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3.75M Case Backlog: Can We Fix Immigration? (Full) · Solving America's Problems

• 0:00
  Alex: Solving America’s Problems
• 0:02
  — Jerremy and Dave just sat down with Audrey Medina and Jerry Valerio,
• 0:06
  two voices who’ve lived the immigrant story from the inside.
• 0:11
  Jerry’s parents landed from the Philippines in the sixties with almost
• 0:14
  nothing — powdered milk, canned food, racism waiting at every corner — yet
• 0:19
  still built a life, raised five kids, and ended up with a seven-figure portfolio.
• 0:25
  Audrey’s grandmother fled domestic violence while pregnant, crossed into the
• 0:29
  U.S., gave birth to an American citizen, then watched that same system treat her
• 0:33
  family like second-class for decades.
• 0:38
  Both guests agree on one ice-cold fact: today the legal path their
• 0:42
  families took barely exists anymore.
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  3.75 million cases rot in immigration court backlogs — some waits now
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  stretch past twenty-five years — while the same immigrants dump nearly a
• 0:54
  trillion dollars a year into the economy and get called a burden.
• 0:59
  Jerremy and Dave dig into why the system stays broken on purpose, who profits
• 1:03
  when it does, and whether America can ever build a line that actually moves…
• 1:09
  Jerremy Newsome: Dave Conley, what are we addressing and solving in this episode?
• 1:16
  Dave Conley: In this week's episode of Solving America's Problems, we're
• 1:19
  asking why the land of opportunity now feels like a waiting room.
• 1:23
  More than 3.75 million people are stuck for years in immigration court, while
• 1:28
  those same immigrants pour almost a trillion dollars into the economy.
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  Yet the system keeps them and us on hold to unpack the gap
• 1:36
  between promise and practice.
• 1:38
  We're joined today by Audrey Medina, a data-driven second generation American
• 1:43
  who turns data into action by day and builds companies and stories by night.
• 1:47
  And Jerry Valerio, a first generation American executive coach and strategist
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  whose decades across tech giants now help professionals rise without burnout.
• 1:57
  Together they reveal where policy stalls, where people thrive anyway,
• 2:01
  and how their parents and grandparents flipped obstacles into momentum.
• 2:05
  And that's this week on solving America's problems, backlogs to breakthroughs,
• 2:09
  fixing America's immigration gridlock with Audrey Medina and Jerry Valerio.
• 2:15
  Jerremy Newsome: Immigration is no longer and never has been just a policy.
• 2:21
  personal, it's powerful.
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  It is the pulse of America right now.
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  Millions, over 3.7 million people are stuck in court backlogs waiting
• 2:35
  years for their shot at the American Dream, and who's hearing them?
• 2:40
  Just judges each buried thousands of cases.
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  Yet these same immigrants, they're pouring hundreds of billions, almost a
• 2:50
  trillion dollars into the economy, paying taxes in a system that is failing them.
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  Failing us all.
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  I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom with my co-host Dave Conley, and
• 3:02
  this Solving America's Problems.
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  Today we have two voices who embody this fight.
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  Audrey Medina, a second generation American lives, the immigrant story,
• 3:14
  data driven by day entrepreneur and storyteller by night.
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  And Jerry Valero, a first generation American and career coach who brings a
• 3:24
  decade of experience to help professionals rise without breaking so first and
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  foremost, what are you two seeing with the current pulse and current
• 3:35
  information as it relates to immigration?
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  What's on your overall media radar?
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  with Audrey first.
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  Audrey Medina: Currently a lot of what I am seeing is propaganda intended to
• 3:48
  cause fear in immigrant populations.
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  It's intended to cause division amongst Americans.
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  It's intended to make us think that immigrants are the problem
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  We need to get rid of.
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  What I've been seeing.
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  That's what a, just people in general are feeling.
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  Jerremy Newsome: And Jerry, you live really close to
• 4:12
  Washington, dc What about you?
• 4:13
  What's currently coming up on your radar?
• 4:15
  What's the narrative?
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  Jerry Valerio: Well, I, I see both sides of the spectrum simply
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  You could talk to one friend and they'll have one perspective and then another
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  friend, and they'll have the opposite.
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  So in some ways, I've learned to like temper opinion and listen
• 4:28
  to both and see where I could learn and be educated, right?
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  There are those that see immigrants as a problem.
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  then there are those that acknowledge that the immigration process has been broken
• 4:41
  for quite some time, and that immigrants are not to blame for where we're at today.
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  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
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  So with that being stated, Jerry, your parents immigrated from the
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  Philippines to Minnesota in the 1960s arriving with whatever little
• 4:56
  money they had in their pockets.
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  a story from their journey that still shapes how you see America today?
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  Jerry Valerio: So I am super proud of my parents because I, they're a reflection
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  of that spirit that immigrant spirit
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  To the states to make a better life for themselves.
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  And what I truly appreciate about what they've done is they've had the
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  I'll say grit about them to figure whatever out to survive, to make a
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  living and to grow, you know, a family.
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  So they came here, uh, when they were in their early twenties, 21, 22.
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  They got married a year later.
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  They were actually childhood sweethearts, grew up in the same
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  small town in northern Philippines.
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  And so, and then they had five great kids in a span of six years.
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  I'm the oldest of the five.
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  And what I've learned from them is just the, the work ethic the commitment to,
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  holding themselves to high standard,
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  Under the pressure of racism, they did not let that deter them because
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  it could have been easily the case.
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  They're like, you know what?
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  I'm not gonna do my best because I'm not gonna be acknowledged or anywhere.
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  Instead, they're like, I'm gonna do my best in spite of what others try
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  to say about me or do or, or do.
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  Know, they we grew up from what I refer to as in, in, in retrospect maybe what I
• 6:28
  would consider somewhat of a poor life.
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  Grew up on canned foods and I had no issue with it until I learned visiting
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  a friend's place who, when we moved out to the suburbs, like what food could be.
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  And I even had powdered milk all the way until I got into maybe early
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  high school, and my mom's like, oh, we should just get regular milk.
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  Why?
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  You know, why are we giving the kids powdered milk?
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  Which, you know, once you have regular milk, oh my God, you
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  realize how bad powdered milk is.
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  I can't believe I lived through this.
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  So yeah, I'm greatly appreciative for them.
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  Uh, they've done well and they still have that immigrant mindset
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  because they're successful.
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  My, my dad learned how to you'd appreciate this.
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  He had a million dollar stock portfolio that he learned to develop
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  and playing the stock market.
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  Uh, and then he lost half of it in the 2000 crash, but then he took it an
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  order of magnitude to where it is now.
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  And I keep telling my parents, enjoy what you've earned.
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  You deserve it.
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  But they're like, the frugal self.
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  We go take them out to dinner.
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  Like, no, it's too expensive.
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  Don't spend money on that.
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  and
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  Simple joys,
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  Dave Conley: but what kind of milk are they drinking?
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  Jerry Valerio: regular milk
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  Dave Conley: Okay, good.
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  Jerremy Newsome: we go.
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  There we go.
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  Yeah.
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  I love that man.
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  I love that.
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  And
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  Dave Conley: That's amazing.
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  Jerremy Newsome: It is.
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  And Audrey, you said, and for the listeners, I'll throw out a quick fact.
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  Audrey's known me since the age of six years old,
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  Dave Conley: Wow.
• 7:56
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
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  So on this podcast, she's known me the longest and, uh, she's also
• 8:01
  one of our avid listeners, so thank you for making it to the show.
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  Uh, Audrey, you said, you've said the immigrant story is
• 8:07
  your story, that it built you.
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  a moment or experience that helped define how you see immigration in America?
• 8:17
  Audrey Medina: More.
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  I had a lot, uh, more recently I was actually doing genealogy and
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  learned that mom's side of the family has been here multiple times.
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  They would immigrate here just in time for a war draft, get
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  drafted, go to war, gets him back.
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  And that happened in.
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  Two different wars.
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  So one and two, that is, is a recent one that kind of reshaped it.
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  But as far as just experiences in general, for me it's as a second generation
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  American, there was a little bit of a duality that occurred where I wasn't fully
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  Mexican, I wasn't fully American and not being fully, I guess not fully belonging
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  in either category, but also having the ability to effectively code switch.
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  kind of just lifts the veil off when you like anything that's obscuring
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  what the big picture story is when you're actually experiencing it.
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  When you have people that don't understand it because it's not relevant
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  in their life and they're some of the closest people in your life.
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  It's offered that.
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  I think one of the larger ones though though, my grandmother came up here
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  when she was pregnant with my mother.
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  she was fleeing a domestic situation.
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  It wasn't like per se, like your standard refugee story, and it
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  wasn't exactly an economic story.
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  It was she and her children needed out.
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  She had come up here, she was pregnant with my mother.
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  My mother was born here.
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  They actually did have to return to Mexico for a period of time while
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  waiting on all of that paperwork.
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  But then coming back living through, I mean, a period of time where speaking
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  Spanish was not a good thing, especially in la This was at some point or another
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  during the LA walkouts going through the discrimination and what she saw when
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  she came here about just, it's not as rosy a picture as a lot of immigrants
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  think it is before they come here.
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  And then they come here and they're like, well, why is all
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  of this oppression happening?
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  Why is this like it's, we're supposed to be the city on the hill, right?
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  The shining city on the hill, and yet these unspoken cast
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  systems effectively still exist.
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  Um, so that was one of the things, Tristen speaking with my
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  grandmother, who by the time she died, had a decent grasp of English.
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  But when I first met her, there was a lot of just language barriers
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  there Learning of her experiences, where she came from and working.
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  She worked herself to the bone and there wasn't a safety net
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  for her when she was ill and old and aging, just things like that.
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  Those were some of the shaping moments.
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  And then outside of that, uh, my first marriage was to, uh, Salvador and
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  child refugee who joined the service, got, eventually got their citizenship.
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  And the way that, that also panned out not only for them but for their family.
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  And I just, honestly just stories upon stories, it's been, it hasn't been any
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  one moment in life that shaped my outlook.
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  It's just been a consistent patchwork of them.
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  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, you brought up a very unique word that I don't
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  think a lot of people probably openly use caste system, where immigrants
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  who come over and they become a legal part of this country, they still are.
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  Potentially seen or noticed as lesser than, and people often
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  say, we're a nation of immigrants.
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  sometimes that can be a phrase packed with pride, nostalgia,
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  to your point, maybe complexity.
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  But what does that actually mean to each of you today?
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  A nation of immigrants.
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  Start with Jerry.
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  Jerry Valerio: So to me, a a nation of immigrants really goes back to from other
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  countries seeking a better life, right?
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  America continues to be aspired destination for having a better
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  life beyond you may have been born.
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  You know, you, we also hear the term melting pot, right?
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  So in some ways, depending on where you live, you can be a melting pot in
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  like urban and city type environments.
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  I would say maybe in more rural where there's disposition against immigrants
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  feel more of the, uh, isolation and lack of acceptance and therefore
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  you might just exist in your own group of friends and neighbors in a
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  pocket inside of a town that still doesn't understand you or accept you.
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  Jerremy Newsome: What's making you shake your head on that?
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  You have like this No back and forth thing going on.
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  Dave Conley: Oh, no, no, I was, no, I,
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  yeah, no, I had, honestly, I was just sort of processing it.
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  Jerremy Newsome: Sure.
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  Exactly.
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  But it feels, it feels what I, what I sense is like, it just feels like both
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  you and I. we don't totally have this story, we don't really have this journey.
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  We're kind of taken back a little bit as we've,
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  Dave Conley: I, well, I guess it, it goes into another question of mine I
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  don't have a strong identification with, with, you know, sort of like my ancestry.
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  You know, it's, it's like sort of a mix of mostly British and some
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  Irish, and for some reason my brother like really resonates with the
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  Norwegian side, which I don't even know what part that is in my family.
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  And so I'm kind of curious being first generation and second
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  generation how important or how, how, what is it like for you as you
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  know, the Philippines and Mexico?
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  Like, what does that mean for you?
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  Jerremy Newsome: go ahead, Audrey.
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  Audrey Medina: I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer a couple of things.
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  First of all, our countries and our cultures that we come from
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  and those experiences and those, those traditions and everything
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  that we bring, what gave us roots.
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  This country gives us wings, and I think that that's part of.
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  What is missing in, um, some of the discourse, especially when
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  you see like the protest movements that are occurring right now.
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  And know a lot of people, you know, they see a, a Mexican flag being waved and
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  they don't understand, well if you're, if you like Mexico so bad, what was so bad?
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  Why don't you just go back?
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  And it's not, it's not about that.
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  That gave us our identity, our roots, our foundation, we were able to
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  come here and give it wings or our families were, our ancestors were.
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  And it ultimately, it is the same thing for, you know, on, on the
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  other side of my family, there's a lot of British Irish as well.
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  There's a lot of other stuff, but British Irish tends to make up the
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  largest percentage of that side.
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  And ultimately there was that at one point for them as well.
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  Dave Conley: Yeah.
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  Do you, do you think, you know, with your kids or further generations that
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  they will still resonate as much?
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  I now I, I'm asking this question not as like a judgment, I don't think there's
• 15:28
  a good way or a bad way in any of this.
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  I'm just, I'm really honestly curious, like, Jerry, with, with your experience
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  as first generation and your parents, how do, do they identify as Filipino Americans
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  or do they have a strong connection with the Philippines, which I, you
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  know, personally I think sounds awesome.
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  Uh, you and I talked about how, you know, like you, you wish you'd actually
• 15:51
  spoke more of the, of the language.
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  So what, what's your view?
• 15:56
  Jerry Valerio: Um, I, I would say my parents consider themselves
• 15:59
  Americans or Filipino Americans.
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  I wanted to comment on your point about as the generations progress,
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  I think you've all heard the, that, you know, by the time you get to
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  the third generation the identity of who they are becomes more muted.
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  So like, I have still a strong tie to my heritage and my culture.
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  And coincidentally, I actually didn't learn that until I got
• 16:24
  to college because, you know, my parents were always, always so busy.
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  And what little culture I had was, you know, at family events and if
• 16:31
  anything, the one common theme, regardless of generations is food.
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  So
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  Dave Conley: Yeah,
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  Jerry Valerio: that the food will continue to perpetuate generation to generation,
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  and that'll be the commonality.
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  But in terms of tie to heritage and culture, it kind of diminishes as you go.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, I can see that in my nephews and nieces.
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  They're second generation, they're less connected to, they love Filipino
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  food, but they're less connected to the culture and the heritage.
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  And time their kids grow up, it will be even, much less.
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  Audrey Medina: Actually, fun story as a second generation, I
• 17:06
  didn't find out that I was Mexican until I was five going on six.
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  We were moving across the country from Georgia to New Mexico, and
• 17:14
  on the route my mom's like, okay guys, I have something to tell you.
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  You're Mexican.
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  And it was like, it was a dark secret, but we didn't even know what that was.
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  And then when we moved to the town, we were one of three white
• 17:24
  children, I'm sorry, three families.
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  And so then being just immersed, and that's where, where the, the, that duality
• 17:35
  started to occur where we belonged in some ways and didn't in others, and
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  were accepted in some and not in others.
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  And unfortunately because of the way that things were going in the country,
• 17:46
  leading up to my mom, actually, you know, getting married and all of that,
• 17:49
  and having children, she wasn't really big on like teaching us the language.
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  That was something we had to do later.
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  Hence the language barrier between, you know, my grandmother and myself.
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  As a result, it, when I did learn Spanish, I didn't necessarily learn
• 18:02
  it specifically around like my family or in Mexico, around Mexicans.
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  It was around people from just all over different areas of Latin America.
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  So even in just speaking, there are times where people are
• 18:14
  like where did you learn that?
• 18:15
  How did you learn?
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  We don't understand.
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  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 18:18
  Now Jerry, your family came through a big strict legal process in the sixties.
• 18:25
  Your parents found opportunity through education, hard work, community.
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  Do you think that same path be possible for them today?
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  or why not?
• 18:35
  Jerry Valerio: I do think so because the demand for people with
• 18:39
  medical backgrounds remains strong.
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  And I do see people even Filipinos now coming to the states, going
• 18:47
  through the same path and process that my parents went through.
• 18:51
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 18:51
  Dave Conley: So what do you think about that, Audrey?
• 18:53
  I know you and I talked before this about that, so like hearing about Jerry's family
• 19:00
  story and how his parents went through it.
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  How, how do you think that experience would play out today for similar
• 19:08
  families based on what you've seen?
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  Audrey Medina: When you say that, you're saying in the same exact scenario
• 19:14
  or different types of scenarios?
• 19:16
  Dave Conley: I think what I'm trying to get at is what, what is the experience
• 19:20
  like, what was the experience like in the sixties and what do you, what's
• 19:25
  the actual experience like today?
• 19:28
  Audrey Medina: Okay.
• 19:28
  So, prior to, honestly, about the late, early eighties, early
• 19:33
  nineties, immigration still kind of just, it, people just crossed.
• 19:37
  They came over, they either declared themselves or not, you know, and they.
• 19:41
  Started life and started the process.
• 19:44
  As time has gone on, the paths to getting here, particularly speaking
• 19:49
  from the Latin American perspective, has become more treacherous.
• 19:53
  There is a lot more nefarious actors in play, and I'm not referring necessarily to
• 19:59
  immigrants, but rather people that exploit and prey upon immigrants that are trying
• 20:04
  to make it here or that do make it here.
• 20:06
  So to say, like with my, for example, with my, my mother and the fact that
• 20:11
  they came over here and she was born here and that gave them a pathway to
• 20:16
  legal status to include for her siblings that were already, older than her.
• 20:22
  I couldn't say with like a great deal of confidence that that same
• 20:26
  exact scenario could play out.
• 20:28
  It's not impossible that someone could effectively get lucky and that could
• 20:34
  occur, but with the, all the laws that have occurred, all the tweaks to the laws
• 20:40
  that have occurred, the exploitation, the, I mean, you gotta, you can't talk
• 20:44
  about migration through Mexico without talking about the cartels and the
• 20:49
  different, the way that trafficking game has greatly and it's become.
• 20:54
  Much more vicious and hard to get out of.
• 20:57
  I couldn't say with, with any bit of confidence that if right now, if I
• 21:03
  were in my grandmother's shoes and I were trying to come up here, if
• 21:06
  I would be able to make that same journey and have that same experience.
• 21:11
  Jerry Valerio: So I actually did wanna bring up something for thought.
• 21:14
  differences between both Audrey and my parents' experience, right?
• 21:18
  Because there's a certain, there tho those are two different processes.
• 21:22
  One's through like what I would refer to as like quota based system, where there is
• 21:27
  the need to attract talented individuals with certain types of backgrounds.
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  That's one path.
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  There's another path also for students to come in.
• 21:39
  And then there's the, then there are also those that are seeking from
• 21:43
  wherever they're, they're at, right?
• 21:45
  So those, those are three processes that are well established.
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  And then of course you have those that come into the country un
• 21:53
  undocument and then try to find a path to be able to get the citizenship,
• 21:57
  which again, they find they have to live in the shadows to begin with.
• 22:01
  And it's a challenge them to feel like, can I feel secure coming out?
• 22:04
  Or am I gonna get shipped?
• 22:06
  Back?
• 22:07
  And so, again, in, in all cases with all of the immigrants, it
• 22:10
  really is still to come here and seek a better life for themselves.
• 22:15
  I mean, that's the one common theme, just different paths.
• 22:18
  And, so one thing I also do see is those that come here for education,
• 22:22
  maybe get their jobs, go back to their wherever they came from.
• 22:27
  And so in some ways, America loses from the talent we've
• 22:30
  honed because now it's helping.
• 22:32
  Whatever other country, sometimes even including, countries that are, gonna be
• 22:37
  our future, I don't know, competitors or whatever you want to call it.
• 22:41
  Audrey Medina: Can I touch on that last point?
• 22:43
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 22:44
  Audrey Medina: So even if they were to come here educate, become, get
• 22:48
  their education, go back to their homeland, to utilize that education
• 22:53
  the grand scheme of things, when you completely zoom out, that actually
• 22:57
  does reduce, it has a ripple effect.
• 23:00
  That does a reduction in immigration flow because anytime you have someone
• 23:06
  who is bettering their own nation, it, little by little has that effect
• 23:12
  of reducing the need to immigrate.
• 23:14
  It may only be by one or two or three people, but the more people that are
• 23:18
  doing that, honestly, the better.
• 23:21
  Now, that's not to say that everybody should come here, use
• 23:23
  what they can, and then ditch.
• 23:25
  It's just one of those,
• 23:26
  Fluid, very complex and very interconnected.
• 23:31
  where foreign policy, uh, natural design, all sorts of different
• 23:35
  things play a factor in immigration.
• 23:38
  And so therefore it's, it's always going to be a little messy.
• 23:41
  That's also why it's as complex as it is, is because every situation is different.
• 23:45
  You can take, a thousand different immigrants from Mexico and you may
• 23:50
  find some threads of commonality, but by and large there are different
• 23:54
  circumstances and different nuances in every single case.
• 23:56
  And unfortunately, that is also what leads to the backlog as well, is
• 24:01
  because we have such a nuanced, I guess, system, such a, a nitpicky down
• 24:08
  to the little nuts and bolts system.
• 24:10
  And truthfully, like there is a reason that it is like that for good and for bad.
• 24:15
  I mean, you, you could talk about the security aspect because, nine
• 24:18
  11 costing massive shift in the way that we handle immigration policy.
• 24:24
  So there was a reason for the tightening of the bolts and
• 24:28
  screws at the immigration system.
• 24:31
  with this many years in the rear view mirror, now we're looking at, we
• 24:35
  have the same problems and honestly in some cases bigger problems.
• 24:41
  Jerremy Newsome: So you said they're the fun word policy.
• 24:43
  Dave Conley: Wow.
• 24:44
  Jerremy Newsome: Let's talk about that for a moment.
• 24:47
  Because I agree with you.
• 24:48
  There's.
• 24:49
  Because you're talking about humans, so every human is different down to the DNA.
• 24:54
  Do you think there is a policy shift?
• 24:58
  Let me ask it this way.
• 25:00
  would be immigration policy that you would change tomorrow if you could?
• 25:07
  Audrey and then Jerry.
• 25:09
  Audrey Medina: One policy that I would change tomorrow.
• 25:11
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 25:11
  If you could.
• 25:13
  Audrey Medina: Hold on.
• 25:13
  Now you're gonna make me go to the end of my notes because Okay.
• 25:17
  There's, there's a couple of policies.
• 25:19
  Let me start with the first one.
• 25:21
  When you understand the monetary aspect of immigration and know that every
• 25:26
  single process pretty much has a form for it, there's little forms within forms.
• 25:31
  It's like a nesting doll of forms and pro procedures that
• 25:34
  have to be met along with fees.
• 25:37
  One of my bigger issues is the price tags with them, and it doesn't seem like a lot
• 25:42
  because if you look at one of the main forms, it's like five to 700 bucks right?
• 25:47
  Does not seem like a lot.
• 25:49
  But when you're looking at that exchange rate in another country, that could
• 25:53
  be half a year, a year, or two years worth of salary of somebody working
• 25:58
  consistently, unless they are not what's considered low skill or low wage.
• 26:04
  that would be one.
• 26:05
  It needs to be so much more transparent to the actual immigrants.
• 26:10
  That are trying to come here because there are also situations
• 26:14
  in which people just, they want to come here to make a better life.
• 26:17
  The, their, their life isn't necessarily on fire, but because of how lengthy and
• 26:22
  arduous the process is, circumstances change and then they have to go.
• 26:27
  They just absolutely have to go.
• 26:30
  And that's how it that set of people could end up in the
• 26:33
  shadows for that amount of time.
• 26:34
  So that, that would be another one is honestly just the transparency.
• 26:38
  And we do need to, policy-wise, I know I was only supposed to pick one, but
• 26:42
  there's so much stuff to shake a stick at.
• 26:45
  But the other one would be just, hold on.
• 26:50
  There needs to actually be a legitimate line to stand in.
• 26:54
  Not what we say is a line, but it's actually like a pinball
• 26:57
  machine that's just shooting people around all over creation.
• 27:01
  but also we just need more resources specifically to the
• 27:03
  actual processing of those petitions
• 27:06
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 27:06
  Audrey Medina: claims.
• 27:07
  That is one of the biggest
• 27:09
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 27:09
  Audrey Medina: is the fact they're just simply, you said
• 27:11
  it in towards the intro, there's
• 27:13
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 27:14
  Audrey Medina: there's not enough.
• 27:15
  And we keep taking away resources from that and instead putting
• 27:18
  it towards enforcement and crackdowns and stuff like that.
• 27:20
  And yet we're not actually fixing the real problem.
• 27:23
  Jerremy Newsome: That's one of the things I was mentioning, um, in an, in an earlier
• 27:26
  episode that Dave and I were kind of just ripping back and forth, was this backlog.
• 27:31
  and again, maybe I'm totally missing it, but if I'm driving around, you
• 27:34
  know, I live in Vegas, California, back and forth pretty often,
• 27:40
  and I'm driving around the city.
• 27:41
  I never see immigration offices again unless I'm just missing it, right?
• 27:45
  There's 418 smog checks here in Vegas where I can go check my smog meter,
• 27:52
  but there's no immigration offices.
• 27:54
  Where it's like, hey if you are an immigrant and you want to come here and
• 27:57
  fill out the forms and learn and be, and through the process and have someone
• 28:00
  look over your case or have someone discuss with what you are or where you
• 28:04
  wanna go or why you wanna go there, I don't see any of those buildings.
• 28:08
  Do you, am I missing these?
• 28:10
  Are
• 28:10
  Audrey Medina: hiding.
• 28:11
  hiding.
• 28:12
  Jerremy Newsome: They're deep somewhere where I have no clue where they are.
• 28:16
  Audrey Medina: Yeah.
• 28:16
  No, they're, they're hiding.
• 28:17
  And then, just, uh, another problem is honestly the immigration
• 28:20
  attorney side of things.
• 28:22
  Of course, I was closer to the situation in the nineties and the early two
• 28:25
  thousands, but the amount of money that they charge, I mean, a lot of times
• 28:31
  you, at least for people that I knew, they were going to the back of like
• 28:35
  bodegas where the immigration attorney was to go and say, Hey, I just got
• 28:39
  this form and they're denying me here.
• 28:41
  Oh, well it's 'cause you, you, maybe you misspelled this or you did that,
• 28:44
  and here's another bill for 600 bucks.
• 28:47
  And then that
• 28:48
  Around.
• 28:48
  And so it, there's a lot of exploitation because at the end of the day,
• 28:52
  immigrants are a commodification.
• 28:55
  Dave Conley: That's.
• 28:56
  That's what's, I mean, there's so many frustrating parts about this because
• 29:00
  I don't think anybody stands up and says, Hey, immigration is working right?
• 29:03
  Like, I'm, I'm going through this personally with a, with my situation
• 29:07
  and we're interviewing immigration attorneys right now, and it, as far
• 29:11
  as I can tell, and you know, like I'm, I'm just average American dude
• 29:16
  and I've gone to the DHS website.
• 29:19
  It looks like something somebody took the worst aspects of filling out
• 29:23
  your taxes, got voraciously drunk and said, immigrate in you, here you go.
• 29:31
  Like it's, I mean, it is absolutely medieval.
• 29:37
  And I it's, and it seems to be intentionally designed that way.
• 29:42
  You know, like it it's absolutely medieval Audrey or Jerry can, I
• 29:48
  don't think we've had any legislation you, you know, since the eighties.
• 29:53
  Do you guys, do you guys have any background in this?
• 29:55
  Do you guys know like, what are the laws?
• 29:57
  Like what, what, what do people live under today?
• 30:01
  Audrey Medina: I've got like six pages
• 30:03
  Dave Conley: Oh,
• 30:03
  Audrey Medina: of notes just on that.
• 30:05
  Jerremy Newsome: Love.
• 30:05
  Dave Conley: Jerry, Jerry, when your, when your parents came over, was it a visa?
• 30:09
  Was it like tied to their jobs and like, I.
• 30:13
  Jerry Valerio: it was a student visa that eventually as they continued to
• 30:17
  work it converted to a regular visa and then they became American citizens.
• 30:23
  Dave Conley: This was like a multi-year process.
• 30:24
  Jerry Valerio: Yes.
• 30:26
  Like they came in the mid sixties and I don't think they got their citizenship
• 30:31
  until the late seventies, so probably a decade and a half, maybe even two decades.
• 30:37
  Dave Conley: Wow.
• 30:38
  And of course, all of your siblings, like you have six, six brothers and sisters.
• 30:42
  All, all of them by birth are American citizens.
• 30:45
  Yeah.
• 30:47
  And Audrey, what, what's, what's the deal like?
• 30:51
  Like what do, what do people live under?
• 30:53
  Like, what's, what's the jam?
• 30:56
  Audrey Medina: Okay.
• 30:56
  Okay.
• 30:56
  You guys ready for this?
• 30:57
  I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try to, to truncate this as much as possible.
• 31:03
  To understand immigration, law and policy, you have to understand
• 31:10
  how America became America.
• 31:12
  And so the very first step, and the first thing that we're aware of
• 31:16
  is some dude got lost in the ocean when he got lost in the ocean, he,
• 31:20
  you know, quote unquote discovers something that was already discovered.
• 31:25
  at that point, for the next a hundred and some odd years,
• 31:30
  there was consistent efforts.
• 31:34
  To bring stuff over to these areas that were discovered.
• 31:39
  The only problem was that the items that they were bringing over, or the
• 31:43
  people that they were bringing over were infected with lots of different types of
• 31:48
  diseases and things that the indigenous populations, they didn't have immunity to.
• 31:53
  Which led to what's known as the great dying throughout indigenous populations.
• 31:59
  During the period of the great dying, over 95% of indigenous populations
• 32:04
  died, now meant that across the us what was now the us, Mexico, south America,
• 32:13
  central America, all of that, indigenous populations during that roughly a
• 32:18
  hundred and what about 20 year period of time, went from approximately 50 to 60
• 32:25
  million down to just a little fraction of that, approximately six ish million.
• 32:31
  and I could be doing my math wrong, but either way.
• 32:35
  So now you had a decreas, decreased population that was
• 32:38
  ripe for conquering that point.
• 32:41
  Didn't make it easy, but ripe for conquering.
• 32:43
  And so now you have the push for the pilgrimage, the push for coming over
• 32:49
  here and establishing and conquering effectively the land and the people.
• 32:54
  Now in the period of time that followed, that is approximately 150 years, you
• 32:59
  have 150 years of slavery where slaves built the infrastructure of this nation.
• 33:04
  They built the backbone of the nation, all of that.
• 33:07
  And then you start to get into, uh, about the last 60 years of that
• 33:12
  was actually the very, very first naturalization act that was passed
• 33:16
  that only applied to white males.
• 33:19
  you have to wait until the late 1890s until you, or 1880s, geez,
• 33:26
  1880s, I wanna say, um, to actually get the Chinese Exclusion Act.
• 33:30
  So our very first piece of true immigration law was based in racism.
• 33:36
  But the important fact to know is it was directly after we as a nation utilized
• 33:42
  Chinese immigrants to build our railways.
• 33:45
  And then we're like, oh, okay.
• 33:46
  We're done.
• 33:46
  We don't want none of them here.
• 33:47
  We don't have them want them having any rights.
• 33:49
  None of that.
• 33:50
  Get 'em outta here.
• 33:51
  Can't, it's not as easy to deport people back then as it is now,
• 33:55
  like logistically speaking.
• 33:57
  So now you get into a period of time in which being.
• 34:03
  or in, in other, I assume, just given the way that we handle things nowadays.
• 34:09
  If you were of any form of Asian descent, you were probably discriminated
• 34:13
  against the same way that the Chinese immigrants at the time were.
• 34:16
  And then from there, now you start having a little, a little like trickle
• 34:20
  of some little acts, but nothing really monumentally shifts until
• 34:24
  about 1924, which was also based in xenophobia and racism because
• 34:31
  this one was to stem the flow.
• 34:33
  They did not want immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe point blank.
• 34:37
  They just wanted them from the Northwestern portions.
• 34:40
  And that's pretty much it.
• 34:41
  Also, if you were coming here and you were a little too brown, there's a good
• 34:44
  chance you are not gonna be a free person.
• 34:46
  That's just it.
• 34:48
  Once you get into about the, the, the big one, this is the one that
• 34:51
  family would've been more immediately impacted by was the one in 52 it
• 34:58
  started to abolish a lot of the quotas.
• 35:00
  It started to more effectively like open the doors, that sort of thing, and started
• 35:06
  prioritizing skilled labor to come over.
• 35:09
  Because before all of that, in order to get into the country, you
• 35:12
  arrive on a boat, you literally have what they call a six second
• 35:16
  review where everybody's coming in.
• 35:19
  There was a place a little bit before Ellis Island, I wanna
• 35:22
  say it was called Castle Garden.
• 35:23
  Something like that.
• 35:24
  But effectively it ran the same way.
• 35:26
  A ship comes up, they check it, make sure there's no plague on there.
• 35:29
  If it's plagued, they have to like quarantine in and make sure people
• 35:32
  live, remove the sick people.
• 35:33
  Those would go to a different island.
• 35:35
  you would have what was called a six second review where the, just
• 35:38
  the whole crowd of people are starting to come up the stairs.
• 35:41
  And you had a bunch of panel of adopters who are looking and trying
• 35:43
  to spot people who are having labored breathing symptoms, who are
• 35:46
  stumbling, anything like that would denote that they were maybe not okay.
• 35:49
  And they wouldn't take them and kick them out.
• 35:52
  They would take them to a hospital.
• 35:54
  And then from there, the registration process was, Hey, what's your name?
• 35:58
  How much money do you have on you?
• 35:59
  What class?
• 36:00
  Did you come here?
• 36:01
  Were you in an actual class?
• 36:02
  Were you in steerage?
• 36:03
  Were you in, like, what?
• 36:04
  How did you get here?
• 36:05
  That was it.
• 36:06
  All right, cool.
• 36:07
  Go to a bathhouse.
• 36:07
  Go get clean and move on.
• 36:10
  But once you get into the post, Ellis Island era, you've got ports of entry all
• 36:17
  over, and you've got people are fallible.
• 36:19
  So people handle things differently.
• 36:21
  Even if there's, a rule of law or whatever, there's, they're still
• 36:24
  handling things the way that they want to for their own microcosm of a space.
• 36:28
  that particular law in, in 52 is what made it easier for my grandmother's situation.
• 36:34
  For example, once you get into, you know, about the.
• 36:38
  The 1980s is probably the big one that everybody remembers,
• 36:42
  which was the Refugee Act.
• 36:43
  And this is a really important one because this gets us a lot closer to
• 36:47
  our modern day immigration system.
• 36:50
  What the Refugee Act did was it basically aligned our views of refugee and seeking
• 36:58
  asylum to, um, align better with the rest of the world with international standards.
• 37:04
  It protected from what was called ref, ref foment, which was basically
• 37:08
  like returning someone to a country where they could face persecution.
• 37:12
  It allowed them to access things like basic rights such as, or let
• 37:17
  me rephrase, be considered eligible for asylum outside of it being war.
• 37:26
  Did you have, do you have access to healthcare?
• 37:28
  Did you have access to, uh, education?
• 37:31
  Stuff like that.
• 37:32
  Like those were things that were also allowed you to request asylum.
• 37:37
  It into place non-discrimination principles.
• 37:41
  It ensured that refugees were to be treated without distinction.
• 37:45
  Um, so basically the same thing that we have where you're not supposed
• 37:48
  to be treated differently because of your, your race, religion,
• 37:52
  nationality, uh, political affiliations, unless I guess it's with the enemy.
• 37:57
  If we're like at war, I guess that could be an issue.
• 38:00
  But it also recognized that the act of seeking asylum.
• 38:05
  It's not a crime.
• 38:07
  And it outright stated that it wasn't cons, it wasn't outright
• 38:09
  considered that before, but it actually laid it down letter.
• 38:13
  The law.
• 38:14
  It's not a crime.
• 38:15
  When it came to work, there was supposed to be fair remuneration.
• 38:19
  So basically like good compensation for the work.
• 38:22
  Now that doesn't actually necessarily play out in the real world the way that that
• 38:27
  was supposed to, to play out because and time again, immigrants are still being
• 38:32
  exploited for their labor and underpaid.
• 38:35
  But it was supposed to.
• 38:37
  And then when you get into, uh, about 86 ish, there was
• 38:41
  the IRCA, which was the reform.
• 38:43
  So now they're looking at, oh, okay, well we've done all of this from the
• 38:47
  fifties through this refugee thing.
• 38:48
  Let's, let's try to, let's try to tighten this down a little bit.
• 38:52
  And that is when they made it illegal to hire undocumented workers.
• 38:57
  But they wanted to provide a path to to legalization for those that
• 39:00
  were undocumented who had been in the country for a long time.
• 39:04
  gets kind of thrown around for a while.
• 39:06
  And then you get into 1990, and 1990 is where the Immigration Act, they
• 39:13
  had noticed that it was like, you know, the, the immigration levels
• 39:16
  were just in general, just increasing.
• 39:18
  And, uh, it created new categories of visas, reformed the visa
• 39:22
  system, the visa preference system.
• 39:26
  and then in the, the, the other thing is, so when you're like,
• 39:28
  okay, so they made it illegal for.
• 39:30
  For corporations or for companies to hire undocumented workers.
• 39:34
  Well then explain all of this happening.
• 39:38
  they were initially doing this, they actually had really steep
• 39:41
  penalties, like super steep when they were first drafting the bill.
• 39:44
  But as time went on and they started haggling by and large conservatives were
• 39:49
  like, Hey, this is gonna cripple industry.
• 39:51
  We can't do this.
• 39:51
  So they started whittling it away and it basically, by the time it
• 39:54
  was passed, it was the equivalent of a, of a slap in the wrist.
• 39:57
  Unless you were just a really prolific offender.
• 40:00
  But you'd have to honestly get caught with doing other things like human trafficking
• 40:05
  or something like that in order for it to really, really blow up in your face.
• 40:08
  If you're sitting here just bringing in a whole bunch of undocumented workers to
• 40:10
  work your fields or you know, whatever.
• 40:14
  There was a small Reforma Reformation Act and what they called an Immigrant
• 40:19
  Responsibility Act in the mid nineties that occurred, which was
• 40:24
  where they expanded the grounds for deportation, for things that were
• 40:28
  drug related violent offenders.
• 40:30
  So domestic, domestic violence did actually fall into that category.
• 40:34
  Things like stalking, um, sexual offenses, and they implemented that retroactively.
• 40:41
  from there there's been just little teeny tiny things.
• 40:45
  There hasn't been anything major until you get into when they dec after nine
• 40:48
  11 when they said, you know what?
• 40:49
  We're gonna go.
• 40:51
  this out of INS and put it under DHS, and then now you've got, what that does
• 40:56
  is that shifts public perception that now immigrants need to be vetted because
• 41:00
  they could be the enemy, and that's where you see the, the larger shift
• 41:04
  occur xenophobia and stuff like that.
• 41:08
  Or renewal, I should say.
• 41:10
  Jerremy Newsome: Boom, mic drop.
• 41:11
  Fascinating.
• 41:12
  I love it.
• 41:13
  I mean, one aspect that I definitely agree and think.
• 41:16
  You for the history lesson.
• 41:17
  And I say that truthfully because really do feel like one aspect
• 41:20
  of immigration that a lot of people forget is the history of it
• 41:25
  Audrey Medina: Yeah.
• 41:25
  Jerremy Newsome: the sense of, hey most, pretty much everyone here has immigrated
• 41:30
  at some point relatively recently.
• 41:32
  And by recently, I mean the last 200 years.
• 41:34
  Audrey Medina: Yeah.
• 41:35
  Jerremy Newsome: It is a really, really fascinating component to
• 41:37
  just kind of drill down into those particulars, into the specifics.
• 41:41
  Jerry, what about you, man?
• 41:42
  If you have one policy that you change regarding immigration as it
• 41:48
  stands presently, what would that be?
• 41:50
  Jerry Valerio: I said earlier that our process is broken.
• 41:52
  I'm not sure what is the right levers in terms of policy.
• 41:56
  'cause in, in some ways, I do think there needs to be some sort of pause to process
• 42:02
  those who are in the backlog and those who are already here who want to come forward.
• 42:06
  And it's like, in some ways let's do justice to those who
• 42:09
  are already here first before we.
• 42:12
  I mean, in other words, it's like we've got a, a, a faucet that continues to run
• 42:16
  and it's like we're overflowing, right?
• 42:19
  How do we take care of those who are already here?
• 42:22
  can't continue to exacerbate the problem by continuing to accept, people, right?
• 42:28
  Again, it's kind of a revisit of what makes sense, what's the right
• 42:32
  set of, of levers to figure out?
• 42:34
  I think, again, figuring out how those who are already here get that path.
• 42:39
  First of all, that should be the priority, followed by, we have
• 42:42
  that, then let's figure out what's a manageable process and fix it.
• 42:46
  And then also figure out what are all of the different things that are broken.
• 42:49
  Like I, I agree with Audrey.
• 42:51
  There are so many people exploiting the immigrant process and so like,
• 42:55
  immigrants are like being unjustly treated, not just simply by applying,
• 43:00
  but those who are part of the process.
• 43:02
  To take as much and extract as much money from them,
• 43:06
  Hear of, I hear about it from people in the tech space who are pursuing
• 43:10
  H one visas and the difficulties there and trying to get sponsorship.
• 43:14
  And of course corporations have gone back and forth, like in the, uh,
• 43:18
  early two thousands, H one visa, visa, H one B visas were like huge.
• 43:22
  And now companies are like, Nope, we're not sponsoring.
• 43:25
  So it makes it difficult for a lot of them to come here as a student visa
• 43:27
  and they're like, well now I can't get an H one P 'cause no one's gonna.
• 43:31
  me or sponsor me.
• 43:32
  I mean, we, in the tech space, we certainly come full circle and
• 43:34
  I think the tech space is like, well, we have enough workers now.
• 43:37
  We don't need to, you know, encourage other people to see H one b.
• 43:42
  Dave Conley: So I, I, that's my question.
• 43:44
  I do you think that em do you think immigration should be based on employment?
• 43:51
  And what I mean by that?
• 43:52
  It's like, okay, you, you know, you have to have a job here and that has to be
• 43:57
  sponsored by, uh, somebody who's hiring.
• 44:01
  Jerry Valerio: I, no I don't think it should be just purely on unemployment.
• 44:04
  I think ultimately at the end of the day, the whole point about
• 44:06
  having immigrants come into the country is to contribute, right?
• 44:09
  You don't have to seek employment through a corporation.
• 44:12
  And in fact, there are immigrants who come in here because there's like a a business
• 44:17
  visa, you're bringing in a certain amount of money, or you're bringing
• 44:19
  a business, or you're hiring people.
• 44:21
  That's another, I mean, you hear about it there, there's that pathway too.
• 44:24
  But that only is affordable to those who are already wealthy.
• 44:28
  They're coming here not for so much about the American dream, but they just wanna
• 44:31
  have a life here or have a presence here.
• 44:34
  Uh, and they could be leaving their own country because it is a form of asylum.
• 44:37
  And they now have this unique path where, oh, if you know, bring
• 44:41
  a business, if you, whatever,
• 44:42
  Jerremy Newsome: they're bringing a business.
• 44:44
  if they're bringing a business, I mean, that would be a form
• 44:46
  of employment though, right?
• 44:48
  It's like they, they're bringing a job to here, so even though they don't
• 44:51
  have one here, they're bringing one.
• 44:52
  So that would, that'd kind of be the same thing though, right?
• 44:55
  Audrey Medina: I do believe there had, there's a revenue
• 44:57
  thing involved in that worry.
• 44:59
  So if I'm just, you know, really good at doing fruit that yes, on the
• 45:04
  side of the road or whatever, and I can get like 10 people to do that,
• 45:07
  that's not gonna qualify for that.
• 45:09
  People love fruit and I'm gonna sell, but it's not gonna get me the visa to be able
• 45:15
  to do that, to come here specifically.
• 45:17
  And I'm like, maybe I can make gorgeous fruit creations in two seconds flat and
• 45:21
  I can teach other people how to do that.
• 45:23
  That that's not, that's not gonna necessarily translate I guess to anybody.
• 45:29
  Uh, so I, I would say that immigrants very resilient people because you
• 45:34
  have to do what you have to do.
• 45:36
  And so if you come here and you can't just find work or you, you couldn't
• 45:40
  get in through the avenue of what your actual education back home is for.
• 45:44
  Because the amount of people that I've known that were lawyers, they
• 45:48
  were paramedics, they were all these things back in their homeland
• 45:51
  and for all, for different varying reasons, had to leave and end up here.
• 45:57
  And now they're in fields and they're building homes, they're
• 46:00
  cleaning houses, they're cleaning whatever to make ends meet.
• 46:03
  And if you follow their story long enough.
• 46:06
  Eventually you are gonna find enough of them that out of just a, a brilliant
• 46:11
  idea and the ability to do so.
• 46:13
  Because again, keep in mind that this nation has the
• 46:15
  capacity to give people wings.
• 46:18
  They build something they build something that they're no longer
• 46:22
  doing that it may not be in any field in relation to whatever it is that
• 46:26
  they had gotten, uh, their field of expertise, their apprenticeship their
• 46:30
  education or whatever back home.
• 46:32
  But it is something.
• 46:33
  So there's a lot of innovation that comes through immigrants because you're bringing
• 46:37
  a patchwork of experiences together.
• 46:39
  And by doing that, it's only strengthening a nation and a in a population.
• 46:45
  Dave Conley: Yeah, I, that was my experience too, like where I
• 46:48
  grew up when I was very young.
• 46:50
  It was a very sleepy part of the city.
• 46:53
  And like there, it was kind of nothing there.
• 46:56
  And it was a complete flood of ma mainly Asian, Korean, and Vietnamese.
• 47:02
  And the I'll tell you right now, the greatest entrepreneurs on the planet,
• 47:06
  and they just created one business after another, and now 50 years later, you
• 47:12
  know, their children and their children's children are the leaders in the community.
• 47:16
  I, you know, like I, my experience was, you know, fantastic entrepreneurship,
• 47:21
  you know, starting everything and just, just seeing a million ways to
• 47:25
  make a buck or, or provide a service.
• 47:28
  And, uh, it just grew and grew and grew from there.
• 47:30
  I, I'm with you.
• 47:31
  I don't, I don't think, uh, immigration should be tied directly to employment.
• 47:36
  I know I was dating somebody a few years ago and PhD, you know,
• 47:41
  research scientist, and her job was sponsored by her company, a really,
• 47:46
  really big, you know, pharma company.
• 47:49
  And, uh, she wanted to change jobs and it was extremely difficult because
• 47:54
  it was the H one B and it had to be sponsored by another company.
• 47:57
  And so she was basically trapped.
• 47:59
  And then she wasn't allowed to leave the country.
• 48:02
  Uh, she actually had to go back for family and No, no, no, no.
• 48:06
  They were gonna restart the process of her, uh, her green card.
• 48:11
  So yeah, I is, it's all bonkers.
• 48:13
  So, yeah, I don't, yeah.
• 48:15
  What do you think, Jerremy, do you think it should be tied to employment
• 48:17
  or, or building business or not?
• 48:20
  I mean, the other side of this is, well, you know, we don't want people on like
• 48:25
  government assistance or, you know, like you hear the arguments on the, on,
• 48:30
  on like, well, you know, our hospitals and that and that and the rest of it.
• 48:34
  So like, what?
• 48:35
  Tell me, balance this.
• 48:37
  Jerremy Newsome: Here's an interesting challenge is take is if you are coming
• 48:44
  here as an immigrant, as Jerry said, you probably are here for a better life.
• 48:51
  And a better life generally is gonna translate to an increase in
• 48:56
  commerce or an increase in safety.
• 48:59
  And if you feel more safe, you're probably gonna end up eventually
• 49:02
  creating more commerce anyway.
• 49:04
  And some of our greatest entrepreneurs.
• 49:06
  On this, I mean, Elon Musk, Like tons and tons and tons of very,
• 49:12
  very successful entrepreneurs are immigrants into this country.
• 49:15
  I don't believe that they should all be tied to it.
• 49:19
  But what's ironic is in all three examples listed so far, going to
• 49:25
  be creating jobs almost anyway.
• 49:30
  And the ones that put the largest strain from a government assistance standpoint
• 49:36
  are current Americans anyway, right?
• 49:40
  Like not the immigrants.
• 49:42
  It's the people that are to provide and that choose simply, in my opinion,
• 49:49
  it's a choice to not create commerce because they've already been here and
• 49:53
  they're already kind of living off the government Tet, so to speak, anyway.
• 49:56
  And I would, I would wager that the vast majority of them are not immigrants.
• 50:02
  I would probably say more than 70% of the people that are living
• 50:07
  on are probably not immigrants.
• 50:10
  'cause it's extremely hard for an immigrant to receive
• 50:13
  welfare in the first place.
• 50:15
  that being stated, I do personally believe that there should probably
• 50:20
  be some type of general quota or number that we allow into the country.
• 50:28
  So if, for example, America said, okay.
• 50:32
  Every year, 1 million immigrants can come in And out of that
• 50:37
  million we have this, and this.
• 50:39
  Some type of brackets or parameters.
• 50:42
  Just simply because to everyone's point, we do know that the system is backlogged.
• 50:47
  we go, all right, we're gonna have a million, and out of that million
• 50:49
  people, we'll have 10% that are seeking asylum will have 10% potentially,
• 50:54
  that are refugees will have 10% that are, coming for student visas.
• 50:59
  Right?
• 50:59
  And you have these percentages you are allowing certain numbers to happen.
• 51:05
  And then those have lines, locations, companies, people, industries that are
• 51:14
  focused and targeted to actually receive them, talk to them, communicate with 'em.
• 51:18
  Because what it does do back to Audrey's point, it starts
• 51:22
  to slowly compartmentalize the complexities that do exist.
• 51:27
  So if you have a department of immigration that is designed, dedicated, and focused
• 51:31
  on asylum seekers, they're gonna have, yes, very complex cases, but those
• 51:35
  individuals that are working on those cases now know we're not here looking
• 51:39
  for student visas, we're not here looking for H ones, we're not, we're not
• 51:42
  here looking for someone who's trying to get a job and come entrepreneur
• 51:44
  or who came across illegally that now wants to become a naturalized citizen.
• 51:49
  They have a very, very specific domain that they're focused on.
• 51:53
  And so I do think a relatively large percentage.
• 51:57
  Already would say, if I'm an immigrant to this country, it's
• 52:00
  because I want a better paying job.
• 52:02
  'cause my country sucks.
• 52:05
  not leaving their country.
• 52:05
  If they're making a bunch of money and they feel safe, they're not.
• 52:08
  They're gonna be just fine staying where they're staying.
• 52:10
  But if they're coming to America, it's because they want more money,
• 52:14
  more freedom, and more safety.
• 52:16
  Dave Conley: Let me, okay, let me ask you this about asylum
• 52:18
  seekers in particular, right?
• 52:20
  Jerremy Newsome: Okay.
• 52:20
  Dave Conley: So I am totally down with asylum seekers.
• 52:23
  I think it's, it's critical.
• 52:24
  Like we gotta be able to say, Hey, you know, like if you are in fear
• 52:27
  of your life, like come on in.
• 52:30
  That sounds great to me.
• 52:32
  And almost every country.
• 52:35
  Signs on to the exact same un charter about asylum speaking.
• 52:41
  Right.
• 52:42
  And so, like if you were in Venezuela, right?
• 52:47
  Not a, not the greatest place right now.
• 52:49
  And we, we, we have a lot of asylum seekers in, in, in the United States, in
• 52:54
  fact, right where I live from Venezuela.
• 52:57
  Yet, if you were to travel from Venezuela all the way up to the
• 53:01
  United States by land, every single one of the countries between here
• 53:07
  and there accepts asylum seekers.
• 53:11
  And so is there something to be said about like, well, do you really want
• 53:16
  asylum if you keep on skipping all the countries that will accept asylum seekers?
• 53:24
  Jerremy Newsome: Valid point, but I mean, uh, go ahead Audrey.
• 53:27
  Yep.
• 53:27
  Audrey Medina: I was just gonna ask if I could speak to
• 53:28
  that, uh, just a little bit.
• 53:30
  The path from, say, Venezuela, for example, to here is also laid
• 53:36
  in with just a ton of treachery.
• 53:38
  So the, a lot of the same problems that exist in Venezuela in other countries.
• 53:48
  The problem with Venezuela right now is that they have collapsed.
• 53:52
  So it's, it's, they were, there were already asylum seekers before the collapse
• 53:58
  from Venezuela that were coming here.
• 54:00
  Part of it had to do with, because their government was going through what
• 54:03
  their government was going through and, we're, we kind of had our fingers in
• 54:08
  the pie trying to help them get somebody who was not a socialist in power.
• 54:14
  That ended up leading to if you had people that were there that maybe
• 54:18
  they, they supported whoever it was that we were, we were pushing, or the
• 54:23
  fact that maybe they weren't okay with the, um, government that was there.
• 54:28
  They couldn't just stop anywhere.
• 54:30
  Because when you're pushing massive groups of people, it's not just the
• 54:35
  one person who's seeking asylum.
• 54:36
  There's, there's people that eventually, especially as a country collapses,
• 54:40
  that we're gonna be some of those same people that were perpetrating things
• 54:44
  on the civilian population that are also moving upward at the same time.
• 54:49
  In addition to that, once you start getting into stuff like drug cartels and
• 54:53
  human smuggling and stuff like that, now you're also getting into the fact that,
• 54:57
  that the whole chain of that exists all through, central America, into Mexico and
• 55:03
  actually in the United States as well.
• 55:05
  And so if you get swallowed up into that, now you've got a whole other
• 55:10
  thing that you're also fleeing from that exists beyond the borders
• 55:14
  of the homeland that you left.
• 55:16
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 55:16
  I guess what I'm trying to tease apart a little bit is, you know, like
• 55:20
  you seek asylum for reasons, right?
• 55:22
  Like political, um, you know, some, you know, like there's underlying,
• 55:27
  you know, like fear for your life.
• 55:29
  If you're in Venezuela, like Columbia signs onto the exact same
• 55:34
  UN thing that the United States does.
• 55:37
  So does Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, I mean, like,
• 55:42
  these are solid countries.
• 55:44
  They're democracies, they have rule of law, and like, I'm, I
• 55:48
  don't think I'm against people having asylum in the United States.
• 55:53
  I'm just like, is it truly asylum?
• 55:55
  If you've, you know, you've gone through all of those countries
• 55:59
  and you haven't gotten, you know, you haven't applied for asylum.
• 56:01
  That's what I'm trying to, trying to get at.
• 56:05
  Audrey Medina: Maybe it's the marketing.
• 56:06
  As the city on the hill, we, we market ourselves as the best.
• 56:10
  So I mean, if I have to leave my homeland I'm too afraid to stay there,
• 56:17
  I'm not gonna necessarily just select the thing that's right next to me
• 56:21
  just because it's right next to me.
• 56:23
  Just because they're a democracy.
• 56:25
  I'm gonna say, where's the place that I can thrive the best?
• 56:27
  Where's the place that I can make sure that my children will be okay?
• 56:30
  Where's the place that I can actually build, truly build a life and
• 56:35
  Dave Conley: None of those are, but none of those are reasons for asylum.
• 56:39
  Not one of those, uh, the best place to raise my kids the best.
• 56:44
  You know, all the, like those, you can't seek asylum for
• 56:48
  economic reasons like that, right?
• 56:50
  Audrey Medina: But you can.
• 56:52
  So if the economy is in such shambles in the country or in such difficult points,
• 56:58
  or maybe you can't access healthcare, you can't access education, you can't
• 57:02
  access these things in those other nations that you're looking at, then
• 57:06
  technically you're going to the next best place, wherever that geographically
• 57:10
  is, wherever, however you can get there.
• 57:13
  Wherever it is, right?
• 57:14
  Wherever you claim as is the, wherever you show yourself, I
• 57:18
  guess is what I'm trying to say.
• 57:19
  Because if you just pass through a country and you didn't declare yourself
• 57:23
  in that country, then it's technically by technicality and the way that it works.
• 57:27
  That's not somewhere that you have to declare yourself as requesting
• 57:30
  amnesty or am Amnesty Asylum.
• 57:34
  Sorry.
• 57:35
  Dave Conley: I get it.
• 57:35
  Audrey Medina: that, that one's just like a little nitpicky thing that
• 57:37
  just exists because that's the same argument that came up when Syrians
• 57:41
  were fleeing and ended up in Greece.
• 57:44
  Dave Conley: Yeah,
• 57:44
  Audrey Medina: it's, you go, I know why people do the things
• 57:47
  that they do, and I also know that they have their valid fears.
• 57:52
  But at the same time, if you were to stop and say Honduras, that's where
• 57:57
  you, you feel safe, and then you find out, oh no, I'm not safe here.
• 58:01
  Now you've just exhausted your opportunity to try to get that asylum
• 58:05
  to be in a now another country, it adds another layer of complexity to it.
• 58:10
  So people just, they're, they again, it kind of, I feel like it comes
• 58:13
  back to the market, the marketing.
• 58:16
  We did it to ourselves.
• 58:18
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 58:18
  Yeah.
• 58:19
  I think,
• 58:19
  Audrey Medina: have the wheels turning
• 58:20
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah.
• 58:22
  No, I, I love the discussion there because I think ultimately it's
• 58:24
  like, well, listen, if you're a fleeing a country, there's plenty of
• 58:27
  other places that you can be safe.
• 58:29
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 58:30
  Jerremy Newsome: right, to Audrey's point, Dave, it was like, Hey, if you're
• 58:32
  gonna be safe, might as well shoot my shot and try to get into the best.
• 58:38
  Yeah, if I'm gonna go, if I'm gonna seek asylum.
• 58:40
  But to Dave's point, Dave's like, well, listen, if you're fleeing
• 58:43
  a country, just go to any country that's safe other than yours.
• 58:47
  Dave Conley: There's a lot of great countries between wherever you
• 58:49
  are and wherever you need to go.
• 58:51
  And
• 58:52
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 58:52
  Dave Conley: I'm not against people coming here for asylum.
• 58:54
  I'm just saying if I personally, I'm feeling like.
• 58:59
  Your asylum claim is untrue.
• 59:02
  If you've passed a dozen opportunities to be safe and to have asylum, you
• 59:07
  know, if you keep on skipping those and you keep on traveling and you
• 59:10
  keep on going, I'm like, are you really, I mean, does it, is it valid?
• 59:15
  I don't get it.
• 59:15
  Because you keep on passing perfectly good, robust economies with rules of law
• 59:21
  and you know, like you're not gonna be prosecuted because of who you are and
• 59:26
  you know what you believe or who you love because those countries have laws, right?
• 59:31
  Like you can be gay in Mexico, right?
• 59:34
  So I, I, I don't know.
• 59:36
  I, I, I think this is worthy of a further conversation.
• 59:39
  I'm like, I don't know if you have like, really an asylum claim if you, if you
• 59:42
  travel a thousand miles, if you come from, from Africa or China, you know,
• 59:47
  if you come from like thousands of miles away for asylum, I'm like, oh, come on.
• 59:51
  Does that make any sense to anybody?
• 59:53
  I.
• 59:53
  Audrey Medina: I, I, and I get that, I do feel that there's probably, one
• 59:57
  of the things that's missing is the fact that if you have a thousand people
• 1:00:00
  walking from one country to the next, there's gonna be some that stay in
• 1:00:04
  that next country, and then they go to the, maybe now it's only 900 going up.
• 1:00:07
  There are people that stay along the way, but there are other people that are
• 1:00:11
  just simply not going to, and it could be that the fear that they have, they
• 1:00:15
  feel that the only safe place that they can be, and this is all, this is all
• 1:00:19
  just formulated around violence, asylum seeking, like literally fleeing violence.
• 1:00:24
  But there's a lot of other factors at play in asylum seeking, if there's
• 1:00:30
  mass famine happening, if there's there, there's, again, it kind of
• 1:00:34
  gets back into the, the fact that it's complex and it's very, very nuanced.
• 1:00:38
  I do get your point though.
• 1:00:40
  I entirely get your point.
• 1:00:41
  And I do feel that there's a lot of people, I mean, just in talking with.
• 1:00:44
  Again, most of my the people that I've known personally, it was throughout
• 1:00:48
  the nineties and the two thousands, but just listening to their stories
• 1:00:50
  and how people just stopped along the way and they said, you know what?
• 1:00:52
  I feel safe enough here.
• 1:00:54
  Dave Conley: On the flip side, you know, like if you have any kind of like even
• 1:00:58
  remote family anywhere in a country
• 1:01:01
  Audrey Medina: That's
• 1:01:02
  Dave Conley: I do, yeah.
• 1:01:03
  I have family in Spain.
• 1:01:04
  So like, would I seek asylum in Mexico or Canada?
• 1:01:08
  Well, I might actually think about Spain, right?
• 1:01:10
  And it's, it's further away.
• 1:01:11
  So
• 1:01:11
  Audrey Medina: Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  Dave Conley: I think I'm just arguing against my own thought on that one.
• 1:01:15
  Jerremy Newsome: No, it's what a great place to be,
• 1:01:17
  Dave Conley: yeah.
• 1:01:18
  Jerremy Newsome: we live here.
• 1:01:19
  This I can absolutely see why NY anyone would want to be here.
• 1:01:22
  And to Jerry's point, so Jerry, you brought up something interesting about,
• 1:01:28
  didn't mention it specifically, but you're kind of talking about those
• 1:01:30
  that are coming over to America that do have extreme wealth in other countries
• 1:01:35
  that essentially buy their visa, right?
• 1:01:37
  I think currently we have the golden visa, I believe it was called, where you, you
• 1:01:41
  pay a million and essentially you bring in a business and poof, uh, you're a citizen.
• 1:01:47
  Now, what would be interesting, Audrey, and then I'll ask,
• 1:01:50
  I'm gonna ask Jerry too.
• 1:01:52
  Do you think in that way, if they're gonna pay a million, do you think a portion of
• 1:01:58
  that proceeds could go to an immigration bucket that other immigrants could use
• 1:02:06
  to fill out all their forms so that they don't have to spend as much money so that
• 1:02:10
  they have some type of provocation or providence where it's like, Hey, we did
• 1:02:15
  have someone from our country, so let's say a, a Cuban nationalist comes over and
• 1:02:20
  they're doing extremely well and bang, they set up and they're now a citizen and
• 1:02:26
  they can put into this pot, Hey, any other Cuban comes over, they can use portions
• 1:02:30
  of my money that I just now contributed because I'm now a citizen to fill out all
• 1:02:35
  their forms and things of that nature.
• 1:02:36
  Do you think that could be something that could work?
• 1:02:40
  Audrey Medina: I think it could, and the reason why I think it could
• 1:02:41
  is 'cause there used to actually be something very similar to that.
• 1:02:45
  It was baked into, I want to say the brae So it basically
• 1:02:52
  covered some of those costs.
• 1:02:53
  Now would it be a little bit your thought process would be a little
• 1:02:56
  more I guess not, not broad.
• 1:02:58
  It would philanthropic, it would be a little more
• 1:03:01
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Audrey Medina: than
• 1:03:02
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Audrey Medina: other one But basically, I mean, part of the partnership and
• 1:03:07
  the, and I'm going on memory here, not my gazillion notes, 'cause I'm not
• 1:03:10
  gonna scroll through that right now.
• 1:03:11
  But with the proto program they had, they had a really, really strong agreement.
• 1:03:17
  With Mexico and how that was going to operate and what those fees were and
• 1:03:21
  how that was gonna gonna function.
• 1:03:23
  And then they used, they kind of piggybacked of that process and some of
• 1:03:27
  the subsequent things on how they were gonna fund things so that it's possible.
• 1:03:31
  It's, it's, I think it's absolutely possible.
• 1:03:34
  I think it could work.
• 1:03:35
  I think we have a long way to go before we get there.
• 1:03:39
  Jerremy Newsome: What do you think, Jerry?
• 1:03:39
  You think that would work?
• 1:03:41
  Jerry Valerio: Yeah I did wanna actually add something somewhat related to the
• 1:03:46
  discussion because I think one of you talked about Asian communities, right?
• 1:03:50
  There is a, there is an opportunity to take a look in what happens
• 1:03:54
  in those immigrant communities to figure out what can we borrow and
• 1:03:58
  bring forward into American culture and make it a standard practice.
• 1:04:02
  One of the things I've come to learn about is like in the Korean community,
• 1:04:07
  they have opportunity circles.
• 1:04:08
  That's the reason why Korea towns throughout the US thrive, it's
• 1:04:13
  usually like five to 10 people and they all commit and put money in
• 1:04:17
  to help each one one get up thrive.
• 1:04:22
  they can choose to disband or stay part of the circle and they
• 1:04:24
  continue to help their people.
• 1:04:26
  Imagine if we created opportunity circles not tied to a specific.
• 1:04:32
  Cultural community, but it was for all Americans.
• 1:04:35
  We would have an America that basically lifts each other up collectively.
• 1:04:39
  We can also break down the barriers that exist between people of different
• 1:04:43
  races or heritages or culture because you're now part of an opportunity circle
• 1:04:48
  and you're all looking for a better life, and you're all helping each other
• 1:04:51
  through that connection that you make.
• 1:04:53
  We get a tighter community and a much better American culture
• 1:04:58
  Audrey Medina: like that.
• 1:04:59
  Dave Conley: Hmm.
• 1:05:00
  Area there.
• 1:05:02
  I think there's a, I don't know if it's a misconception.
• 1:05:04
  It's a, it's a con, a concept that immigrants want to pull
• 1:05:10
  up the ladder behind them.
• 1:05:11
  Uh, that they wanna actually make it difficult for people who came from
• 1:05:15
  their original country to actually come in because they're, they're in.
• 1:05:18
  And, and do you, is that a, a real thing?
• 1:05:22
  Have you heard that?
• 1:05:23
  Do you have any experience with that?
• 1:05:25
  Jerry Valerio: it.
• 1:05:25
  It's called the crab mentality because people wanna climb up and once
• 1:05:30
  they made it to the top, they don't care about the people below them.
• 1:05:32
  That I think, happens in all cultures to some extent.
• 1:05:36
  It is.
• 1:05:37
  And it I've talked to my parents about this.
• 1:05:39
  It is called the crab mentality.
• 1:05:41
  There are people who climb to the top but don't want you to be at their level, and
• 1:05:45
  they'll do whatever they can to I like the idea, you said pull the ladder up.
• 1:05:48
  And so now there's no ladder,
• 1:05:50
  Dave Conley: Yeah,
• 1:05:50
  Jerry Valerio: uh, it's it's destructive, right?
• 1:05:53
  Because it's on, you don't need to do that.
• 1:05:55
  There's enough abundance for everyone.
• 1:05:56
  Help each other, uh, level up.
• 1:05:59
  Uh, and that's what I love also about what the Koreans do
• 1:06:02
  with their opportunity circles.
• 1:06:03
  I'm like, that's a great idea.
• 1:06:04
  We should just be doing that as a general broader practice.
• 1:06:08
  Dave Conley: I, I lived right outside of a town, uh, where I grew
• 1:06:11
  up that was completely built by Koreans, I mean, like ground up.
• 1:06:14
  And it was amazing.
• 1:06:16
  To this day, my comfort foods or Vietnamese and Korean food, because
• 1:06:19
  I grew up outside of Washington, DC.
• 1:06:22
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, that's, some level of, mean, I guess ultimately
• 1:06:26
  the question Jerry was like, how do we make that a requirement?
• 1:06:31
  'Cause that, that's really the thought process would be would
• 1:06:34
  that, that'd be it, right?
• 1:06:35
  If you leave it to everyone else to do it, thus there will be a minority of
• 1:06:39
  groups of individuals that will, but if everyone's required to create, like you
• 1:06:44
  said, that opportunity circle or a co essentially a cohesive community where
• 1:06:52
  it's almost, you've gotta do this, if you fill out this bubble in your form, right?
• 1:06:59
  And you are saying, I am a part of this, race background, nationality,
• 1:07:04
  immigration status, I'm gonna help this, then this type of situation.
• 1:07:09
  I think that'd be unique.
• 1:07:11
  And I think,
• 1:07:13
  Dave Conley: It sounds a little racist.
• 1:07:14
  It sounds a little racist to me.
• 1:07:16
  Audrey Medina: I think it has the potential to be misused.
• 1:07:19
  Jerry Valerio: It does, anything can be misused because there's always
• 1:07:23
  gonna be people with other agendas.
• 1:07:25
  But if you, if you use it under the guise of.
• 1:07:28
  This is the American spirit.
• 1:07:29
  It's all about paying it forward.
• 1:07:31
  Your success, you get to pay it forward to the next people who come after you.
• 1:07:37
  So I think that's,
• 1:07:39
  Audrey Medina: I feel the challenge, sorry, the, the, I feel like the
• 1:07:42
  challenge in that is people don't like to be required to do anything.
• 1:07:46
  Dave Conley: Hmm.
• 1:07:47
  Audrey Medina: Just in general.
• 1:07:48
  Everybody, all Americans, nobody wants to be required to do anything.
• 1:07:52
  Dave Conley: I,
• 1:07:52
  Audrey Medina: to do something
• 1:07:53
  Jerry Valerio: so I would call it a requirement.
• 1:07:56
  I would call it a give, get exchanged.
• 1:07:59
  Dave Conley: Ooh,
• 1:08:00
  Jerry Valerio: for you to get the support, you're gonna have
• 1:08:03
  to give something in return.
• 1:08:06
  not a requirement.
• 1:08:07
  Audrey Medina: reciprocity.
• 1:08:08
  Jerry Valerio: Yes.
• 1:08:08
  So don't call it a requirement.
• 1:08:09
  Call it reciprocity.
• 1:08:11
  Jerremy Newsome: Fair.
• 1:08:12
  Dave Conley: And I know my Australian friends would never do this.
• 1:08:16
  There'd be a lot of expletives.
• 1:08:18
  Jerremy Newsome: That's right.
• 1:08:19
  Wouldn't be a lot of
• 1:08:19
  Dave Conley: I.
• 1:08:20
  Jerremy Newsome: No, this, this is awesome guys.
• 1:08:21
  This is really fun.
• 1:08:22
  It's a beautiful discussion because again, I do think that
• 1:08:25
  I just love the word Audrey.
• 1:08:27
  I mean, it sums it up so perfectly, like complexity.
• 1:08:29
  Like there's very, challenging countries everywhere that I
• 1:08:34
  don't know one specifically where they're like, they have nailed it.
• 1:08:40
  I don't, I don't know if there's one country, but I will ask that.
• 1:08:43
  Is there a country that you feel currently is a plus tier immigration policies?
• 1:08:51
  Audrey Medina: I know there was a Nordic country recently that was doing just
• 1:08:55
  amazing, and now for the life of me, I can't remember which one it was, but it
• 1:09:02
  was one in which there's a period of time in which you have this transitory period
• 1:09:07
  of time when you immigrate somewhere or seek refuge or whatever, where it has the
• 1:09:14
  safety nets to help get you on your feet.
• 1:09:17
  It has we have language resources here, but they're not
• 1:09:20
  like wild, widely available.
• 1:09:21
  They're not, it's not easy to access.
• 1:09:23
  And so I know that there are some countries that that is literally part
• 1:09:26
  of the process is, okay, all right, well you're here now, so now we gotta get you
• 1:09:30
  to where you're comfortable being here.
• 1:09:31
  So let's start with the language.
• 1:09:32
  I think things like that would probably go way into helping kind of the scenario
• 1:09:40
  that we find ourselves in as a nation.
• 1:09:43
  But as far as one that's doing it perfectly, I'm gonna be honest with you.
• 1:09:45
  Humans are fallible.
• 1:09:46
  Humans are messy, and I don't think there's a perfect
• 1:09:48
  system that exists anywhere.
• 1:09:50
  But that doesn't mean that we allow perfect to be the enemy better.
• 1:09:54
  there's not
• 1:09:55
  Jerry Valerio: Progress over perfection.
• 1:09:56
  Audrey Medina: Yeah.
• 1:09:57
  You know, you just keep trying to improve it.
• 1:10:00
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 1:10:01
  Dave Conley: What do you think about the open borders?
• 1:10:03
  Uh, there's, there's plenty of advocates that be like, borders aren't a thing.
• 1:10:07
  Why don't you come on in?
• 1:10:09
  Audrey Medina: Me personally,
• 1:10:10
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:10:10
  What do you think I.
• 1:10:12
  Audrey Medina: I, so I'm neither here nor there in a certain,
• 1:10:16
  from a certain perspective.
• 1:10:18
  So don't believe that humans are illegal by existing in a location.
• 1:10:27
  Personally speaking, do I see that we have created a system and an order of
• 1:10:33
  doing things that now means that if you don't have certain things and you don't
• 1:10:39
  follow a certain process, that you're now gonna be into this other this otherized
• 1:10:45
  group and now it's gonna make it harder and now people are gonna like point their
• 1:10:48
  I towards you and, and stuff like that.
• 1:10:51
  And so then maybe it's probably better if we had a system in which our borders
• 1:10:55
  acted like an actual border and we, traded back and forth, but we also,
• 1:11:01
  had an actual system in which we knew and everybody was going what direction?
• 1:11:08
  I think we've built a system that technically requires that
• 1:11:12
  unless we change the system,
• 1:11:14
  Dave Conley: What about you, Jerry?
• 1:11:15
  Open Borders.
• 1:11:16
  Just come on in.
• 1:11:18
  Audrey Medina: I.
• 1:11:18
  Jerry Valerio: I'm not sure how that's gonna make things better.
• 1:11:22
  Dave Conley: Fair.
• 1:11:23
  Jerry Valerio: And so, an interesting concept, so years.
• 1:11:27
  I think what that's practice now in Europe, right?
• 1:11:29
  Because they've opened the borders, but they're also challenged with
• 1:11:32
  the problems that they do have.
• 1:11:33
  So think it's an opportunity to see where it then may have worked successfully
• 1:11:38
  or learn from that and then figure out, well how can we make it better if
• 1:11:42
  we wanted to do something like here?
• 1:11:43
  Mean, I think in some ways NAFTA and trade and all that stuff was like an attempt
• 1:11:46
  to like, oh, let's have, open borders when it comes to economics and trade.
• 1:11:49
  But you know, obviously that's not an easy problem to solve.
• 1:11:54
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, great question.
• 1:11:55
  Um, here's another fun one.
• 1:11:56
  Okay, so if you had to immigrate to a different country right now,
• 1:12:03
  so let's put you in that position.
• 1:12:05
  You're not being deported, but you, you've gotta go to another country.
• 1:12:09
  country are you currently choosing and why?
• 1:12:14
  I'm gonna start with Dave.
• 1:12:15
  I wanna hear what Dave says, and then Jerry, and then Audrey,
• 1:12:16
  and then I'll give an answer.
• 1:12:18
  Dave Conley: You know, actually just talked about this with, uh, because of,
• 1:12:23
  uh, political instability where my boo is and political instability where I live.
• 1:12:27
  Um, we were seriously, uh, and we're seriously talking about Spain.
• 1:12:31
  It has, uh, great healthcare.
• 1:12:34
  It has lots of great international airports.
• 1:12:37
  It has access to Europe you know, pretty good laws, you
• 1:12:39
  know, pretty decent economy.
• 1:12:41
  Uh, it's fairly, and you get value for your money.
• 1:12:44
  I got family there.
• 1:12:45
  We like the weather.
• 1:12:46
  It's right on the Mediterranean.
• 1:12:48
  Like, it, it checked a lot of boxes.
• 1:12:50
  So, you know, like actually seriously considering like, oh, maybe get a place
• 1:12:54
  in Barcelona or, or somewhere on the coast, uh, and just, have it as a, as a
• 1:12:58
  place to at least, uh, have a second home.
• 1:13:01
  Jerremy Newsome: All right.
• 1:13:02
  Jerry, what about you Gotta go somewhere else.
• 1:13:03
  Dave's going to Spain or is Jerry going?
• 1:13:06
  Dave Conley: Oh, Jerry, you, you can live with us.
• 1:13:07
  I'm good.
• 1:13:09
  Jerry Valerio: so
• 1:13:10
  Jerremy Newsome: you can also go to Spain.
• 1:13:11
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah.
• 1:13:12
  Jerry Valerio: I think my choices, and this is just me, where I'm at
• 1:13:16
  with my life, fighting a place where the comforts that I've already become
• 1:13:20
  accustomed to would be also available.
• 1:13:24
  if I look purely at like, okay, it's probably gonna be a, a country
• 1:13:27
  where speaking mostly because that's the language I know the most of.
• 1:13:32
  But then also to some degree of diversity.
• 1:13:35
  I think my first choice would first be Canada because it is like the us it's
• 1:13:39
  a kinder, gentler American culture.
• 1:13:43
  And I've worked there and I love Canadians.
• 1:13:45
  I love their spirit, their openness.
• 1:13:47
  They're welcome.
• 1:13:48
  So in, in some ways, you know, they figured things out that
• 1:13:51
  we can certainly learn from.
• 1:13:53
  Uh, and then probably the second place I would consider is, my
• 1:13:58
  parents' homeland, the Philippines.
• 1:13:59
  'cause they speak English there.
• 1:14:01
  Um, and they have culture.
• 1:14:03
  They're not only just Filipino culture, but there's a lot of different other
• 1:14:07
  countries, whether it's Chinese, Korea, or Japan or, or whatnot.
• 1:14:11
  There's a, you know, many American expats, because again you have
• 1:14:17
  English speaking people, right?
• 1:14:20
  have incredible, you're, you know, if you took your American dollar, whatever
• 1:14:25
  you're making here, you're like.
• 1:14:27
  Over there, right?
• 1:14:29
  So your money goes a long way.
• 1:14:31
  It's a great life.
• 1:14:32
  And, and you know, in, in, in the case of the Philippines, they're known
• 1:14:35
  as some of the warmest people the earth, friendliest and, and whatnot.
• 1:14:39
  So I mean, that's why I chose Philippines as the second.
• 1:14:42
  But I think Canada, if I'm choosing based on I'd consider Canada just, just
• 1:14:46
  because it's very similar to America, and then the Philippines probably next.
• 1:14:51
  Jerremy Newsome: Audrey, where you going?
• 1:14:53
  Audrey Medina: So we've actually had this thought experiment because of things going
• 1:14:57
  on in the nation right now as a Mexican American truthfully listen, I, I grew
• 1:15:03
  up near Gators and stuff, but I don't, I don't necessarily wanna be fed to one.
• 1:15:06
  So that obviously that was that bad humor from.
• 1:15:11
  Who was it, the advisor to the president or whatever.
• 1:15:14
  But with that being said we've teased out different scenarios
• 1:15:19
  based on what would cause us leave.
• 1:15:22
  So if it's because now all of a sudden, you know, protections are
• 1:15:28
  gone for members of the L-G-B-T-Q or something like that, that dictates
• 1:15:34
  which countries we would look at, um, no matter what, that would dictate it.
• 1:15:38
  Even if it wasn't specifically the reason why we left.
• 1:15:41
  We would have to go somewhere with those strong protections, which limits
• 1:15:44
  the playing field to a certain degree.
• 1:15:46
  Then there's also language barriers and also coming from an
• 1:15:50
  immigrant family and understanding how difficult it was for them.
• 1:15:55
  Knowing that it's not gonna be a walk in the park, where is it
• 1:15:58
  that I can go and try to hit the ground running as fast as possible.
• 1:16:02
  So with that being sad, if it was a fight or flight, have to leave.
• 1:16:06
  Right now I'm close to the Canadian border, so that's an easy peasy.
• 1:16:09
  Let's say I can't do that and I have to go somewhere where my lineage is at.
• 1:16:13
  Then I've got Mexico.
• 1:16:14
  I've also got Spain, 'cause I do have a grandfather from Spain,
• 1:16:17
  or great-grandfather, sorry.
• 1:16:18
  So there is that option.
• 1:16:19
  But one of the places that we've also looked at was Portugal for the protections
• 1:16:24
  offered to the LGBT community and Ireland.
• 1:16:29
  And Ireland is extra helpful because there's no snakes.
• 1:16:33
  No snakes and I do love me a no rope, but my partner does not.
• 1:16:39
  and they
• 1:16:40
  Jerremy Newsome: it.
• 1:16:40
  Audrey Medina: English already, so that makes it a little easier.
• 1:16:43
  Jerremy Newsome: Fair.
• 1:16:43
  Dave Conley: All right, Jerremy.
• 1:16:44
  Where what's the answer?
• 1:16:45
  Where, where are you going?
• 1:16:47
  Audrey Medina: And then
• 1:16:48
  You,
• 1:16:48
  Jerremy Newsome: and the correct answer is I'm going to, I'm going to Aruba.
• 1:16:53
  That's where I'm going.
• 1:16:54
  I'm going to Aruba.
• 1:16:55
  Beautiful time zone.
• 1:16:57
  They speak all the languages.
• 1:16:58
  Nice melting pot safe.
• 1:16:59
  No one messes with 'em.
• 1:17:01
  A lot of very strong tourist economy.
• 1:17:04
  Beautiful place.
• 1:17:05
  I've been there before.
• 1:17:05
  Perfect Beaches.
• 1:17:07
  I'm gonna go there to have fun.
• 1:17:08
  Yeah, that, that's my, essentially my answer.
• 1:17:10
  Audrey Medina: doing this for World War iii?
• 1:17:11
  Because then that changes my answer.
• 1:17:13
  Jerremy Newsome: No, nothing for, we're just doing it in
• 1:17:15
  this hypothetical example.
• 1:17:17
  Yeah.
• 1:17:17
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:17:18
  If it was just like a straight up immigration, like I'm, you know, I'm
• 1:17:21
  probably Spain, Jerry, you're, you're heading to, to, to Canada or Philippines,
• 1:17:26
  Audrey, you know, maybe Spain.
• 1:17:28
  Maybe Canada.
• 1:17:30
  Jerremy.
• 1:17:30
  Aruba.
• 1:17:31
  I, I dig it.
• 1:17:33
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Dave Conley: That'll.
• 1:17:34
  Audrey Medina: camp, maybe I'm just going around camping in Airbnb in it for the
• 1:17:37
  Jerremy Newsome: Sounds like it.
• 1:17:38
  Audrey Medina: just blogging about my experiences,
• 1:17:40
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah.
• 1:17:40
  That would be fun.
• 1:17:41
  That'd be fun.
• 1:17:43
  If you had to sum up the current Immigration nation that is America
• 1:17:49
  and use it in a summation of one word, the immigration system
• 1:17:54
  in one word, what would it be?
• 1:17:56
  Jerry.
• 1:17:57
  Conflicted.
• 1:17:58
  Alright.
• 1:18:00
  Audrey.
• 1:18:01
  Audrey Medina: Discombobulated,
• 1:18:03
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, Dave.
• 1:18:05
  Dave Conley: Immigration, I would the words drunkard.
• 1:18:10
  But like immigration, like assimilation, uh, you know, the best, I, I don't, I
• 1:18:18
  think there's no place better in the world that, opens its doors to immigrants.
• 1:18:23
  I think, you know, we are that shining star, like, I don't think
• 1:18:26
  there's any country on the planet.
• 1:18:28
  I think it's the best place for an immigrant.
• 1:18:30
  Jerremy Newsome: Fantastic.
• 1:18:31
  Fantastic.
• 1:18:32
  I, I would, I would probably use the word messy.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah.
• 1:18:36
  To the point that I do believe with us four, we definitely
• 1:18:40
  know some of the policies.
• 1:18:41
  We're very aware, but I think as a general public, there is this really
• 1:18:49
  undereducated aspect of both the history of immigration to this country
• 1:18:54
  also an undereducated aspect of how do people actually come into this country.
• 1:19:00
  And I think most Americans, if I had to unfortunately surmise how
• 1:19:05
  they probably think it, they come in, they, they all come in illegally
• 1:19:08
  and they all just come across the border, go to Canada, come down, go
• 1:19:12
  to Mexico, come up, and that's it.
• 1:19:13
  That's the only way they come in.
• 1:19:15
  that's just not the, that's just not the case.
• 1:19:17
  Yes, Biden did open the borders a lot.
• 1:19:19
  And there were a lot of people coming across the borders.
• 1:19:23
  And now Trump has created ice.
• 1:19:25
  And now not created unfortunately revamped it.
• 1:19:28
  And now ICE is the 14th largest military on Earth.
• 1:19:33
  And so we're spending so much money to Jerry's Point, deporting the current
• 1:19:40
  existing individuals where in reality, if we spent that same amount of money
• 1:19:44
  saying, Hey, they're already here.
• 1:19:46
  Let's figure out who needs to be here safely, legally, And yes, there's
• 1:19:51
  definitely people in this country who came here who should not be here.
• 1:19:55
  But I would personally feel, and I do personally feel that that number
• 1:19:59
  is probably dramatically small.
• 1:20:01
  of the immigrants who come over.
• 1:20:02
  I think that's a, viciously, tiny percentage of those who are
• 1:20:09
  here for the cartels, here for drugs, here for human trafficking.
• 1:20:13
  'cause the unfortunate news human trafficking has yes,
• 1:20:19
  something to do with immigration.
• 1:20:20
  Absolutely.
• 1:20:22
  But it is horrifically smaller than we would think it is impacting this nation
• 1:20:29
  in forms of millions of people a year.
• 1:20:33
  the cities that are not even remotely close to the borders.
• 1:20:39
  Example, Nashville, Tennessee one of the largest hubs in the
• 1:20:44
  nation for human trafficking.
• 1:20:46
  So is Atlanta, so is Indianapolis.
• 1:20:50
  So is Minneapolis.
• 1:20:52
  These are some of the largest hubs in the country for human trafficking we
• 1:20:57
  like to blame it on the immigration aspect, but in reality there's a
• 1:21:02
  lot bigger problems going on and
• 1:21:05
  Audrey Medina: a demand for it.
• 1:21:07
  Jerremy Newsome: which is appalling to me.
• 1:21:09
  Still can't figure that one out.
• 1:21:10
  But not only is the demand, it is, I do not believe at all represented by
• 1:21:17
  the people that want to come to this country And I do think that uh, there's
• 1:21:23
  probably a very fascinating of some degree of individuals that should, if we
• 1:21:30
  created a system that was work dependent.
• 1:21:34
  'cause I actually am probably more pro if you come here to this country
• 1:21:38
  and you do sign up for some job, it should become a lot easier.
• 1:21:44
  And that job, could it just be, Hey, I'm gonna come here as an entrepreneur.
• 1:21:48
  Cool.
• 1:21:49
  We'll check in on you and we'll make sure that you're submitting 10 90 nines.
• 1:21:52
  Check.
• 1:21:52
  Thanks for being here.
• 1:21:54
  I do think if we create it as a job dependent entry, I don't really
• 1:21:58
  think that's gonna deter most immigrants realist realistically.
• 1:22:02
  And I don't see that as a, as an ultimate problem because they're gonna work anyway.
• 1:22:07
  That's why they're coming here.
• 1:22:08
  They're coming here to work in this country with the freedoms that we do have.
• 1:22:11
  Because to your point, Dave, we are the best.
• 1:22:13
  This is the place that you want to go.
• 1:22:14
  This is where you want to go.
• 1:22:16
  You don't want to go anywhere else.
• 1:22:17
  You're not gonna Croatia, although you probably should.
• 1:22:19
  Croatia is amazing, but you're not going there because the economy's not thriving.
• 1:22:25
  not the strongest empire on earth.
• 1:22:30
  So this is where they gotta go.
• 1:22:32
  And we do have a big problem as it relates to in on how to keep the
• 1:22:39
  current population of immigrants in this country so that they can thrive.
• 1:22:43
  And I do believe that the immigration aspect really in this
• 1:22:47
  country has always been a who is president, top down approach.
• 1:22:52
  And I don't think that there are many leaders in this nation that stand up
• 1:22:58
  for the immigrants that are, that are stand up might not be the perfect word,
• 1:23:02
  but leaders in the immigration realm that say, this is how it should be.
• 1:23:09
  And I'm going to take the burden to carve a really beautiful path and
• 1:23:13
  make the policy changes and make the updates and battle the president.
• 1:23:17
  Because I feel, and this could be me, I feel that the president, whoever
• 1:23:20
  it is, whoever gets elected, is almost always the most influential
• 1:23:24
  person as it relates to integration.
• 1:23:26
  And I don't know if that that should be the case.
• 1:23:29
  Audrey Medina: I am not sure that the policies that affect
• 1:23:32
  hundreds of millions of people should be down to one human being.
• 1:23:37
  Jerremy Newsome: I agree.
• 1:23:38
  Audrey Medina: re, I
• 1:23:39
  Jerremy Newsome: Totally agree.
• 1:23:39
  Audrey Medina: a lot of voices and a lot of perspectives.
• 1:23:41
  'cause
• 1:23:42
  Even in this little teeny tiny group that we're discussing, I mean, we have
• 1:23:45
  altering thought processes, altering ideas, altering the different experiences,
• 1:23:50
  and it takes a, taking all of those and putting 'em in a blender and looking
• 1:23:55
  at them and saying, what do we create?
• 1:23:56
  Or, you know, what can we create with these ingredients,
• 1:24:00
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:24:00
  Audrey Medina: to get to some kind of a policy.
• 1:24:03
  But I also think that we need to start being honest about our own history
• 1:24:07
  and our own usage of the immigration system order to be able to fix it.
• 1:24:13
  Because it is, it stays broken in order to create an exploitable population.
• 1:24:20
  Jerremy Newsome: Stays broken to exploit.
• 1:24:23
  I feel if I were president, I would just task the House of Representatives.
• 1:24:28
  Figure out immigration.
• 1:24:29
  That's your guys' job for the next year.
• 1:24:31
  Go for it.
• 1:24:32
  Because again, now you have a larger melting pot.
• 1:24:35
  You have people that are representatives from individual states.
• 1:24:38
  They have more boots on the ground, they have more individuals they can
• 1:24:42
  collaborate with, communicate with.
• 1:24:44
  They start figuring out individual policies.
• 1:24:46
  I do also think that immigration should be a state.
• 1:24:49
  decision as well.
• 1:24:51
  Because there are certain, ahead.
• 1:24:53
  Audrey Medina: go.
• 1:24:53
  Going back to to the house of representative, are you saying
• 1:24:55
  you actually want them to do what they're supposed to be doing?
• 1:24:58
  Jerremy Newsome: I think that's a crazy statement to make.
• 1:25:01
  I know.
• 1:25:01
  I feel like, I don't know why.
• 1:25:03
  Why did
• 1:25:03
  Dave Conley: Yeah, we, we heard the history, like the last time
• 1:25:07
  they actually did their job was, before, most people that are
• 1:25:11
  listening to this were born, right?
• 1:25:13
  Like, it was 19,
• 1:25:14
  Audrey Medina: in diapers,
• 1:25:15
  Jerremy Newsome: For real.
• 1:25:17
  Dave Conley: And then there was like little pokes, it's like a little bit
• 1:25:20
  of daca, you know, they just passed the Lincoln Riley Act with basically only
• 1:25:24
  said, Hey, if you, if you do something horrible, you know we're gonna deport you.
• 1:25:27
  Which we already do.
• 1:25:29
  We already do, right?
• 1:25:30
  So it wasn't like new work, you know, they're just like, let's do this again.
• 1:25:35
  Jerry Valerio: so have you done an episode on government reform?
• 1:25:38
  Because Dave, we talked earlier
• 1:25:40
  Dave Conley: Every single show is about government reform
• 1:25:43
  Jerry Valerio: true,
• 1:25:44
  Jerremy Newsome: It's ultimately,
• 1:25:46
  Jerry Valerio: about our government and the elected public servants,
• 1:25:51
  Jerremy Newsome: on.
• 1:25:51
  Jerry Valerio: They're no longer truly representative of
• 1:25:54
  Jerremy Newsome: come on.
• 1:25:54
  Jerry Valerio: of America.
• 1:25:55
  Dave Conley: now.
• 1:25:56
  Jerry Valerio: for anyone who wants to run to office, you need to be, in some ways
• 1:26:00
  well connected and well-funded, whether it's your own wealth or you, the when
• 1:26:07
  government was founded by our founding fathers, it was with the intent, like
• 1:26:10
  anyone could potentially run for office.
• 1:26:12
  That is no longer
• 1:26:14
  Jerremy Newsome: No.
• 1:26:15
  Correct.
• 1:26:15
  Jerry Valerio: And I just feel like every person who gets elected, there's, I
• 1:26:20
  mean, it's very clear their actions speak louder than the platform they ran on.
• 1:26:24
  And you find a lot of elected officials.
• 1:26:28
  Betraying their constituency and never living up to the platform
• 1:26:33
  that they said they were going to.
• 1:26:35
  And that's not surprising because it's like, while I'm in, at least
• 1:26:39
  get four years or six years or
• 1:26:41
  Jerremy Newsome: Yes.
• 1:26:41
  Jared.
• 1:26:42
  Yes.
• 1:26:43
  And this is why everyone hates politicians because there's no accountability.
• 1:26:46
  There's none.
• 1:26:47
  I say all these things and then I just do whatever I wanna do.
• 1:26:50
  And there's no downside, right?
• 1:26:52
  None.
• 1:26:53
  Jerry Valerio: that cycle.
• 1:26:53
  That's why I said everything about all of the branches of our
• 1:26:57
  government need to be reevaluated.
• 1:26:59
  We've, we've seen over the last couple of decades how things have been
• 1:27:04
  like, Play-Doh, pooled, stretched, put back together, we're seeing how
• 1:27:08
  things can get broken or there's loopholes and stuff like that.
• 1:27:13
  I think now's a good time to like, reflect and figure out how
• 1:27:16
  do we make this better for the Americans experience moving forward?
• 1:27:21
  That's a big ask, Because you
• 1:27:24
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:27:25
  Jerry Valerio: break the system that's been in place now for however long.
• 1:27:28
  Yep,
• 1:27:28
  Audrey Medina: now, the system thrives on the fact that the American public
• 1:27:31
  is by and large uninformed or dis, and
• 1:27:35
  Jerry Valerio: yep.
• 1:27:35
  Audrey Medina: doing that, they can do things like the Lake and Riley act,
• 1:27:38
  even though all of that already exists.
• 1:27:40
  They're gonna get all that applause and all that attention
• 1:27:42
  because they did something.
• 1:27:44
  But they
• 1:27:44
  Jerry Valerio: Yeah.
• 1:27:44
  Audrey Medina: anything, and
• 1:27:46
  Jerry Valerio: Yeah.
• 1:27:46
  If you're.
• 1:27:47
  Audrey Medina: Of government.
• 1:27:48
  Jerry Valerio: So you're, you're talking about the power of politics, right?
• 1:27:50
  When it comes to politics, it's all about the optics, right?
• 1:27:54
  Jerremy Newsome: Media,
• 1:27:55
  Jerry Valerio: optics look good.
• 1:27:55
  Then people are like, okay, it's done.
• 1:27:57
  They look away and they're like, okay, now we can stop.
• 1:28:00
  Jerremy Newsome: Right?
• 1:28:01
  Jerry Valerio: and that's where we're at.
• 1:28:02
  That's the broken system.
• 1:28:04
  We
• 1:28:04
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:28:05
  Jerry Valerio: out how to solve that.
• 1:28:06
  Jerremy Newsome: ironically enough the number one I get when I tell
• 1:28:11
  people the ultimate goal for me is to, is to run for president.
• 1:28:13
  They always go, well, you have no background in politics.
• 1:28:16
  And I'm like.
• 1:28:18
  Audrey Medina: great.
• 1:28:19
  Jerremy Newsome: Exactly.
• 1:28:20
  Yeah.
• 1:28:21
  I don't, and I don't believe that we should, everyone should have term limits.
• 1:28:25
  Duh.
• 1:28:27
  That's mind boggling, right?
• 1:28:30
  That our boy, Bernie Sanders is still in government.
• 1:28:32
  He's still 37 years later, right?
• 1:28:36
  Still con whatever.
• 1:28:38
  Unbelievable.
• 1:28:38
  And they should be public servants, they should be individuals.
• 1:28:41
  They go, Hey, listen, I have made it to some degree in whatever field, doesn't
• 1:28:44
  have to be business and money, right?
• 1:28:47
  But I am at the point now where I have enough knowledge, influence information,
• 1:28:51
  and connections where I going through this service, that's what, public
• 1:28:56
  service, it should be a service role.
• 1:28:58
  And I now have the ability to go back to the people that I worked
• 1:29:02
  with or worked for and have direct communication with those individuals
• 1:29:07
  and actually bring up the entire population of America right through that.
• 1:29:12
  Because we've also
• 1:29:13
  Audrey Medina: outta politics.
• 1:29:15
  Jerremy Newsome: In, in so many forms.
• 1:29:16
  In so many forms.
• 1:29:17
  And I really do think that unfortunately the presidential aspect, the one thing
• 1:29:23
  that Trump did, do a, among many other things, but one thing he definitely did
• 1:29:28
  is said, Hey, shouldn't say a regular person, non deeply career politician
• 1:29:35
  can ascend to extremely high ranks.
• 1:29:38
  That's something that I do vehemently believe should be the overall policy
• 1:29:45
  of this nation is the individuals that are at the highest levels
• 1:29:50
  should be those that have ascended through the American dream itself.
• 1:29:56
  have actually started, that have built, that have created, that have produced
• 1:30:01
  and have actually been boots on the ground and haven't had their nose stuck
• 1:30:05
  in the entire system the entire time and only have their best interests at play.
• 1:30:09
  'cause that's exactly what's happening.
• 1:30:11
  The fact that Congress and the House of Representatives can buy stocks is
• 1:30:18
  one of the most blatant broken systems we have because they are building
• 1:30:28
  the policies agreeing to the trade and to the commerce that directly
• 1:30:34
  affect the businesses that they are able to invest in, which is the most
• 1:30:39
  Audrey Medina: Corrupt.
• 1:30:40
  Jerremy Newsome: corrupt insider trading of all time and insider trading, which
• 1:30:43
  Martha Stewart went to prison for and many other people have, right?
• 1:30:46
  To all tons of other people, they've gone to prison for insider trading.
• 1:30:51
  That's what all the Congress is doing.
• 1:30:52
  All of them.
• 1:30:53
  And that is mind blowing to me.
• 1:30:56
  So aspects like that, that are trickle down effects to
• 1:30:59
  the immigration piece because.
• 1:31:02
  You're saying that, we are keeping the system broken so that we can exploit them.
• 1:31:05
  They're doing it for money and the system is being controlled by money and
• 1:31:10
  it is being controlled by money because they are making so much money doing it.
• 1:31:13
  And so if you,
• 1:31:14
  Audrey Medina: deportation centers are owned by publicly traded corporations,
• 1:31:18
  which now commodifies a different, we are basically complicit in a form of
• 1:31:24
  human tra human trafficking, because now we have ice going in and just
• 1:31:27
  grabbing people and discriminately, depriving them of due process,
• 1:31:30
  putting them into these facilities, and that raises the stock price.
• 1:31:35
  Jerremy Newsome: oh, shoot.
• 1:31:36
  And then the Congress can buy that stock.
• 1:31:38
  Yep.
• 1:31:40
  Audrey Medina: To your point on public service so indigenous
• 1:31:43
  people have long held, way before this, this country existed.
• 1:31:49
  The way that we, we now know it, system of reciprocity where those that were in some
• 1:31:56
  form of public service to their tribe, to their community they were taken care of.
• 1:32:02
  And that was, that, that was part of the reciprocity, just a natural working
• 1:32:06
  order of things so that the person who was providing, said public service, be
• 1:32:12
  it medicinally, spiritually, whatever, that leadership, whatever that was, they
• 1:32:17
  weren't focused on matters of securing food or, you know, whatever it was.
• 1:32:24
  They, the community did that so that they could focus on the community.
• 1:32:28
  I think in the public service sector there, we do need to really, really
• 1:32:33
  analyze the way money poisons it and it needs, it needs a person
• 1:32:40
  who dedicates their life to public service shouldn't be broke per se.
• 1:32:44
  They shouldn't be able to not afford things, but maybe that
• 1:32:48
  shouldn't even be a concept.
• 1:32:50
  Jerremy Newsome: I mean, I mean ultimately it's, they they should
• 1:32:53
  be the, at the point where for four years, again, hashtag term limits.
• 1:32:59
  They can afford to not make substantial profits for that
• 1:33:05
  four to eight year term, right?
• 1:33:08
  Like if I become president at the age of 40, between 40 and 48, I'm good
• 1:33:13
  like that, that eight year timeframe.
• 1:33:15
  I have other streams of income that have, I've already created where I don't
• 1:33:19
  have to, where other presidents wouldn't have to, or other members of Congress or
• 1:33:24
  House of Representatives wouldn't have to these backdoor deals to make more
• 1:33:31
  money because they already have some form of investments, passive income.
• 1:33:37
  They've worked the American dream so that they can now go be a public servant
• 1:33:42
  so that other people can also win.
• 1:33:46
  just makes logical sense to me too bad, too much logic.
• 1:33:50
  There
• 1:33:51
  Audrey Medina: Yeah,
• 1:33:52
  Jerremy Newsome: It's really, really, really fascinating.
• 1:33:54
  So as we go ahead.
• 1:33:56
  Audrey Medina: was gonna say, gone are the days of, like Jimmy Carter when he
• 1:33:58
  divested from his peanut farm because he didn't want it to look bad because
• 1:34:02
  there used to be a, an ethical code of honor that people just naturally went
• 1:34:08
  by there wasn't the same level of money in politics that you could just polish
• 1:34:13
  something out and, and, you know, people had to actually like, want you and
• 1:34:17
  trust you and then they'd vote for you.
• 1:34:20
  And I feel like that's definitely missing what we have now as negative
• 1:34:23
  partisanship where we just don't want the other guy to win and they spend
• 1:34:28
  billions of dollars to get there.
• 1:34:29
  But, that's the one we're going for, even though we don't like 'em.
• 1:34:33
  Jerry Valerio: That's also another problem of our, our political system, but the
• 1:34:36
  two party system needs to be revamped.
• 1:34:40
  Jerremy Newsome: Speaking of, since we have plenty, we have plenty of
• 1:34:43
  time an American immigrant, AKA Elon Musk is creating a third party, the
• 1:34:48
  American Party as he's calling it.
• 1:34:51
  So with a five minutes, I would love each of your take on that,
• 1:34:55
  just or five, five minutes or less.
• 1:34:57
  Jerry, what's your take on, building a third party, I would say.
• 1:35:01
  What's your thoughts?
• 1:35:03
  Is it gonna work?
• 1:35:04
  Jerry Valerio: I think it opens up the door to, for more accountability from our,
• 1:35:09
  in our political system by having we can't just be two, there has to be more choice.
• 1:35:15
  So whether it's three, four, or five parties, seen that
• 1:35:18
  happen in other countries.
• 1:35:19
  And I think it some ways it helps, balances the spectrum.
• 1:35:23
  'cause with two parties right now, we just have a push pull with extremes, right?
• 1:35:29
  That needs to be moderated by ha having other options, right?
• 1:35:32
  So like libertarians are not large enough.
• 1:35:35
  I think by and large, most people, would consider themselves libertarian,
• 1:35:40
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 1:35:41
  Jerry Valerio: I think we also vote with the understanding that I want
• 1:35:44
  my vote to be able to impact and therefore I'm gonna choose the one
• 1:35:47
  party that has the best shot at winning.
• 1:35:49
  It's a bad way to look at it.
• 1:35:51
  I actually like the idea that I'm seeing in some states about
• 1:35:54
  this whole rank voting process.
• 1:35:57
  Where you have multiple candidates and then you, then
• 1:36:01
  you have a, a runoff, right?
• 1:36:03
  So let's say the top three of the five or whatever gets a runoff
• 1:36:07
  whoever gets the most votes.
• 1:36:09
  I think that seems to be a much, much better option to be being able
• 1:36:14
  to break the two party cycle if we introduce something like that as well.
• 1:36:19
  Jerremy Newsome: Audrey.
• 1:36:19
  Audrey Medina: I, I'm also pretty heavy on the rank choice.
• 1:36:22
  Idea because it allows people to say, well, hey listen, I really
• 1:36:26
  like this Green Party candidate, this independent this, libertarian,
• 1:36:30
  this, whatever, you know, person.
• 1:36:32
  I don't know that they'll win, but I wanna vote for them anyway
• 1:36:35
  because that's who I align with.
• 1:36:37
  And you know what?
• 1:36:37
  Just in case they don't get the numbers, and here's the one I
• 1:36:40
  think might win, and yada yada.
• 1:36:42
  And then based on what, when everything comes through, it, it,
• 1:36:45
  you're not throwing away your vote.
• 1:36:47
  You've said, I prefer this one.
• 1:36:49
  However, if that doesn't work, then I'll go to my next choice.
• 1:36:52
  And then it gets counted into there.
• 1:36:54
  as far as will it work?
• 1:36:56
  So the fun fact about why third parties have not historically gained
• 1:37:03
  traction in the US is primarily because it requires getting them in
• 1:37:11
  all the lower forms of government to even be considered functional.
• 1:37:15
  So you have to have your school boards, you have to have your
• 1:37:18
  railroad commissioners, you have to have your judges, you have to
• 1:37:21
  have your mayors throughout the nation that are also in this party.
• 1:37:25
  And if you're only focusing on the presidential portion, you're gonna have
• 1:37:29
  a lot of pushback and you're gonna have a very ineffectual government at the
• 1:37:33
  federal level without the participation.
• 1:37:38
  And people advocating for that, basically that that political structure
• 1:37:44
  that shows and demonstrates that, yeah, it can work, it works in my
• 1:37:47
  community, da da da works in my, uh, in this section for this district.
• 1:37:52
  And it, there's just no demonstration of it working.
• 1:37:54
  There's not that faith.
• 1:37:55
  And so then what happens is when you have somebody who's going to make it to that
• 1:38:00
  level in this other party that's never been tried before, I think we're at a
• 1:38:05
  point in human, in, in American history, and there's so much division that I
• 1:38:09
  think we're up to that boiling point.
• 1:38:12
  But then the problem's gonna be that particular candidate is almost set up for
• 1:38:16
  failure because there's not gonna be the type of cooperation that's gonna be needed
• 1:38:20
  to do anything meaningful in their term.
• 1:38:23
  And so that's where the, the rub is, is how when you're setting up this for Elon
• 1:38:28
  Musk, for example, with the American America, what does American Party,
• 1:38:32
  Jerremy Newsome: Markable.
• 1:38:32
  Audrey Medina: if he, if he sets that up, he's got years basically to get
• 1:38:38
  people throughout the country, not only to join this political movement,
• 1:38:42
  but to run in that political movement in order for by the time you're
• 1:38:46
  doing well, less than three years, by the time you count the political
• 1:38:49
  trail or the, the election period.
• 1:38:52
  To actually do something and show and have some kind of, of.
• 1:38:57
  Return on investment, I guess you could say, showing that, hey, it's functional.
• 1:39:01
  I've got all these people all across, look at all these positions that have now been
• 1:39:04
  filled by people in the American Party.
• 1:39:06
  That one's a tricky one, but I think that where we are right now as a nation that's
• 1:39:13
  figuring it itself out, this is very much reminiscent of the, um, Dixie party.
• 1:39:18
  When the party Democrats and Republicans basically swapped their
• 1:39:23
  platforms, it's very reminiscent of that time period where there
• 1:39:27
  Jerremy Newsome: Right.
• 1:39:27
  Audrey Medina: be some, some, maybe it's just an interim, and then eventually
• 1:39:31
  we just swap back and forth again.
• 1:39:33
  I, I don't know, but it does feel like we're getting to that
• 1:39:36
  boiling point, that pressure point.
• 1:39:39
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, which is fascinating.
• 1:39:40
  Jerry Valerio: I did wanna add something.
• 1:39:42
  Earlier, Audrey, you had talked about, the American public being
• 1:39:46
  un uninformed or misinformed.
• 1:39:49
  an interesting concept.
• 1:39:51
  Your right to vote.
• 1:39:53
  You don't automatically get it there.
• 1:39:55
  There could be just like a driver's license, a whole education demonstrating
• 1:40:00
  you understand the process, you understand the current themes, that
• 1:40:04
  are affecting America, and you have to pass just like your driver's license.
• 1:40:08
  That gives you the privilege.
• 1:40:09
  I think if we had something like that, then people would
• 1:40:12
  hopefully take advantage.
• 1:40:14
  Audrey Medina: we used to, and it was highly weaponized and it was.
• 1:40:19
  Used to disenfranchise the vote.
• 1:40:22
  And that is where as a nation, like regardless of if we go back to that or
• 1:40:27
  not, without us actually looking at our past, understanding it and building from
• 1:40:35
  that experience and saying, Hey, yeah, no, we did some really bad crap throughout
• 1:40:41
  all of those many, many decades.
• 1:40:43
  We, we weaponized this, we weaponized that.
• 1:40:45
  And actually being honest and, and not shying away and not trying to just only
• 1:40:51
  say we're the greatest nation on earth.
• 1:40:52
  We are, but we could lose that.
• 1:40:55
  It's a freedom has to be kept.
• 1:40:58
  Like you have to protect it.
• 1:41:01
  And if we are only looking and saying, oh, look at this shiny stuff and not
• 1:41:05
  fixing our problems, then we run the risk of running into the exact same cycles.
• 1:41:10
  And the only problem with those types of tests is that this nation, they have only
• 1:41:15
  ever been used to disenfranchise the boat.
• 1:41:19
  I would love to have a more informed public.
• 1:41:21
  I would love to have real journalism.
• 1:41:25
  Again, I know it exists, but it's hard to find and it's also not free.
• 1:41:30
  That's another problem that we have is the free sources for news.
• 1:41:33
  It's all skewed sources, left or right.
• 1:41:36
  It's all over the place, but it, that's what's free.
• 1:41:39
  And what's actual journalism now costs money.
• 1:41:42
  And most people simply will not do that or cannot do that.
• 1:41:45
  So now it's like up to a public, to the person to stay informed, but at
• 1:41:51
  the same time, we've now built a system where getting that information is
• 1:41:55
  its own version of Act of Congress.
• 1:41:58
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:41:59
  Well, this will be fun to hear from Dave, just about the
• 1:42:01
  American Party, which you thought
• 1:42:03
  Dave Conley: I mean, I, I like it and I think, you know, you
• 1:42:05
  and I have to seriously look at what they're talking about, but
• 1:42:08
  we, third parties already exist.
• 1:42:10
  I mean, the, you know, the what's his name?
• 1:42:13
  Yang, uh, the, for
• 1:42:14
  Audrey Medina: Yeah,
• 1:42:15
  Dave Conley: Yang, the, the Forward Party.
• 1:42:16
  There's the No Labels Party which is, you know, already a bunch of oligarchs,
• 1:42:22
  Audrey Medina: was Yeezy's party, but I
• 1:42:23
  What
• 1:42:23
  Dave Conley: li you know, Libert, right?
• 1:42:26
  Libertarians, the Greens, the, I, you know, like, I, I mean,
• 1:42:31
  don't ever bet against Elon, you know, like him of anyone.
• 1:42:36
  I mean, the, the Republicans have gone through a significant
• 1:42:39
  shift in the last 10 years and.
• 1:42:42
  The Democrats have not.
• 1:42:44
  And it's time, you know, like every party goes through its evolutions.
• 1:42:50
  And it's, it's, you know, beyond time for the Democrats to go through their own
• 1:42:53
  evolution and to, to be something new.
• 1:42:57
  I think if I was looking at something structurally, I, you
• 1:43:00
  know, I'd be looking at things.
• 1:43:01
  I mean, I like the idea of ranked choice voting.
• 1:43:03
  I had that within in San Francisco, and it, it really did,
• 1:43:06
  you know, do some good things.
• 1:43:08
  I like that.
• 1:43:09
  I definitely like the idea of having public funding of candidates.
• 1:43:15
  It allows for anybody to run.
• 1:43:18
  You know, like that's what happened in New York City was public matching,
• 1:43:21
  so that enabled somebody who was like, kind of nobody to come out
• 1:43:24
  of, somewhere and really, you know, really make a difference quickly by
• 1:43:29
  having, you know, a coherent message and actually having money behind it.
• 1:43:33
  I think if I was looking at something structural we have 438 representatives
• 1:43:39
  in the, in the US Congress, and that's been capped for decades.
• 1:43:45
  You know, by legislation, but it's against the constitution.
• 1:43:49
  So I would lift that cap.
• 1:43:51
  Like we have one representative basically for 80, 90,000 people.
• 1:43:56
  I would say, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:43:57
  We need to have a representative for like every, every 20,000, 40,000, you
• 1:44:01
  know, like double and triple the number of congressional representatives.
• 1:44:05
  And that would, by definition create a lot more coalitions, uh, because they're,
• 1:44:11
  they're like the Tea Party coalition in the, in the Democrat or the Republicans
• 1:44:15
  had a lot of power, you know, uh, 10, 20 years, uh, 10, 15 years ago because
• 1:44:20
  they were able to stick together.
• 1:44:21
  And so like coalitions sticking together can actually get
• 1:44:24
  some interesting stuff done.
• 1:44:25
  So I would, I would raise the cap on the number of, of representatives in Congress.
• 1:44:28
  That's where I'd start.
• 1:44:29
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:44:30
  Fascinating.
• 1:44:31
  Very, very fascinating.
• 1:44:33
  Friends, family team, Americans, thank you so much for listening to this episode.
• 1:44:41
  Audrey has a poem, first poem that's been on the podcast that she would love to
• 1:44:46
  read to wrap up this episode immigration.
• 1:44:50
  So, Audrey, the floor is yours.
• 1:44:53
  Audrey Medina: I read the poem, I am going to do just a little
• 1:44:57
  disclaimer, disclaimer, warning.
• 1:45:01
  poem is specifically from a refugee perspective in regards to immigration.
• 1:45:09
  with that, it's, it's definitely a deeper topic.
• 1:45:14
  And I am also gonna say there is one racial slur in there,
• 1:45:20
  and it's an important one.
• 1:45:22
  I've read it many times, and there's kind of no way to get around it because as,
• 1:45:26
  as somebody who also writes, I have to do justice to the person who wrote it.
• 1:45:32
  And it was a very intentionally selected word.
• 1:45:36
  With that disclaimer in mind, the poem is called Home.
• 1:45:40
  It is by Warsan Shire, and uh, here we go.
• 1:45:45
  No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
• 1:45:49
  You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well.
• 1:45:54
  Your neighbor's running faster than you breath bloody in their throats.
• 1:45:58
  The boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old 10 factory
• 1:46:03
  is holding a gun bigger than his body.
• 1:46:06
  only leave home when home won't let you stay.
• 1:46:10
  No one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet, hot blood in your belly.
• 1:46:16
  It's not something you ever thought of doing until the blade
• 1:46:20
  burnt threats into your neck.
• 1:46:22
  And even then you carried the anthem under your breath, only tearing up your
• 1:46:28
  passport in an airport toilet sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it
• 1:46:34
  clear that you wouldn't be going back.
• 1:46:36
  You have to understand that no one puts their children in a boat unless
• 1:46:41
  the water is safer than the land.
• 1:46:44
  No one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages.
• 1:46:48
  No one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper.
• 1:46:53
  Unless the miles traveled means something more than the journey.
• 1:46:57
  No one crawls under fences.
• 1:47:00
  No one wants to be beaten, pitied.
• 1:47:03
  No one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching
• 1:47:08
  or prison because prison is safer than a. City of fire and one prison guard
• 1:47:13
  in the night is better than a truckload of men who look like your father.
• 1:47:17
  No one could take it.
• 1:47:19
  No one could stomach it.
• 1:47:20
  No one skin would be tough enough.
• 1:47:23
  The home, the go home, blacks, refugees, dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
• 1:47:28
  sucking our country dry niggers with their hands out, they smell strange,
• 1:47:33
  Savage messed up their country, and now they wanna mess up hours.
• 1:47:37
  How do the words the dirty looks, roll off your backs?
• 1:47:41
  Maybe because the blow is softer than a limb torn off.
• 1:47:44
  Or the words are more tender than 14 men between your legs or the insults
• 1:47:49
  are easier to swallow than rubble than bone, than your child body in pieces.
• 1:47:55
  I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark.
• 1:47:58
  Home is the barrel of a gun and no one would leave home unless
• 1:48:02
  home chased you to the shore.
• 1:48:04
  Unless home told you to quicken your legs.
• 1:48:07
  Leave your clothes behind.
• 1:48:09
  Crawl through the desert, wade through the oceans, drown, save,
• 1:48:13
  be hunger, beg, forget pride.
• 1:48:16
  Your survival is more important.
• 1:48:18
  No one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
• 1:48:23
  saying, leave run away from me.
• 1:48:26
  Now, I don't know what I've become, but I know that anywhere is safer than here.
• 1:48:32
  Jerremy Newsome: Powerful.
• 1:48:33
  I love poetry.
• 1:48:34
  I love the way it pierces the soul and opens up new paradigms and beliefs.
• 1:48:39
  Jerry, you would like to have a closing remark as well.
• 1:48:42
  Jerry Valerio: I am of the strong belief that the American spirit
• 1:48:46
  is built on the immigrant spirit.
• 1:48:48
  And the one phrase that resonates in my mind, and it's funny because
• 1:48:52
  I actually shared this with earlier today, phrase is, I can, because I am.
• 1:49:01
  And the I can, because I am immigrant, I can because I am American.
• 1:49:07
  Those are equivalent.
• 1:49:09
  Jerremy Newsome: Ah, man.
• 1:49:10
  Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Solving America's Problems.
• 1:49:17
  Please feel free to subscribe.
• 1:49:19
  Drop a five star review and make sure you share this episode.
• 1:49:23
  us.
• 1:49:23
  Solve USA Pod on X or.
• 1:49:26
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• 1:49:30
  Thank you so much for listening.
• 1:49:34
  Did I learn?
• 1:49:35
  Dave Conley: What did you learn?
• 1:49:37
  Jerremy Newsome: Oh, this is a big one.
• 1:49:39
  That's what I learned.
• 1:49:40
  This is not one of those we're gonna solve with a, I do this I, what I
• 1:49:46
  also learned is it's gonna be really great for me, another portion of.
• 1:49:52
  Information from a very politically vested aspect that, as I mentioned
• 1:49:58
  earlier, I do not think that this should be on the shoulders of one person.
• 1:50:03
  not think the President should have that much say so, how immigration is created,
• 1:50:11
  because especially if the president is a direct immigrant or not, historically
• 1:50:17
  they're not 'cause they can't be.
• 1:50:19
  I really don't truly see that one individual having the to
• 1:50:26
  make such a powerful judgment call over so many people.
• 1:50:31
  I do think that there can definitely be elements that the president can protect
• 1:50:36
  and can provide and can be aware of.
• 1:50:37
  And as a a, I love the question that you asked, like, Hey, should
• 1:50:41
  we just open up everything?
• 1:50:43
  I, I think that aspect of the presidential policy of having a protection,
• 1:50:48
  having something in place, having the awareness that yes, every country should
• 1:50:52
  have a country should have borders.
• 1:50:53
  That's what makes a country.
• 1:50:55
  And knowing the facilitation that there are other people, there are
• 1:50:59
  other individuals like you mentioned, representatives like the house, that
• 1:51:04
  that could be expanded upon more, representatives that would be tasked
• 1:51:08
  with something of this magnitude, I think is much more relevant and prevalent.
• 1:51:14
  And I also truly believe that.
• 1:51:16
  Audrey made a great point.
• 1:51:18
  There's every aspect of our society is probably gonna be at some point
• 1:51:21
  touched upon immigration, and I think we kind of demonize it in
• 1:51:25
  such a way that it's us versus them.
• 1:51:27
  It's the people that have made it versus the people that haven't.
• 1:51:29
  And I think that's really what causes a lot of the uproar and the riots and
• 1:51:33
  the anger and the frustration is really because it is a a caste system, right?
• 1:51:39
  If you are, even if you are a an American resident citizen, there's
• 1:51:46
  a massive difference, right?
• 1:51:48
  If you are an immigrant that became a citizen, there's still a difference.
• 1:51:51
  If you were born here, if you were not born here, if your
• 1:51:54
  parents came, they didn't come.
• 1:51:56
  There's this classification that probably, I think ultimately shouldn't be there.
• 1:52:00
  And I think that probably is a top down approach.
• 1:52:02
  Someone who is ultimately able to share the vision that all Americans, why they're
• 1:52:08
  here, what we should all do together, what type of value we should all create.
• 1:52:13
  that focus and having that awareness, I think is gonna be a
• 1:52:17
  really, really key aspect to making these proper, adequate changes.
• 1:52:21
  What did you learn, Dave?
• 1:52:23
  Dave Conley: I am still processing it.
• 1:52:24
  Like I, I've been sitting here, I was thinking about it when you were wrapping
• 1:52:27
  up and I'm like, what did I learn?
• 1:52:28
  And I don't know, uh, I'm gonna actually, I'm gonna listen back to this as we edit
• 1:52:33
  it and, and I'm, I'm not exactly sure.
• 1:52:36
  I know I learned something like there's a, there's a, there's nuggets in there and
• 1:52:40
  I'm sort of just kind of going through it.
• 1:52:41
  I know basically, like immigrants are awesome and like first generation
• 1:52:46
  immigrant, you know, like, I mean, the amount of bravery that I feel
• 1:52:53
  like it takes to pull up stakes from wherever you are on the
• 1:52:57
  planet and be like, you know what?
• 1:52:59
  I'm moving.
• 1:53:00
  I'm, you know, like I'm, I'm going to like, go someplace else on the planet.
• 1:53:04
  I'm gonna go to America and see what it's all about.
• 1:53:07
  It feels like an incredibly brave thing to me and to the grit and resolve and
• 1:53:13
  the drive that someone has in order to go do that and create a family and then
• 1:53:20
  create wealth and businesses and like immigrants are amazing and like, that's
• 1:53:25
  exactly what this country's all about.
• 1:53:28
  And I, um,
• 1:53:30
  and it's, it's complicated.
• 1:53:32
  Uh, you know, it's, it's complicated.
• 1:53:34
  I mean, I live in, I live in Miami and you know, like I'm very much in like
• 1:53:39
  it's, I feel very much in the minority you know, being a. English speaking.
• 1:53:44
  And it's a different experience for me.
• 1:53:47
  You know, like, it definitely feels like a foreign country in a lot of ways.
• 1:53:51
  And I think sometimes I, I, sometimes I have like a, like a negative
• 1:53:57
  emotion to that and I'm like, oh my God, is this a little bit of racism?
• 1:54:00
  And I'm like, ah, I'm not racist, but like, yeah, that's, that's
• 1:54:02
  not the best, you know, like, step back check yourself, Dave.
• 1:54:05
  Like, what's that?
• 1:54:06
  You know, what is that?
• 1:54:07
  Right.
• 1:54:07
  Like, why, why do you feel that?
• 1:54:10
  When I was talking to, to Audrey and, and to Jerry before this, you know, just
• 1:54:15
  to get a sense for where they wanted to go, and so we could have this they
• 1:54:20
  both said something independently.
• 1:54:21
  They said, you know, what was really key for their parents and
• 1:54:25
  their parents' parents and Audrey's sense, what was incredibly key for
• 1:54:28
  them was, uh, the English language.
• 1:54:31
  You know, Jerry said, you know, like I, I, I can't speak Phil,
• 1:54:35
  you know, Filipino tag along.
• 1:54:37
  I'm, I'm not sure I'm, forgive me folks.
• 1:54:39
  Yeah.
• 1:54:39
  For, for not knowing that.
• 1:54:42
  And he said it, it kind of sucks, you know, like I, you know, I have trouble,
• 1:54:46
  you know, sometimes, you know, with family and, like, I, I wish I'd, I'd, I'd
• 1:54:49
  paid more attention, you know, growing.
• 1:54:52
  But then he said, and the thing that assimilates you more than anything
• 1:54:55
  else is not having that language.
• 1:54:58
  And just having English.
• 1:55:01
  And I think that that's, that's an interesting thing to say.
• 1:55:03
  I, I, you know, I, I like that, in, in that, it, it is very unifying
• 1:55:07
  to have a unified language.
• 1:55:09
  And I think we already have that, even though we don't
• 1:55:11
  really have a national language.
• 1:55:12
  I, I think it's, it's pretty cool that we can say, okay, like, English is, is
• 1:55:17
  like our, you know, how we get along and how we get around and saying that, most
• 1:55:22
  of the things around here are in Spanish.
• 1:55:23
  But uh, I think it's an easy thing to do and say is like, you know,
• 1:55:30
  like, we're going to, we're gonna have our education in English.
• 1:55:32
  We're going to, you know, make sure our kids know English.
• 1:55:35
  I know a lot of countries besides their language, they also teach English.
• 1:55:40
  I think, you know, having a real emphasis on the English language for anybody you
• 1:55:44
  know, who, uh, doesn't speak English as a native language or, uh, speaks a,
• 1:55:49
  speaks a different language primarily.
• 1:55:51
  I think that that'd be kind of a thing.
• 1:55:53
  That's something I learned.
• 1:55:55
  Jerremy Newsome: Love it.