Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest hosts Grant Henry and Ben Cunningham welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the potential consequences if the Senate parliamentarian passes Democrat’s large spending bill, the PRO Act, and the unionization of America.
Henry: Crom Carmichael is in the studio with us. How are you doing this morning, sir?
Carmichael: Good morning. I’m doing fine. Thank you.
Henry: (Henry chuckles) That’s good. Now, as you walked in the studio, you did say that you had a little bit of a different take possibly on what’s the Democrats’ hopes sort of plan was with the agenda. What the end goal might be? Where are you coming from in that?
Carmichael: It’s all the other stuff that’s in the bill that has nothing to do with the money that they’re trying to pass as part of reconciliation. And if the Senate parliamentarian goes along with it, then the filibuster will be done away with without doing away with the filibuster.
It’s making millions of illegal immigrants legal. It’s changing the voting laws or is attempting to change the voting laws. It is all about giving Washington and the bureaucrats and the regulators more power.
And the way I look at the division in the country, it’s very similar to France before the French Revolution. If you are connected to the government in France, either part of the government or you benefited from the government or you are in the elite, then there are a set of rules that applied to you that were very different.
And there are actually a set of courts that adjudicated claims against you that were completely different from the courts and the rules that affected 80 percent of the population.
And so when the French Revolution actually got going and the elites who were semi-opposed to what was going on with the government, but then once it got going, they ended up being killed also.
Henry: So what you’re saying, possibly, maybe, is that some of the other things outside of the actual spinning of this bill could create a sense of class or caste system in America?
Carmichael: Well it’s happening now.
Henry: I agree. I hear you.
Carmichael: But the caste system is are you connected or are you part of the government? Are you connected to the government? And, for example, if you’re a government employee and you’re a Republican, where is your money going in terms of political support.
Your labor union dues are going to the labor union. And how that money is spent is not determined by you. It’s determined by the people who are run the unions. And virtually 100 percent of all government employee union does go to the Democrat Party.
Virtually 100 percent. $10 billion dollars every two-year election cycle. When they claim that the NRA is giving $50 million, think about $50 million as a percentage of $10 billion in perspective.
Henry: That’s right. It puts it into perspective.
Carmichael: Truly, it’s truly nothing. And in our media, the people who report the news are highly, highly paid. And they get to keep their jobs if they tell people what they’re told to tell people. And so Democrats can do literally whatever they want to.
Let me just give you an example. There is a son of a very, very powerful Democrat who had absolutely no experience with art, and yet his paintings, which he creates by blowing paint through a straw, sell for half a million dollars.
Henry: Wow. I’m in the wrong industry.
Carmichael: His name is Hunter Biden and they sell to people all over the world. They sell to people in Communist China. They sell to people in the Middle East. Perhaps they sell to billionaires who have investments in green energy and who want billions of dollars of tax credits.
This is well known to the people in the media. Do they report it? No. Because if they did, they would lose their jobs. And if you’re overpaid compared to what you could do otherwise in life, then you’re going to do what you’re told.
So our media do what they’re told. Now a real good example of somebody who did something that was a bit of a surprise. And I’m not also claiming that I follow this lady very much. And in fact, I’m blanking even on her name. And that is the pop star.
Henry: Nicki Minaj.
Carmichael: Nicki Minaj. Yes. She has now come out incredibly strong in favor of free speech. And by the way, she’s done it in a very, very persuasive way. And they don’t know what to do about that.
The left does not know what to do about that, because she has 22 million followers who don’t get that message from all of the places that they get it. And by the way, Twitter is controlled by the left because the billionaires who control Twitter get tremendous tax benefits from the Democrat policies.
Facebook is the same way. Warren Buffett was the first to do it many years ago. He said he should pay more taxes. And what was Obama’s reaction to Warren Buffett saying he should pay more taxes?
He started calling Warren Buffet his friend. (Henry chuckles) So what did that do? It insulated Warren Buffett from a tax by the left. Now, how does Warren Buffett make his money? How does Warren Buffett’s wealth increase?
It increases through the increase in the assets that he owns. Not the money he earns. If Warren Buffett wanted to, and this is true with any of the multi-billionaires, wants to live literally like a king and pay no tax here’s all that Warren Buffett has to do.
He has to sell a billion dollars worth of his stock and give a billion dollars to the charity, the foundation that he controls. Then he gets a billion-dollar tax deduction in the same year that he generates a billion dollars in cash.
And now he has a foundation to support whatever causes that he needs to support so that the government doesn’t start taxing unrealized gains.
And that’s the game that they all play. And the media lets them get away with it because the media is part of the billionaire elite class. They may not be billionaires, but they’re part of the class.
Henry: Let me ask this then. Has the train left the station? Are we too far gone? Is there any getting some of this stuff back? Do we need to look for something entirely different, revolutionary, in a sense, or where are we?
Carmichael: Well, that’s a great question. I don’t know the answer. But I look at Texas, for example, having passed the law that does two things regarding abortion. One is it makes abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
And the second thing is it gives enforcement of that law not to the government but to the citizens, by suing and giving the citizens the right to sue.
And by the way, the left very badly says, wants, and maintains and it may even be a law in some states, that if a police officer does something wrong as a police officer, that they can be personally sued. I think if a police officer does something that’s really bad, frankly, I think they ought to be sued.
But then the question is if schools do a terrible job of teaching students, especially lower-income Black and Hispanic students, should school boards be suable personally or should principals be suable? Should teachers be suable?
One of the big problems we have in this country is in addition to having a divide in terms of whether you’re part of the government or not part of the government, is whether or not you are educated enough to be prosperous or financially independent in a world that requires better education.
And our government-run school educational systems are going backward. But that’s on purpose. That’s on purpose because the most powerful union in the country is the teachers’ union.
The second most powerful union in the country or the postal employees. What two unions do Biden mandates on vaccines don’t apply to? Oh! The teachers’ unions and the postal unions. Who would have thought?
Henry: Meanwhile we have the Biden administration trying to continually push this thing called the ProAct. And to lend credence to what Crom is saying here.
Carmichael: Explain the PRO Act.
Henry: The PRO Act is essentially forced unionization across the United States. It will nullify the right to work states overnight. I just finished reading this book by guiding Michael Lind.
It’s called the New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. And in this book, he discusses how, like in Europe and North America, there’s the sort of populist revolts that have shattered party structures.
And there’s a pushback against technocratic neoliberalism and a squeezing in a consolidation of power. And his solution to all of this is something he calls Democratic pluralism. It sounds nice and flowery and fancy and wonderful.
It’s an idea to push the power back to the people. But what he says Democratic pluralism is, is forced unionization all across the United States for every single industry.
This is not just a mere theory anymore. Just like Crom is saying, they are starting to attach legislation to the high-level think tank stuff that people have been theorizing for a while. There is real-life action on this. We’ll have more of this and more of Crom and Ben right after this break.
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Photo “Crom Carmichael” by Crom Carmichael.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies Mark Krikorian to the newsmaker line to discuss his recent call for the withdrawal of the United States from the decades-old 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol as the southern border leaks more than Latin American refugees.
Leahy: We are joined now on our newsmaker line by our very good friend, Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark, welcome and thank you, thank you.
Thank you for writing your very important article at the National Review Online. Time to Withdraw from the UN Refugee Treaty. Thanks so much. It’s about time, isn’t it?
Krikorian: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because we’re talking about a lot of loopholes in the law, and how are we going to, you know, sort of nip here and tuck there. But you got to go to the root of the problem which is that we are subject, we signed a treaty 70 years ago.
This is a lifetime ago. A UN treaty on refugees. But it was written in – the terms of it are based on post World War II and the beginning of the Cold War conditions. That’s a world that no longer exists. And yet we have signed the treaty.
We signed the sequel to it, but it doesn’t matter. We’re still subject to its terms, and we incorporated them into our law. And the main problem here is not refugees that we go and pick and resettle in the U.S. That’s a problem.
But that’s something that’s up to us. We run refugee resettlement. I know Nashville has a real issue with a lot of refugee settlements, but that’s something that we under our law and under our decision-makers do. And I think we need to change it, but we have the power to do that ourselves.
The real problem with this treaty is that it sets up asylum law as well. Which are illegal immigrants coming into the U.S., sneaking in, overstaying a visa, whatever it is, and then saying, you have to let me stay because of the terms of this refugee treaty.
And that’s what we need to fix because if we don’t, we don’t have control over our own borders. Basically, the rest of our immigration laws are irrelevant. If illegal immigrants can just hop over and say, you have to let me stay, I don’t really care what your immigration law is.
Leahy: This treaty was the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees. President Harry Truman in 1951 did not sign that because he felt it infringed on U.S. sovereignty. This is from your article.
In 1968, Lyndon Johnson reversed course and signed the protocol, and the Senate ratified it, binding the U.S. to its terms. The provisions were formally incorporated into a U.S. statute called the Refugee Act of 1980. But you say in your article, Truman was right not to sign it.
Krikorian: Truman was right because he chose not to sign it at the time – 1951 – because he viewed it as infringements or provisions of it as an infringement on U.S. sovereignty. And we resettled refugees between Truman’s decision and then LBJ’s getting us into that treaty, with Congress, passed legislation.
And we did it on our own decision. What happened in 1968 is we bound ourselves to these asylum provisions. But even then, it didn’t make that much difference because, how many people were sneaking across our borders and then saying political asylum in 1968?
It wasn’t seen as a problem – was only when the Cold War ended and transportation and communications around the world became dirt cheap, relatively speaking, and easy and quick. So now, instead of one ballerina from the Soviet Union defecting – which is what asylum is for, defections.
Now we’ve got 200,000 people a month coming across our Mexican border. Not from Mexico or Central America, but from Uzbekistan, Mauritania, Romania, and you name it. We got people coming from all over the world and saying, oh, I fear return. You have to let me stay and let me stay as a refugee.
And Europe faces the same problem. But you know, that’s their problem. They need to deal with it, too. We need to deal with our own problems. And that is not that we’re never going to give asylum to anybody, but that we need to set asylum rules based on the national interest. Based on what’s good for the United States and not based on some UN treaty.
Leahy: Mark, you reference in your outstanding article at National Review Online, a book written in 2011 by John Fonte called Sovereignty or Submission, which is about the struggle between national sovereignty and global governance. Now, I guess, was prophetic. The past 10 years have not been so great for American sovereignty.
Krikorian: No, definitely not. And this book, Sovereignty or Submission, deals with a whole bunch of things. It’s not about immigration. My point was that this issue of refugees and asylum fit into that broader push by these mainly left-leaning groups that see themselves not as citizens of their country.
Not as American groups or French or German or British organizations. And the people in them don’t think of themselves that way. They think of themselves as citizens of the world and they want there to be more and more rules that countries have to follow, whether their people like it or not.
Globalism is kind of the shorthand we use. This refugee treaty is an important part of that globalism push because the point of it is to limit more and more the control a country has and therefore the people of that country have over their own borders.
Because if there are rules set by the UN about who you can deport, who you are legally required to let stay in your country, even if you didn’t choose it, even if they came against you without your consent, then you progressively lose sovereignty over your own borders.
Leahy: I agree with your suggestion that we withdraw from the UN refugee treaty immediately. Let’s talk about the politics of this. What’s the likelihood that in the current Congress that a proposal like this would have any chance of success?
Krikorian: First of all, it’s the president, whoever the president is can withdraw us from a treaty. The way a treaty works is that the president and the people who work for him sign a treaty, negotiate and sign it, and then the Senate has to ratify it.
Okay it or not. If they do that, it becomes law of the land according to the Constitution. The president can then back out of the treaty on his own. He doesn’t need a vote for that. President Trump, for instance, and I’m pretty sure President Bush got us out of a couple of treaties because all treaties have a provision that says, if you want to get out of it, you have to send us a notice.
And then however much time, in this case, one year later, you’re then free of the treaty. Obviously, (Chuckles) President Biden is not going to be pulling us out of the treaty. So this is something that would have to wait until we had a President who was not just more in touch with his surroundings, but just generally speaking, ideologically and politically, very different.
Maybe, hypothetically, a President DeSantis might do something like that. But even then, it’s the necessary first step. But even then, just getting out of the treaty doesn’t free us from the UN provisions. We have to then change the legislation, the law, and that’s something Congress will have to do.
You’ll have to see what the makeup of Congress is at some point. It’s certainly not going to happen with a Democratic majority. It won’t happen immediately with the Republican majority potentially either, because this is one of the reasons I wrote the article.
And that is that no Republican politicians have submitted changes, proposed changes to the refugee law. So this is a discussion that I’m trying to move along. And this kind of, you’re addressing the issue on your show is one step in that direction.
Leahy: We’re talking with Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark, can you stay with us because when you come back, I’m going to ask the big question about the politics and your outstanding proposal that the United States should withdraw from the United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees. Can you stick with us through the break?
Krikorian: Sure. I’d be happy too. Thank you.
Listen to the first hour here:
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Photo “1951 Refugee Convention” by UNHCR.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed former Tennessee Speaker Beth Harwell in studio to discuss the importance of being proud of America and the economic consequences of illegal immigration.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by the former speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Beth Harwell. Beth, it is really great to have you in studio.
Harwell: Thank you. It’s good to be here. It truly is.
Leahy: When you were a speaker, we just didn’t have the opportunity for an extended conversation because that’s a pretty hectic job from what I can tell.
Harwell: It is. It is. It’s a great job. I enjoyed it tremendously, worked hard at it, and wanted us to have a successful state government and always tried to be a speaker, unlike the one we have at the national level, Nancy Pelosi. Whatever she was doing, I tried to do the opposite. (Laughs)
Leahy: Don’t even get me started on her. Let’s talk a little bit about your career. You were born in Pennsylvania.
Harwell: Correct.
Leahy: Moved here to Nashville to attend David Lipscomb.
Harwell: That’s correct.
Leahy: Did you along the way, when you graduated from Lipscomb, did you get a Ph.D.?
Harwell: I did. From Vandy. And I have taught for a number of years at Belmont University science and government and how that is.
Leahy: What was your Ph.D. in?
Harwell: Political science. And I enjoyed teaching, especially at the college level. Teaching young people about the basics of government and the history of our great nation. And that’s something that’s lacking in our curriculum today.
Leahy: You think? (Laughs) I don’t know if you know this. We do a National Constitution Bee here. We have a little foundation and we do it and the winners get educational scholarships. Claudia Henneberry now is our executive director for that. We’re going to do it again in October in Brentwood.
Harwell: Wonderful.
Leahy: And you’re more than welcome to attend. Maybe we’ll talk you into being a judge.
Harwell: There you go.
Leahy: But what we found is most public schools – is – that I think they’d rather teach Critical Race Theory than the Constitution.
Harwell: Isn’t that sad?
Leahy: It really is sad.
Harwell: We’re taking a generation of young people and teaching them to be embarrassed that they’re Americans instead of proud of being American.
Everybody knows the country has its flaws, but there’s no other country in the world that I see people fleeing, trying to get into like they are the United States.
Leahy: Well, illegals, according to the Tucker Carlson report, last night, we’ve had one million illegal aliens cross the border into the United States since January, and since the legal but not legitimate current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue took office.
Harwell: I saw that segment last night.
Leahy: Did you see that segment?
Harwell: Yes. And I thought to myself, he’s spot-on on two things. Number one, what they find administrations doing is illegal.
They don’t have the authority to do what they’re doing. And two, when you don’t have your borders, you don’t have a country. And we’re losing our borders. It’s scary.
Leahy: The specifics that Tucker Carlson uncovered and reported since, is that in January of this year, the U.S. Air Force, the military from Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas has been flying unvaccinated illegal aliens who haven’t been tested for COVID into the heartland of America.
Some of them apparently have been flown in the dark of night into Tennessee, among other places.
Harwell: And they have the footage of it. And we know that it’s happening. What we all have to be aware of is citizens, and no one wants to be cruel, but on the other hand, this is a tremendous burden on our economy. These people come here and they have to be educated. They don’t have work. You’ve got to provide health care. It is a true burden on the state government as well as the federal government. But we can’t afford it. We simply can’t.
Leahy: And while you were a speaker back in 2015, I believe the House and the Senate passed a resolution basically suing the federal government on Tenth Amendment grounds on the NFIB Sebelius case that said it was taking from the citizens of Tennessee to force them to pay for all these benefits for illegal aliens placed here, though not illegally. But through the refugee program that they didn’t want.
Harwell: Right. I absolutely believe that was a valid lawsuit. The Tenth Amendment reserves the rights to the states, not the federal government. And we’ve got this reverse. We’ve allowed the federal government to get way too powerful. And that was never the intention of our founding fathers.
Leahy: Federal courts threw the case out. And I think it was because they said that the Tennessee General Assembly didn’t have standing because the governor at first was Governor Bill Haslam. And then it was Governor Bill Lee who refused to sign on to the lawsuit. Do I have that right?
Harwell: I believe that is correct. And that was a disappointment because I really did think the legislature had taken the right step.
Leahy: Did you have a conversation with then-Governor Haslam and say, you know, you ought to sign on to this. How did he respond?
Harwell: He’s a wonderful man. He was a very good governor for our state. He just philosophically disagreed with us on this. As did Governor Lee. I mean, Governor Lee could have had the opportunity under President Trump to get us out of it as well. And he didn’t.
Leahy: Yeah. That really rankles me, by the way. It was a big mistake on their part. That was a very significant thing that you did there as speaker. When were you first elected to the Tennessee House Representatives?
Harwell: 1988. So a long time. I was speaker for eight years.
Leahy: You were a speaker from 2011-2019. That’s a long time as speaker.
Harwell: Right. It’s a political position, and it’s a tough territory. The House is unique. It’s a rowdy body. But again, I wouldn’t have done anything else. I enjoyed it tremendously.
Leahy: And the House seems to be more active and the Senate is sort of laid back and staid, shall we say. (Laughter)
Harwell: Right.
Listen to the second hour here:
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Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Art Del Cueto to the newsmakers line to discuss growing up on the border and becoming part of the National Border Patrol.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmakers line now by Art Del Cueto. Art is the vice president, spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council.
That’s a Labor Union establishment 1967 that represents agents and support staff of the United States Border Patrol. Good morning Art.
Del Cueto: Good morning. Thank you for having me on.
Leahy: My cousin was a member of the National Border Patrol Council. Worked on the Border Patrol for many, many years, just retired, I think about 10, 12 years ago.
He tells me he’s glad he retired. Is that the general attitude now of National Border Patrol Council members?
Del Cueto: Well no, unfortunately, a lot of the agents out there have been saying they’re just waiting for their eligibility to retire and get out because they’re just tired of the dog and pony show.
They’re not happy with the way things are going. They’re not happy with the current administration. They’re not happy with the type of work that they’re having to perform.
A lot of the men and women joined to protect our nation’s borders. And that’s still the mission, however, more and more so it’s a standing joke.
But it’s not so funny, obviously, is that they’ve become more of a welcoming committee for individuals that are breaking the law and coming into the United States.
And a lot of it is due in part because this administration has changed the policies from the last administration and is not really enforcing the laws that they should be enforcing.
Leahy: Yeah, that comes across loud and clear. What’s that doing to morale and the National Board of Patrol Council, Art?
Del Cueto: Well, I mean, obviously, that lowers the morale of the agents that are out there working. When you get up in the morning and you’re going out there and you’re seeing yourself capturing and arresting numerous groups only to turn around and release them, turn them out the door, it’s upsetting.
And I tell you what’s worse, I think when you start looking at what the current administration is doing. You have individuals that cross them to the United States legally each and every day.
They were coming through our ports of entry where they come from, Mexico. They do purchases in the United States, they help the economy in the United States.
And then they go back home at the end of the day. Well, because of COVID and everything that’s been happening, the ports of entries have been closed.
So they’re not allowing the Mexican citizens that are coming in legally to come in. They’re saying you can’t come in because of COVID, yet you’re having all these Central Americans come in illegally and they’re being released in the United States.
So realistically, what this administration is doing is rewarding criminals, and it’s putting the individuals that are doing things the right way on the back burner.
Leahy: Yes. That sounds more than a little bit crazy. Art, tell us, do you work shifts on the border yourself these days?
Del Cueto: Yes. I’m still active, but because I’m the spokesman for the National Board of Council when I do these shows or when I do a lot of public speaking, and in reality, I also have my own podcast available through iHeart radio.
I do those on behalf of the National Border Patrol Council. I don’t do it on behalf of the agency, so I don’t represent the agency, even though I’m still active out there working in the field.
Leahy: Got it. How did you get involved in this? Where are you from originally yourself?
Del Cueto: So that’s a great question. My family is from Mexico, so I derived citizenship through my family. My family immigrated to the United States legally.
And I grew up on the border. I always tell people this because I see a lot of individuals that speak about the issues on the border.
Sometimes we even see former chiefs that spent a small amount of time within the agency, and all of a sudden, they’re being touted as experts.
I was born on the border. I grew up on the border. I was raised on the border. I’ve lived on the border my entire life. I continue to live on the border, and I work on the border.
Just growing up seeing it each and every day, it was the only route that I really was going to take by getting involved with the Border Patrol.
And in an essence, I was just thinking about it this weekend. It’s funny, but how many of us actually get to grow up and work alongside our heroes? And I’m very blessed to have had that opportunity.
Leahy: Where were you born? And where do you currently live?
Del Cueto: I live down in Tucson. I was raised in Douglas, Arizona, which is a small little town right on the border. And I was just born on the other side of Douglas on the Mexican side.
Leahy: And so did you go through a citizenship process yourself?
Del Cueto: No. I obtained citizenship through my parents. I was born outside the country to US citizen parents.
Leahy: Good. We got all the details on that.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies Mark Krikorian to the newsmakers line to discuss the repealed immigration policies of Trump that has lead to the Biden administration’s inability to control the border surge.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by our good friend, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian. Mark, what a terrific piece you had on Thursday in the National Review about Vice President Kamala Harris’s, your words, layover in El Paso.
I wanna take this sentence from your article and just get you to elaborate on this. ‘As hard as it is to believe the Biden-Harris administration was taken by surprise by the border surge that it caused.’ Can you tell us more about that?
Krikorian: Yes. The administration probably knew that there was going to be some increase at the border when they undid all of the things Trump had done which successfully stabilized the border.
I mean, Trump didn’t solve everything but definitely had stabilized the situation. They basically expected a little bit of a surge, but Mexico would help them suppress it, and people would listen to their pleas not to come.
Remember, the Vice President went down there and said, do not come, do not come. They’re kind of like Jimmy Carter back in 1980. I know it’s a long time ago, but Jimmy Carter basically did the same thing with regard to Cuba.
He said, anybody who gets out of Cuba, we will welcome them with open arms and open hearts. And Castro looked up and said, hey, that’s a great idea. So he emptied his jails. 120,000 people streamed out of Cuba until Jimmy Carter was like, oh jeez, that’s not what I meant.
(Leahy laughs) But he was able to shut it down because he hadn’t run on immigration. He wasn’t boxed in politically. This administration has run as the anti-Trump. And since immigration was one of Trump’s top things, they had to undo everything Trump did, creating this disaster that they really don’t have any good idea about how to fix.
Leahy: Yes. It seems very obvious they don’t have any good idea how to fix it. Crom Carmichael is our all-star panelist in Studio. Chrome has a question for you, Mark.
Carmichael: Well, if, Mark, if they do want to fix it, then the obvious answer is to return to Trump’s policies.
Krikorian: Of course. But my point is they can’t do that just psychologically or politically. Right? It’s not going to happen.
Carmichael: I think the obvious conclusion is they don’t want to fix it because there’s an obvious answer on how to fix it. I guess my question to you is that they’re not going to return to the policies of Trump. And so the surge is going to actually get worse. Would you agree?
Krikorian: Yeah, sure. There’s no question. In the summer, it may actually dip. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. The numbers may actually go down a little bit because it is unbelievably hot down there this time of year.
And frankly, if you are planning on sneaking into the U.S., not just Central Americans, but now we’re getting people from Romania, Uzbekistan, India, and everywhere trying to get in on the action here, some of them may figure, well, let’s cool our heels for a couple of months somewhere where there’s air conditioning, and then we’ll come.
So the numbers could go down a little. But even if they do, they’re just going to go right back up in the fall. Not to get too long into it but this is not some long historical thing we always have to deal with.
This surge is the result of specific loopholes in the law that was passed in 2008 and 2009 and other changes since then. So this is not something we just have to deal with in perpetuity. Congress and the President over several administrations created this problem.
Trump stabilized it again. That’s what I mean by he didn’t fix the loopholes, but he did stabilize it. Biden took something that was fixed and broke it. And it’s not going away until we fix those loopholes and change the things that make it attractive to sneak in. Because the odds are good that you’ll just be let go.
Leahy: What are the major loopholes and what are the chances of fixing them legislatively?
Krikorian: The chances, I can tell you now are zero until there’s a change in Congress and the White House. But not to get too wonky, there’s a provision that says so-called unaccompanied minors, and we kind of take your word for it that you’re under 18 can’t just be returned home.
They have to be given hearings. They have to be delivered into shelters and delivered to their parents who are here illegally often paying to smuggle them. That has to be changed. There’s a court ruling that Congress can overrule that says minors, even if they’re with their parents, can’t be held in immigration detention for more than three weeks.
But they have to be let go, including the parents. There’s more to it than that. But that’s the kind of thing that we have basically created the situation in a time when there weren’t a lot of kids or families coming over.
People in Congress figured out what’s the harm? Make us feel good. Virtue signaling, and it won’t really have any consequences. Well, within a few years, the problem exploded because these things started really in 2008, and 2009 is when these were passed.
It blew up under Obama in 2014. It’s just been getting these ups and downs, but it’s just been getting worse ever since.
Leahy: What you take on the job, direct Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has been doing?
Krikorian: Terrible but terrible because that’s what he was hired to do. In other words, he’s doing the job that this administration hired him to do, which is, first of all, not to enforce immigration law.
ICE, which is under his purview, is basically not permitted to do immigration enforcement except in the most extreme cases of terrorists and spies. And that sort of thing. Other than that, illegal immigrants have a free pass.
Leahy: Let me ask you this about Mayorkas. Is his failure to enforce our immigration laws an impeachable offense?
Krikorian: That’s kind of up to the Senate. They could impeach him. The House in the Senate, and frankly, they probably should, but they shouldn’t have approved him in the first place. And anybody who replaces them is just going to do the same thing because this is what the President promised to do.
This is a political problem in the sense that we’ve got to get rid of or change who’s in the White House and then change who’s in the majority of Congress before any of this can change.
Carmichael: Mark, is Mayorkas not upholding the law, or is he exploiting loopholes? And the reason I’m asking the question is in a new administration, once he is out of office, could he be indicted for not upholding his oath of office?
Krikorian: I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t think he’s upholding his oath of office, but I don’t think the president’s upholding his oath of office. The Constitution requires the executive to faithfully execute the laws, and that’s not what Biden is doing.
It’s not what Mayorkas is doing at Biden’s instruction. So, I mean, potentially, I guess. But I don’t like the criminalization of politics. I think what we need to do, and this is me talking as a citizen, CIS doesn’t get involved in elections, but as a citizen, the solution is to get rid of these guys from office and put in somebody who actually is going to do what’s necessary.
Carmichael: Here is I guess question, and you’re hitting on an excellent I’m asking you something in your responses philosophical in nature, which is appropriate. But if Republicans were to retake the House and have a majority in the Senate, but not 60 and have the presidency, you can’t fix immigration legislation with less than 60 votes.
Krikorian: You can’t fix everything, obviously, because of the filibuster. But the filibuster is protecting us this time. Do you know what I mean? There is a great reason for it. But there’s a lot of smaller things that can be changed that some of them the Democrats may go along with.
You put package deals together. Okay, they get some of this. We get these four immigration loopholes fixed. It’s not impossible. The first thing is, you need to get control of the majorities in Congress and get somebody in the White House.
Leahy: Last question. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the chances of fixing any of this over the next three and a half years?
Krikorian: Oh yeah. I mean, pessimistic isn’t a word. There is zero possibility of any of this getting fixed.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
