← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Biden Let ‘Immigration Activist’ Turn America Into an Open-Borders Country | Victor Davis Hanson
00:42:07
Did former President Barack Obama prioritize a scheme to increase and use immigration to achieve political goals? Were Obama’s cronies actually the ones in the driver’s seat during the ramp-up of the Biden administration’s open-borders policies, asks Jack Fowler on this special edition of “Victor Davis Hanson (Minus Victor): In His Own Words” with Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
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- [00:00]
A
I do want to keep my promise. Here to update our viewers and listeners on what's going on with Victor.
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B
But the president and this sort of, I think, is a broader issue about the president's comment on this. You said, you know, we want to. He wants to double the number of chicom foreign students, which is like crazy. The president is not a restrictionist. He is a regular legal, good, illegal, bad Republican politician. It's just that he means the illegal, bad part. The oath says I don't have the words right in front of me now, but I entirely and absolutely renounce and abjure all allegiance to anything I ever had. There's no wiggle room. There's no gray space. You're giving up. You are. It's kind of like you're converting to another religion. The place where you see our lack of seriousness with regard to the oath, as Teddy Roosevelt said, dual citizenship is a self evident absurd.
- [01:05]
A
Well, hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, minus Victor Davis Hansen, I'm Jack Fowler. I'm the host. We are recording on Wednesday, January 7, and this particular episode of the podcast will be up on Tuesday, January 13th. And we're blessed to have with us today Mark Krikorian, a rock star on immigration policy and issues. And I'm going to read Mark's bio shortly. And just to remind our listeners and viewers, where's Victor? Well, I'll give a little update, but Victor wanted this podcast to continue while he was recuperating from major surgery, which he is doing right now. He asked me to do four shows a week. I asked those of you who watch these podcasts to offer that up for the souls in purgatory. But we will have appointed shows with experts. I will ask them five questions on issues of I think, great importance and I think you will enjoy it as we buy time for Victor's return. So anyway, we will be back with some initial questions to Mark and an explanation, an update of Victor when we return from these initial important messages.
- [02:31]
B
You.
- [02:34]
A
We'Re back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Let me tell you who Mark is. Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the center for Immigration Studies. It's an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. It was founded in 1985 to provide policymakers, scholars, journalists, concerned citizens, and I would say, fans of Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words, with reliable information about the social, economic and environmental security and fiscal consequences of illegal immigration, but also, I think, more importantly, legal immigration into the United States. Mark's the author of the New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal, and How Obama is Transforming America Through Immigration. I've been friends with Mark for years. He's written for many publications also including National Review, where I first met Mark and he came on our cruises and he wowed folks with the wisdom he shared there. If you get the New York Post, you'll see Mark occasionally with wisdom sharing there. So Mark, thanks so much for being here. And Victor's a big fan of Mark also, folks, I want to assure you of that. So I want to start this interview bouncing off the last of the book title on Obama and it's a two part question. Mark, did Barack Obama prioritize a scheme to increase and use immigration maybe politically? And if he did, what was the purpose? And do you think there is evidence that Obama, we'll call them brain trusters, were behind the Biden administration's flagrant policies to keep America's borders open?
- [04:24]
B
Mark Krikorian, as far as the first one, first of all, thanks, Jack, for having me on. It's unfortunate, it's because of Victor's illness, but hopefully he'll be back here as quickly as possible. But the question you ask about kind of intention, was it a plan? Was there thinking behind it? It's the same kind of thing people have been asking about what Biden did. And my sense has always been that no, it's not part of a plan. In other words, it is, in fact, it has all the impacts, the political effects, economic, welfare, all of that stuff is real. I don't think it's, you know, these guys kind of meeting in a conference room and saying, how are we going to dismantle the American republic? As much as they frankly are sympathetic with that, I think it's more that it's ideological in the sense that they don't believe the American people have the right to keep anybody out. In other words, it's sort of happening. I mean, people want to come here. There's millions of people want to come here. They don't think that it's morally defensible to say no to them. And so the result then ends up being huge numbers of people coming here and making all of these societal changes, which again, the left is not opposed to. But I think it's more a kind of they're doing what they think is morally right. And it also results in benefits politically to them rather than the political scheme being the kind of the motive force or the origin of the immigration policy. Do you see what I mean?
- [06:08]
A
I see what you mean. It still gnaws that there's this lying in plain sight of, say, Secretary Mayorkas, the borders are fine, nobody's getting through, totally safe. So that does torque us as Americans.
- [06:25]
B
Torques me, too. And the second part of your question, in other words, was that, were these Obama people behind what happened with Biden? Actually, I think, if anything, some of the Obama vets, like Susan Rice, for instance, kind of one of the most prominent ones in the domestic policy area for Biden, they actually were more realistic about it. They were saying, oh, my God, this is gonna be bad for us. What happened is that Biden basically just let the activist groups on immigration run immigration policy. And since he wasn't really president, in other words, it was a very weak executive. They just sort of, you know, ran with it and caused all the problems because there was no, you know, there was no governor in a kind of mechanical, like in a sense of an engine. Nobody was keeping control and making sure things stayed on the. On track because there was nobody in charge of anything. And so you had not just mayorkas, but all of the people under him just kind of went and did what, you know, they. Whatever they thought they could get away with.
- [07:39]
A
Well, we're going to ask some questions about legal immigration, but first for our listeners and viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you. You thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse, and they prepared for correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, we should consider that Mark, Are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. I'm talking about physical gold, not as speculation, but as insulation. Reputation matters. And that's why we are partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by. By integrity, reliability, and an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and longstanding relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer to listeners of Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words, to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting at a bank. So if you believe that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious, call 8447-7909-1918-4479, 09-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com Let me repeat all that. 8447-909198-44790-9191 or visit ProtectWithVictor.com History rewards those who take the long view. And we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Mark, gonna ask you another question. We're gonna take a break, then we're gonna come back, three more questions and an update on Victor. So here's the second of the five questions. I don't think Americans have a good understanding of the consequences of legal immigration, how it impacts us economically and culturally. So someone approaches Mark Krikorian. Let's imagine it's a Republican in good standing with the Chamber of Commerce. And I'm sure they have approached you, Mark, and that person says immigration is vital to the American economy. We need more, not less, legal immigration. Mark, how do you respond to that statement and what in the balance, however you want to make that balance, does legal immigration mean for America?
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B
The first thing is that most immigration is legal immigration because when people talk about this, it's as though, you know, people illegally wading across the Rio Grande is the immigration issue. I mean, even illegal immigration isn't all just border jumpers, but most immigration is legal. We have at this point, we're going to we're close to 16% of our whole population is foreign born. That's not counting their kids. That's just people who were immigrants. And most of those people came legally. Most of the Somali scammers, in fact, almost all of them came legally. So the first thing is that legal immigration is the discussion here. It is the core of the issue and the economic argument for it is that, you know, businesses need access to labor, they need access to workers, and we need to bring in more workers. Well, one of the things that's happened in conjunction with the increase in immigration over the past, really what are we Talking about now, 60 years, is an increase in the share of working age men who are not even working. In other words, we have the highest percentage ever, percentage, not numbers, percentage of men, working age men who are not even connected to the labor market. And what ongoing large scale immigration, again, most of it legal, does is it kind of subsidizes almost that process of withdrawing for the labor market. Now, a lot of those guys who are not in the labor market have problems. They could be recovering addicts, ex cons, just lazy people living in their mother's basements, watching porn and playing video games. All those things are real. And when businesses complain about, you know, it's hard. Good, you know, good workers are hard to find. They're not lying. I come from a whole line of small businessmen. I've never worked for an organization with more than a hundred people in it. So I get all that. And again, it's true. But it's not so much that immigrants are better workers. It's that immigrants probably are, at the margin, better workers because the people who don't have jobs in the United the Americans who don't have jobs probably are not as good workers as the immigrants who don't have jobs. But the basic issue here is that it goes beyond economics. That guy who is, say, a recovering addict, who's living off his girlfriend and not in the labor market, is he going away if we import a Honduran to hang drywall in his stead? No, he's not going anywhere. And men not working results in all kinds of social dysfunction. Crime, drug use, deaths of despair. And so the congressman, responding to the prodding of the chamber of Commerce, needs to think about more than just the next quarterly earnings report. Now, businesses, that's what they're going to be thinking about. But a congressman's job is to set the rules, sort of the stadium within which the economic, you know, dynamism takes place. And in that regard, large scale immigration harms the most vulnerable. And Americans who are the most marginal to the labor market, whether it's single moms, whether it's people with developmental disabilities, but who can still work, those people just lose bargaining power if we have large scale immigration. And I understand why businesses find that appealing. They're not bad guys. Some of them are, but most of them, they're just operating within the rules. It's Congress's job to set the rules. And those rules need to be such to create incentives for businesses not to ignore marginalized American workers. What immigration does now is create incentives not to invest in labor saving and productivity increasing technologies. So the businessmen making this argument are not lying, but they are looking at the issue in a kind of with blinders. And policymakers need to look at the broader issue.
- [15:25]
A
Well, Mark, we're going to be back with three more questions. The next one will be about visas and student visas, but all visas. And we're going to get your take on that and plenty more when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Mark, before I get to ask you a few more questions, I do want to keep my promise here to update our viewers and listeners on what's going on with Victor. So again we are recording on Wednesday 7th January and this episode is up on the 13th. So Victor did have surgery on two days before Christmas and it was major surgery. He's reported this through various means, through Hoover Institution where he is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow, and through Rob Bluey, who was the big kahuna at the Daily Signal, which is a happy home for this podcast. It was cancer surgery and Victor had a part of his lung removed and that's major surgery. And I think it's fair to say a the surgery was successful, it got what it was looking for. However, there were serious post op issues. So Victor is recovering from major surgery and significant post operation issues. He is near where he had the surgery at Stanford. So he's recovering and he is, I know, deeply appreciative. I think millions of people were praying for Victor. I know tons of priests were saying masses for him. So he's deeply appreciative and he'll be back soon. Not soon enough, but he'll be back soon to his audio and video home. So that's the update. Mark, third question out of the five I'm gonna be asking you. I assume MAGA voters are shocked by the student visa situation in America. We have, for example, 300,000 communist Chinese students in our colleges, many in public colleges that are taking the seats that should be occupied by citizens of those states. And Donald Trump said recently that he wants to double that number instead of slashing that number. And there are many young foreigners who come here allegedly to learn, but it seems more so they come here to hate the takeover of our campuses after October 7th and the hostile treatment of Jewish students. That's a real scar, I think, on America's recent history. So, Mark, I want to know if you could redesign our current visa program, would you share what your priorities would be? And you don't have to limit it to student visas. Although I'd love to know your view on student visas, but also broader visa issues.
- [18:29]
B
Sure. These are what they call technically non immigrant visas. In other words, you get a visa if you're immigrating and you're abroad. These are non. Any kind of temporary visa is called a non immigrant visa. That's student visas, work visas, you know, people, government representatives at the un Tourists, all of that stuff. And student visas, to start with that we had like a million foreign students in the United states. You'd suggest 300,000 around are from Red China, but there's a million altogether. And every university is subsidized by the taxpayer, even the private ones. I mean, Hillsdale, I think, doesn't take any government money, but all the rest of them are. And even the few that don't take any government money are still exempt from taxation. So. So, I mean, the starting point is every university is subsidized by American taxpayers. And therefore we as a nation have an interest in how they operate. Because the point is to train our elite. And I don't use elite in a derogatory sense to train our leadership classes, whether it's in business, whether it's in law, medicine, it doesn't matter, engineering. And the problem is that the universities look at it as a business matter. In other words, they are seeing foreign students as a revenue source. And something that is literally not is unlimited because there are no legal caps on the number of foreign students or the percentage of foreign students in any particular institution. So to start with, I would have some kind of cap nationwide on the number of foreign students in any year. Can be number of foreign student visas that can be issued in any year, and a cap on the percentage of any institution. There are places like nyu, for instance. I think it's like a quarter of the entire student body are on foreign student visas. There's no excuse for that. This does serve academia a kind of ideological purpose. Because, look, universities are, you know, and faculty lounges really don't see themselves as part of the United States anymore. You know, there are citizens of the world. And this mass access to foreign students reinforces that citizens of the world kind of perspective at university. So I would dramatically limit the number of foreign students allowed in and the number or the percentage allowed into any given institution. But again, there's way more visas in this H1B visa is a foreign worker visa that is mainly, not entirely, but mainly used by the. It. By the computer industry. There's no excuse for it. I think it should just be eliminated. But if it's not going to be eliminated, it at least should be dramatically restricted and admit only, you know, genuinely the highest skilled people, which is not what it does now. But the President and this sort of, I think, is a broader issue. About the President's comment on this, you said, you know, we want to. He wants to double the number of chicom foreign students, which is like crazy. There's two points I'd make here. First is the president is not a restrictionist. He is a regular legal, good, illegal, bad Republican politician. It's just that he means the illegal bad part and follows through. And that's a real change. And, you know, I don't have too much to complain about there. This is a real break with the past. But he is a kind of transitional figure on immigration because he's, you know, in caveman language, he's for legal, good, illegal, bad. Nobody meant either. Nobody meant the illegal bad before. He means the illegal bad part of that, the transition is that everybody under him or not under him, but sort of the next cohort, whether it's The Vice President, Governor DeSantis, Senator Schmidt, Senator Hawley, Senator Cotton, that next group of Republican leaders who will rise to the top, they're all real restrictionists. In other words, they want numbers reduced in legal immigration. The second point, and that kind of mitigates, in a sense, the president's lack of restrictionism, as it were, is that he's not super committed to the legal immigration is good part. In other words, he's not gonna be putting his shoulder to the wheel and say, look, we need to increase the number of Chinese foreign students. It's the kind of thing he says he was on during the campaign, this recent last year's or 2024 campaign. He was on a podcast with a bunch of tech, top tech people, big shots. And he said every foreign student should get a green card, even if they're at a community college, if they get an associate's degree. I mean, complete bonkers nonsense. But it hasn't happened and it's not gonna happen. This is one of these take the president seriously, not literally kind of things. And you know, it's sort of see what is happening as opposed to what the president says on a podcast. And what's happening is that there's significant tightening of the rules even on legal immigration. So I didn't like that either. But the president's been saying kind of wacky things on legal immigration since 2015, even during the Republican primary debates. So, you know, I'm not gonna get my knickers in a twist about that.
- [24:17]
A
Okay. Keep em untwisted, Mark. It's easier that way. Before we take a break, one more question. First, I do wanna mention your website, the center for Immigration studies is cis.org correct?
- [24:31]
B
Yep, cis.org there's a donate button if you're interested to sign up for our email list. We won't plaster you with stuff and if you like snark and sarcasm, I'm on Twitter ARC S as in Stephen.
- [24:44]
A
Mark S. Krikorian yeah, the information on the website is terrific. Shocking often, but truthful. So I heartily recommend people visit there. I've got something in my craw we've discussed with Victor a couple of times and this has to do with the oath of allegiance for a naturalized citizen. And I find its language to be powerful and it is allegedly an oath, it's called an oath. But it seems that the oath is violated frequently, regularly, without consequences. Mentioned before many of the Somalis here, daycare owners are here legally are citizens, but they've clearly taken an oath to citizenship. Are there any consequences for someone who takes an oath and then violates the oath? Is there any evidence of any teeth in this as a way of curtailing, scamming or of removing people who clearly have lied when they put their hand up and said I swear absolutely not.
- [25:53]
B
The citizenship oath, which I've heard delivered many times because I've spoken at these new citizenship swearing in ceremonies and happy to do it and we'll be doing it again. The oath says I don't have the words right in front of me now, but I entirely and absolutely renounce and abjure all allegiance to anything I ever had that. I mean it's very there's no wiggle room, there's no gray space. You are giving up. It's kind of like you're converting to another religion. I mean it's a political thing, but that's the point and the place where you see the our lack of seriousness with regard to the oath is in dual citizenship, especially because the oath clearly is contrary to the rejects the idea of dual citizenship. As Teddy Roosevelt said, dual citizenship is a self evident absurdity. The problem is the problem started as with so many other things in the 1960s with the Warren court there was a decision of Freud MV Rusk which said that the law at the time which said if you did any of these things, vote in a foreign election, run as a candidate in a foreign election, several things that you were automatically lose your U.S. citizenship because you would have violated your oath. Earl Warren said no, you can't do that. You can only lose your citizenship if you, you know, actually sort of come out and say it. But Oral Warren actually said in an earlier decision where he was in the minority Congress can always just make those actions illegal. It just can't take your citizenship away. So Freud MV Rusk happened 1967 Congress did nothing because Nobody thought immigration was a big deal. Who cares? Well, it's long past time for Congress to say, look, okay, you don't lose your citizenship after having taken this oath if you go and get a foreign passport or run in a foreign election. But it's a criminal offense, a misdemeanor on the first felony on the second offense. And it's not. The point is not to lock anybody up. It's to make, as you said, make that oath mean something. Unfortunately, right now, not only does it not back is it not backed up with anything, they're not even really required to study it, even in their own language so they know what abjure means. I'm not sure what abjure means. Abjure means give up somehow. But I mean, you know what, it's old language, which is fine because it's ceremonial, you know what I mean? In other words, I don't mind having abjure in there. But people need to understand what they're taking an oath to and they need to understand that the gringos take this seriously and that. Don't take this oath if you don't mean it. Now, it's just, ah, this is the way I can get an American passport. It'll be easier to travel or I'll be able to get a job at the post office or whatever it is. And that's not, I mean, even if that's what your motivation is, we need to make clear that we take this seriously. As a boss of mine used to say, you teach people how to treat you. We're teaching people by not taking this, by our not taking the naturalization oath seriously, that they don't need to take it seriously.
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A
You know, it's interesting, Mark, I have any number of family members or friends who are trying. Born here, obviously, born in the Bronx. You know, they're Americans and they're trying to get their Italian citizenship.
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B
I know.
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A
Or trying to get their Irish citizenship.
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B
Access to the EU easier. I don't like that stuff at all, you know?
- [29:35]
A
Yeah. Well, we're going to take a last break and then we're going to come back for a final question. We'll do that right after these final important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. These are the Victor's recovery episodes. The first one is with the great Mark Krikorian and we are recording on the 7th of January. This episode will be up on the 13th when Victor will be even stronger and more readier to come back in the saddle. So, Mark, again, I thank you for participating. Final question Here. Are you surprised that the Somali immigrant community has a communal reputation for engaging in massive fraud in Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or that other ethnic groups. We can find that over half of them, I think the Afghans, for example, half of these immigrant communities are major recipients of welfare. So that's a question. But then also another question. Let's admit that readily available welfare is alluring to immigrants. But that said, are there cultures that inherently find the American principle of e pluribus unum to be antithetical?
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B
I'd have to say yes. And I think part of it is that the natural state of humanity is not the way we want our country to be. In other words, that kind of tribalist perspective where you morality depends on who's doing what to whom, rather than a kind of objective universal rule. That's the natural state of humanity. We're the exceptions. People have written about this as weird, an acronym, Western educated, something. In other words, Western Europeans and Americans have a kind of perspective shaped by Christianity, shaped by a lot of things that is not normal for human societies. It's the kind of thing that requires cultivation and preservation and is kind of fragile. And so from an immigration perspective, yeah, clearly Somalis just see Minnesota as prey and you know, to, to help their tribes. I mean, there's no question about that. And it's again, it's not just Somalis. They may be an extreme case of it, but just because Somalia is so backward and so much like the rest of humanity was 10 or 20,000 years ago, that's the kind of the way to look at it. But from an immigration perspective, I don't see a good way of shaping an immigration policy that picks people who are more likely to be high trust or consistent with a high trust society. I think the solution is you just have to have less immigration. Because if there were two Somali families in Minnesota, who cares? How much fraud can you do? They'd all their kids would end up being Vikings fans eventually. You know what I mean? In other words. But when you have 20,000 or actually there's 80,000 Somalis now in Minnesota, well then, you know, assimilation doesn't work in the same way. Assimilation, you know, of a handful of people into a broader society is simply going to work better than assimilation of a huge number of people. They're still going to change somewhat, but, you know, especially if they come from culturally more dissimilar societies, you need to have low numbers immigration. As Enoch Powell, who was a British politician who was, you know, pilloried for criticizing immigration and the potential for it would cause to Britain guy's obviously been totally vindicated. But as he said, numbers are of the essence. If you take in fewer people, it doesn't matter if you screw up the decision of who to take. Look, it's a government. You think the government's gonna do a good job of deciding which people are more consistent with our values than others? No, of course not. And I'm not even. That's not even. I'm not making a joke about bureaucrats. It's just not something government can do. Well, what they can do is say, yeah, we're only going to take a hundred thousand people this year. That's it. And when you have that kind of limit, the mistakes that will happen and they'll be inevitable, will just be a lot smaller. Rather than 80,000 Somalis ripping off the people of Minnesota again, there are eight people. You just wouldn't have this issue.
- [34:35]
A
Well, I do want to spring a bonus question on you, which I didn't alert you to in advance. I'm just curious. The beginning of the year, the calendar year, do you have any hopes, Is there something good you think is going to happen on the immigration front? Reasonably, a reasonable feeling, not a pie in the sky wish, but is there something reasonable you think is going to happen positively on the issues you're fighting for?
- [34:59]
B
Yeah, I think so. We went over our 2026 predictions in my own podcast, parsing immigration policy, which is everywhere, wherever you get your podcasts. I think what we're going to see, and again, this is a modest but real thing, is we're going to see significantly expanded work site enforcement. And because that's the key to limiting illegal immigration, you can have guys in body armor going through Chicago and Minneapolis and arresting people. And look, there's a role for that. But you need what I call briefcase enforcement, too. In other words, Social Security sends a letter to an employer, hey, what is this? What's up with these? You know, this payroll information you sent us, it doesn't match our information. The names are faked. And whatever it is you send in people, you send in ICE and the irs. And the IRS gets taken pretty seriously, frankly. And that is the kind of thing that can significantly generate self deportation, more than we've even seen over this past year. And, you know, they've talked about it. There's problems, there's elements in the administration that are ambivalent about, you know, going after employers or work sites. But I think that's what we're going to see this year is we're going to see a significant increase and what that will do is drive even more of a decrease in the illegal population.
- [36:22]
A
Mark, would you repeat the name of your podcast, please?
- [36:25]
B
Sure. It's Parsing Immigration Policy. Like parsing a sentence you know you wouldn't have done in elementary school. So parsing with a p. Parsing Immigration Policy. It's on all the usual places. It's on our website if you want to take a look there too.
- [36:37]
A
Which is cis.org yep. Cis.org well, Mark, I really appreciate your being here and all the wisdom you shared. And I want to just for myself, folks, check out Civil thoughts. Go to civilthoughts.com, sign up. It's a free weekly email newsletter of 14 recommended readings. You're going to like it. We want to strengthen civil society. Civil Thoughts is published by the center for Civil Society. So thanks Mark. Thanks you viewers and listeners. Thank the good people at the Daily Signal. And Victor, I know you're watching this a week after we've recorded we love you and we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Bye bye. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.