lose our great companies because we have a ridiculous policy that we won’t accept smart people. That is exactly right. We have a ridiculous policy that we won’t accept smart people. It is insane. It is not how other countries do it. That is something that is very easy to fix because you can just establish maximum processing times on the government. The Congress should mandate that. You can also open up and increase the number of green cards.
This problem is if you are from any country other than China and India. This is where it gets messy. The US legal immigration system not only has an overall cap on the number of green cards, it also has a cap on the number of green cards that people from certain countries can receive. If you’re from a highly populated country, then you have the same number of green cards allowed us if you’re from a smaller country. That results in incredible wait times for people from India and China. If today you have a master’s degree and you apply through the EB-2 category for a green card that is highly skilled, and you’re from India, you could face a wait time of 100 years. You will never get a green card.
Bob Zadek 22:26
You made a point a second ago that I do not want to have lost on our listeners. You mentioned that green cards are allocated based upon countries that are in favor or in disfavor. What is the basis for that? How does a country get on the good list or the bad list? It sounds, Daniel, maybe I’m being too harsh, just purely racist. How are the visas allocated among favored and disfavored countries?
Per Country Caps and the Mysterious 80,000
Daniel Di Martino 23:14
There is a cap per country called the “per country caps.” It means that in the employment-based category, no country can receive more than approximately 7% of all green cards. If your country happens to be a large country, like China or India, and Vietnam or Mexico in the family category, then those people are on a separate waitlist. All the people on the waitlist that are for years and years are from India and China. That is a big problem because the the US immigration system created an underclass in this country where there are hundreds of thousands if not over a million people already from India and China who are living and working in the United States under different work visas, H-1B, O visa, and for people who were also Canadian but happened to be born in India. Those people are approved for a green card. They are already approved by the government because there is this arbitrary numerical limit. They have to stay on a visa. If they get fired, they lose their green card under visa even though they have been waiting for 10, 12, 20 years. They will have to wait perhaps their whole lives.
This issue right now is in Congress. Some Republicans are trying to fix it, actually. It is the issue of the children of these people. These people are illegal immigrants and they are approved for a green card, but they will probably never get it. They brought their children when they were one year old, five years old. They are together with them in the green card application but they will also never get the green card. They are on a visa. Even though they lived their whole lives in this country and they entered legally, they will never become Americans because of this. It’s a shame.
Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Young Kim, and others in Congress on the Republican side together with Democrats introduced an act that would fix that for the children, called the Children Act, that will give green cards to these children of highly skilled immigrants. The problem remains. It’s just a symptom of the problem, which is that we are limiting the number of very smart people that come into our country because we want to limit it to 80,000 a year rather than the real number which is market based, which is probably more like 200,000.
Bob Zadek 26:04
The 80,000 number sounds like somebody made a calculation. 80,000 is the sweet spot. That’s the perfect amount for the good of our country forever. 80,000 is probably somewhat arbitrary, the result of a negotiation between staffers on House and Senate Committees negotiating in a vacuum. It is not as if somebody determined 80,000 was perfect. It is totally random or at least it sounds that way to me. We have an artificially low number which cannot be defended, which ought to be much higher for the good of the country. Let’s take the 80,000, increase it to 200,000. Who would be opposed to that one piece of legislation and other pieces of legislation that fix the most egregious problems in our system?
Daniel Di Martino 27:20
That limit was set in 1990. It has not changed in 31 years. Even if that had been determined to be the sweet spot then, it didn’t even grow with the population. It didn’t even grow with the economy. If that had grown, the problem that we have now would probably be very different. Who opposes this? It’s the same reason why there’s so much bureaucracy. Imagine that you agree it’s 80,000, then why should we have two year processing time. Regardless of what you think the number of immigrants should come to the United States, that decision should be made as fast as possible taking care of the security part, but the reason it took two years has nothing to do with security. It has to do with the bureaucracy.
A background check is fast. These people are already better than most of them because they already live in America and got another visa. This is not about security. This is about inefficiency. The reason is that some people want to make it hard for high skilled immigrants to come into the United States because they have this wrong idea that all immigrants take jobs away from Americans. That’s just a total lie that’s been debunked in the economic sciences. It’s not supported by any evidence.
Net Burden versus Net Gain of Immigration: Finding a Balance
Bob Zadek 28:48
We are talking about the highly skilled segment of the immigration population. I don’t remember ever seeing somebody wandering around the streets with a sandwich board which says, “we’ll code for lunch.” It’s not as if the American born PhDs are homeless and are living in an appliance carton somewhere. Whose job could possibly be taken away? Some people rail at the thought of competition, but the word competition in an economic context means competing to give Daniel, you and I, exactly what we want at the lowest possible price. I love cutthroat competition where people are fighting you for the privilege of giving me something really cheap that I want. I love that competition.
Daniel Di Martino 30:45
I view this a little differently. I do think that it is a job of the US government to try to admit people who will be a net benefit to Americans and to take care of specifically lower-income Americans. I will concede the possibility that it is true that some immigrants will be a net burden on the United States if during their lifetimes they make low income and end up becoming citizens and collecting social benefits. They may be an added burden. If you’d want to admit everybody in the world who would be a net burden to the country, we would go bankrupt, basically. So that is not the goal. I’m trying to just give a reasonable solution to something that would be really a free lunch for Americans. There are very few of those in economic policy. That is, to accept people who will never be dependent on the government, and who are high net taxpayers. Not only that, but they create jobs. They are entrepreneurs. They innovate. They give new products, and that’s a good thing for the United States. Those steps of immigration shouldn’t be limited.
We can talk about cultural concerns. It is a different question, and I can address it. The reality is that immigrants from highly skilled professionals don’t take away American jobs people have, especially anti-immigrant advocates who have really maligned the so-called H-1B visa, which is the visa that allows foreign workers to come here if they have a college degree in a specialized occupation. There’s only 85,000 of those. This is a temporary visa. This is not a green card. No legal immigrant can collect welfare. That’s not an argument. They argue that all these companies are basically bringing callers for phone calls. That’s just untrue. They argue that if these immigrants were in here, Americans would take those jobs. That’s totally not founded in reality. First, American companies don’t need to have call centers in America to hire Indians. They go to India. They open the call center there, and they call you from there. That’s ridiculous. That would be too much money to bring somebody in for something they can pay them a lot less in India. So that is false.
Imagine that you are a coder. You talked about coding. Companies increasingly are relying on remote work. There will be a point in the future where they will not even need to bring those immigrants into America. They will be able to hire them from India. That will be a problem. Why? Because if those immigrants were in America, they would be paying taxes in America. They would be contributing to many things in the United States and being highly paid. If they hire them in India, they will be paying taxes to the Indian government. What’s the result of jobs? It’s the same. The company is still hiring the same person. I would rather have an immigrant paying taxes in the United States if it’s a net beneficiary than an immigrant paying taxes abroad and living in another different country.
Then we can talk about the cultural concerns. I think some of those are valid. Some of those are not. High skill immigration is a free lunch because of the entrepreneurship innovation. The fact that it’s what we call in economics, skill complementarity, immigrants who have college degrees when they are together basically. That’s the reason we have in person classes most of the time and not remote classes. You run to each other. You have ideas from running to each other. That’s a positive externality.
Then there’s agglomeration issues. That’s why we live in cities more now than ever, because when you are closer to other people, things are easier to do than if you were farther away. Humans are social animals. We were not made for living away and working remotely. There are so many issues like this. Another issue with high skilled immigration that is brought up usually is that these immigrants lower the wages of high skilled Americans, and that Americans who have a college degree also have a right to make more money.
I’ve heard this argument actually very, very many times. The reality is that they don’t really lower the wages of college graduates because most of the immigrants who come here are not bachelor’s degree immigrants. They’re actually masters and PhDs. I don’t think that these people are concerned about the wages of college professors. I don’t think they’re really concerned about the wages of the best coders in America who are making 200k-500k dollars as financial analysts, but their wages don’t go down because of these positive externalities of innovation. That just makes everybody more productive. In reality, what happens is, and this is something that’s not talked about enough, the wages of blue collar workers go up from high skilled immigration because the more doctors there are, the more financial analysts, the more coders living in this country, there will be more demand for the services for the same number of plumbers, of construction workers, there will be more demand for their services and not more supply for them. The college premium from getting a degree actually goes down. It will be more profitable to go into trades and trade school rather than college if you bring more highly skilled immigrants into this country. That’s something that conservatives should embrace. We want more people in trade school. We want people who are in construction and who are blue collar workers to make more money like they did in the past.
Free Education: A Country to Country Wealth Transfer
Bob Zadek 36:53
When we award PhDs to immigrants who are here on a temporary visa program but do not have green cards with permanent status, where do they go after? What is the effect upon our country and on the country they came from before they studied here? That really amounts to a huge country to country wealth transfer, doesn’t it?
Daniel Di Martino 37:49
That’s right. There’s this really good paper by Dr. Berta Glennon that came out last year at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s an economist who studies the restrictions on H-1B visas. These are temporary visas, not the highly skilled green cards. America has changed the H-1B cap from time to time. That has allowed economists to study the effect on the economy on jobs of firms that used to hire H-1Bs that can’t anymore. The result was that those firms decided to relocate most of them to Canada, China, and a few other countries, especially Canada.
The reason is that if you can hire the workers that you need and who you know who are the best for the job in Toronto, and then just export your things to the United States or come here with just an international intellectual property product, why would you have an office in New York and not in Toronto? In fact, Canada has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States, so it’s also not such a bad deal in taxes. That’s why companies are relocating to Canada. Did you know that Burger King is not an American company anymore? They bought a subsidiary in Canada. Now they’re Canadian. That has to do with taxes. Not so much anymore, but Canada and other countries are really stealing America’s lunch because they make it so much easier to hire international highly skilled entrepreneurs.
Bob Zadek 39:30
Canada is our neighbor with great similarities, but tell us about the effect on China and countries whose political systems seem to be somewhat adverse to ours. They are often looked upon as being our enemy. Tell us about our exporting information through the PhD graduates to China. That has a direct and negative effect upon national security, although I hate that phrase.
Daniel Di Martino 40:13
It’s true. If half of the foreign PhDs in America don’t stay because they are and that’s the actual numbers, approximately half of them don’t stay because of these immigration rules. Most of them are actually from China and they will go back to China. China is America’s number one adversary and enemy. It is really a despicable human rights violator. We shouldn’t want the biggest threat to the United States to have smart people who were educated by the United States paid for by American institutions. It is ridiculous. Some people who would be anti-immigration will just say, “well then just don’t admit Chinese immigrants in the first place to get them educated.” That’s one possible answer to this problem. I think that the best answer is to admit as many smart Chinese people who were not obviously politically involved with the Chinese Communist Party back then and make sure they still stay here along with all the smart people from China. That is the smart strategy. That is what we did with Germany during World War II by the way. That is why we developed the atomic bomb and beat them with Albert Einstein and others. That is what we need to do with China today. It’s an unintelligent race against China.
Immigrants from Authoritarian Countries versus Democratic Countries
Bob Zadek 41:34
When you analyze the behavior of immigrants from very authoritarian countries into the US. How do they assimilate? We’re talking about those from Venezuela, Cuba, and from authoritarian countries in the Far East. How do they fare statistically as citizens when they arrive in the country? I’m asking the question although I know the answer, but I’d like the audience to hear about what our policy should be towards immigrants from those authoritarian countries. Tell us about what that demographic that cohort says as opposed to other immigrants.
Daniel Di Martino 42:37
That’s actually what I’m studying this year — the differences in economic assimilation of immigrants from authoritarian and from democratic countries. It turns out that immigrants from democratic countries fare worse than immigrants from authoritarian countries in America. When I say for the worse, I mean that their wages converge to the wages of American workers at a slower pace than the wages of immigrants from authoritarian countries. That is a puzzling thing. This is all adjusted by education, age, and initial income. You would think that people from democratic countries would do better. It turns out that that’s not the case. It’s immigrants from authoritarian countries.
What I’m trying to find out is whether there is more self selection. It is harder to leave an authoritarian country. Only the most determined people from those countries leave. Also, it could be self-selection from authoritarian countries pushing out the most entrepreneurial and skilled people from their country. They are the risk takers, and they are the ones who leave, and therefore the ones who fare better once they arrive in America. That has immigration policy consequences if that’s true. If that’s true, it means that America should really be trying to admit many more people from authoritarian countries. That’s not happening now. America has not made one Venezuelan refugee in the last 10 years. Not one has come from Venezuela. Some of them have come from Africa, from Asia, and thousands have come from Eastern Europe, from Ukraine and such. None have come from Venezuela, which is the largest refugee crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere and the second largest refugee crisis in the world right now.
It is about to overcome the Syrian refugee crisis, yet America has not brought in one. Only people who arrive here on tourist visas can request asylum later, which is very few. That has to change. We should have a policy like the policy we have with Cuba, which has been very successful, which is the Cuban Adjustment Act. It allows Cubans who have stayed in the United States for one year legally to apply for a green card of their choosing. They don’t have to, but they have to enter legally in some way. That allows for some self selection. Then if they stay one year legally, they can apply for a green card. That has allowed hundreds of thousands of Cubans over the decades to become Americans. Where are Cubans now? One of the most successful economically Hispanic groups. They’re also the most conservative because they know what socialism is like. That’s why I have been pushing for something called the “victims of communism visa” that would allow people from US government designated socialist countries to immigrate to the United States much more easily than it is allowed now.
Hong Kong Immigration Policy
Bob Zadek 45:58
What you’re doing is you are saying we have a Berlin wall in the United States, where we are preventing immigrants from voting with their feet and to demonstrate the failures of socialists and authoritarian regimes in the most clear way possible by having them flow through the Brandenburg Gate. In effect, you’re saying, “Mr. Biden, tear down that wall.” I can just hear you saying that, Daniel. The last issue I’d like to discuss, because it’s currently relevant, is our policy towards Hong Kong immigrants. What should it be and what is it currently?. We are missing a golden opportunity to improve the mix of talent in our country if we were to change our policy towards Hong Kong. Speak for a few minutes as we close about Hong Kong and how it fits into everything you have said.
Daniel Di Martino 47:22
Hong Kong was the freest city on the planet in terms of economics. It was a former British colony before becoming part of China in 1999. After that happened, the Chinese Communist Party has gradually increased its control over the city. Recently, over the past couple of years, they enacted this Chinese national security law that basically criminalizes any speech. There were many protests. People got killed. They got kidnapped. So all these people from Hong Kong want to leave and live in freedom. The United Kingdom decided to grant basically all of the people of Hong Kong the option to immigrate to the United Kingdom. Hundreds of thousands have already exercised that choice. Many people could come to America. I think that America should give them a chance. These are people who love freedom, who know what it is like to lose it just like other people from socialist countries. We could also save lives. It’s not just about the benefits even though I think that the benefit is the most important part for America. It’s also about saving lives. That’s a moral dimension that I think needs to be taken into account in everything.
We could do that, but after we imposed some sanctions on China, we decided to stop treating Hong Kong as a separate country from China because effectively it is not. Now, it doesn’t have trade preferences. It also means that it doesn’t have immigration preferences. Why is that important? Remember when I mentioned earlier on the show that there are country caps for immigrants. Before Hong Kong had a different country cap from China. Now, it is part of China for immigration purposes, which means that it has the same cap as China.
Therefore, immigrants from Hong Kong face wait times that they didn’t face before. We are making it harder for people from Hong Kong to escape. It’s the total opposite of what we should be doing. We should have made it easier for them to come to America, but we made it harder because of a misguided choice. We really need to rethink the immigration system. The problem in our political discussion is that most people don’t know the things that I’m telling you right now. I don’t blame them. Immigration law is, as one of the circuit court judges said a few years ago, the most complex, perhaps only less complex than tax law in this country. It is incredible. We need people who know immigration law to fix it. We need people who want the smartest and best people in the world to be able to come to this country and people who know what freedom is like, people who will support American values. That’s what immigration policy should be about.
Bob Zadek 50:35
Daniel, how can our friends out there follow your thoughts and your writing and your appearances in the media?
Daniel Di Martino 50:45
You can follow me on Twitter @danieldimartino. You can also go on my website, danieldimartino.com, and you will find my contact there. You can subscribe to my newsletter. Most importantly, just read about what I write, which is usually things that are related to Venezuela, economics, and immigration policy.
Bob Zadek 51:10
Daniel, the work you have done is just so informative. You have taught me in the brief time since I started following your work so much that I’m slapping myself in the face. How come I didn’t know that? I’ve learned so much. There’s so much yet to learn about our byzantine bureaucracy policy towards immigrants that is most importantly self destructive both to the immigrants and to the country. Thank you so much, Daniel, for all the work you have done. Good luck on getting your doctorate degree. I look forward to having you back on the show often to check in on immigration policy.
Daniel Di Martino 52:01
Thank you so much, Bob.
Bob Zadek 52:03
Bob Zadek, thanking Daniel for his scholarship, for his work, and for just plain being here. Daniel. Thank you so much. Thank you to my friends for giving me an hour of your time. Please check me out on my podcast. If you like what you hear, please indicate all your suggestions. The more stars the happier I am. Thank you so much and have a good Sunday.
LINKS:
RELATED SHOWS:
- The Immigration Crisis in Context with Alex Nowrasteh, April 22, 2021
- What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns, May 26, 2019
- Alex Nowrasteh on Misconceptions about Open Borders, June 5, 2015
- Alex Nowrasteh: How Prop. 187 Turned California Blue, December 2, 2016
- Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again, December 20, 2015
- ICE in the Age of Trump with Mitch Jeserich, March 30, 2018
- Let Them All In with Alex Nowrasteh, May 5, 2013
