Illegal immigration, in the treatment given it across four episodes of the Bob Zadek Show, is less a policy area than a question the host poses repeatedly: when a person says they oppose illegal immigration, which of the two words are they opposing? Bob Zadek states his own position flatly—“let them all in”—and argues that illegal immigration “transcends typical Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative lines” so thoroughly that even a distinctively libertarian position is hard to discern Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). The recurring subject matter includes the Secure Communities initiative, the DREAM Act, proposals for amnesty, wage studies, and the relationship between immigration and the welfare state.
The framing question
Zadek introduces the distinction that organizes his coverage: a person who opposes illegal immigration may oppose the “illegal” part, in which case legalizing immigration would placate them, or the “immigrant” part, in which case it would not. He poses it to callers and guests alike and says the answer interests him because it separates those who object to a statute from those who object to persons Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). He repeats the same formulation years later, opening an episode by saying he hates illegal immigration and despises it, then immediately asking which of the two words his listeners oppose What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). He offers his own answer: the “illegal” part, and he says he is “fearful” that more Republicans than Democrats simply do not like immigrants The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012).
Zadek’s stated view is that the problem lies in the law, not in the number of immigrants Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). He favors “as open a border as we can possibly have,” with a basic system to screen out the worst cases—people carrying disease and people with very serious records—while extending welcome to ordinary immigrants Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). In a later episode he characterizes his position as favoring open borders if the law were changed so that “all or almost all immigration was just made legal,” removing the “illegal” part and leaving a one-word concept: “immigration” What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).
Sophia Campos on the broken system
Sophia Campos, a college student who learned of her undocumented status in her senior year of high school, tells Zadek that people hold extreme emotions about immigration without knowing the facts, and that many do not understand that the immigration system is broken—that there is no single line people can enter to become permanent legal residents Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). She says there is no legal pathway for someone in her situation to gain residency, though she has been in the United States since age six and considers it her home. She cites the DREAM Act and immigration reform as necessary responses, noting that there are 12 million undocumented people in the country and that they cannot all be deported Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).
Campos also contests several claims she attributes to media stereotypes: that undocumented people do not pay taxes, which she says she and her parents disprove every year, and that undocumented people are only Latinos, when they come from Asia and elsewhere Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). She connects the fear many feel to Secure Communities and to collaborations between police and ICE, arguing that visibility matters and that people should not have to live in fear Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).
Amnesty as a policy device
Zadek mounts a defense of amnesty against the objection that telling people who broke the law there are no consequences rewards lawbreaking. He calls that objection hypocrisy and offers two historical analogies: the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st Amendment, after which people who were felons one day were not felons the next, and the amnesty programs taxing authorities routinely offer to people who have misstated their tax liability—programs that collect the tax due while waiving penalties and jail time, and that produce “buckets of money” Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). On his account amnesty is a legitimate technique and a legitimate policy device, and adopting it would let undocumented residents come out of hiding and participate fully, sparing law enforcement and society a large cost. He notes that proposing it nonetheless drives a politician into hiding because the proposal is perceived as outrageous.
Gary Johnson and the welfare-state answer
Zadek’s conversation with Gary Johnson includes a caller, Steve, from San Rafael, who describes immigration court proceedings at an address on Montgomery Street in San Francisco as doing nothing—cases continued six months at a time while the people return to work—and complains that workers are flooding a blue-collar industry, hiring relatives, and that if the same happened in talk radio, Zadek would be angry too The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012). Johnson answers that workers in the country should be documented, that everyone entering should undergo a criminal background check, and that without a work visa there is no such check, which is how the border is controlled. Zadek presses the caller with his framing question—illegal or immigrant—and the caller answers, “It depends.”
Johnson argues that legal immigrants doing work United States citizens are not willing to do benefits the whole economy and all job classes, that the government should not be in charge of quotas, that businesses either have jobs or they do not, and that taxes should be paid and criminals excluded The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012). He says the country is a country of immigrants and that we are all immigrants, and he ties immigration to the Fair Tax and a zero corporate tax rate as a means of job creation that would let businesses hire immigrant workers on work visas. From his vantage point as a border state with Mexico, he says the country gets “the cream of the crop” in workers from Mexico. He also concedes that people crossing the border should not receive benefits as U.S. citizens would, and that welfare reform gets at the heart of the issue; Zadek’s earlier summary had been that the fix is to do away with the welfare state, not the immigrants.
Alex Nowrasteh and the economic data
Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, supplies the numbers the earlier episodes lacked What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). Immigrants make up about 13.5% of the U.S. population and about 16% of the workforce, and they boost GDP by somewhere around 12 to 15%, he says, a finding he describes as uncontested even by the most anti-immigrant economists. The only live disagreement concerns wages. George Borjas of Harvard, whom Nowrasteh calls probably the most skeptical economist of immigration’s benefits, finds that from 1990 to 2010 the roughly 30 million immigrants lowered wages of native-born high school dropouts by about 1.7% while raising wages of every other group by about 1% overall. Giovanni Peri and Gianmarco Ottaviano find that over the same period immigrants raised wages of native-born Americans by about six-tenths of 1%. Nowrasteh’s summary is that the differences are very small and that the most negative finding in the peer-reviewed literature is the 1.7% figure, which is outweighed by benefits to those with at least a high school degree.
Zadek frames the discussion in two stages—first the economic facts, then whether a net negative, even if true, would be a moral reason to oppose immigration—and introduces the topic by noting that opposition often rests on fear that immigrants harm the country economically What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). A later episode returns Nowrasteh to debunk common myths about immigration, covering the economic impact on wages, the relationship between immigration and crime, the welfare state, and the historical shift from legal guest worker programs to modern illegal immigration Immigration Myth-Busting - Redux (2020). The excerpt from that episode consists of a summary of topics and speakers rather than transcribed argument.
Across episodes
The framing question—illegal part or immigrant part—is put in 2011 to Sophia Campos and to a caller named Steve, and again in 2019 in nearly identical words Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011) The Triumph of Principle Over Politics (2012) What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). What changes is the evidence brought to bear: the 2011 episodes rely on the broken-system testimony of an undocumented student and on analogies to Prohibition and tax amnesty, while the 2019 and 2020 episodes bring Alex Nowrasteh’s GDP, workforce and wage figures. The later excerpt from the 2020 episode shows no development beyond a topic list.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts identify no statute by name beyond the DREAM Act and the Secure Communities initiative, and they state no holding, amendment or court ruling in any immigration case. They give no account of deportation numbers, border enforcement budgets, or the legislative history of any reform bill. The 2020 episode’s excerpt is a summary rather than a transcript, so its arguments are not available in detail. The sources also do not supply the outcome of the wage studies beyond the figures Nowrasteh reports.