• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G7SMA7U3FRUKUJ4MTE5CIZ6VEY francis

    sound like Ikea economic at the end of the podcast.

  • Edward Molyneux

    For some reason the podcast isn’t correctly hosted, meaning that it is not downloading on my Instacast feed for iPhone.

  • George Corley

    I strongly agree with Tom on the idea of open borders.  I think a major issue in the debate on immigration is in its unfortunate framing as a criminal problem.  I prefer to think of it as a recordkeeping problem, which is one reason I prefer the term “undocumented immigrant” to “illegal immigrant”.  The fact is, these are people who will come into our country anyway.  Perhaps we are limiting the number with incredibly severe laws, but what those laws create is an enormous shadow population that is just not on the books and therefore can’t be accurately counted.  China has a similar problem with the hukou (??) system, which prevents migrant workers who are working in factories and on construction jobs from recieving social services in the places where they are living.

    Last year, Mexico did part of the reframing that I’d like to see here by passing a new immigration law that de-criminalized undocumented immigration.  This was a major step for Mexico, which until that point actually had severe human rights abuses stemming from even stricter immigration laws than the United States (which, ironically, gave them little moral grounds to negotiate with the US for better immigration laws).  The new law also simplified the visa system to make things easier on immigrants coming in.

    Frankly, I have had friends in college who overstayed visas simply because of delays in getting the paperwork back.  Our immigration regime in the US is far too strict and prone to exclude people far too readily.  It is one of the reasons that we lost the bid for the 2016 Olympics —  the IOC didn’t want to deal with such a crazy immigration system after their experience with China’s similarly difficult system.  I really do feel that immigration is important to America, and our current system is seriously holding us back.