Episode 7- Immigration and the Common Bridge

Richard Helppie talks about the absurdity of both party's approach to the immigration problem, and begins to start a conversation about a sensible solution.

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Speaker 1 0:04

[inaudible] .

Speaker 2 0:05

Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard helpy . Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife, Leslie, are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger , and from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast. So welcome , uh , back to , uh , common , uh, bridge with rich helpy . Um , today we're going to talk a little bit about immigration. We just kind of been talking off air about this and it , so almost like we wanted to like, you know , cue up the mix and let it go. So rich, thanks for coming again. And , uh , let's jump right in. Let's start talking about , uh, immigration. What may be some of the, maybe you can frame in your mind frame what the problem seems to be with the folks in the, in the U S on either side , um, uh , about immigration and where we can come together and the common bridge on that.

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Well, you know , Brian, one of the reasons I love coming to these sessions with you is that you just, you know, come up with these really easy questions right off the bat. And I'm a giver. Um, we, we can , uh , uh , talk about that, but listen, this is a great example of how our country has been stalled now for decades on a very solvable problem because of polarization. And there's on one extreme, let's have no borders. Let's not have ice. Let's let everybody that wants to come in, flood in , um, and we'll take care of them once they get here. And then on the other side, it's slow . We're going to lock it down. Nobody's getting in. And in fact, we're going to be even crazier and take people that have been here literally their whole lives and maybe even served in our military. Uh, but because they got here when they were six months old, we're going to kick them out because there are big problem . Yes. I mean, can we agree that both polar extremes are just crazy? Yes . All right . It's kind of the basis for what we do here. So let's look at this, that , um, you know, let's go down either path of no borders at all. Anybody can come in , um, do whatever they want. All right ? And yet, if you look at a recent quotes by some of the, Oh , you share as an example, she said, well, wait a minute, they all can't come here because we have enough of our people to take care of in Los Angeles, including veterans. So not my backyard. And then you go to the other extreme that says, we're going to root out everybody that is here illegally or that we presume is here illegally round them up round. I mean, is it crazy to think we're going to track down 12 or 18 million people and move them out? Um , and then wonder why our roads aren't getting paved and things aren't getting cooked. I mean, both of the polar extremes are absolutely insane. It goes against our American values. It goes against our own laws. And even if it didn't, it goes against common sense. Sure. So let's talk about , um, what does make sense? All right . And data is a really helpful thing here. And our birth rates in the United States , uh, require that we have immigration. All right ? We do not produce enough human beings naturally to fill all of the needs of the country. Okay , let's stipulate that. So we need to have people coming in when you bring data into it. And I was kind of skews off the media cause it doesn't , uh, it is not sexy. It does, right? It's not going to get anybody alarmed. And let's also say, look, every country in the world has limits and controls on who crosses their border. So I live very close to the Canadian border and when I cross the bridge or go through the tunnel, the Canadians want to know who I am, where I'm going, how long I'm going to be there. And of late, they always ask me if I'm doing business on the Canadian side of the border. So something's a foot there. I don't know what it is. Uh , but they are asking whether it, the purpose of the trips , uh , business. And then they ask it again and they ask it a couple ways. So every country in the world limits who crosses their border to protect their borders and who gets to stay. Um , so what do we need to do? And I look at this as a three part solution and I'll outline them here. Uh , first of all , uh , we have to stop illegal entry into the country. All right ? Whether that is people overstaying their visas or whether it's people that are sneaking across the board. Second, we have to have planful immigration, right? Who comes, how do they come? How is it processed legally? Let's, for God's sakes, not put people through the horrors of trying to cross a desert by two legged coyotes. Let's be planful about that, right? And then thirdly, let's address the population that is here illegally and let's figure out what to do about them. Um, the easy part about this solution is that the prior presidential administrations have pretty much solved this problem. Uh, the gang of eight solved this problem , uh, during the Bush. He had a comprehensive plan moving through. Uh , but at the midterm elections , uh , there's a weird combination of the far right in the Republican party said, ah, amnesty is a buzzword and we can stop this. The left wing of the Democrats said, our labor unions don't want , uh, legal immigrants coming in. Uh , and the bill died. Uh, the Obama administration put forward a plan, not dissimilar to the Bush plan , um, yet it was destroyed in the Congress. So same reason , see ? Right. Um, uh, I don't know all the details on , on that one. Um, but I , I'll give credit to both the , uh, uh, Bush 43 and the Obama administration for making a, an attempt at it. Uh, that was policy driven. Uh, and then of course today , um, we have a lot of broken glass and tipped over tables going after this , uh, issue , um, in a ham-handed way. Right. So the , the words invasion and people coming over a great buzzwords for the , uh, right. And the , um, uh, what you say, the family's coming over and deserts on mules and stuff as great buzz feed for the , uh, for the left. And listen, if you listen to one , one news broadcast , um, it is a, it's a horde of , uh, of people that are gonna assault you and rape you. And if you hear from the other side, no, it's all future PhDs . My otherness , neither one's true, but that's where they're at. So , um, you know, let's start with the notion that , uh, we need to control our borders and say, who gets to come in? And if you're not coming in legally , um , you are going to be prosecuted. Um, you can't just come back and try the next day. Um , but that we're going to be like every other country in the world. We're going to be like Canada and we're going to say, you can't cross our border and just come here and live off our stuff. All right , let's start there. Um, when we look at , uh , planful , um , immigration , uh, what we want to do is say, all right, who would really be a benefit to the United States of America? And there is an economic lens you can look through. So we have tax support to many of our great universities and we graduate engineers and computer scientists and PhDs , um, that are here from other countries. And they probably go through their graduation ceremony and we tell them it's like, and most of the proposals and including Mitt Romney when he ran for president said, you know, when someone gets their doctorate, we're going to staple a green card to it. Bingo. Yeah . And so we need to say, look, we're where our economy is going is a knowledge economy , um, that the many of the great entrepreneurs came from , uh , immigrant families. And we , when we get somebody that gets those kinds of qualifications, yeah, we want them to be here, we want to welcome them. It's a , um , a merit based system. Uh , not unlike other periods of immigration where we needed a lot of labor. And so the, the immigrants that came from Europe , uh, they were welcoming to the country because that's what the country needed at that time and celebrated for them . Well actually they have not celebrated quite at first, but in the long run historically that was a good thing. Absolutely. And then another aspect of a planful immigration is a guest worker. Um, we share a border with Mexico. Um, I know many, many Mexican men and women who come to the United States and work , um, and either send money back to their families or go back and live in Mexico and then come back over to work. These are frankly just awesome people. Fantastic. They , and that's just Mexican. That's let alone , uh , Latin acts . You know, the rest of the, we used to be the Hispanic rubber . You're talking about Mexico specifically and I agree. Absolutely agree. Right? And they, they not necessarily w w w they do not necessarily want to be on his path to citizenship that their retirement plans are Mexico. And so we should acknowledge that there is a guest worker and I use Mexico because we do have a different relationship with our Southern border. And we know we have farm workers that come over and why not? Instead of making them crawl across a desert, why not set up immigration centers in Mexico? You can come there, be identified, be processed, and be granted. A guest worker card. Um, identification at the border is quite easy. Um , I know several weeks ago I came back from Europe , um, I got to a border control and the full identification I handed my passport in, I looked at a camera, they said, okay, you're good. They had my face on file. So the technology's there. Let people come in. The other part, by the way, should've mentioned on , um, the illegal part of people crossing the border is most of the time they're coming for jobs. And part of that fix needs to be , uh , penalties if you hire somebody that is here illegally. All right ? You've got to take away the , um, the demand side of that. And I think you can find an agreement on both sides of the Island that it just , um, I think at the root, if at the root at both sides believe that. Yep , I do. And there , there are requirements for , uh , uh, verifying immigration , uh, uh, through the I nine forms and so , sure. Uh , but it doesn't do everything it needs to do in order to make sure that we're not exploiting people , uh, who are vulnerable when they're coming over illegally, which we know is happening beside it and Mississippi a couple of months ago and started to see some of these canneries and , uh, some of these factories that are hiring illegal immigrants at a really cheap rate in their, their, their , uh, level of living is awful. Exactly. And, and , uh, I guest worker program , uh, would address that, that you're here for this period of time or it could be a period of years, period of months, whatever it might be or between this month and that month. And so folks have the full benefit of our , uh, police and fire protection. They have the full benefit of being able to enter into a lease for a decent place to live, that they can work legally. Um, of course they'll pay payroll taxes just like everybody else. You just gotta know who you are. Exactly. It's not, this is not rocket science. Um, and then because of our failure as a country to deal with immigration, we have people that are here illegally. Uh, they may have overstayed their visas, they may have , uh , been born , uh , elsewhere, but come as an infant and never registered. Um , they may have crossed the border illegally. Um, this is , uh , stickier, wicked to be sure. Sure. Especially when you talk about DACA and you would just kind of outlined that group anyway who might've been born here. Yeah. And it's the challenge there is identifying them is that, how do you, how do you know, but they're adjudicating these cases is not difficult. Um , that I think that our, our court system could make a reasonable judgment on each case. And that , um, included in again, the Obama bill and the Bush bill and the gang of eight is that if you're here , um , illegally, we do want you to register and we do want you to go through some processes to either gain a green card, gain temporary status or gain citizenship. Um, and that was , uh, learning English. It was having a clean , um , criminal record. Uh, it was making sure that you're paying your taxes and, and the like, right? Not anything that's too radical and that we can integrate folks into our society, which , which you and I both agree benefits everyone. Absolutely. And , and so , um, again, the tragedy that we're making out of this is again, the failure of our polarized political parties who are spending their time beating on each other. And most of America, I don't think cares anymore. I agree. It's, it's, it's the theater of the absurd. Um, and , and it's being reported by organizations that have abandoned any kind of journalistic principles. Their interest lies in selling advertising for their , for their shows to make it interesting. And , and so, so today we want to look at asking our elected representatives to behave like adults and do the job that we asked them to do. And , uh , I don't recall ever pulling the lever for somebody to say, go stop the other party. Uh, I wanted them to be good stewards of our , uh, national wealth and to come up with good policies that address the issues of the day and make a better country for us. Uh , we need to ask them to do that and we need to put patronizing , uh, groups that are, instead of reporting the news and a sober factual basis are trying to alarm people and vilify. Um, case in point, I was having a discussion with a friend and , uh, he only listened to a couple of news channels and I said, well, what, how are you going to get the other side? He goes, well, they play clips. And I said, alright . I said, here's something you need to do. I said, go find the full , uh , video of what that clip was taken out of it . I think you're going to be surprised or at least you'll be able to make your own judgment at that. Exactly. Yeah. Um , but again, people are being led to conclusions. They're being led to hate the other. They are being led to believe that if they trash a particular elected person, that that is going to make us a better country. And I challenge anybody that has that belief to tell us how. So let's, let's look after the issues of the day. And that's what this podcast is about. Not all the answers certainly, but at least we're going to call out problems. We're going to throw out some ideas. Um, and as I've told many of those in our early audiences, you're going to come and hear things on this podcast. You don't like. You're going to hear things you disagree with. If you want to get something that has an ideological purity either right or left, lots of places you can go, but you're going to come here and hear things you don't like. And I hope you keep coming back and hearing things that you don't like because that's the only way we're going to get to a solution at some point. Rich, healthy . Thank you very much. It's a , it's , it's , it's always entertaining and informative to talk with you and , uh, and we'll see you next time. I look forward to it. Brian, take care.

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