Immigration is treated across The Bob Zadek Show as a question about law rather than about people. Bob Zadek, the host, frames the subject as one that “transcends typical Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative lines,” and says he finds it difficult to discern a libertarian position on it. His own stated view is summed up in four words: “let them all in,” favoring as open a border as possible so long as there is some basic system to weed out people carrying disease and people with very serious records. He poses the question that recurs throughout the episodes: when someone opposes illegal immigration, do they oppose the “illegal” part or the “immigration” part? Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
The broken system
Sophia Campos, a guest on the 2011 episode, describes the immigration system as “in fact broken,” with no single line people can enter to become permanent legal residents. She speaks from her own situation as an undocumented person who came to the United States at six years old, grew up in its educational system, and became a college student, and who says there is no pathway for her to gain legal residency. She cites the DREAM Act and immigration reform as important, and puts the number of undocumented people in the country at 12 million, arguing they cannot seriously all be deported. She also disputes the stereotype that undocumented people do not pay taxes, saying she and her parents prove it wrong every year, and notes that undocumented communities include Asian people and people from all over the world, not only Latinos. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Bob Zadek’s framing in that episode is that the problem is in the law, not in the number of immigrants. He argues that illegal immigration causes disproportionate heat, that opinions on it are not “database-driven” but driven by emotion, and that some of the sentiment carries racial undertones. He asks whether the statutes criminalize behavior that ought to be legal, or whether the real objection is to immigrants themselves. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Amnesty as a policy device
Bob Zadek devotes a segment of the 2011 episode to amnesty, which he calls “a legitimate public technique, a legitimate policy device.” He notes that public officials who propose granting amnesty to the presently undocumented draw indignation, particularly from the right, on the argument that people cannot be told they broke the law with no consequences. He calls that position hypocrisy and offers two comparisons: the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st Amendment, after which people who were felons a day earlier were no longer felons, and tax amnesty programs, in which authorities waive penalties and jail time in exchange for payment of taxes due. He argues that declaring amnesty would let undocumented residents come out of hiding and participate fully in the system. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
The history of immigration law
Alex Nowrasteh, in the 2016 episode, gives a chronological account of U.S. immigration law. He says the first laws on the topic, in 1790, were essentially an open borders law that regulated who could become a citizen, with no restrictions on coming to the country by race or country of origin. In 1875 Congress passed a law banning criminals and people who were insane and targeting prostitutes, with the intent of excluding Chinese women coming to meet male Chinese immigrants who had come to work in the gold rush and other California industries. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. Alex Nowrasteh: How Prop. 187 Turned California Blue (2016)
Nowrasteh continues: beginning in the late 1880s, laws were passed against the importation of workers who could break up labor unions, and a Gentlemen’s Agreement between Japan and the United States stopped Japanese immigration. In 1917 a law banned illiterate immigrants and almost all immigrants from Africa and the rest of Asia. In 1921 the Emergency Quota Act put numerical quotas on immigrants from Europe for the first time, with the intent and effect of discriminating against Eastern and Southern European immigrants in favor of Northern and Western European immigrants. That law was solidified and made more exclusive in 1924, and Herbert Hoover created an executive action in 1929 that banned almost all immigrants from Europe for the rest of the Great Depression. Alex Nowrasteh: How Prop. 187 Turned California Blue (2016)
After World War II, Nowrasteh says, came gradual liberalization: a guest worker visa program created in 1942 to bring Mexican farmworkers north during the war, expanded in the early 1950s; the Immigration Act of 1952, which removed many race-based and discriminatory features of the 1924 Act; a large liberalization in 1965 that treated every immigrant from every country essentially the same; and an Immigration Act in 1990 that opened the door wider for high-skilled immigrants, especially Asians. In between, he notes, there was a Reagan amnesty in 1986 for about three million or so Mexican illegal immigrants. Since 1990, he says, there has been more of a crackdown and more spending on immigration enforcement at the border and in the interior, but no further liberalizations or increases in legal immigration. Alex Nowrasteh: How Prop. 187 Turned California Blue (2016)
Bob Zadek’s summary of that history is that the restrictive laws enacted from the end of the 19th century were for the most part driven by xenophobia and racism rather than by findings that restrictions furthered the country’s self-interest. Nowrasteh adds that the period from 1880 to about 1930 was the most xenophobic period of American immigration law, and that it was not only racist but an alliance between racists, labor unions, and progressives. Alex Nowrasteh: How Prop. 187 Turned California Blue (2016)
Birthright citizenship
The 2018 episode with Sheldon Gilbert of the National Constitution Center concerns birthright citizenship. Bob Zadek introduces the discussion by saying immigration is discussed on several levels: the legal issues of what is illegal and what should be permitted; the constitutional question of whether Congress has the power to limit immigration; the policy question of what is sensible and moral; and, at the bottom, what he calls the ugly racial, xenophobic, emotional battle about immigration and American culture. He notes that the previous day was Bill of Rights Day. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
The episode description states that Zadek and Gilbert trace birthright citizenship from the original Constitution through the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision and the 14th Amendment to modern debates over executive orders and the “subject to the jurisdiction” clause. Gilbert is identified as Vice President for Content and Development at the National Constitution Center, and Zadek says Gilbert has represented clients in perhaps a hundred cases at the United States Supreme Court and was previously director of the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement. Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018)
Economics and the 2019 return
Alex Nowrasteh returns in the 2019 episode, introduced as an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. Bob Zadek opens by saying he hates illegal immigration and despises it, then repeats the question of which part of the two-word concept a person opposes, asking whether those who oppose illegal immigration would be placated if almost all immigration were made legal. He attributes the prominence of the issue in part to what he calls President Trump’s obsession with immigration, and argues that policy is made and opinions formed on emotion rather than fact. What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019)
Nowrasteh gives figures: immigrants make up about 13.5% of the U.S. population and about 16% of the workforce, and boost GDP by somewhere around 12 to 15%. On wages, he cites George Borjas of Harvard University, whom he calls probably the most skeptical economist of the benefits of immigration, finding that from 1990 to 2010 roughly 30 million immigrants lowered wages of native-born high school dropouts by about 1.7% while raising the wages of every other group of Americans by about 1% or so. He contrasts this with economists Giovanni Peri and Gianmarco Ottaviano, who find that over the same period immigrants raised the wages of native-born Americans by about six-tenths of 1%. Nowrasteh calls the 1.7% figure the most negative finding in the academic peer-reviewed literature, and says it is outweighed by wage benefits to other native-born Americans with at least a high school degree. What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019)
Across episodes
The same question — whether opposition to illegal immigration is really opposition to immigration — is posed by Bob Zadek in 2011 and again in 2019, and in both cases he answers it himself rather than deriving it from a guest; the 2019 treatment adds Alex Nowrasteh’s economic figures and the framing of President Trump’s attention to the issue, while the 2011 treatment rests on Sophia Campos’s account of the broken system and on Zadek’s amnesty argument. The 2016 episode supplies the historical account of how the law became restrictive, and the 2018 episode turns to the constitutional question of birthright citizenship. The excerpts show no resolution of the underlying question across the episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any case, the text or holding of any statute beyond the names and years the guests give, or the current legal status of the DREAM Act or of the undocumented people discussed. The 2018 episode’s excerpt ends before Sheldon Gilbert speaks, so his account of birthright citizenship is not available here. The 2021 episode with Daniel Di Martino breaks off in the middle of Bob Zadek’s sentence about modifying his position, so his revised view is stated only as letting in as many people as possible without suffering measurable, direct adverse consequences. Daniel Di Martino on Immigration (2021)