Author:
Dr. Andrew Selee is the president of the Migration Policy Institute and the author of Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together.
Conversation:
Total run time: 26:21
2:38 - US and Mexico as highly integrated neighbors
7:26 - The "Mexican Dream": Americans moving to Mexico
9:32 - Current state of immigration, including caravans and the border wall
18:51 - Impact of anti-immigrant rhetoric
21:24 - Mexican president Obrador
23:05 - Best places in Mexico to visit
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Good interview. I liked his objectivity and his obvious lack of partisan slant. So much of the debate on this issue is colored by raw politics and the pursuit of advantage in elections that the interdependence between the nations is often overlooked on on one side...while the seriousness of 150,000 border crossings per month is overlooked on the other.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that stood out to me most in the interview was his citing that it can be up to a four-year wait for a trial to approve or deny asylum claims. How is this acceptable? If we're setting up tent cities all over the southern border to house thousands of people, with families being separated, then it's a national emergency. What's the excuse for not reallocating hundreds of current judges to asylum applications? Or calling back hundreds of retired judges out of retirement just as happens when we're in a war and short on military personnel with specific skill sets and call back retirees? Or recruit thousands of law students on an accelerated timeline to become judges that can get to these asylum claims? I refuse to accept that the current paralysis is the best we can do or the best we can expect.
SOmething has to give here. Either we need to revisit asylum laws ASAP....or we need to vastly expand the legal infrastructure to deal with existing asylum protocols.