Podcast Transcript: Unpacking the Beast That is Immigration in America

On July 18, AFPC-USA sat down with Cecilia Menjívar, a professor of sociology at UCLA who is the Dorothy L. Meier chair in social equities, as well as Hiroshi Motomura, the Susan Westerberg Preger distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA's Law School.

The topic was immigration, the biggest topic in the United States at the moment amid the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown; senior policy adviser and immigration architect Stephen Miller has vowed that the administration will deport 3,000 people per day. Last month, President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles despite the protests of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. The passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” recently rendered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country. The administration also recently handed over the healthcare data of 79 million Medicaid enrollees to track down illegal immigrants—an action that has been decried by privacy advocates.

This interview was conducted by Ankita M. Kumar, a journalist who was awarded a 2023 Professional Excellence Award by AFPC-USA. She is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco.

AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this podcast episode. The link to the learning takeaways for this episode can be found HERE.

Ankita Kumar:  Hello and welcome to the Foreign Press Podcast. I'm Ankita Kumar. This podcast is an educational program brought to you by the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States. That's AFPC-USA. 

AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode. Last month, protests began in the city of Los Angeles, after immigration and customs enforcement agents raided several locations in LA to arrest individuals believed to be staying illegally in the United States. Things escalated quickly as the National Guard, followed by 700 Marines, were deployed in LA. On June 8, thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest President Trump's deployment of the guard, blocking a major freeway as law enforcement used tear gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs to control the crowd, according to a report by NPR. Things have eased a bit since then, but continue to stay tense. Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it's ending the deployment of 2000 National Guard troops in LA accounting for nearly half of the soldiers sent to LA to deal with the protests. 

The protests in LA point to a wider issue with immigration in the United States. Four in 10 voters approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. In September this year, the Department of Homeland Security said it'll end temporary protections for more than 50,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans who have lived legally in the US for decades. According to the AP, ICE is going to be handed the personal data of 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the US. Children born today in the US to immigrants on visas or those without paperwork now stare at a future of potentially not being granted birth right citizenship. Why is immigration such a complicated issue in the US? Can immigrants see themselves building a new life here? Also, how did we get here? Stay tuned to know more. 

In today's podcast, we are joined by Cecilia Menjívar, distinguished professor of Sociology at the University of California Los Angeles and the Dorothy L. Meier chair in social equities. Cecilia specializes in immigration, gender, family dynamics and broad conceptualizations of violence. She focuses on two main areas – the impacts of the immigration regime and laws on immigrants and the effects of living in the context of multi-sided violence on individuals, especially women.

She has written extensively about the impacts of immigration laws on immigrant families, including the award-winning book, Fragmented Ties, Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America based on ethnographic field work that she conducted with El Salvadorans in San Francisco, and also she's written the book Immigrant Families.

We are now also joined by Hiroshi Motomura, the Susan Westerberg Preger distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA's Law School. Hiroshi is a scholar of immigration and citizenship and has worked on a number of policy initiatives as part of a team that has worked with the federal government. He has written several books on immigration, including the new book, Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy. Hiroshi has also written a book on irregular migration called Immigration Outside the Law. 

It's my honor to moderate this panel discussion with my two distinguished guests. Welcome, Cecilia and Hiroshi. It's my pleasure to have you here. Before we begin, I would like to thank all the foreign correspondents listening in today. If you're someone who wants to know more about US immigration policies, then this podcast is definitely for you. 

Ankita Kumar: So, Hiroshi, I would like to start off with a question for you. Why do you think things escalated in LA last month, the way they did?

Hiroshi Motomura: Well, first of all, thank you for having us on this day, and I'm looking forward to the questions and conversation. So the question of how things escalate in LA and why that happened, I think that the best way to approach that is to put this into a political context. President Trump has been very vocal about a campaign of what he calls mass deportations.

If we look more closely about what that would actually involve, one of the things that if you were, I suppose in his position, in trying to raise the number of people being deported – one of the things you'd really want to do – is you would want to enlist the help or even demand the help of state and local police. And one of the big obstacles to this and this has been true for quite some time, predating Trump – is the idea of sanctuary. And a number of cities in the United States have so-called sanctuary policies. And so Los Angeles thinks of itself in various ways as a sanctuary city. And so I think LA becomes a natural target to try to go after state and local police.

Another way I think that the administration can try to up the mass deportation numbers is to do what the administrations are very explicit about – and that is to get people to leave. To create fear in communities, just to make people afraid. And if the federal government won't arrest them, it's gonna be a local police, [if] it's not any police, then people are just gonna leave because they're scared.

And so in that context with a number of undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, I suppose it's – it doesn't surprise me that he would target Los Angeles. Not just for those reasons, but also to amplify the narrative that I think has been central to the administration's message, which is that immigration is a matter of being invaded. And so LA becomes a target that I think from a – if I can be objective about this – from an overall strategy point of view, it doesn't surprise me. 

AK: Thank you so much, Hiroshi, and I do wanna talk about sanctuary laws and I'll get to that later, but before we head in that direction – Cecilia, my next question's for you – I want to get a historical understanding of the US and its relationship with immigration because, you know, in - back in the 80s and 90s it was seen as a safe haven for immigrants across the world. Do you think anything went wrong along the way? Or is this like a cycle that keeps happening? Like we keep coming back to this? 

Cecilia Menjívar: Uh, yes. Well, first of all, thank you for having us on this podcast. I look forward to the rest of the conversation. And yes – this is – if we put what's happening today in a broader historical perspective, we can see that this seeming contradiction between this country being a country of immigrants, of offering opportunity to immigrants. At the same time, seeking to narrow the path for certain immigrants [rather] than for others has been the story of this country since the beginning. So there, over time, there have been efforts to exclude, deport, make things a little more difficult… for immigrants to live here. So, in the 80s and 90s, it might have looked easier to come, to be an immigrant here, but there were still, many laws in place that guided people in different pathways and exclusionary laws too that did not allow certain impact groups to migrate as easily as others.

So there's always been, since the foundation of this country, there's always been that contradiction, seeming contradiction between the country of immigrants that we hear about. For instance, historically, we've had laws that have excluded specifically on race, [like] the Chinese Exclusion Act at the end of the 19th century and so on. More recently after the Civil Rights Movement, with the advent of more consciousness about racial exclusion. Race has not been mentioned in immigration law, but there has been another current that has contributed to excluding immigrants in very similar ways and that is through the criminalization of immigration and of immigrants.

So, that has been in place since a long time, but especially since the passing of the 1996 Immigration Act that expanded the basis for the criminalization of immigrants. So immigrants are no longer excluded based on race, but they are criminalized and excluded based on certain behaviors or practices or minor violations that can contribute to exclude them. So this is absolutely a cyclical aspect of probably the nation as it sees itself as a nation of immigrants. It has this underlying current of also creating infrastructures that lead to exclusion, but also to make pathways to permanent residents and to be able to settle here, more difficult for certain groups than for others.

HM: Just if I could add a couple of really small details on this, but I think it's important to remember that a lot of the mid-1800s saw immigration concerns. Immigration restrictions being focused on Catholics because [of] the fear that Catholics were taking over. And if you go back even further, Benjamin Franklin was very concerned that the Germans were taking over and railed against the adoption of German as the official language of the United States. And so this, as Cecilia says, is very cyclical. What we see is really almost a national nostalgia about the good old days of immigration. But those good old days of immigration didn't necessarily seem so uncontentious back when they actually happened. 

AK: And that's very interesting because I also want to dive into the basics of immigration in the US because I feel that when we sort of romanticize the good days, we don't really know a lot of the policies that went into the making of that time and you know, the policies towards immigrants. And I feel that a lot of things are in the news now, and I want to sort of touch upon them so that, you know, the listeners can understand what these terms mean and what it means for an immigrant in the US. So, Hiroshi, say, I'm from Honduras and I reached the US-Mexico border and I was allowed to enter the US. What happens to me? What are the next steps that I need to do? Do I immediately get the right to work? 

HM: Well this is a broad question of course, and I'll try to answer this succinctly. I mean, there are basically four streams of what we call lawful immigration in the United States to stay permanently to do what some people call getting a green card, right? Become a lawful permanent resident. 

You come based on work, you can come based on family. And then there, there's actually a lottery for a small number to get into the country. And then there are people given humanitarian protection as refugees and asylees. If I'm from Honduras, different options here. Maybe I came with being sponsored by a spouse and I get a green card right away. Maybe I come on a work visa – not just a work visa, but a work category. Maybe I'm being recognized or seek to be recognized as someone who gets asylum, but those are the paths to the green card and citizenship.

A lot of people also come to the country in temporary statuses. It could be a student, it could be a business person, it could be a temporary worker. And so, the people that I just labeled do have a right to work. But if you come temporarily, then the right to work is confined to the job that sponsored you. So, short answer is there are multiple categories. Some are more permanent, some are more temporary. Some of the temporary categories come with a right to work and some do not. And then there, of course, many people historically who've come to the United States without papers irregularly. And so that's another possibility.

If we assume that someone either comes to the border and somehow crosses, it's also true and often overlooked, that many people in the country without papers came here legally to start with, but they may have overstayed a tourist visa or student visa or some other status they had at the beginning.

AK: Just to follow up to this, Hiroshi, if – say I overstay my welcome – I came on a tourist visa and then, you know, I don't [leave]. For example, most of my work is with refugees from Afghanistan and they don't even have a country to go back to. So if I'm from Afghanistan, I came on a temporary status and my status expired and then I can't go back. And I overstay my welcome. What happens after that? Is there a pathway to citizenship? 

HM: Well, it depends. There are many people who get green cards, get legal status, and eventually are on a pathway to citizenship, who actually started in the country without papers, as undocumented. And that's a fact that's often overlooked.

But there are many obstacles and some  opportunities. And so someone who is – the example you give of Afghanistan is a very real one because the administration has moved to end temporary protected status for people from Afghanistan. And so what's the situation for them? They may qualify for some other pathway. They may qualify for durable asylum. They may be married to a US citizen or something. But there's different ways to qualify. You have to find some other category, the ones I mentioned, of work related or family related status. You or you could apply for refugees in asylum or from some countries you could, you could win the lottery. But just because you, this is one of the strange contradictions of American law. Just because you qualify doesn't mean you can actually get the status because the procedural hoops you have to run through or jump through to get status – even if you're married to a US citizen, are actually significant. And some of those obstacles Congress put in the way actually to make it more difficult to essentially translate your qualification into the actual green card. 

AK: Yeah. And I'm gonna get to those hoops later. Because when we will be talking about the H1B and the hoops you know, legal immigrants have to jump through as well. So Cecilia, I want to circle back to the temporary protected status that Hiroshi and I just discussed. In 2020, you wrote about the TPS benefiting over 400,000 immigrants in the US. You said TPS holders have the highest labor force participation rate. In fact, over 88% of all TPS holders are in the labor force. But there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about the TPS and its so-called benefits. Do TPS holders really have the same rights as citizens? What does their life look like? 

CM: No they do not have the same rights as citizens at all. They don't even have the same rights as lawful permanent residents. Their status – temporary protected status – is temporary. So there are a few things, a few characteristics of this status that are completely invisible and ignored, and people don't know anything about it. In fact, this status has been in – as part of the Immigration Naturalization Act since 1990 – but no one really knew about it until in the first Trump term, there were efforts to end TPS for people who were on TPS at that time. And that's when people started to notice that there was this status – temporary protected status that is not asylum, but it is in between. And so, basically it provides protection for 18 months at a time.

So it is renewable every 18 months. People have to renew it and pay a fee of $500, I think it is, at this time, to renew. And each renewal is announced about two months before the renewal period. And the benefits it provides is a work permit and the protection from deportation provided that the person has a clean criminal record.

So that needs to be also submitted together with the fee to renew. And aside from that, that is the only – the only protection that it offers. One misunderstood thing about TPS is that people who apply for TPS have to [not] be present in the United States at the time of application. They cannot come in with TPS. This is not a visa as such. This is, once people are here, they can apply for TPS and it has to be certified by the State Department because conditions for TPS have to be certified by the State Department. It's – TPS is not just extended to anyone. It is extended to people who cannot return to a country under civil conflict, political conflict, or a human made or a natural disaster, and where the governments of those countries cannot protect people who may be returned. So it is – the idea is to provide temporary protection until those conditions have improved so that people can return.

And so it's not offered to anyone. It is not offered to people who apply from outside the United States. It is very specific and it does not provide a path to citizenship at all, not even to lawful permanent residency. So it is very misunderstood in that way. It is not – it is in the law that it cannot lead to any more permanent status. There is a caveat that it's a technical caveat that – it's a little bit extended, but if, because people who are protected [by TPS] – people most likely came to the country without proper documentation. They were not admitted technically into the United States. So they, that technicality of having entered without documentation does not allow them to proceed to a more permanent status. But there is a court in the United States that recognizes entry. And so it recognizes the TPS holders to apply for permanent residence if they have a family member to petition for them.

But that is very limited and it's not – it's not in the law and it's not allowed for as a blank benefit of the status. 

AK: Cecilia, I'm gonna follow up on this. Hiroshi, I mean, you can add to this as well. I want to understand what is the difference between someone who was on TPS versus someone who has sought asylum? What is the fundamental difference between these two? 

CM: TPS again is – it’s temporary. It's very different from asylum because asylum leads to permanent status and it's not – and so that's the main difference. Asylum seekers, once they are, they are extended asylum – they don't have to renew every 18 months.They don't have to go through all the – what TPS holders do. So that is the main difference. And then, of course with that comes other benefits for asylees, that TPS holders do not have access to. 

HM: And I would add just to that in addition to what Cecilia said about the substance.

It's crucial that the decision making as an asylum is done on a family basis or an individual basis, but you need to have a lawyer. It's very complicated to show that you qualify. In contrast, TPS, temporary protected status – is granted on a country by country basis to people who are typically already in the country when the country is designated.

And so it's a big difference between focusing on a country and a whole situation versus focusing on an individual. Um, and one of the things that is crucial to understand about focusing on the individual is that lawyers can play a crucial, essential role in this process. And so some of the people who don't get asylum may have weak cases, but some of them have good cases and can't find a lawyer.

AK: So Hiroshi, I want to lead into the question about, you know, sanctuary, because you were talking about that at the beginning of the podcast. You know, you've talked in the past about sanctuary laws and being a sanctuary city. Denver was also in the news for being a sanctuary city. Can you explain to listeners what does – what does this mean and what is its current role in the immigration narrative? Like is a sanctuary city a sanctuary for someone who is an asylum seeker or someone who's on TPS? And can you also add onto this and explain what you know [about] how state and federal agencies work together in situations like immigration raids in these sanctuary cities?

HM: Yeah. One of the things, it's true, I've written about sanctuary, but a big part of what I've written about is how I don't like the term, so let me explain that a little bit. Sanctuary is an interesting term because it's used by both sides of the debate, right? It's not like some people on the law enforcement side are using it as an insult or an epithet against some cities and states and other people on the advocacy side for, on behalf of immigrants, often use it as a badge of honor. And so what explains that? So let me dig in and just say that sanctuary laws are at its core laws that limit cooperation by state and local governments, with federal government enforcement. So for example, as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, one of the ways to have mass deportations is to get every police officer – local police officer to cooperate. And so one of the reasons that has motivated sanctuary laws is to limit state and local enforcement. And this isn't necessarily just a move against enforcement. Of course, the local government has all kinds of priorities. Every dollar that Los Angeles devotes to immigration enforcement – that would devote to immigration enforcement – is a dollar that's not available for fighting forest fires, for example. So those are kind of local dollars, local choice kind of issues. And sanctuary is focused on immigration enforcement. 

The reason I think it's more useful to think about sanctuary – is that sanctuary is really a way of recognizing people more broadly. So in the same stroke of policy that you have limited co-operation of local police with federal enforcement – you offer driver's licenses, you have in-state tuition, you have professional licensing regardless of immigration status and so forth. Those weren't sanctuary provisions in the narrow sense. But they are inclusion provisions in that sense, they're very similar. And I think what's going on there and what motivates these policies and unifies them is to recognize people as community members regardless of status.

And that reflects the history of immigration law, which is that – we have a system where the formal rules to come to this country legally don't match up with the jobs that people can get, with the families that people live in. And so we have a lot of these in-between statuses. It's not just temporary protected status, but other statuses that are temporary. So I think it's natural to say, well, you know, we have a system that's in effect invited people here to work. Why don't we recognize them in the community and give them driver's licenses so they can get to work. And so in that context, sanctuary is part of curtailing enforcement or containing local dollars for enforcement. But it's also part of recognizing the role that people who are non-citizens, regardless of immigration status, play in families and businesses in the community. 

AK: So in the case that, you know, like what happened in LA, there was a raid and you know, there were protests and the federal government stepped in. How much of overarching ability or authority does the federal government have to override the state? 

HM: Well, I mean the federal government – there's a couple answers or different couple parts to your question, therefore, a couple of answers. I mean, one is that the United States Constitution puts a lot of limits on federal enforcement. I mean, there's laws requiring, you know, warrants and reasonable suspicion of legal violations before the federal government can arrest people. And so that's one, you know, big set of limitations. There are also practical limitations because one practical limitation is just human resources or police power to have local police involved in this. This is one of the reasons why the President basically called upon the National Guard and then the Marines. Then there's also I think, an outcry that we've been seeing that's reflected in some of the more recent polls saying – wait a minute – I didn't sign up for the mass deportations, if mass deportations mean arresting people on the basis of their appearance – and it's gonna pick up US citizens. So limitations are federal, constitutional, they have to do with limited state and local cooperation. But they all also have to do what, what I think is public opinion about, what limits the – what limits the federal government.

AK: And Hiroshi, you've previously said that there were more deportations. I mean, this fact is out there that there were more deportations under the Obama administration than the Trump administration. So deportations have always been a big part of, you know, the US administration's policy. There have been some bizarre stories coming in about deportations under the current administration, including the deportation of an American citizen to El Salvador. I recently spoke to a student who's on an F1 visa who carries her i-20 [document] with her everywhere because she's just scared that somebody can just ask her for her papers and deport her. So, my question is, what are the grounds usually for deportation? Can anybody get deported? 

HM: Well, let's see. There's a couple ways to approach this. I mean, one is the stories that you mentioned that are bizarre – in all too many cases are true stories – true bizarre stories,  I should mention that. So let me start with the last part of your question. What are the grounds for deportation? There are a couple different categories of reasons. One, someone who has a green card, in other words, a permanent resident of the United States – they could be deported and lose their green card status, but most typically that's because they've committed crimes of a certain seriousness. So that's one possibility. 

There are also people who have overstayed or violated the terms of a temporary permission to enter. So it could be a student who's no longer studying – someone like that – or someone who came in as a tourist and stayed too long. So that would be another ground for deportation. And the third type of ground for deportation is for people who are in the country, essentially, unlawfully without lawful status. One of them, one category there is people who overstayed, came in legally, but stayed illegally. The other possibility is people who came across the border, you know, and evaded the border patrol. Or, I suppose that would include people who come across the border with, you know, false papers. So then that gets me to the – what you're asking about – deportations and the bizarre stories. There are many reasons why people who might - you might think they could be deported. It could be – it could be for all kinds of reasons, including, unfortunately, the way people look.

And so what we've seen is there's some real concerns in this administration of people being deported without being given a chance to explain themselves. You know, in other words, this is why people are carrying passports around because they're afraid that they look – they might look to somebody like in the federal government that they're not, that they're not here legally.

And so the issue in these cases, these bizarre cases, as you say, are cases where people said, well, I have a claim to protection under US law. And that case is still being heard in court now. So, you just picked me up, but you're gonna send me to El Salvador. But this is what actually happened in this case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He was not a US citizen, but he had his case, you know, working through the courts and all that's been asked for in these cases, um, in the first instance and it really matters, is a chance to present their cases. But unfortunately, one of the ways that you up the numbers of people being deported is to basically have speed deportation and that means you're going to get a lot of people caught up in the machinery without a chance to prevent their being sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador and other places. And so that's the bizarre story. One of the ways that you up the numbers of deportation is you don't give people a chance to explain why they shouldn't be deported under the law of the United States.

AK: It's really like some – every time I open the newspaper I'm like – I don't know what I'm going to read today. Because some of the stories are really bizarre. But Cecilia, I want to ask this question to you. As we have discussed and established, the path to the US is not an easy one for an immigrant. Migrants, you know, who are coming, especially from South America, have to travel dangerous paths like the Darien Gap. I once read a story of this family that tried to cross in from the Canadian side because they didn't want to pass the Darien gap and then died in the cold. So sociologically speaking, how do people who have experienced such extreme trauma and hardship rebuild their lives in the US? Do you see a disproportionate impact on particularly vulnerable communities like women and children?

CM: First I think it's important to again put a little bit of historical background here. We have heard a lot about the Darien gap these days, but Central American immigrants from Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, have been traveling through Mexico through extremely dangerous situations since the 1980s and continue to do so.

They, in my own research, in my first book, for instance, I documented. In a chapter about the journey that they went through, where people would tell me that that was like a test of fire. If you made it through Mexico, you could make it anywhere. So it has been an aspect of a lot of migrations. There have been people who perish at sea, for instance, migrating. So we have a lot of attention on the Darien Gap – not to diminish what happens there, but I think it's important to contextualize. Salvadorans and Guatemalans have been going through this test of fire that constitutes the journey and have found it extremely difficult to settle in the United States because they have never been allowed or have never been recognized as needing protection. So they have never been extended refugee protection. Their asylum rates have been extremely low – always in the low single digits – even though their countries have had civil wars, have had violence, all sorts of things. So they are kind of like, if you look at their lives, you can see the effects of all of these on immigrants' lives. And do I see a disproportionate – no, I don't think it is disproportionate for women and young people. It is different. Very different. The effects of the, the context of reception for central American immigrants, for instance, the system of laws, labor market opportunities, all of that, they all come to the same place.

But their effects and how they experience this is very different because people of different genders experience the same things very differently. People of different ages do so. So for instance, men also go through very difficult circumstances when they arrive here, especially if they don't have legal protection and they don't have access to decent paid jobs. The same as women. 

However, there are some particularities for each different social position, if you will. So for instance, women have the added layer of being more likely to be exposed to other different forms of violence during the journey, but also when they arrive. So it’s not disproportionate, but it is a specific aspect of how they experience the journey and their adaptation here. Children and youth, the same thing. Because of their age, because of their position within their families, they experience this in very different ways. They have to attend schools at the same time that they have these adult size situations that they have to deal with within their families [like] not having documents, living in cramped apartments, etc.

I wouldn't say it is disproportionate, necessarily. Each experiences this context in different ways, according to their age and their gender. 

AK: Speaking of children, Cecilia, there is a specific program for children, you know, who come to the US without their families, which is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. I want to understand what does DACA mean for a child? Say, you know, I'm a child and I’m on DACA. And then, you know, till what age can I be a beneficiary of the DACA? Do I have a pathway to, you know, getting the green card? And what does the future of DACA look like now, because there seems to be a lot of talk about the personal information of DACA recipients being handed over to the administration. Recently, Senator Martin Hendrich from New Mexico said he will lead a push to protect this. So what does the future of this program look like? 

CM: Yeah. You know, DACA is an executive order – a memo, really, a memorandum of agreement that was drafted during the Obama administration in 2012 to protect minors who were brought to the country as children, from deportation and to provide to them a work permit. But it is very restricted. First of all, it is not like TPS -  temporary protected status - it’s in the law.

The countries may change – countries may be designated for TPS or un-designated for TPS, but the legal tool is in the law. With DACA, the legal tool is not in the law. It's very weak because it is up to the current administration whether they want to continue with the program that looks on the face of it very similar to temporary status. People have to renew every two years, pay a fee, show that they're good citizens. So on the face of it looks similar, they have no path to citizenship and it's even weaker in terms of the legal protection and the legal standing than TPS. The other aspect of DACA that makes it even more difficult is that people have had to have continued residence in the United States since June 2007, and to have been present in the United States since June 15, 2012. And that is a date that has never been changed. 

So there are many people – the people turning 18, people growing [up], who are never going to be protected by DACA because there is this date in the executive order that was passed. So there are lots of people who are not going to be protected. Those who were able to be protected by DACA when it came out and when they applied and who were here by June 15, 2012 – they are the ones who may be at risk of losing their limited protection because it's important also. It allows them to go to school, to get better jobs - it allows them quite a bit. But again, it does not allow the same rights as citizens. It does not allow them to vote. It doesn't allow them to conduct themselves as a permanent lawful resident either. But it is, it's a form of important protection. 

HM: I think it's also important to add that there have not been any new grants of DACA since the late 2010s and the reason is because of a court order. I think at a very technical level, that court order was recently limited to people in the state of Texas. But under the current administration, there's been tremendous reluctance to apply. Because it's not clear that you would be able to get it. And so that hasn't been really tested whether you can get new grants of DACA. But the result practically is that DACA has been fading away because of what Cecilia mentioned about the residency requirement. And also, DACA typically required you have to be 15 years old to get it. And so we have people, of course, in college now, who were not 15, back when they stopped issuing new DACA. And so, in that sense, the people at universities or people in general who have DACA are often, you know, in their twenties, mid-twenties even, or even older. 

AK: So, and this is a question for both of you. Why do you think there's so much, there's a lot of misinformation out there about immigration, migrants, people on DACA, undocumented migrants. It's a very strong word, but there's a lot of ‘hatred’ towards these communities who are on these temporary statuses. And it sort of seems like the narrative now is that immigration is bad for the United States. Why do you think this is, this has been happening? Like is there a correlation with, you know, say the eyes of social media or like – I'm hypothesizing – Elon Musk buying Twitter, maybe?

CM: I think it's the narratives that, again, not the first time we hear these narratives. There have been massive deportations in the past based on hate – narratives of hate. And immigrants tend to be sort of like the low hanging fruit because they were not born in the United States. They could be, they can be deported and also a lot of the social problems, a lot of the inequality, a lot of the problems that people face – US citizens face – in their everyday lives can easily be blamed on immigrants. If they don't have good jobs, it's probably because of immigrants. If they cannot access healthcare, it's probably because immigrants are using that. If they cannot access housing, it's probably because immigrants are using that. So they become a punching bag easily because they live and work in the country. But they are outsiders. They are – they can be framed as not belonging very easily. So they serve a purpose, sort of like a scapegoat to explain to US citizens - to poor working class US citizens - that if we get rid of these people, their lives will be so much better, when in fact it may not be the case at all.

HM: And we have a President who basically has built this political messaging around soundbite ideas. So, in other words, if there's some controversy about immigration – get rid of the immigrants. If there's too many people at the border applying for asylum, then call asylum a scam, which he said on a number of occasions – build a wall. It's a triumph I think of the simplistic solution over one that's actually gonna be more fair. And I think it takes place in the context, as I mentioned, of a certain type of political messaging. And I think social media and people living in their own news bubbles or universes is one of the contributing factors at a more broader social societal level about how people get information, how they talk to the people who will think about the things the same way they do, and so forth. 

CM: The most important narrative that is used, and it's not just with this President, it has been used before quite a bit, is to frame them as criminals because no one wants criminals in their country. But immigration, any immigration infraction, has been framed and twisted to become a criminal offense. And so, this is sold to the American public as we're going to get rid of criminals, when in fact, the only thing that people have done is to be in the country without documents, which is not the same thing as robbery and murder and what we would normally consider to be crimes. So it's an easy way out of a lot of issues that need to be addressed nationally. 

AK: Now I want to move the conversation to legal immigration, because that's also a very – there's a lot of hoops that people have to jump through for that as well. So, Hiroshi I want to, I just want to say that when we talk about legal immigration, when the birthright citizenship proposal came up, to end it - it was sort of targeted towards undocumented people, but also people on visas. Children of legal migrants may not be able to get US citizenship if the parents were on a visa when the child was born. And this is particularly concerning for Chinese and Indians because both these nationalities make up for the most number of international students in the US. In fact, they're also high recipients of the H1B visa for skilled workers. So why do you think legal immigrants are also being included in these kind of proposals? Their legal status shouldn't be a problem, right. Do you think there's a particular concern with, say, Chinese immigration? 

HM: Well, I think that the full way to answer that is to really think about what's behind the birthright citizenship proposals. I think a lot of what the current administration has in mind, very broadly speaking, is a return to an America that they nostalgically remember before 1965, when there were relatively few immigrants. What's often pushed under the rug here is that the reason or that what drove immigration policy before 1965 was a lot of racial discrimination. For example, if you wanted to immigrate from India or from China, basically, you know, for practical purposes, it wasn't, it wasn't allowed. There were exceptions, but there was a discriminatory policy very, you know, expressly explicitly discriminatory policy since 1965. And so I think a lot of what's driving this administration is the vision of nostalgia for a certain type of America. I think a lot of it does mean that people who are viewed as from strange parts of the world, I mean, from a perspective of a very Eurocentric view, you know, that would include Chinese and Indians and South Asians. And it doesn't have to do with legal status at that level. It's something that says, well, even if you were here lawfully, you were here only as a student. There's a non-recognition of the fact that many international students ultimately get more permanent jobs and many become citizens and many are the founders of very important companies in the United States. But there's a real reluctance and even an opposition to accepting them really as Americans.

You know, it's the kind of question that you know, people get. It's like, where are you really from? And so I think a lot of what's going on here is to say it's not good enough. You need to have one parent who is a citizen or a lawful permanent resident to be a citizen. And that's really what the birthright citizenship executive order is trying to do. Of course it remains to be seen what will happen in the courts. 

AK: And there's also a lot of advocacy around – there's a lot of confusion around the H1B, like Elon Musk through DOGE was advocating for it, Vivek was advocating for it. But there's also this narrative that that's now come up is that H1B people are taking away jobs. So, is that actually happening? Like, are H1B holders really taking away American jobs? 

HM: Well, it depends on how you look at it, right? I mean, there are some cases reported on where literally a job was taken away from a US citizen and those tasks were either assigned to H1B visa holders or in many cases the job was sent overseas, right? But I think that's a misleading way to think about this from the policy point of view and to what the system should be like because it's not like there's a one-for-one correspondence between an H1B holder and people who had the job before. There are a couple of – there's some things that are more important to recognize – and that is H1B holders help businesses grow. And so they also create jobs and they help businesses grow, not just only at that moment, but they also help the business, you know, reinvest profits and become a more prosperous growing concern over a period of five, 10 or 20 years. And so this mirrors a lot of what economists will tell you about the economic impact of immigration or non-citizen workers in general. And that is, there may be short-term focus displacement, but the long-term prosperity that immigration brings has really been essential to American economic growth. And I think the real challenge and I have to say often, not necessarily recognized enough by immigrants rights advocates, is that – try to find better ways to make sure that the benefits – that the growth of companies spurred by H1B workers is a prosperity that is shared.

So instead of saying no H1B workers, I think we would be much better off saying we need to take seriously job training programs and things of that nature. So I don't think H1B workers, um, take away American jobs in any, in any kind of nationwide, even regional perspective, and certainly not in the long term. 

AK: But what about the F1 visas? Because those are not dual intent visas. So dual intent visas are basically intended to, you know, immigrate to the US. So the Department of State is issuing less F1 visas. Do you think there’s sort of this perspective coming in the administration, that F1 was never meant to be a dual intent visa - that students should just get their degrees and leave. Is that the narrative that's sort of being presented now?

HM: Well, I mean, I think that there's several ways to look at this. I mean, I look at this in several different contexts. One is that this administration has done a lot of things that have injured or disadvantaged American education, particularly, but not only higher education. We've seen withdrawal of grant funding for scientific research, just as an example. And I think that one of the things that the administration has done is to make it more difficult to come to the United States as an international student. Sometimes it's taken the form of, for example, going after Harvard's ability to even admit international students, but others are more subtle, but very real, which is that we're going to – there was a pause on interviews at consulates to even get an H1B visa and then a resumption that it involved a promise of more, you know, vetting of social media. And a lot of this has taken all these different steps relating to higher education.

To me they look like efforts that are being made to really - without regard to the damage it's causing - to higher education, which I think is damage that's caused to the American economy. Because of course, many people who come to study in this country, many of them stay, but those who don't stay, often have a lifelong loyalty to the United States and have real good memories of their time here. 

And so I think that I haven't seen any studies or interviews on this. But over time it's become relatively more attractive to take advantage of other options that are available. It could be Canada, it could be Australia and it could be, [study] in other languages, that people would, may not know necessarily, but over the long term that may be the place that they go to medical school and become a doctor or whatever else they plan to do.

I think that this type of approach to American universities really makes it harder to do what has become, had become common, which is that people come to this country, they participate in education, they pay tuition, which helps keep American education afloat, but they also provide a supply of talent.

I think that this has ripple effects, not only through colleges and universities, but also to the entire business community and to employers in general. 

CM: Just very quickly with this question about whether H1B holders take jobs from Americans. We also have to remember the enormous benefit to the US economy and to employers because as a whole, a country should invest in the education of the people who are going to hold jobs in their economy.

In this case, it is several countries that invest in training people. But then they come to the US and the US does not invest in any money in their – any resources in their education. It only uses  people who [are] already trained or who come to graduate school to be trained specifically to work in what the US economy needs. And so it is a win-win for the US economy and for employers in certain, across sectors, but specifically in certain sectors. 

AK: I just want to end with one question for both of you, which is – what is the future of immigration and immigrants in the United States?

CM: Oh my goodness. That's a heavy one. The future of immigration right now, we think. There's going to be no migration. But you know, this, again this – I tend to always look at a broader historical trend, and this is part of the cycle of cyclical ups and downs that we see. We will continue to have migration because again, demographically, this country needs people basically at a very fundamental level. The birthright in the United States, the, I'm sorry the birth rate in the United States keeps on falling. And so there will be no people right now - demographically the US is at no replacement. And so we will need people to be able to continue as a country at a very fundamental level. And so there will be migration, there will be a reorganization. There will probably be going back to some of what we already have. There will be new laws in place, but I don't think it can end because of what I just said demographically we need people. We need not only workers, but we need people who consume, who pay taxes, to keep the country alive. So there will be migration. We need to see what shape the laws will take, but there will be some.

HM: Yeah. To add to that, is that there are a couple ways to think about the future. One is the immediate future and I think that we're in a phase now of very limited - not just access to asylum, but a reduction of legal migration. And I think that we unfortunately have to go through a period of hurt which may take some time to really get into American public perception. But the hurt could be in the US citizens being arrested by immigration police. It could be in people – American citizens not having enough faculty, to help be the teaching assistants at their universities. A lot of things like this, I think that there has to be a realization there. And I think that that's gonna be painful to get to, but I think that we will get to it. What should immigration policy be? You know, going forward, I think that there has to be more of a recognition that the American immigration system, not only that it's not working, but try to figure out exactly what the problem is.

And I think the problem is that there's a demand – [for] a demographic as Cecilia mentioned, and part of that is the economy. It's who's gonna be in the growing economy. And we just don't have a legal system that provides that. And so I think that if we hit some kind of a bottom in the short term that we can rebound to develop that kind of system, I think it will require more of an effort to share the prosperity the immigrants bring to this country. And I think that those are the components that really matter. And then we'll have a system that will be much more conducive to enforcement than the unenforceable system that we have. The other thing I would add is that it's been very difficult for politicians and policy makers and even the American public to have the patience. I think we've had to come up with good policy and I totally understand that. But I mean, we're in a mess that has been many, many years in the making. And so the idea that we can have a quick fix is very elusive and deceptive. But I think that part of the reason I mentioned – fixing the legal immigration system – is because that's what it's gonna take. And I think that we're even seeing some of the signs now of, well, maybe it's important to legalize people. I didn't realize that arresting people would have this effect on my life. That type of thing. And so, yeah, I'm hopeful that's going to be what happens.

But I think it's something that we're looking forward to in the coming generation. Not certainly not in the coming election cycle. 

AK: On that note. I would like to end today's discussion. It was such a pleasure to chat with both of you 

HM and CM: Thank you for having us.