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Future Hindsight
The Pathway to Citizenship: Todd Schulte
00:47:04
A fair, humane, and orderly immigration system should think of the US as the top destination for top talent from around the world, as well as a beacon of hope. Changing the law to give permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship would fix the...
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- [00:00]
A
Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com hopeful all lowercase and if you want to support Future Hindsight, subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's easy and free and a great way to build your civic action toolkit every week. Head to YouTube.comFuture Hindsight to subscribe now. Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week I bring you conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now. We are at a critical moment for immigration in America, as ICE enforcement steamrolls through American cities. The question isn't just what's happening, it's what is still possible. The past decade did bring what seemed like significant victories, like defending Dhaka and securing protections for millions. And today we're joined by someone at the center of these fights and who can shed light on how to make sense of this time. Todd Schulte is the President of Forward us. Over the past decade, he has directed successful efforts to make the case that immigrants and immigration power the US Economy, help us win the global race for talent and strengthen the American workforce. Welcome, Todd. Thank you for joining us.
- [01:59]
B
Well, thank you for having me. As I was saying before, longtime listener, but great to be here in person and honored to be here.
- [02:05]
A
I'm so delighted you're with us. So there is so, so much going on. I'm not sure we can get an accurate lay of the land, whether that's on the brutal and cruel ICE raids, the use of National Guards against citizens, targeting citizens because they're brown and therefore suspected of being undocumented, the erosion of due process and the rule of law. If you had to explain what's happening right now to an alien from another planet, how would you describe how we got here? And it seemed like we got here so fast.
- [02:39]
B
I would say we have as a country for a long time been a nation that has welcomed more people than most countries have been able to. And we have done that in ways that are imperfect. We have done that through decades, long periods where we have restricted immigration, where we've expanded immigration where we really didn't have a national immigration regime, where we've had racial restrictions, country of origin restrictions, where we have recruited people from different places here, and that sometime around a couple decades ago, there was this idea that there would be what's called a kind of a grand compromise on immigration policy, which they called comprehensive immigration reform. There was this bipartisan idea that had bipartisan pushback, but there was this kind of gathering of an idea that what we would do is say we can try to make it so people are coming lawfully in the future by having kind of new lawful pathways for people to be able to come to be with their family or to come to work or to come to flee persecution. And we would change those channels. We would make it so that you had to go through these particular channels to go there. You had to come lawfully. But for people who'd been building their lives here for a long time, because we had had a failed immigration system, we were going to try to basically say, hey, we'll treat those people fairly. And you had this idea that grew out of the mid-90s or suffered under the only two political parties we have in the United States. And that didn't happen. And when that didn't happen, this other person came along and weaponized fear of immigrants. That had been long a factor of our politics here. And where we have found ourselves is a lot of the forward progress that we've made to treat people a little bit more fairly, a lot of the forward progress to give people protections. The bottom feels like it is quickly falling out. And we are here eight and a half months in to this administration with about 40 months to go. And if I were explaining to somebody who'd never really thought about this before, I would say we should be trying to build a system that allows people to come, that allows people here to be treated fairly, to fully contribute. And we are all going to be better off because of that. We are all going to be better off if people can live, thrive and survive. But instead, what we have found ourselves is a system in which to spread fear and to consolidate power down to, like, the memes of cruelty. What we are seeing here is a very, very different, and I think for a lot of people, destabilizing and scary approach to not just how we treat people who are coming to this country in the future, but people who are building their lives here, whether they're immigrants or not.
- [05:14]
A
I want to get at the bigger picture of the vision of what the North Star should be. And I also want to talk about what we actually have to do to get there on the day to day. And it feels incredibly urgent right now, right, that we need forceful action. Because what you see on social media is so terrifying, or what you see in the newspaper or on television or just around the corner from your own house. So it feels to me like I just saw a video of a man in Chicago over the weekend who was in the middle of an abduction, let's call it, by two ICE agents. And in the end that failed. They ended up driving away without taking him. There were people trying to pull the man, there were people honking, there were people taping. And it feels to me that that's really not a sustainable way, right, to push back against this agenda because not always will you have this opportunity to tape in the middle of the day. And notably, of course, we had agents rappel from helicopters in Chicago, fast roping down in Chicago. Right, Right. So it's the kind of thing where I'm wondering in this moment, what kind of response would be a powerful answer to the efforts of the Trump agenda, Meaning who or what entity is the right, most forceful actor here? Is it sanctuary cities and states? And if that's the case, what power do they actually have? And is there an example that you can point to that is an effective resistance?
- [06:52]
B
I mean, the biggest thing I would say is it's not a person, it's a thing. Which is the most important protection we can give people is legal status, permanent legal status, a pathway to citizenship. So, yes, we should be taking protective efforts here, but we gotta ultimately figure out how, when we get to the other side of this one, how do we get to the other side of this? But we shouldn't be having a conversation that just says, like, who does and doesn't get deported? We shouldn't have an immigration system to your point, that says if you happen to be walking down the street and the people who jump out of a car get filmed and they realize that the kind of public shaming that may come with that may choose them to drive away, that is really. We have long lost a thread in the plot. We can build a better immigration system. It has to be grounded really in the understanding here that there's a lot of people who are building their lives here. Many of them came legally, they fell out of status. There's a lot of people who came here, they didn't come legally, they've been here for a long time. There are people who have a temporary status, whether or not they fled from a war torn country, whether or not they are in the process of seeking asylum, their refuge, whatever that may be. At the foundation of the immigration system we want to build for people who are here is that legal status, and not just these kind of acts of resistance against horrific levels of violence on the hands of the state here. So that's one thing. I think the second thing is we can build a better immigration system so that we don't have a big temporary status and undocumented population in the future. We should have an immigration system that allows people to come. We should have an honest debate about actually how small and restrictive and harmful our immigration system is today compared to how it's been in the past. But we should have an immigration system that when people come, they are able to fully contribute to their communities and their families here. Again, that's good for them, but it's also good for all of us here. The thing I can say is, as you are seeing people who are rightly standing up for their neighbors and doing these amazing things, I hope if there's one thing people will take away is giving people the pathway to citizenship is ultimately the most important thing we can do to have a fair, humane immigration system.
- [08:52]
A
Mm. Mm. Well, let's talk about the legal underpinnings that the Trump administration relies on to justify these actions, because I think it's incredibly confusing if you're somebody like me. I'm not an immigration lawyer. Most people don't know.
- [09:06]
B
I hear these words like, what does it mean to be undocumented?
- [09:09]
A
Yes, exactly. Unlawful, illegal, that, or the things that they're using. And then what is then the legal solution to the way that they are framing this? Yeah.
- [09:19]
B
So the modern kind of idea of a large undocumented immigrant population really comes out of a couple of things. The first is we had notably exclusionary policies and racist policies towards people from China, people from other places in Asia. Lots of problems with our immigration system, but we didn't have, like, numerical limits and caps. About a century ago, there was a huge immigration restriction that was put into place. A lot of that was rolled back in 1965. But we have these kind of legal immigration channels. They are rigid, they are not flexible, they have not been updated. And people come, they came to work, they came as a student visa, they overstayed. And the issue is that when people don't have that status, there's actually no way to really get right with the law. There is no line to get into. You hear like, oh, just get in line, get legal. That's kind of the fundamental problem we have these things called the three and ten year bars. And I know this sounds very technical, but this is the single most important thing I think, to understand in immigration policy. If you've been in this country for more than a year without legal status, you are subject to this 10 year bar. That means that you can't adjust status in almost all cases from inside the United States. And if you want to, quote, unquote, get right with the law, you've got to leave, go back to the country you're from, wait 10 years and then apply. So functionally, let's think about that for a second here. I've got little kids. Let's say I came to this country, I studied, I was a student, I talked to an immigration attorney, I came here, I sought asylum, I got some bad advice, whatever that is. And I've now been in this country for two or three years and I don't have legal status, but I've got a five year old. So the law says I gotta leave, I gotta go back to a country I'm from, no matter the conditions. I gotta wait a decade and then I can start to apply. Now, that doesn't mean I'm coming back in 10 years. It probably means I'm coming back maybe in three years after that or five or eight years. So if I have a five year old, I'm undocumented in this country. The law says I should leave and maybe I'll make it back for a high school graduation, maybe a college graduation. That's a broken law. That is an unjust law. That's a law that hurts that family, but it hurts everyone here. So when you hear about people, what does it mean to be undocumented? Why can't just people get legal? The fundamental legal underpinning are these bars. They're called bars to adjustment of status. And they stop people from getting right with the law. And the number one thing we think we should change is that doesn't work, that hurts everybody. Let's change the law so that people aren't stuck and trapped in this undocumented status. And that's when you hear about a pathway to citizenship in Congress. That's what we're trying to get done. Just give people the opportunity, been building their lives here for decades to get right with the law.
- [12:02]
A
So how would you do that? What is the law that you would write to rectify specifically this problem?
- [12:07]
B
Yeah, so there have been various laws that have been passed to address how to give people a pathway to citizenship. Sometimes it's people who have been here for longer than five or ten years who are undocumented. Sometimes it's dreamers. So that's people who came to this country as children. You hear about a DREAM act, but the basic idea is pretty simple. We have an unfair law. It's a really bad idea that we've got millions and millions of people who have no way to avail themselves and again, pay a fine, pay back taxes, they gotta go through a process, that's fine. But what we're basically just saying is, hey, we have a failed immigration system. Let's do an update and that's going to help all of us here. The alternative is not just we're going to trap people in this undocumented status where they can't in a lot of cases unless they have another status, work legally, where they're living in fear of deportation every day. But you are going to see these efforts that you're seeing today that are not just designed, I want to be clear, to make life miserable for immigrants and their families, which they are. But they were also designed to provoke a reaction. To provoke a reaction that is going to be met with protest. That protest is going to be met with more counter protest and violence, often by whether that's the National Guard or state and local police or ICE or whatever that is here. We should be de escalating and we should giving people a pathway to citizenship with rights, not this cycle that we seem to be on right now. That's really scary.
- [13:33]
A
Mm. I have a little bit of a side question here because you referenced dreamers and I feel like this is also not like in the context of what you're saying is not very well understood that you know, the dreamers can stay. What about the people who are on temporary permits, like the people who came from Haiti? How do those fit in? What is their special status? Can they normalize their or can they adjust status so that they become a legal resident? Yeah, become a legal resident. How does that work?
- [14:02]
B
Yeah, so the answer is having daca, which is a protection for some dreamers, having temporary protected status, which is a country based protections. Both of these things are once a two year renewable program, once 18 months. These don't give you like an explicit pathway to citizenship there. Like it's temporary and there may be other avenues you can pursue. So for example, you came here from Afghanistan, you got temporary protected status and you may be able to apply for asylum and you have a pretty good chance of getting that. Asylum is basically the humanitarian protection you apply for when you are in the United States and Not to throw too many terms out there, but refugees and the refugee program are the protections that you will get when you apply from a third country outside the United States. So we have these temporary statuses. We have millions of people who have these. You're talking about folks who came from El Salvador a long time ago. You're talking about people who came from Haiti or Venezuela. And I'll come back to Venezuela in a second. Afghanistan, Ukraine. We should be really, really concerned that the Trump administration is doing everything they can to preemptively revoke these protection. The conditions on the ground in Haiti are not better than they were a couple of years ago. The government is supposed to say, if they're getting rid of this protected status, they have to go through a process and say, things are better in Haiti. Things are not better in Haiti. Things are not better in Ukraine. Things are not better in Afghanistan. Things are not good in Somalia. Things are certainly not better in Venezuela. Can I talk about Venezuela for a second?
- [15:33]
A
Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
- [15:34]
B
Is that just an example of how if you don't have a functional and vibrant immigration system, you can get into a hard situation? So Venezuela had the largest peacetime, meaning there's not an actual large war refugee crisis in modern history. About 9 million people have left Venezuela. This started about a half decade ago. And we're here in New York City. So had we been sitting here three years ago this month, there were about 26,000, 27,000 Venezuelan immigrants in New York City, which is to say not one of the larger refugee or immigrant populations in the city. Not tiny, but pretty small compared to others. So what was happening is that people were fleeing the country. Many were ending up in places like Colombia, and not everybody wanted to come to the United States. But there wasn't a Western Hemisphere refugee program. There was no way that at any sort of scale, if you had to leave Venezuela to flee the regime, to flee poverty, persecution, there wasn't some country you could safely get to. And we would say, hey, this is a refugee crisis in our hemisphere. What you could do is you could try to go up through Central America, you could cross the Darien Gap, you could pay the cartels to get you to the border, and then you could try to cross and apply for asylum. Now, you might have to cross a handful of times, but we had an immigration system in 20, 21, in 22 and 23, where the only way to come to the United States for people in our hemisphere was essentially pay the cartels to get you to the border, put one foreign in American soil and say, you apply for asylum. So that started to happen. You then saw people who said, I don't have tons of family in the United States. Most immigrants historically, whether they come for work, whether they've come to seek asylum, whether they've come to see family, stay with family members. But there wasn't a large Venezuelan population in the United States who was accepting people compared to how many people were coming today. But people started going to some cities. They started going to New York, and then the governor of Texas started busing people here. But there was no federal approach to this. The Biden administration did not say we should regularize and have an immigration channel away from the border so that people don't have to do the dangerous journey. We should have a aggressive approach to think about, like, how are we supporting cities? Denver, Chicago, New York City. And people kind of put their head down. And then what started to happen was more and more and more people were coming to the United States and applying for asylum. You had the largest refugee crisis in American history in our hemisphere here, you saw no real governmental response. But more and more pressure went into what's called the asylum system. And so originally, at the beginning of the administration, when people come, it might take a year and a half for them to get in front of a judge to hear a hearing, and then two years. But by the end of 23, so not that long ago, you had people who were showing up in New York City who were saying, I want to show up. Because now I've heard that there's no other way to come except asylum. But if I apply for asylum, I'm going to not have to show up in court for a decade. And so, by failing to modernize our immigration system to have alternatives to showing up at the border, we have this one channel left. And as I look back on the last couple of years, the big lesson to me is you can build an immigration system. You can have an active approach. It might be imperfect, but putting your head down is how you end up with these really tough unintended consequences.
- [19:06]
A
Yeah, you know, I remember, of course, this crisis living in New York myself at the time in 2023, and I was a little surprised that the Biden administration was not more proactive. But I also feel like the Trump administration is not proactive either in this respect. Like, they're not actually trying to fix it. They're just trying to deport people, which is not the same thing as fixing the immigration problem. And, you know, you made reference to comprehensive immigration reform. So now that we are where we are, what can still be our North Star? Or how do you think about this? Like, where do we want to go in the long term?
- [19:46]
B
So I think from a values perspective, to start there, too often people get lost in kind of the, like, what went wrong? I think we should talk about a little bit like what went right and what we can do. So we should have an immigration system that really thinks of America as both the top destination for top talent from around the world and also a beacon of hope. We can and should be both those things for people coming to the United States. And we should have robust systems in place to do that. We should have an aggressive entrepreneurial visa and we should have a robust and welcoming refugee system also. These aren't different people.
- [20:20]
A
Like, just to say they're often the same person.
- [20:22]
B
They're often the same person. Like many of the people who have contributed the most scientifically to the United States, they didn't come on an employment based visa. They came and they sought refuge. And I just think it's important to break down those silos. But like, for people coming in the future, we should have a legal immigration architecture that is thinking about recruiting people and welcoming people and letting people come and contribute. We should make sure people get a good start in the United States here. But also we don't strip away their rights. I mean, you mentioned what we're seeing now. Instead of thinking about an administration that's taking away people's deportation protections and their ability to work legally and get access to housing and a driver's license, let's give people full opportunities. So value one to me is thinking about a way to welcome people for all sorts of reasons in politically resilient sorts of ways. Value too is for people who are building their lives here, giving them rights and opportunities, civil rights. We talked about a pathway to citizenship, but at a basic level, not having an immigration system where we somehow say, well, if you eventually get to stay or you eventually don't get deported, that's somehow a win. That shouldn't be what it should be. We should have streamlined immigration processes and rights and opportunities for people who are building their lives here. And, and we should have an orderly and secure immigration system. I think too often that gets just talked about in the context of chaos at the border. We should build a diverse set of legal pathways that people are encouraged to use. We know that's going to work now. In contrast to what we're seeing now. We're not seeing somebody trying to fix the problems, as I think about them, what we are seeing is an all government approach to restricting immigration. We are seeing that in domestic policy, whether that is people who are unidentifiable governmental actors. This is not the first time in American history that people jump out of vans that are unmarked. But it is happening in a social media era that I think is really jarring to people and should be. It's also something that we see in our foreign policy. I mean, you have seen leaders of countries go to the White House. They are asking for things. They think they were having a foreign policy conversation. They think they're having a tariff conversation. They're being told that they need to accept people from other countries for deportation flights. We organized ourselves as a country sometimes around these big themes and the fact that we are now organizing ourselves so much around being cruel to immigrants and stopping immigrants from coming is really bad. And so I think again, we should be organizing around welcoming people, treating people fairly here in order and security. I think we can do all those things there, how we get there. Also we need to be flexible about. It's not a one big bill approach. When we have somebody in there and they can act through executive action, a president should do that. When Congress should act, they should do that. Local government, state government should act. I think too often people get caught up in like, now is the time for a big bill, a small bill. We need to think about an all of government approach to building a sort of immigration system that's going to help us get to where we want to be as a country.
- [23:31]
A
We'll be back with Todd in just a moment, so don't go anywhere you wouldn't want to miss this episode's civic Spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. But first, starting something new is tough. When I first started Future Hindsight, I had to figure it all out on my own. Every day seems to introduce another question that needs an answer, and quick. That can be an overwhelming feeling when your to do list just grows and grows with new tasks every day. Honestly, that list can pretty easily take over your life if you're not careful. So how can you find the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything? Because that can be such a game changer for millions of businesses out there. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Heinz and Mattel to fresh brands that are just getting started. So if you want to get started, take the first step with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. And maybe you want to accelerate your content creation. Great. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. With so many great tools at your fingertips, you can get the word out as if you have an entire marketing team behind you in just a few quick minutes. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. So if you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. What I love about Shopify is that no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Turn your big business idea into Cha Ching With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com hopefully go to shopify.com hopeful shopify.com hopeful Cha Ching and now let's return to my conversation with Todd Schulte. You said a bunch of things there, you know, about sending people to third countries, you know, not the country where they came from. You talked about people jumping out of unmarked cars. There are so many things in this time where I wonder on a daily basis like how is this going to end? You know, the people that are from. I'm just making it up now. Let's say somebody from Ukraine was sent to El Salvador. What happens to this person down the line? Like who takes responsibility for that? Who is accountable? What is the recourse? And we're going to have lots of people like that and what's gonna happen?
- [26:47]
B
Yeah, I think it's important to have a little perspective and I think the show's done a great job. We are dealing with things in a lot of cases that feel new. I don't think this is the worst time for this sort of work. It's certainly not the worst time for democracy we've seen in American history or anything like that. It is, I think, the hardest time that we have seen for a number of decades and the scale and scope at which the administration is moving to strip away status from millions of people, to strip away kind of basic constitutional protections and these assaults on the constit, whether that's birthright citizenship, whether that's due process, the Ramp up in the money, the speed at which is something we have not seen in a very, very, very long time. And we are going to end up in some really tough places here. And I just want to be honest with people there. I think it's always important to be grounded in what you can do day to day. But the size and scope and the harms that we are going to see here, we're going to be in for it for a while. I think we need to think about how to reduce those harms. I think we need to tell a story about why it's really bad they're doing it so that on the other side of this we have the political momentum to fix an IMM system. We have the political momentum to slow down this broader project, but also we have the policy momentum to get to where we want to be for some of the things I've talked about. Yeah, look, I think we should be thinking really creatively. They took hundreds of millions of dollars that the United States government clearly and lawfully appropriated to do things like help welcome newcomers in places like New York City. And they sent it to build the so called alligator Alcatraz in Florida. That is awful. It's terrible. It is a clear violation of how money is supposed to be spent in the United States and it's a clear moral abomination. We should think about the money that they are putting towards these things and how to redirect money there. We should think about making sure that we are not going to, with the stroke of the pen, be sending people to a foreign torture gulag in ccop because the next administration wants to do that. We should also look to the people who've stepped up. I think one of the most meaningful things I've seen since this administration took office was when a pretty small handful number of people went to El Salvador for Senator Van Hollen and then the delegation, Kilmar Brago, Garcia's lawyers, the people who fought alongside organizations and lawyers for the Venezuelan men, people like Andre who were taken off the streets and subjected to the Alien Enemies act and sent down there. That should give people hope that people took action and the public rallied behind them. And I'm going to be honest, a lot of policymakers, a lot of Democrats, a lot of people who said I'm a smart political operative, I know what to said it wasn't wise. That sort of hope that you can give to people in that action is I think an inspiration in what we should be following for the next couple years.
- [29:23]
A
I want to do a little Bit of a quick statistics check because what are the actual numbers of the people who have already been removed? You know, because things are moving so quickly.
- [29:33]
B
We don't know.
- [29:33]
A
We don't know. Right. Because it's like 12 million people. How far along are we? And we don't know. What does that mean, that we don't know?
- [29:41]
B
Well, you know, not just because I don't want to get the quiz wrong, but yeah, there's a couple of numbers that I think are helpful to ground on. So one is we have about 14 million people who are either undocumented or have a temporary status in this country. So about half those people have some sort of a protection. That's good. We should celebrate that. We should keep that there. They're trying to take that away. The undocumented population, inclusive of people who have no status or some status, has been really stable numerically for the last almost two decades, essentially. That doesn't mean it's the same people, country of origin. Things like that have changed here. This administration is ramping up, deportations. We don't really have great accurate numbers yet. I think we will have more over the next couple of months where it's a little hard to disaggregate where things are right now. There is one number that is out there that they are bragging about which is that like 2 million people have left the country. You may have seen this there. That is not the case. There are not 2 million people who've been forced out of the country. And I'm happy to talk about why. But they're pumping their numbers. They like to do the memes, they like to do that stuff. And obviously that's not what we're looking for. So.
- [30:53]
A
Yeah, so tell me about the 2 million. What is the real number or what are they actually referring to when they say 2 million?
- [30:59]
B
Yeah, so you've seen this thing about how like basically 2 million people have left. That is basically based off of an extrapolation from some labor numbers here, which is they want to make the argument that what they would say their mass deportation agenda is going to create jobs for native born Americans. Now this is not true. This has never been true historically when these things have happened. But the idea that my parents in Missouri, that by deporting farm workers in Arizona, that's gonna free up jobs for my parents to head on out to the field, that's not the case here. They wanna tell you that deporting immigrants is gonna solve all your problems. Housing's gonna get cheaper, it's gonna make your wages grow up, your back pain's gonna go away, your hair's gonna regrow. All they gotta do is deport immigrants here. And if you think I'm like kidding about that, they literally put up like a Gillette ad as like this is how America's gonna look when we deport a bunch of people. So they push out this idea, hate that ad. It's really something. So if you don't believe that the glory of America is looking at like advertisements from the late 1980s of people shaving and you actually think like what's actually happening in labor markets here? They pushed out this idea that 2 million people left. Basically what they've done is there were pretty small numbers of people who stopped responding to a survey. Immigrants. Now you might say, huh, Immigrants responding to a survey. I don't think immigrants probably like answering their phones when the government calls or answering the door so much. So numbers went down of immigrants responding to a survey. And so they said, oh, there's fewer immigrants in the workforce. Okay, fine, so there's immigrants in the workforce and then there's native born people in the workforce. And so essentially since the number of immigrants they believed went down in the workforce because there was what's called a non response bias, people stop answering the phone. That's a small percentage. That's like 20, 25% of the workforce that went down. They presumed that all those jobs must be being filled by native born Americans. But because of the way they model it, there's like a 5x multiplier, yada, yada yada. Yeah, very nifty MA number. And they're pushing it out here because.
- [33:12]
A
Got it. Well, speaking of labor, of course, realistically we know that the target population is motoring the American economy, right? Like they are picking the crops and they roof houses, they do all this work that actually a lot of native born people don't want to do. And it seems to me right now that businesses that rely on this labor are not really pushing back very much on the crackdowns. And long term this has to be unsustainable, right? Like we just can't continue to terrorize people and then make them quit their jobs or disappear. And that businesses can continue to function. They can't. So have you seen actually any industry specifically push back hard and what would be a sound business led response?
- [34:01]
B
I do think you're seeing more. We've lived through these two really abrupt, fast economic crises over the last couple decades. Basically in a matter of weeks, the country shut down over Covid and prior to that, in 2008, 2009, you had this huge financial crisis. And so I think people's reference points are like, economies can crash really, really fast. That's not what this is on immigration. It's not really what this is on tariffs either. It's gonna be a really big, nasty slow drag. So immigrants tend to work disproportionately at kind of the lower end and the higher end of the wage scale. At the lower end of the wage scale, they work in jobs that are really, really hard, but often where English fluency isn't required. Working in construction, working in agriculture, working in food service, things like that there. They also tend to aggregate in really high education levels there. So again, there's overlap between these populations here. You're seeing huge, huge, huge drags on both of these immigrant populations that are starting to show up and employers starting to get really frustrated. These crackdowns on universities. There was an effort last week that's basically trying to force universities like MIT to cut the number of international students in half. You're also seeing agriculture and construction start to speak up. And we've worked with folks really across the country on this. You've seen stories in Alabama about the construction industry starting to grind to a halt. And in Colorado. Those are two different states. You've seen growers in the Upper Plains states and in California you're also seeing people who are really concerned startups. And I talked to a biotech company the other day. They don't need hundreds and hundreds of people. They are really worried that they're not going to be able to get the two or the three people that they need who are coming out of a postdoc program. I do think businesses have been quieter than they were in the first administration. I think anybody tells you other than that is not being particularly accurate. And so I think it's important that people speak up. I do want to say that we work with a lot of these folks and nobody's coming through the door to save anybody. There's nobody coming over the hill who is going to come in and make problems go away here. People have got to speak up. And I think the longer the wait, the harder it is going to be. Now, I still think that there are in civil society, in parts of the Republican Party, in universities and law firms and businesses. I don't think there's any way to look at the last eight months and say it feels like there is the sort of broad based pushback that there was in the first administration. Administration in all of these places here. And I just think we should be pretty honest, though. Like, things are gonna get harder until they get better. And if you're in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. And so I think it's an opportunity for people to realize here their workers and their consumers are gonna be in a really hard spot. And, you know, people gotta speak up.
- [36:48]
A
Well, I feel like from everything you said just now, it's a good segue to talk about the Supreme Court greenlighting racial profiling. So in September, Noem Vasquez Perdomo. The Supreme Court decided that immigration agents can use race, accent, and job type to detain people, meaning any resident, including citizens, of course, is now at risk of arrest simply for how they look or sound. So to me, this is a significant step away from our rights to due process. Right. But it's also really the bridge between going after undocumented people. Undocumented people. I'm saying this in quotation marks and terrorizing citizens who fit the profile. And so I know that your beat is really immigration, but how do you make sense of this and what is the next step that you anticipate?
- [37:40]
B
We just talked about kind of breaks on the administration. In the first term, the administration moved quickly, and they moved unlawfully, and they got slowed down and they got stopped. In a lot of cases here, it's a different court and it's a different time. This time that's not happening here. I think if you look at what this administration is doing, they are acting aggressively, unlawfully. They are being consistently told by lower courts that they are breaking the law. They are getting decisions from judges that were appointed by Republicans and Democrats, including by President Trump, saying these are not close calls on birthright citizenship, on these ICE raids, on all manner of things, on deporting people in clear violation of a court order to El Salvador torture prisons. And then these things end up at the Supreme Court. And you are seeing two things happening that are really, really concerning. One, you are seeing the Supreme Court not rule on the merits, but basically say, well, we are going to lift the lower court ruling for now, and eventually we may come back. So you hear about this thing called the shadow docket. This is when courts don't go up for these big arguments here. That is really, really scary. You know, it's early October. Last Friday, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to end TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans. It didn't say why. It just said they can move ahead on it and eventually we may come back on the merits. So the use of the shadow jocket to kind of precede policies that courts have ruled is unlawful is really bad. And then you are seeing on a handful of these cases here, deeply troubling decisions. So you mentioned this racial profiling case. The idea that it is somehow constitutional that we can racially profile people, that we can arrest US Citizens, but because they're only going to be arrested for a small period of time here is absolutely the wrong approach. And I think you saw that language, you saw from some of the justices in strong, strong opposition there should put chills in people's minds about how far things have moved and how quickly they are. That we are having a debate about birthright citizenship at all is the wrong approach. That somehow the idea that an arrest might only be some period of time is both clearly anti constitutional. It is also kind of a clear denial of what the criminal justice system in the United States actually does when it comes to, particularly folks who are black and brown and immigrants in this country here. The idea that somehow there's not horrific harm by saying that law enforcement can just arrest people arbitrarily for some period of time. And it is really concerning. It is really concerning. And so I think that people should think about reactions to court cases the same way they think about laws and actions by the administrations and show their concern and speak out about that there. And I think we are going to see more and more video of the consequences of that sort of stuff, whether it's in Chicago or cities around the country here and probably in New York in not that long when they decide it's time to bring folks to and do their show of force.
- [40:43]
A
Yeah, it's coming for sure. Well, let's talk about what we can do. Right?
- [40:47]
B
Yes.
- [40:47]
A
So every week on Future Hindsight, I ask my guests to share civic spark, one small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. And you know, when it comes to situations like what we're talking about, flexing our civic muscles seems a little out of reach. So what's a good way to turn the insights that you've shared with us today into action?
- [41:09]
B
Yeah. So I think if we want to think about how to build the country that we want, the one that can both be a beacon of hope, that can treat people fairly, that can allow us to lead into the middle and into the next century, that seems like a big and tall order. And so most of the time somebody would sit here and say, oh, like call your member of Congress, go to a protest sign up do that. And that is all really important. So here's like a. I'm a big, like one foot in front of the other guy, tangible step. So most of us are members of institutions of some sort. We work at a job, we're a member of a church, we go to synagogue, we show up at a grocery store. We're on a co op border. If you're here in New York, whatever that may be, and there's just things you can do to be like a little bit better at protecting people from the harmful immigration system from a harmful criminal justice system there and to help people navigate those systems better. If you want to go to our website, www.forwardus or just Google or whatever your search engine of choice is, I don't want to presume how to be a good employer. And it gives you tangible steps of how you as a company, you as an employer, you as an organization can stand up for people. So whether that's posting Know youw Rights materials at your local grocery store, making sure if you work at a grocery store that they've got it up there or your local podcasting studio for that matter, here, making sure people understand what they can do. One, to make sure that you have rights when you come into contact with law enforcement. Two, go to your HR at your company. If you work at a big company, if they have attorneys, just say, hey, what are we doing to make sure that our staff are immigrants? Have we helped make sure they've got legal resources available to them? Have we screened them to see if there's some more protective immigration status if they have a temporary one there? But we just want to give people resources of things that you can do to make your workplace a little bit better, a little bit more organized here and commit to building a better immigration system there. That's just one thing you can do close to home. It's a little bit easier than getting in touch with your senator sometimes here and just ask some questions about like what we're doing to make sure that there's a plan in place for our team, for the people we pray with, for the people that we go to school with, things like that. You know, there's been some amazing grassroots organizing on back to school stuff too. You can find if you give it a search. So I think start local.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good advice. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
- [43:32]
B
You know, I will actually go back to what I just said, which is I think. I think people are of the belief that the best way forward out of a status quo that has failed them from both political parties, they would argue, is they're going to have to start locally and act and get involved in things. And I think that in some ways, the most important thing a lot of us can try to do who do policy change or political work for a living is give people the tools so that they can be active because the demand is there right now. That's the thing that I'm, I think, most hopeful about is people who, on issues that I've worked on for a long time are looking and saying, you know what? I want to understand and I want to do a better job just knowing what I can do to stand up for people there. And that makes me really hopeful because I've been there when people have navigated to the end of a really hard immigration system, people who have spent decades trying to find some way to adjust status and to do that there. And I've been there when people have said we're going to stand up and protect our community there. And that gives me hope that there's a demand and people want to do more of that there. And I think at the call for those of us who work in politics to do a better job giving people those tools.
- [44:43]
A
Yeah. Hear, hear. Well, Todd, thank you so much for joining me on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
- [44:50]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [44:52]
A
Todd Schulte is the president of Forward Us. Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps that spark progress, like sharing this episode with a friend. Let's recap. This week, Civic Spark and fire up our collective power. Just put one foot in front of the other and start local. Go to Forward Us and check out their resources, whether for yourself or others, and find out what you can do in your workplace or your community or any organization you may be a part of to make sure there's a plan in place for everybody who is an immigrant and needs resources. Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Stephanie Liu. She's the chair of the Labor Studies department at CUNY and the co author of Practical seven Strategies to Change the World. We have a system that's stacked against us, but we try and emphasize the book that everyone in every case can access some form of power, whether it's the power of turning to your neighbor with solidarity, the power to withhold and non cooperation, you know, or the power of care that. Next time on Future hindsight. Now be sure to follow us on your podcast app so you'll never miss an episode. And if you're listening on your browser, you can find Future Hindsight on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app. We're here to build your civic Action toolkit every week, so follow Future Hindsight now and we'll come right to you. And if you want to support Future Hindsight and all the work that we do as an independent pro democracy podcast, consider subscribing to the Civics Club on patreon. Head to patreon.com futurehiinsight now to join. Thanks for tuning in, and until next time, see clearly, act boldly, and spark the change you want to see. This episode was produced by Zach Travis and me.
- [46:57]
B
This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.