It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind U.S. Immigration and Its Economic Impact

Summary

Episode Summary: It's a Numbers Game – The Numbers Behind U.S. Immigration and Its Economic Impact

Podcast: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show (iHeartPodcasts)
Host: Ryan Girdusky (sub-hosting)
Air Date: October 13, 2025

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the U.S. immigration debate, focusing on the data and economic realities underpinning mass deportation policies, the labor market, and the broader impact on American society. Host Ryan Girdusky, joined by liberal commentator Mickey Kaus, critiques the emotional narratives surrounding immigration, especially recent commentary from Joe Rogan, and explores the outcomes of current enforcement strategies in both border control and labor markets. The discussion is driven by a “show your work” approach, using numbers, policies, and economic dynamics as the episode’s backbone.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Columbus Day and Host’s Perspective

[02:53]

• Ryan opens with holiday context, expressing pride in his Italian immigrant heritage and defending European colonization as foundational to American prosperity.
• Quick reminder about upcoming elections and poll accuracy critiques.

2. Reaction to Joe Rogan’s Immigration Commentary

[06:17–07:39 | 07:47]

• Joe Rogan’s stance: Mass deportations lack compassion; long-time, law-abiding migrants should have a pathway to citizenship.

  • Quote (Joe Rogan, 06:17): “Everybody who has a heart sees that and goes, that can’t be right. They can’t be the only way to do this, right?”
  • Quote (Joe Rogan, 06:49): “…if they’ve been productive members of society for 20 years, no criminal record, they worked the entire time, they paid taxes, find them a pathway to citizenship.”

• Ryan counters Rogan sharply, accusing him of “emotional blackmail” and hypocrisy due to his wealth and insulation from immigration’s real-world effects.

  • Cites that the Trump campaign openly pushed mass deportation, not a surprise to voters.
  • Critiques Rogan’s “compassion” as harmful, creating an incentive system that fuels human smuggling, deaths, and trafficking.

  Quote (Ryan, 07:47):

  “There’s a lot going on and most of it is emotional blackmail…This is a rich person trying to make you feel bad saying, your neighborhood should be flooded with people, your social services should be drained, your quality of life should go down, not his.”

• Numbers Highlight:

  • 7,000–8,000 migrants died attempting entry in 2000–2020.
  • 50,000–150,000 were trafficked into sex slavery since 2010, most being women and minors.
  • Cartel/human smuggling business estimated at $75–110 billion since 2000.

• Tough enforcement, Ryan argues, actually reduces these harms by slicing demand, decreasing dangerous crossings, and preventing trafficking.

  Quote (Ryan, 12:04):

  “That money faucet is turned off to a great degree because migrants aren’t willing to come here if they know they’re going to be deported.”

3. Self-Deportations and Immigration Numbers

[16:40]

• For every 1 forced deportation since Trump took office, 6–7 left voluntarily (“self-deportations”), a trend saving U.S. billions in enforcement costs.
  • Number: U.S. foreign-born population down by 2.2 million from Jan–Aug 2025.
  • Emotional viral videos misleadingly focus on rare forced removals rather than commonplace, peaceful departures.

4. Immigration, Labor Markets, and Farming Economics

[17:45–19:39]

• Discussion of the H2A visa program:

  • No cap on farm labor visas; complaints from agriculture sector are about wage protections, not worker scarcity.
  • Farmers resist paying prevailing wage rates ($15–$20/hr) and providing housing, as law requires for visa holders.

  Quote (Ryan, 19:07):

  “It’s not that farm workers, farmers can’t get access to workers. They just don’t want to pay them anything more than impoverished wages.”

• Impact on food prices:

  • Farm labor = 9% of farm costs; raw input ≈ 10–20% of retail price.
  • Doubling farm worker wages would result in only 1–2% one-time increase in grocery prices—not an ongoing hike.

  Conclusion: The real solution: push for agricultural mechanization to avoid dependency on low-skill, low-wage labor.

  Quote (Ryan, 20:40):

  “It is time that we have a real conversation...the end of the low-skilled labor era. It’s like one of Taylor Swift’s eras: the low-skill labor era.”

5. Interview – Mickey Kaus on Mass Deportation, Compassion, Labor, and Race

[25:06–47:54]

• Is mass deportation compassionate?

  • Mickey favors consequences for breaking immigration law (“impose consequences”) but wants more efficiency and less “shock and awe.”
  • Notes modern communications mean deterrence travels via family/friend networks, not viral deportation videos.
  • Points out that “compassion” overlooks Americans harmed by bottom-tier wage depression, disproportionately affecting Black workers.

  Quote (Mickey Kaus, 30:17):

  “If you have compassion for your fellow Americans who have been screwed over the last 40 years, you want to control immigration.”

• Amnesty for long-standing illegal immigrants?

  • Mickey would support a “honest deal” for those here 20+ years, but is skeptical Democrats would stick to a hard cutoff and avoid repeat amnesty cycles.
  • Both agree amnesty provokes fraud, is messy to administer, and is politically toxic because of constant goalpost-moving.

  Quote (Ryan, 32:45):

  “When you’re talking about an administrative state...you’re talking about paperwork that would take five, six, seven, eight years to even go through on a proper basis.”

• Farm Labor Economics Revisited:

  • Mickey and Ryan agree: Farmers’ complaints are about being forced to pay higher wages, not about worker scarcity.
  • Mickey’s take: Restaurants, construction, and small businesses don’t collapse under higher wages—they adapt, or the market evolves (e.g., take-out replacing full-service).

  Quote (Mickey, 35:51):

  “I care more about the wages of construction workers rising 30% and farm workers and all sorts of unskilled laborers.”

• Transition and Job Losses:

  • Trump policies trigger several simultaneous transitions: self-deportation, automation in farming, loss of government “make-work” DEI jobs.
  • Black wage gains from tighter labor supply may be offset in the short term by the end of certain government jobs.
  • Both see this as a rough but necessary transition to a more sustainable labor market.

  Quote (Mickey, 42:14):

  “At some point, we got to do it. Trump has like four transitions going on at once…”

6. Ask Me Anything (AMA) – France’s Political Crisis and Animal Shelters

[52:23]

• Ryan answers listener questions:
  • French politics: Center is collapsing, rise of the far right and far left, possible governmental shakeup, zero chance of monarchy but fun to imagine.
  • Animal shelters: Intake has surged (COVID pets, rising cost of living, landlords’ pet policies)—recommendation to adopt, not buy from breeders.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Joe Rogan on compassion and deportation:
  “Everybody who has a heart sees that and goes, that can’t be right.” (06:17)

• Ryan Girdusky on emotional arguments:
  “There’s a lot going on and most of it is emotional blackmail.” (07:47)

• Ryan on policy efficacy:
  “For every one illegal alien that we forcibly deported, six or seven just left on their own...” (16:40)

• Mickey Kaus on immigration’s impact on Black Americans:
  “If you have compassion for your fellow Americans...you want to control immigration.” (30:17)

• On labor market adaptation:
  “I care more about the wages of construction workers rising 30%...than about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 30% loss.” (35:51)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:53 — Introduction, Columbus Day remarks, set-up for immigration debate
• 06:17–07:39 — Joe Rogan’s critique of mass deportations (audio clip and host reaction)
• 16:40 — Self-deportation statistics and impact
• 17:45–19:39 — Deep dive: H2A visas, labor costs, economic arguments for automation
• 25:06–47:54 — Long-form interview: Mickey Kaus on policies, amnesty, farm labor, Black workers
• 52:23 — Ask Me Anything: France’s political future, national animal shelter overcapacity

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Tone and Style

Ryan’s approach is factual yet impassioned, using humor and sarcastic asides (e.g., Taylor Swift era/lack of compassion jokes), and pushes back strongly against “elite” and “emotional” arguments he sees as disconnected from middle-class realities. Dialogue with Mickey Kaus is civil but pointed, exploring the liberal perspective but reaching significant agreement on economic impacts.

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TL;DR (For Those Who Haven’t Listened)

• The episode critiques emotion-driven immigration commentary (especially from Joe Rogan), advocating for policy based on hard data and American economic interests.
• Focuses on how tough enforcement reduces illegal migration largely through voluntary departures, simultaneously protecting migrants from tragedy and boosting wage prospects for low-skill American workers, particularly Black Americans.
• Refutes farm lobby narratives: America’s food supply is not endangered by enforcement; wage demands, not labor scarcity, drive industry complaints.
• Proposes agricultural mechanization as the solution, not perpetual low-wage visas.
• Features a robust, data-driven, bipartisan discussion on the reality and limits of amnesty policies.
• Audience Q&A covers the crisis of France’s political center and the surge in animal shelter intake.

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This summary captures not just the “what” but the “why” behind the data and opinions, providing a thorough guide for anyone wanting the full story without listening to the podcast.

Transcript

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[Ryan Gradusky]

Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Gradusky. Thank you all for being here. Happy Columbus Day. As many of you know, I'm a proud descendant of Italian immigrants. They came to America about 100 years ago, and they came from Sicily and Naples. And to quote the great philosopher Tony Soprano, in this household, Christopher Columbus is a hero. So happy Columbus Day. Have a flag cookie if you don't know what they are. By the way, for people who don't live in a major city, it's chocolate top and bottom with the Italian flag in the middle. Great cookie anyway. But happy Columbus Day. I hope you have a wonderful day if you're off and even if you're working. And let don't let anyone tell you that European colonization was a bad thing. Discovering America was a great thing, and so was colonialization from Europe. And ultimately it led to the founding of the greatest, freest and most prosperous nation that ever existed. So happy Columbus Day. Now, for the last few weeks, I have focused a lot on the elections. They're coming up in 22 days. Yes, 22 days. So if you haven't made a plan to go vote yet, find out who's running in your area, find out the issues that they support, make a plan and go out and vote. Well, I started off every episode with some polling information about the upcoming elections, but there really hasn't been many polls lately. There was only one. It was a Trafalgar poll in Virginia. Now, let me preface by saying Trafalgar does some very good work. In the past, they did a lot of good work when Republicans were ahead. But then they had an awful year in 2022 where they made all these projections of Republican victories that were, you know, never happened. And some of them weren't even close. And it really hurt their reputation in a big way. But in 2024, they were the fifth most accurate pollster. So that's something. And I might add that in 2021, they nailed the Virginia local election. So there's that as well. So the Trafalgar poll came out and has Spamberger up by three. It didn't include an independent who's not on the ballot for some reason, and she's endorsed Spamberger. So I'm going to say it's Spamberger plus five. But they Spamberger up by three. Hajme for lieutenant governor, Democrat Hajme for lieutenant governor up by one. And the Republican, Jason Miarez, the incumbent attorney general, up by six points. He is facing Jay Jones, who made all those text messages saying he wanted to kill Republicans. This seems a little too good to be true, in my judgment. But they have nailed some elections in the past and we'll have to wait to see more information, which I'll cover next week probably. Now, for those of you who know, you know, know this show, they listen to me. I don't do episodes where I chase comments made by other people in the media. I don't do reaction videos. I don't, I don't say, like, you'll never believe who said so and so the lib got owned or you'll never believe this take. I don't do that. I find most of it very, very cringe. I don't really care. Most people in the media, especially very famous people who are not even listening to this podcast, say, I'm not going to start a feud. It doesn't make any sense to me. But there have been a few comments made about immigration that I think need to be addressed and I need to present the numbers to you about what was said. So Joe Rogan, most famous podcaster who's ever lived, who I don't, by the way, listen to very often, he had an episode that I checked out specifically because of this clip where he claimed that people who support Trump's mass deportations don't have a heart. Let me roll the clip now so you can hear exactly what he said.

[Joe Rogan]

Let's just talk about the immigration thing. The way it looks is horrific when you're just arresting people in front of their kids and just normal, regular people that have been here for 20 years, everybody who has a heart can't get along with that. No, everybody who has a heart sees that and go, that can't be right. They can't be right. They can't be the only way to do this right. Because you have to think, look, yeah, we have to have a border. Yes, it should have been secure. Yes, they should make sure you know who everybody is before they get in.

[Mickey Kaus]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But when people been here for 20 years, like, come on, come on, that's crazy. Yeah, let's find a way. If they've been productive members of society for 20 years, no criminal record, they worked the entire time, they Paid taxes. Find them a pathway to citizenship. Find a way where you can do this thing that you want to do, which is keep terrorists and cartel members from getting across the border with drugs that kill 100,000 people a year. Okay. But also have a fucking heart. Because if you don't, you're not going to get anybody on your side if you're doing this stuff publicly, throwing women to the ground, handcuffing people just for existing on the wrong side of the dirt.

[Mickey Kaus]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Not a criminal. Not. The only crime they ever committed was coming over here as a kid.

[Mickey Kaus]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

They probably didn't even know what the fuck was going on.

[Mickey Kaus]

Yeah, yeah, man.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, a lot of kids got snuck across when they were already born in Mexico and they've grown up their entire life in America. They can't even speak Spanish.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Okay. There's a lot going on and most of it is emotional blackmail. So first of all, him saying, I didn't think this is what Trump would do. Did you pay attention at all to the campaign? Because he was very clearly going to do mass deportations. He said it at rallies. He said in interviews. There were signs printed at the RNC saying mass deportations. Like it wasn't a secret. It wasn't like Trump said, oh, by the way, we're invading Mongolia. Yeah. That would be shocking. That would be. Oh, wow. He never mentioned he was going to invade Mongolia. No. This is very, very, very deliberate. It was out in the open. It was no secrets hidden whatsoever. So saying you only thought it was means you either A, weren't listening or B, trying to play dumb. Now, secondly, it is not horrific. Illegal aliens being deported in most of my time should be my screensaver. This. We are the most generous nation on Earth. We've taken in more immigrants legally and illegally than any other place on the planet in history to our own detriment at times. And the line that he said, these people were just born on the wrong side of the dirt. Excuse me, Joe Rogan. Exactly how many migrants are living in your house that you allow? How many are allowed to camp on your lawn? How many, you know, military age single men will you allow to sleep within a few hundred feet of your daughter? Like, this is a rich person trying to make you feel bad saying, your neighborhood should be flooded with people, your social service services should be drained, your quality of life should go down, not his. Because he lives in a divorced reality from the rest of us, because he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but middle class people who he views as the ones that have to take in these people and bear the load of taxpayer funded immigration problems from illegal aliens. Specifically, their hospital should be overloaded, their school should have to speak 700 languages. It's ridiculous. It is such hypocrisy to hear from a wealthy person who has generational wealth on his side that they don't have a heart for, for wanting to have a better quality of life than they would if they lived in a neighborhood that was flooded with illegal aliens. Secondly, what Rogan is saying isn't real compassion. What he's advocating for is not compassionate. It is quite the opposite of compassion. Rogan's viewpoint creates a cycle of perpetual victimhood where the world's poor enrich human smugglers because they're told that the American people are made up of people who sound like Joe Rogan, that they will allow illegal behavior, that there's a high threshold before you get kicked out of the country. Rogan says if they commit a certain number of felonies. I'm sorry, a certain number. What are you talking about? Like, do you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth as you live in a gated home in a nice part of Austin? And to the credit of Rogan's guests, he tried to lay out. Later on in the interview, he tries to lay out what Tom Holman says. He says, Tom Holman talks about supporting a draconian effort to curb illegal immigration because when illegal immigrants is permitted, permitted to come in the country, human smugglers prey on poor people from across the globe, enticing them to do the same illegal alien trip and make loads of money for themselves. During the first two decades. I want to remind you people how dangerous having an open border or any kind of immigration system is where we, we don't punish illegal behavior. During the first two decades of this century, between 7,000 and 8,000 migrants died coming into the United States. And those are the ones who made it to the border. Those are the ones whose bodies we discovered, not the people who went missing in some jungle along the way or got thrown from a train track in Mexico or God knows what happened to them. This comes from an estimate, by the way, by USA Facts Slash no more Deaths as a nonprofit. These the years where deaths declined is when the administration, specifically Trump's administration, actually cracked down on illegal immigration domestically because less people thought they can come here, so less people made the trip. That is true. And between and in the last 15 years, and this is a very rough estimate, but between 50,000 and 150,000 migrants who came to the US or try to come to the US were sold into sex slavery, 70 to 80% of them being women, 20 to 30% being minors. Human traffickers since the year 2010. Would you know that would. That was completely. By the time that Rogan said these people should be allowed here, they made between 75 to 110 billion since 2000. Smugglers. That faucet. That money faucet is turned off to a great degree because migrants aren't willing to come here if they know they're going to be deported. You are actually improving their lives. You are preventing hundreds of them from dying of dehydration or murder. You're preventing thousands from being sold into sex slavery, many of them minors. You are preventing all those things by being tough on illegal immigration year. Joe Rogan just can't see it. So not only is Rogan not actually offering any compassion, it's all emotional blackmail because he hopes to enshrine a policy that will get thousands of people killed and sold into slavery and enrich the worst people in the world. It's just because your algorithm doesn't show you that. That you can't get the vibes that actually enforcing laws are good. Right? I mean, it's not fair. It is simply not fair to allow a country to skirt their laws for a specific group of people who enrich the worst people in the world. Human smugglers are, in my opinion, the worst people in the world and openly skirt a law that already allows a million people in a year. Imagine all the people waited 20, 30 years to come here legally, and nope, someone just crosses. They lived close by the border so they'd be able to get in. The victims created by Joe Rogan's supposed compassion aren't the only thing he's not noticing. Right? He's not just noticing the people who didn't die because they didn't cross the border legally or didn't get sold into sex slavery or all the money the cartel members and human smugglers didn't make. He also is not seeing the amount of people who are just leaving on their own peacefully, without being arrested, without being chased, without, you know, having a horrific video, as he calls them. According to an estimate, this is by the Border patrol and by ICE, between 250,000 and 300,000 illegal aliens have been deported since Trump took office in January. Yet six or seven times that amount have decided to leave on their own accord, without force, arrest, or trial. It has saved the United States billions of dollars in. In legal fees and law and lawyers in. In chasing them down in, in everything. According to data collected by the center for Immigration Studies, the foreign born population of the United states shrunk by 2.2 million people from January to August 2025. That means that for every one illegal alien that we forcibly deported, six or seven just slept on their own without any viral video. That hurts Joe Rogan's feelings. Emotional blackmail masked as toxic compassion serves no one's interests. And Rogan's brand of being like the every man who, you know, he doesn't do big research. It's all vibes and feelings and he'll talk to anybody and whatever that is. Great. When you are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and you were denied any consequences from the statistics, from the real effects of policies you advocate for. It's just pisses me off to no end. And I had to bring up and Rogan's not the only person who's been sitting there and doubling down on trying to be loose on immigration. The Trump's own administration put out a document that was reported by the Washington Post. It says, quote, the near total cessation of inflow of illegal aliens is threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices of for US consumers. Unless the department acts immediately to provide a source of stable, lawful labor, this threat will go. The Washington Post article continues. The Labor Department made this case in paperwork documenting a new rule that took effect October 2nd that effectively lowers the pay for seasonal migrants working in agriculture under the H2A visa program. The move is aimed at giving farmers easier and legal access to foreign workers to avoid imminent widespread disruption of the US Agricultural sector. The agency said it is expected to cut farmer labor costs by $24 billion over the next decade. So 2.4 billion a year. I don't know why they do the next decade for. Okay, here's why. The Washington Post, and by extension the farm lobby, is lying to people, including the Trump administration. Whoever published this post. Unlike most visa categories, the H2A visa, the farm labor visa has no cap. It is completely dependent on the demands of the of the employer. So if you want 10 million, you get 10 million. If you want 10,000, you get 10,000. In 2024, we gave out almost 400,000 H2A visas. But as the article says, it's not about access to workers. That is not what farmers are complaining about. It is the fact that the way it works is with the H2A visa, you have to deal with something called the adverse effect wage rate. Basically, they can't pay H2A visa workers. Farm workers less than the average American citizen in whatever given state that a farm is operating in. So farm workers tend to get between 15 and $20 an hour based upon which state they're working in. Like Florida's like 15, 80 an hour and California is like $20.70 an hour. So they, they don't under work under undercut American, American pay. That's the whole entire point is to protect American workers with that part of it. They also to provide some basic services like housing and transportation for them. Things that will probably otherwise likely be covered by taxpayers if it doesn't work. So the employers has to do that. So it's not that farm workers, farmers can't get access to workers. They just don't want to pay them anything more than impoverished wages. They, you know, they were refused. They were having a sort of problem undercutting American laws. And I'm sorry, if an industry cannot operate under the current law, which is very generous to them, then it cannot continue the way that it's running. Like they need to reform or they need to get bought out by someone who can reform that. And it's not even accurate. It is not even accurate that increasing labor costs are changing the prices of groceries, which this article referenced later on, and it's mentioned over and over again, is that grocery prices are coming up. Farm labor is 9% of raw farm input costs and raw farm input costs is 10 to 20% of retail prices on average. Thus if you doubled, which no one's calling for a double, but even if you doubled farm labor, the cost at raw or retail would be up by 1 to 2% and it wouldn't be 1 to 2% per year. It's a one time adjustment. It is time that we have a very real conversation. Not we, but the administration has a conversation with agriculture and say it's time to mechanize. Like it is we. It is the end of the low skilled, low skilled labor era. It's like one of Taylor Swift's era, the low skill labor era. It's going to make grocery prices cheaper. If they mechanize, we're going to end the entire draw, the entire magnet of low skill labor from the third world. Especially as their birth rates are plummeting in places like Mexico and places like Guatemala that they don't have an endless supply of 19 year olds who are uneducated, who want to work, that that supply is thinning out every single year. And Congress could offer tax breaks so medium size and fairly larger or decently larger farms can afford the mechanization costs. It's just, it's ridiculous that every time we talk about enforcing the law and having a country and protecting our borders, we, we have to hear about rotted vegetables in the fields. I just, I can't, I, I, I guess I don't have a heart at the end of the day. I guess if this is what I have to do is get surrender the country, have no borders, have no enforcement, invite the entire world and let them live on the taxpayer dole. I guess in the end of the day, I don't have a heart either. But what I don't have is the ability to buy bullshit compassion from very rich companies and people who will never, ever have to live with the consequences that they're advocating for. With me this week is a liberal friend of mine who has been talking about immigration longer than I think I've even been alive. Very, very smart guy. I think it's the first liberal friend of mine I've ever had on the show. That's coming up next.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O o dot com. That's O D O o dot com.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Ah, come on.

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Run a business and not thinking about radio? Think again. Because more people are listening to the radio and iHeart today than they were 20 years ago and only iHeart broadcast radio connects with more Americans than TV, digital, social, any other media, even twice as many teens than TikTok. And that reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. The number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results. Now let's get those results growing for your business. Radio's here now more than ever and iheart's leading the way. Think radio can help your business. Think iheart streaming, podcasting and radio where the reach is real. Let us show [e-mail] that's iheartadvertising.com or call 844-844-Iheart one more time. Just call 844-844-iheart and get radio working for you.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Mickey Kaus is the author of the End of Equality, a legendary blogger, a good friend of mine. Mickey, thank you for being on.

[Mickey Kaus]

Glad to be here, Ryan. So Mickey, Columbus Day. Happy Columbus Day.

[Ryan Gradusky]

On Columbus Day. On the day of my people. Mickey, you're a very well known liberal and but you've argued a lot over the re. Over the, over the issue of immigration with members of both parties about this. And Joe Rogan had on his podcast, he said if you do not support, if you support mass Ms. Mass. Mass deportations, you don't have compassion and you don't have a heart. This is a common thing heard on the left about the argument compassion. Is it compassionate the way that Donald Trump is doing deportations now?

[Mickey Kaus]

Well, Holman's seems to have bought into a bit of what the Border Patrol's philosophy was, which is, was always to we impose consequences. I always thought that was a bad slogan because you could justify anything as imposing consequences. We threw people under pits, okay? That's imposing consequence. The Border Patrol should efficiently and politely as possible get people out of the country who shouldn't be here. So I think their focus should be on the numbers. Instead they focused on what's been called, I think correctly, a sort of shock and awe strategy on the grounds that they can then use this to discourage people overseas from even trying to come and encourage people to self support, both of which are worthy goals and it makes sense to do that. But I wonder in this day and age with cell phones, when people find out people decide whether to come to America by whether their cousin got in. Their cousin calls them on the cell phone from America and says I got in, they'll come too. If he says I didn't get in, they won't come. The shock and awe is less important than it was before. We had this instant communication for who is in and who is actually out. So if I were running cbp, I would tone it down a bit. Okay. And I don't think that would placate people like Joe Rogan who was spouting every sort of cliche of the anti borders community about how, you know, first he we want to give people a path to citizenship. Well, you don't spot that unless you imbued with propaganda. And also he, he picks the most extreme examples. People who've been here 20 years, you know. Yeah, you know, the Biden let in people in the past five years, five million people. Okay. Obviously if you pick the first people you'd like to deport, it's that was those 5 million who've only been here for five years. And a policy of self deportation gets most of those people who is going to Deport, self deport. First, people who have no roots, people who've only been here for a short period of time. The Biden people are going to self deport. So Homer's strategy makes sense as a way to focus on the new arrivals. People who've been here 20 years are going to be more reluctant to self deport.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Some people who have been here for 20 years, like that chef that knew George W. Bush. He'd been here for so long. Well, I looked at his case. He had an outstanding deportation order. He had been through the system. They found that he had no legal right to be here. He, I guess, applied for asylum. They said, you have no right for illegal asylum. And then he just evaded deportation. So he broke the law not once, but then he evaded deportation a second time. As a big middle finger to you. I don't have a ton of compassion for people I who do that.

[Mickey Kaus]

There's only one case that's really gotten to me in terms of maybe we shouldn't deport this guy. It was a 65 year old janitor in LA who was doing nothing but going to work every day. I have much more sympathy for that guy. He'd been here for a long time. Let's say he satisfied the 20 years requirement. I have much more sympathy for that guy than for this social climate who comes, lies and sucks up to powerful people. Plus, he has talents. He can go back home. He can use his talents to make ceviche wherever he comes from. His poor janitor, his talent, he doesn't have those talents. If he goes home, he might be in a worse shape. But I guess my basic point is I would be happy to cut a deal, an actual honest deal. That said, in the spirit of statute of limitations, we deport everybody who is here illegally. But if you're here for 20 years, the statute of limitations, it kicks in and you get to stay in some form or another. Okay, if the Democrats would stick to that deal, if they were a common agreement that we have borders, we enforce the immigration laws, it's legitimate to enforce the immigration laws. But the Democrats don't have that. They don't see the validity of enforcing the immigration laws and they would just use the 20 to lobby for 15 and then 10 and then 5 and then 0. So if you cut that deal, which is a reasonable deal to make, you're buying a whole world of trouble. So I support the idea that for now, let's just support everybody who's here illegally and see what happens. And maybe the Democrats will finally get the message that we have borders. The other point about compassion is, I mean, what my book was about was about how unskilled Americans, especially blacks, were being thrown on the trash heap of history because wages were actually going down for those people. So while it used to be everybody moved up into the middle class in unison, the bottoms were dropping out, they were going on fentanyl. They're the people Charles Murray wrote about. And that's not the society we want. And it's produced by mass immigration because those people are lowering the wages for everybody at the bottom. Even if they don't take a single job from a black person, they are lowering the wages. But of course they do take jobs from black people. Blacks rightly say they're the last hired, first fired, and they are hired after the illegals. So if you have compassion for your fellow Americans who have been screwed over the last 40 years, you want to control immigration.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right. So I want to go back to your first point before I go to the second point. Here's why I don't agree with the 20 year policy. Like if you've been here since 2000, let's say, or 2005, and you get to say, let's say 2000 is a nice even year. The Reagan Amnesty was in 86. It was signed in 86. It didn't take effect till like 87. It ended. I think. I think the last person who got it was like in 1999 or 2000, but it extended for quite a period of time. George H.W. bush issued a series, a smaller, but a series of amnesties as well. So really you're talking about people who came between 1993 and 2000. Right, like right before 9, 11. It's a six or seven period of time. It's a few million people, some of which will have passed away by this point. Some will return to their own home country. It's not, it's a very, very. It's a blip of the illegal alien population as far as the real groups of people. But those are clear, the most sympathetic. And the problem for people who want to enforce the law is that we see, yeah, we see that woman throwing herself on the floor of the jail cell saying, please don't take my husband. What we don't see is the six or seven people who just go home on their own peacefully. There was a New York Times article over the weekend about how New York City public schools are fighting back against deportations. Every person they feature was being deported. So I have no idea how they're fighting back but their parent, but they were, a lot of them were just self deporting. They were just going home on their own volition and that's the best way possible. It is, you are, it is the best, it's what we are looking for. So I don't know if I buy the whole like 20 year thing. And also there's, I mean it's hard to have documentation. And when I think what Joe Rogan doesn't understand and you would, is that when you're talking about an administrative state and the administration having to go through millions upon millions of applications to verify the legitimacy of someone's claims that they haven't broken the law, not even like ID theft and that they've been here a certain period of time. I mean you're talking about paperwork that would take, you know, five, six, seven, eight years to even go through on a proper basis. So I think that that's, that's why we get so many badly legal immigrants is because it takes so long to go such a short period of time to do the paperwork.

[Mickey Kaus]

Every, every time they draw a line like that in the Reagan amnesty with the DACA amnesty, there's massive fraud. People claim, you know, if you were supposed to come before 65 people come up with some fake, you know, utility bill or something that implies they came here before 65. I mean the numbers are always much larger than expected because they're inflated by fraud. And yes, you're asking for it.

[Ryan Gradusky]

And it's an open invitation for one progressive judges to waive those things which they did on the Reagan Amnes and invite the entire world in. You mentioned about black Americans being left behind. There was a story in the Washington Post. I sent it to you. I don't know if you got a chance to read it about farm workers and the Department of Labor complaining complaints from farm workers that once again they're going to have rotted vegetables in the fields because they can't get access to illegal immigrants. And if you read throughout the article it says, well, the best thing to possibly do is to lower the threshold for, for legal labor so that they don't have to earn more money than Americans. Is what they're actually advocating for is a reduction in all these visas. You have to make more than the prevailing wages for Americans. They want to reduce it where Americans then would have to fight against the cheapest labor on earth.

[Mickey Kaus]

By the, in theory, what the Trump administration is doing is not letting in illegals to help the farmers, but they are loosening the restrictions on the existing program, which has no numerical limit, the H1, a program where farmers can hire immigrants for a year, in theory, they go back home after the year, question whether that actually happens. But they're lowering the wage requirement and they're getting rid of the, the obligation of the farmer to provide housing. And what they want to do is make it year round. Right now it's only geared to seasonal crops. Yeah, okay, but first it comes down that the basic complaint is not we, the crops are rotting in the fields. The basic complaint is we want to lower the wage by 30%. We can't, we don't want to pay 30% more for these people. And that's a much less sympathetic claim. You had Marjorie Taylor Greene on TV talking about the construction industry. Well, she runs a construction company. Does she really think that construction industry is going to grind to a halt because Trump is deporting people? Is the construction industry grinding to a halt? Do we see it anywhere grinding to a halt? No, but if you run a business, it makes a big difference to you. If you have to pay 30% more, that's painful for Marjorie Taylor Greenery. I don't really care that much about Marjorie Taylor Greene's 30%. I care more about the wages of construction workers rising 30% and farm workers and all sorts of unskilled laborers. So it all comes down to money. And it's bizarre that they think by lowering the wage they will attract more workers. No, if it's a lower wage, you attract fewer workers. If it's a higher wage, you attract more workers. You just make it cheaper for the farmers to hire more workers. And I'm sort of sympathetic to business. I, I have friends who are in business. They say, you know, like, like restaurant owners will say, if I have to pay the dishwasher $12 instead of $11, I go broke. I'm out of business. I have a friend who has, who has, I have a friend who hires semi skills skilled, you know, seamstresses. And she holds that line as much as possible because at some point your business becomes non viable if the wages become too high. The restaurant industry in Los Angeles is a good example. They've boosted the minimum waste so high that restaurants are being replaced by takeout places. So Gwyneth Paltrow has her takeout place. You go, you pay her $20, you take the food home with you. She doesn't have a restaurant. All she does is hand you the food through a door. Okay. Eliminates all those, all those expenses. And that's the wave of the Future. The restaurant industry is shrinking, the takeout food industry is growing. I don't think we're at that stage. We're just at the stage where a lot of farmers would like to make more money and avoid having to automate. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for that.

[Ryan Gradusky]

And there are labor, labor costs are a relatively small percentage of what? Of, of getting your food, of going from the farm to your table. Labor is not the main driver. Energy is the main driver energy and you know, soil and animals and whatever those main driver labor is a fairly small percentage of, of the amount. And like you said, you can get as many workers as you want under the A2A visa. So it's not like they're capped. It's not like there's a scarcity. They just don't want to pay their own workers what, what they had to pay last year.

[Mickey Kaus]

Right, that's, and that's what the United Farm Workers said. The union said, you know, you just don't want to pay our workers more. So I, I, I, I think that's right. You know, there is some, at some point, if we had a, had to rely on farm labor, a wage would be too high, farmers couldn't make it. But we don't have to rely on farm labor. We can automate. And that is clearly the wave of the future. And you know, Brooke Rollins talk. Brooke Rollins, Trump's Secretary of Agriculture talks about how this is just temporary, we're going to encourage businesses to automate. And this is, we have a transition plan. I'm not sure she's sincere about that. And the problem is that farmers have a powerful lobby, especially the, especially the non big farmers who are the people closest to the margin maybe. And they're not gonna wanna, if they don't wanna automate, they're gonna lobby to extend it. So at some point.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Yeah, well, the small farmers don't, the small farmers don't usually take much advantage of the a, of the A2A of the visa system. It's the big ones, it's the one.

[Mickey Kaus]

Really.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Okay, yes, the small, I've been to small farms, I've been to CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture. I mean they're most like hippie, dippy white people who like, you know, they're yuppies and they're reading the communist manifest on the weekends. I mean that's, that's genuinely, that's generally the vibe. And they're fine, they're very, very nice. They have whatever. I didn't, the three times I've been to csas, I never saw visa holders, foreign visa holders there to do to. You have this back to the earth experience where people are eating holistically. So I mean, that's, that's what I've always witnessed. It's most of the big ones, when.

[Mickey Kaus]

They talk about how onerous the requirements are, they always trot out a small farmer who says, I can't afford to provide housing for these people. It would bankrupt me. If you're an agribusiness, it's obviously not going to bankrupt you to provide housing. You can, you can achieve economies of scale. So one thing that's interesting is if we do automate, will it encourage further concentration of into big farms and put small farms out of business? And I'm not sure that's true. Why wouldn't there just be a guy with a combine who goes from farm to farm and he does your farm, then he goes does your neighbor's farm and he charges you money. You don't have to buy the machine. And that's the way it'll be in small farms. Will do perfectly fine.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Oh yeah, that would be a real. If you could do like a. Where you could rent. Where, like, see when you need a, I don't know, picking time, whatever, you could just rent the machine for the time and have it just under the amount of wages you would pay workers. Yeah, that'd be a great business model. There's so many obvious business models for somebody that they are make money doing this. It's not. It can't be impossible, but it's far easier in the short term not to automate than to automate. And there's resistance to it because they don't want to automate. Wait until they make the AI farm worker. Sorry, I said wait till they make the AI farm worker.

[Mickey Kaus]

I'm sure the AI farm worker is already there, probably. I went to my local market the other day and they have a camera equipped with AI that sees when people are slipping products into their pockets and then it goes and busts them. Okay. So if they can do that, they can spot whether a fruit is ripe for picking or the fruit is not ripe for picking. I'm pretty sure they already have that technology. The weird thing is that's a transition, okay. It's sort of a painful transition to automation. At some point, we got to do it. Trump has like four transitions going on at once. Okay. He's got the. He's got the immigrants sort of ripping themselves away from their families, some of whom are citizens. That's painful if he's got the business owners taking a cut, having to pay 20 or 30% more. I'm sure for Marjorie Taylor Greene, that's a, that's a painful experience. He's got this automation farms shifting to automation. And the fourth one is he has all the African Americans who have been in government jobs, often bullshit government jobs, DEI jobs, personnel jobs, HR jobs who are now getting fired, their jobs are being eliminated and they have, they have to find a new way into the middle class, a new way into the workforce. And that itself is very painful. Okay, so. And Trump is doing all four of these things at once. Okay, right. You would think if you were like super brilliant, you would do one at a time, but I guess Trump, it may, there may be an argument that, you know, do it when you can. Trump only has four years, he's got to do them all at once, right?

[Ryan Gradusky]

No, it's true. The Times also had an article on the DEI government jobs or it was like, Trump's firing all these black workers and a lot of them were DEI jobs. And you're like, okay, how much of, over the last 20 years have we spent as taxpayers to, for these jobs that essentially we never needed? It's probably quite a bit, right?

[Mickey Kaus]

And we spent and we had community colleges that taught people the bullshit subjects that qualified them for the bullshit jobs. There's a huge investment in the bullshit jobs that is disappearing. So it's a real thing, It's a real problem. And people like me expected the black wage to go up as soon as the deportation started. That did sort of happen. The wages for a six month period are higher than they were under Biden. But the last couple months haven't been good and everybody's waiting for the new figures to come out in a couple of days to see what happened. But what's happening. But this, this, this end of bullshit middle class jobs in the government is a huge force in the other direction, unfortunately.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Yeah, no, I understand. I mean, I sympathize with them, but it is, it is. I mean, the taxpayers are putting up quite a big bill for a long time.

[Mickey Kaus]

I guess if I were going to postpone one transition, I would postpone that one.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right.

[Mickey Kaus]

The other problem is, but the other problem is these jobs aren't just useless, they're actually counterproductive.

[Ryan Gradusky]

And they all vote against the President.

[Mickey Kaus]

I mean, every agency in government has a, has a, you know, a civil rights, mini civil rights division in it. And their job isn't just to provide jobs for middle class people who don't do any productive work. No, they actively make trouble for the rest of the agency by suing. Every time you hire somebody, you should have hired a, a minority or you should have done this or protecting people you want to fire who you can't fire so the whole agency is less efficient, not just you're wasting 10% of your money. You're degrading the entire government.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Right. Mickey, where can people go to read more about your stuff and listen to you?

[Mickey Kaus]

I mostly tweet these days and my handle is Kausmicky. I have a substack like everybody else on the planet is called House Files, but I only write there when I actually have something to say, which is very rarely. And, and those are basically the two places to see me. It is. Don't you think it's weird that all, all this anti deportation stuff is cropping up at once? It makes.

[Ryan Gradusky]

It's all happening at the same time. It's all happening from the same spokespeople. I've known Marjorie even before she got elect, but after she got elected, before she got seated, I met her and I talked to her specifically about this and I listened that whole interview she had with Tim Dillon where she talked about the immigration thing. There were points that she made that were true and there were points that she made that I disagree with. And she said, you know, we need to transition. What she said about the immigration. We need to transition these workers from ill from, you know, to legal. I just think that there's a lot of people, I think there's a lot of people who are first time Trump voters. And it's like beyond a roller coaster. For the first time, when you dip the third, the third time Trump supporters are all like waving their hands in the screaming saying this is a great time. And the first time Trump voters are saying, I did not know what I signed up for. But I mean, listen, it's not like he hid the term mass deportation. It wasn't a secret. He couldn't have made it clearer. It was literally signs at the rnc. So I don't know. I mean, listen, four more years. He's got to keep it going. And I'm sure there's intense pressure to make him stop, especially from the likes of people like Brooke Rollins. But you know, 2.2 million illegals left the country in six months through self deportation. Mostly we have to just keep it up, the numbers up before, I mean, if we want any semblance of a country back.

[Mickey Kaus]

I agree.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Thank you so much for being on this podcast. Mickey.

[Mickey Kaus]

Okay, see you later.

[Ryan Gradusky]

You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Gradusky. We'll be right back.

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[Ryan Gradusky]

Ah, come on.

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[Ryan Gradusky]

This thing is ancient.

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[iHeart Radio Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about Radio? Think again. Because more people are listening to the radio and iHeart today than they were 20 years ago. And only iHeart broadcast radio connects with more Americans than TV, digital, social, any other media, even twice as many teens than TikTok. And that reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. The number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results. Now let's get those results growing for your business. Radio's here now more than ever and iheart's leading the way. Think radio can help your business. Think iheart Streaming, podcasting and radio where the reach is real. Let us show [e-mail] that's iheartadvertising.com or call 844-844-Iheart one more time. Just call 844-844-iheart and get radio working for you.

[Ryan Gradusky]

Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment of the podcast. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me ryan numbers game podcast.com that's Ryan at Numbers Game Podcast. Numbers plural game podcast.com Love taking these questions. First one comes from Cameron. He asks is France screwed? So I think he's mentioning is France is having a lot of political instability. Listeners of this podcast, I told you these votes were happening several weeks ago to pay attention and the French Prime Minister Sebastien Le Crux, he. He left. He collapsed the French government after 27 days of holding the job. So the president had to appoint a new prime minister and he appointed Sebastian Le Crux again. He appointed the same guy who stepped down is Franz Crude. No, Macron is screwed and the center is screwed. And what I mean by that is forever in France. Or for living memory, in France, you had the center right, the Centrist, which is like the Macron Party, and the center Left, the Socialists, they were all governing France. And France is a second. They have two rounds of their election, right? So you have a first round where everyone runs, and then you have a top two or top three, depending on the municipality, you're running it. And the agreement between the three major parties was we're going to block the far left and we're going to block the National Rally, Marine Le Pen's party, from ever winning seats. Eventually, Le Pen's party became so popular in certain regions, they were winning in the first round. They didn't need an alliance. And the same thing kind of happened with the very far left, which is a scouring of many, many parties. So that coalition cannot hold because the people supporting that coalition aren't there anymore. They have left. The National Rally is going to come in first place in the next presidential election, the first round of it. And the Socialists, the. Not the Socialist, but the, but the far left party, if they are all aligned behind a single person, which, who knows, they fight on breakup all the time. It is like JLo and Ben Afflec, like the, The French far left, they are. They can never keep it together, but if they have one candidate running for office, it is likely they will make the first round as well. The center is done. And Macron is coming to a place where he's going to try to pass this budget which needs to be passed by December in France. I don't know if he has. I don't see how he has the votes for it. And what he doesn't want to do is step down. If he resigns as president, then he will have to. He will be the first President, Charles de Gaulle, to step down. And if he holds snap elections, he will very likely end up in a position where Jordan Bardella, the successor to Marine Le Pen, will be the Prime Minister. And he's going to be the president who ended the Great Centrist. And he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be. Angela Merkel, was supposed to be the, The. The leader of Europe. He was supposed to be the man who held the center together. And he's going to be the man who saw the center of Europe's second biggest economy, the EU second biggest economy, turned to the. Either the far left or the far right. And if it's the far right, and if it's. I hate that term. But if it's the. If it's the national rally. You will be in a position whereby before Trump's presidency ends that France, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, very likely Sweden, maybe Finland, Poland possibly are all the Czech Republic are all far right or nationalist parties. Great Britain will get there when they have their next election, likely under Nigel Farage. And then there's just Germany alone and it can't sustain it. The center is what's collapsing in Europe and in France, but France particularly, interestingly enough, crazy thing, I don't think this is going to happen but it's worth saying because I find it so fascinating. De Barbonne, who is the direct descendant of King Louis the Ninth, he is the heir to the Bourbon dynasty, said quote, he put out a statement. The situation has never been so serious. The Fifth Republic is on the verge of collapse. My family has served France for centuries and if France calls upon me, I will be at its service. The indispensable condition is that France desires the return of the monarchy. A monarchy above parties, unifying. Now I don't think that France is going to return to a monarchy. If it does, I will geek out like no one's business. We will have a full on monarchy episode. It will be I will be living for that episode if it comes out. I don't think it's going to, but it would interest me. Second question this is a great interesting question, something non political which I love from time to time. Hi Ryan, I love your podcast. Listen to it religiously. This has nothing to do with politics but I hope I find it interesting. Lately I've been been browsing animal shelters to adopt a new dog and almost everyone I've gone to online says they're over capacity. Even private rescue say that they can't take in any more animals. Are animal shelters intakes actually up nationwide and can you tell me what's contributing to this? Do you see them as continue to go up or will they go back down soon? I need to know as the guilt trip is getting bigger every time I go on one of these websites. Have a great day. M in Tennessee M yes, they are going up. You know I adopted my dog from a shelter in 21D when during COVID I my friend was running a shelter and they were closing down because of the coronavirus and they said whatever dogs we don't get rid of we basically have to, you know, we might have to go put them in a kill shelter or something like that. And they sent me a picture of a tiny dog and I said oh of course I'll take him. How long could Covid possibly last for. I'll just have him for a few weeks and I'll give him back. And that was five years ago and he is still, he's sleeping right next to me right now. So that, that happened. So I have a shelter dog. Dogs are a lot of work. Animals are a lot of work. But they do give you, they do give you more love than a person would and it's unconditional anyway. But the answer is yes. They are facing overcrowding nationwide. In New York, the Animal Care center said they receive more than 1,000 animals per day. The New York Times reported the shelter system in New York would need to give up to give up about 1000 animals per week to meet capacity, which is twice its normal limit. In 2024, 4, there were 6.5 million animals up for adoption. The national, the national intake had increased by almost a million per year in the last year. While the amount of people still getting animals is basically stalled, the puppy boom during COVID has ended. I, I've read, I mean this is all, you know, just pontification but the analysis is, is that as cost of living has increased as the job market hasn't been so wonderful, a lot of people can't afford it. As a lot of people moving into rental rental spaces as well, a lot of renters do not want tenants to have animals inside the house. So all of those things are, are the reason why. But the cost of living and also people got animals during COVID and then they had to return to the office and then they couldn't leave an animal home all day, 10 hours a day in a cage so they had to get rid of them and all those things happen. So if you are interested in adopting a pet, a dog, a cat or whatever, then definitely do so because the shelters to get rid of these animals and if you can adopt over getting a dog from a breeder, that is always wonderful. That's what I did. Not to sound like a bleeding heart liberal because apparently I don't have a heart, but it would be if you can adopt adopt on Thursday. One last announcement before we wrap up the show on Thursday. So I'm doing a non political episode. I am having my friend on my friend Giancarlo on. We are going to do a top 10 movie list of movies conservatives should watch and why. Think it'll be fascinating. Tune into that. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast and I will speak to you guys on Thursday.

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[Ryan Gradusky]

This is Jim hello, Jim started advertising with iHeartRadio way back in April, and now I have customers out the door.

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And this is Sarah.

[Mickey Kaus]

Hi.

[Ryan Gradusky]

She started putting a portion of her marketing dollars in podcasting back in June.

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Business is booming.

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That's why I'm working on a Saturday. Want to be like Jim and Sarah? It's easy. All you have to do is own or manage a business and reach out to iHeart. Get started today at 844iheart or iheartadvertising.com.

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This is an iHeart podcast.