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Ep 27 - Noah Smith, "Noahpinion" - Immigration and Mass Deportations
117 Plays2 days ago
On this somewhat special episode of the Sphere Podcast, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Publisher of Sphere Media, debates economist Noah Smith, author of the "Noahpinion" Substack, on immigration and mass deportations.
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Transcript
Introduction and Debate Origin
00:00:00
Noah
have to Hey, I'm Noah Smith and I'm here with ah PEG, which stands for Pascal amanuel Emmanuel Gobri.
00:00:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:00:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:00:10
Noah
how How was my pronunciation?
00:00:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that's pretty That's pretty good. That's pretty good. ah So welcome, welcome, Noah, to the Sphere podcast. you wanted you You challenged me. You challenged me, sir, ah not to a duel, not yet, but to a debate on immigration. And you know i'll i'm I'll debate anybody.
00:00:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah and i I do think it can be an interesting debate. So since you since you started since you fired the first shot, go
00:00:42
Noah
Right. Well, anyway, i'm I'm trying to do more debates after on Econ 102. I did a debate with Orrin Cass. It turned out really well. And then I did a debate with Orrin McIntyre.
00:00:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
cool
00:00:53
Noah
um
00:00:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
so cool
00:00:55
Noah
And then that turned out okay. um Yeah, we ended up getting very sidetracked on that, but it I think it turned out okay anyway.
00:01:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, that can be fun too.
00:01:04
Noah
So... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, immigration. so So the background here is that I thought we should have a debate because we were arguing about something on Twitter and I forget what it was that we were arguing about and it wasn't immigration.
Concerns Over Immigration Policies
00:01:17
Noah
It's actually something else.
00:01:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. Yeah. No. So you I i remember it's it's this Twitter crap that just that just goes.
00:01:23
Noah
Wait, what what were we arguing Do you remember? Yeah, yeah.
00:01:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah You challenged Mehdi Hassan to a debate.
00:01:35
Noah
That is true. Got it.
00:01:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I said, well, i'll sure, I'll debate Mehdi Hassan too. And that's when you DM me and said, you and I should have a debate. And then and then i said, you could pick the topic and and you picked immigration.
00:01:44
Noah
ah
00:01:49
Noah
Well, yeah, because I figure immigration is something that everybody likes to shout about. And so, you know, we might as well talk about it a hot button issue.
00:01:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:01:57
Noah
i was going to write a book about it. So I read about 30 books about immigration and assimilation and, you know, related issues.
00:02:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Wow. So I'm very outmatched.
00:02:09
Noah
i am a I am a bit of a scholar now, I feel. That was
00:02:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
your business that's that i'm i'm i'm only ah i'm I'm just a guy with a Twitter account.
00:02:16
Noah
i was in 2018-19.
00:02:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah So, you know, I'm i'm i'm already ah overmatched.
00:02:28
Noah
That's all anyone really is these days.
00:02:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, I get so...
00:02:31
Noah
um
00:02:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
there I guess there's two kinds of
Philosophical Debate on Borders
00:02:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
debates. There's this sort of philosophical debate, ah which i get I think is important, which is oh what I believe is that any country's immigration policy should be based on the interests of its current and for and future citizens, as opposed to sort of humanitarian concerns, as opposed to sort of abstract rules, ah as opposed to sympathy for other people who you know would have a better life if they were in France rather than Mali or in the US rather than Honduras.
00:03:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah I think that's an important philosophical debate because the thing I've noticed, especially on the American left for the past, i since the since the Trump era, or I don't know, is ah sort of devaluing of the very notion of the nation state and of the very notion of borders. And there is a huge segment of the left, um including ah federal district judge last week that clearly believes that any form of border enforcement, any form of saying, look, so not everybody gets to come, sorry, is tantamount to some sort of you know horrible Hitler-type thing. And I think that's extremely dangerous because so far as we know, the nation state is the only political form we know that sort of works well.
00:04:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah and And it's dependent on having borders, having rules for who gets to live there, who doesn't get to live there, who gets to be a citizen, who doesn't get to be a citizen, and having those ah role those rules be enforced by the state.
00:04:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so I think the sort of open borders thing on the left it is it frankly very concerning for me as a sort of centrist moderate.
Public Opinion on Immigration Policies
00:04:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So I guess that's the philosophical thing, or we can do the econ thing.
00:04:30
Noah
well Well, the thing is that that this debate is apparently off to a very poor start because I agree with everything you just said.
00:04:38
Noah
And I think that almost everybody agrees with this. Like there are a few people who think that borders are some sort of like injustice that needs to be fought, but there're they're tiny. There's a tiny percentage, like almost no Democrats in America think that.
00:04:51
Noah
Yeah.
00:04:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
In opinion polls, sure.
00:04:55
Noah
Yeah, if you just ask people, like, should nations have borders?
00:04:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But...
00:04:57
Noah
Should they decide to control who gets in and who doesn't? People would be like, yeah. And then if you just walk up to people on the street or or even if you if you walk into, like, some, like, you know, lefty party in Brooklyn, you know, and you ask people this, like, some people will say, a few people will say no, but they're they're trolling, you know, and...
00:05:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:05:15
Noah
and um maybe they they really believe there that shouldn't exist. And then there's the w a few wacky libertarians like, you know, Brian Kaplan, who are ah think open borders is a great idea. But like, I think it's really hard to find people, ah you know, who who like the idea of open borders.
00:05:34
Noah
It's easier to find people who reflexively oppose every form of border enforcement to the point where they sort of accidentally back into being de facto open borders people.
00:05:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:05:44
Noah
But it's it's hard to find people who support it in the abstract philosophical sense.
00:05:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Well, I mean, you know, this is like saying they they they don't support four, they just support two plus two. um Like, like ah you know, they they they they have views that just sort of naturally lead them to supporting that policy.
00:06:00
Noah
Well, no, it's not.
00:06:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Whether it's the actor whether they have this sort of full thing in their head.
00:06:08
Noah
Sure. Sure.
00:06:13
Noah
um Yeah, no, I mean, of course, that's right. if If what we care about is which policies people like support, you know, then then that does matter or which policies they indirectly support by voting for candidates.
00:06:25
Noah
But the thing is that if people are supporting policies that don't fit their philosophical idea, of what a nation state should be, then it's actually, I think, fairly easy to flip them by giving them more information about what's going on. Because I think often these people don't understand what's going on, the facts on the ground.
Historical and Current Enforcement Practices
00:06:43
Noah
They don't understand how the policy opinions that they formed from watching the news lead to conclusions they don't want. You know, they just don't understand.
00:06:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:06:52
Noah
People are are poorly informed. And I think that, you know, Dealing with poorly informed people by like attacking them on mass doesn't is is suboptimal. And I think that instead we should just inform them better.
00:07:05
Noah
And, you know, this is exactly what Trump did. Right. So or or not even Trump, but the red state governors took the all of these quasi legal immigrants, these people who, you know, cross the border illegally, but then turn themselves into to ah border security and get request an asylum hearing and get to stay in America in the meantime.
00:07:25
Noah
you know, let's call them quasi legal immigrants um because they're illegal and then they're legal afterwards. But then um what what ah what the red state governor started doing during Biden's term was shipping them all to New York and to you know other other blue cities, most East Coast.
00:07:41
Noah
And um it caused this massive, massive backlash against specifically that kind of immigration because people, you know, people didn't know what the hell was going on. It wasn't that people understood what was going on and simply thought, ha, ha, ha, those Texans can suck it.
00:07:57
Noah
You know, those Floridians can suck it. It wasn't just that.
00:07:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Maybe a little.
00:08:00
Noah
what
00:08:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah,
00:08:01
Noah
i mean, there's I'm sure there's a few people in Brooklyn who do think that way. but But I guess more to the point, people didn't understand what was going on.
00:08:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah. Yeah, i'm I'm joking, but I take your point.
00:08:08
Noah
And once it arrived on the doorstep, they got it.
00:08:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. ah Yeah, I mean, yeah.
00:08:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i i get I guess we're sort of talking past each other because you're talking about like opinions of voters in opinion polls, and like Democratic voters are largely quite moderate. i'm I'm talking, and again, I'm saying like this is adrift. I'm not saying this you know this is what the Democratic Party is. I'm just saying I have watched this sort of change in the discourse over the past few years, and and it worries me, which is the sort of...
00:08:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i I hate that word, the the elites, the sort of tastemakers, the sort of ah
00:08:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
intellectuals and activists of the Democratic Party and activists are very powerful in the Democratic Party. That may change in the future, but for now, they're still extremely powerful. Like you do see a lot of people and they're who who sincerely believe that one illegal.
00:09:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
no one is illegal Right. No human is illegal. Like I have seen that poster with my own very eyes in like fancy neighborhoods in lots and lots of blue cities in the US. And like it's the same thing as, you know, maybe if you sit down these people and like, oh, are you really you really agree with like a billion people coming here? They would say, oh, no, maybe so. They don't believe four, but they believe two plus two.
00:09:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so it is worrying. And it is strange, which and it is a shift from the sort of 2008 Obama era thing where Obama would say, look, I'm for border enforcement. I'm for deporting people who shouldn't be here, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And it's in the national interest of America to sort of legalize some of the people who are here and allow more people, which is a very, very different position than no human is illegal.
00:10:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
You know what I mean? And and I do, you know,
00:10:04
Noah
Right.
00:10:05
Noah
Right. Exactly. And so it's affective, you know, like the the idea no human is illegal. It's um it's people see the word illegal. They don't like it.
00:10:16
Noah
It feels like you're you're, you know, impugning a whole class of people. Right. And you're saying, oh, you you are illegal as a person. You have no rights. We can just abuse you however we like.
00:10:28
Noah
And they they they don't like that, you know. So and, you know, they have a point because, um you know, the Parsley Massacre. have you ever heard of the Parsley Massacre?
00:10:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No.
00:10:40
Noah
Okay, so ah the Dominican Republic borders Haiti. The Dominican Republic is much more economically successful.
00:10:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:10:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:10:46
Noah
Many Haitian people illegally immigrated to Dominican Republic um in the like early 20th century in order to work in Haiti.
00:10:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:10:54
Noah
hey i I'm sorry, in order to work in the DR.
00:10:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:10:57
Noah
The Dominicans didn't like this. And they had a dictator named, I think it was Raul Trujillo.
00:10:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:11:04
Noah
And he ah basically said, you know we'll kick him out or kill him. And so he sent guys around to say, you know, but esto and and you know like what is this? And then and then if they and and it's parsley, like it's pet heel.
00:11:17
Noah
Right. and And
Challenges of Strict Enforcement
00:11:18
Noah
like if you can't say that because you're a French speaker, you die.
00:11:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:11:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Ah, right. I see.
00:11:23
Noah
Or if you're just nervous, you know, so French or nervous, you're dead.
00:11:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:11:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:11:27
Noah
And so.
00:11:28
Noah
They killed you know most of the Haitian migrants. It was you know maybe less than 100,000, I think, but it was quite quite a lot, ten many tens of thousands.
00:11:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:11:37
Noah
and um And they killed they slaughtered him with machine guns. and then And then the Haitians didn't come again. so But I don't think americans i don't think America is going to send out ice with machine guns to slaughter people who aren't here in the country if they can't pull out their birth certificate.
00:11:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and and i And I don't want them to.
00:11:53
Noah
Right. But when you see what they are doing, you know, there was that hairdresser guy who was like raped in a Salvadoran prison. You know, you've got US citizens being randomly pulled off the street and detained for like weeks because like someone just thought they looked, their face looks like ah an illegal immigrant face ought to look.
00:12:12
Noah
And they put them in a thing and they, of course, they don't papers with them. So they throw them in a cell while they get their papers and then they let them out. And then, you know, or or at the border, you see people, citizens being detained.
00:12:22
Noah
And then, of course, you see people who actually are here illegally getting treated fairly badly. you know alligator Alcatraz, like that's the conditions there are are just horrible, you know, like women being forced to poop in front of men and, you know, like ah just all kinds of like just terrible conditions in that in that detention center.
00:12:44
Noah
And so i think the statement, no human is illegal, is ah it's ah it's a nonsense statement, right? It's affective. It's purely just an emotional response to the word illegal applied to a person.
00:12:56
Noah
But when you look at the actual policies trump the Trump administration feels that it's entitled to do to people who are here illegally, that looks bad and I don't like it.
00:13:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That... it A couple points. So first of all, you know, ah the the kind of people who post these signs, they they all have graduate degrees from like prestigious ah institutions.
00:13:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And they all, you know, are in their 30s and 40s and have like six figure jobs working for NGOs or universities or healthcare systems or things like that.
00:13:30
Noah
or Google.
00:13:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
They're not 19 year olds.
00:13:31
Noah
No.
00:13:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
You know what I mean?
00:13:34
Noah
no
00:13:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
They're they're responsible adults and they they're not shooting it when They're not saying it when drunk at a party. They made the affirmative positive decision to purchase a sign and put it on their lawn for the entire world to see.
00:13:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
This is like one of the top three most important things, I believe. yeah Like that.
00:13:57
Noah
right
00:13:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, i I just I just find that just astonishing. Yeah. That's number one. ah Number two on the whole immigration enforcement thing, I mean, so first of all, I don't want to get into a factual discussion about like which reports of what atrocities and alleged atrocities are are are true or not.
00:14:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um ah because that i let me concede that there's probably some horrible shit and hopefully you can concede that a lot of those reports turn out to be false because a lot of them did turn out to be false ah like the the the infamous ah quote unquote Marilyn dad who turned out to actually be a gang member and actually a human trafficker and a wife beater and apparently somebody who collected child porn
00:14:45
Noah
Yes.
00:14:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And and and the a senator, ah ah the Maryland senator, flew to El Salvador to have his photo taken with him. So, you know, there's all sorts of stories in both directions.
00:15:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I just, I, like, enforcing rules is always ugly, and I find it always striking that the ugliness of enforcement catches a form of attention that isn't caught.
00:15:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah or that isn't focused on the ugliness of what happens when you have unchecked mass third world immigration into a country, which also causes a lot of very real human suffering.
00:15:30
Noah
Right.
00:15:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:35
Noah
right So it's basically just people, you know, saying, just focusing on different, different, you know, sort of extreme cases and thinking about those extreme cases and getting upset about those extreme cases and then advocating, ah you know, policies based on doing whatever the opposite of those extreme cases are.
00:15:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:15:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:15:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:15:56
Noah
And so that's not a constructive way to deal with the situation in my view.
00:16:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay.
00:16:02
Noah
I think if you want illegal immigrants to leave, i feel like the easy way to do that is just prevent them from getting jobs. You just, ah you know, you you audit companies. You say, look, you're hiring these guys. You pay a fine. Like, we're not going to send jackbooted thugs onto your lawn and break down your door.
00:16:19
Noah
We're going to send you a penalty via the IRS. And you'll have to pay ah ton of money and maybe you'll have to close up shop or maybe not, but you're just going to pay a lot of money for doing this.
00:16:30
Noah
And then everyone will be like, ah we don't want to pay the fine. So we're going to, you know, we're going stop hiring these people. Sorry, you're not a, you know, legal worker. So we're not going to hire you.
00:16:42
Noah
And then everybody's like, shit, there's no jobs in this country, man. And they leave. And so like, there's precedent for this working, which is the great recession. After 2007, you know, we had this big recession. It was coupled with increased enforcement by the Obama administration. But honestly, it was that for like 10 years, there weren't really that many jobs to be had.
00:17:02
Noah
And, um, And so people left, like, I think, even if you accept, even if you like the the higher estimates of the total number of illegal immigrants in America, you know, the the total amount that it the number went down was like one and a half million ah over those years. And that's ah that's a substantial amount of the net decrease.
00:17:21
Noah
And then um ah the number of people you deport, of course, is much, much larger than that. But then um but then the the total number went down by like one and a half million.
00:17:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
Discussion on Asylum Law Changes
00:17:32
Noah
All the estimates agree. And um just do that times five by by auditing companies that hire illegal immigrants. And then you don't have to put anyone in like alligator Alcatraz or send them to a Salvadoran torture dungeon or do these other things which whose purpose is to scare people away.
00:17:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes
00:17:51
Noah
You know, you can instead just we reduce the pull factors that pull them here.
00:17:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, ah why not both, right? I mean, the the sort of ether is fine.
00:18:01
Noah
because one has much higher side negative side effects and and the other is sufficient.
00:18:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah I don't know if it's sufficient.
00:18:07
Noah
That's why not both.
00:18:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:18:09
Noah
will It will get rid of many millions of illegal immigrants. Will it bring your illegal immigration to zero? No, but neither will turning your country into like an armed camp. I mean, like the only, really the only thing that would bring it to zero is actual, you know, parsley massacre type of of genocide. And we're not gonna do that, okay?
00:18:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:18:27
Noah
um So like nothing's gonna bring it to zero. The, you know,
00:18:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you can you can get You can get pretty close to zero, and I think there's value to having deterrence.
00:18:34
Noah
you know
00:18:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I think there's value to sort of loudly communicating your goals, and I completely agree. And like the issue of E-Verify, it's a huge problem because basically Congress has made it so that you can't make it mandatory.
00:18:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And so... And by the way, the Trump administration has done like workplace raids and so on and so forth because I track this. And you're right. like This is a problem within the Republican coalition because if they go after employers a little too much, ah you know ah trump Trump gets an angry phone call from his golf buddies.
00:19:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And... um And so he changes his mind and then Stephen Miller comes after him and then changes the policy back again.
00:19:25
Noah
right
00:19:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah you know i mean I think deterrence is good. i think it you know it's important to let people know that if they break the law, there are consequences ah and that if they come to America illegally, there are going to be consequences and they might be detained.
00:19:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:19:46
Noah
Yeah. But then a lot of the, you know, I mean, every administration detains people, right? The Biden administration detained tons of people. The Obama administration detained tons of people. just look at the detention numbers.
00:19:58
Noah
I mean, like we could, I could look it up right now. um
00:20:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, the the Biden administration detained people and then released them immediately with UTS.
00:20:02
Noah
I existed under both of those.
00:20:05
Noah
Okay. But like, if you look at the total stock of people who were detained, you know, yeah.
00:20:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And... And my understanding is that this is this is why there was a huge ah immigration package in the big, beautiful bill is the the Biden wave really was like unprecedentedly large.
00:20:15
Noah
yeah
00:20:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so from all the people that I talked to in DHS and CBP and all of that, what they tell me is that the Biden wave was so large, there isn't the sufficient infrastructure physically.
00:20:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah to deport people.
00:20:44
Noah
To detain all the people. Yeah.
00:20:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, because they they do need to be detained while they're being processed, right?
00:20:46
Noah
It's absolutely true. That's true.
00:20:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Because they are not actually doing the the sort of Dominican thing of like, oh, you're brown, get out, right?
00:20:50
Noah
Right? Yeah.
00:20:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
they're They're grabbing people. If they don't have papers, they put them in facility and then they sort of look they actually investigate what their status is. um But that required and and and then if they're illegal, they send them out so um or they put them in front of a judge and then they send them out.
00:21:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Uh, so that requires a process that requires infrastructure that requires state capacity, which the United States government is not great at historically generally. and, but particularly on the issue of immigration enforcement, because there's this huge backlog and it's sort of been neglected for, for, for a very, very long time.
00:21:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Um,
00:21:40
Noah
That's right. I mean, almost any country would be hard pressed to deal with that. Like France certainly would. And they're known for higher state capacity than America.
00:21:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, ah yeah, yeah we we would probably solve it the Dominican way.
00:21:53
Noah
Right. But there's another thing we can do, by the way, besides the employer audit thing that I talked about. There's a second thing you can do, which is you can change asylum law.
00:22:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
Political Landscape and Trust Issues
00:22:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:22:03
Noah
And you can say that if you come illegally, you are not entitled to asylum.
00:22:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:22:08
Noah
unless there's some special dispensation.
00:22:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, that was the remain in Mexico policy of the ah of the Trump administration, which was Trump one, which was overturned by the Biden administration, which is how you got all of these, as you put it, like legal, illegal guys.
00:22:22
Noah
That was not the Remain in Mexico policy. It was not, actually. it um That would require the policy I just described of changing ah the requirements for asylum, um requiring you to present yourself at a port of entry,
00:22:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:22:36
Noah
That policy has to be passed by Congress because it has to change our fundamental asylum law.
00:22:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay.
00:22:41
Noah
And ah so far, um
00:22:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But Remain in Mexico was like a version of that.
00:22:47
Noah
Remain in Mexico, it was attempting to sort of jury rig, ah you know, a way around the law, but the law needs to be changed.
00:22:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like i don't I don't remember the legal technical stuff. That was the same idea.
00:22:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. Yes.
00:22:57
Noah
And unfortunately, Trump has never tried to change that law. um The law, yeah.
00:23:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, because they're... they're they're they're
00:23:06
Noah
change the law.
00:23:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
there You can't... you can't ah I mean, right now, the Amnesty Caucus in Congress is too strong, so you you're you're not going to get any law passed. It's very doubtful that you can get any law passed, period, but it...
00:23:21
Noah
But it's not it's not a subject for amnesty because these people aren't subject to amnesty.
00:23:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, but i'm there there's a critical mass of senators in both parties who will not allow any immigration bill to advance unless it contains ah very large amnesty provisions.
00:23:38
Noah
Okay, I see. Got it.
00:23:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:23:40
Noah
Well, that yeah, I see that. So, but then...
00:23:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that That's what they meant by comprehensive immigration reform in the and
00:23:44
Noah
Okay, but that's... I know. But that's... um ah the First of all, the 2013 bill was good, I think. It had amnesty in it. But um that aside, you can...
00:23:57
Noah
You can change people's minds on a bill by yelling about it. You can draw attention to the people who are blocking it. I haven't seen that done.
00:24:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:24:05
Noah
I haven't even seen such a law proposed saying, oh, there's this caucus that'll block it. I mean, like, okay, but try at least try, like, you know, Biden tried, ah you know, to bring a million bills that got blocked and like yelled about them. And once in a while, one of them would get through.
00:24:20
Noah
I think that this one's common sense enough. Like if you, if you explain to people that our asylum law says we can't discriminate in asylum hearings against people who came illegally, people would think that's nuts.
00:24:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:24:31
Noah
And people would like say, no, that needs to be changed. Even most liberals would say that that's nuts and needs to be changed. Um, only very hardcore, like committed progressive people who think that, you know, asylum, uh, spamming is basically human right.
00:24:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:24:46
Noah
ah
00:24:47
Noah
It includes a lot of lawyers. would ah would Would, you know, um yeah, i have I have lawyer friends who was like, wait, no, that's ah the basic human right. I'm like, no, no, it isn't. No.
00:24:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:24:58
Noah
but But, right, so the the the right to be not discriminated against in asylum for breaking the law is not not a basic human right.
00:24:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Intended to appeal is not a human right.
00:25:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:25:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:25:09
Noah
Breaking the law should allow you to be discriminated against in asylum here.
00:25:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:25:14
Noah
But it's not because of our current law. So some you know people need to yell about this. And and i I worry, what I actually worry is that the Republicans have no desire to change that law because it allows them to continue having this problem that they must be elected to solve.
00:25:36
Noah
And that's maybe that's cynical, but I worry that they don't want to address the root cause. They just want to treat the symptom kind of like you know, pharma companies that sell painkillers, but don't want to cure underlying diseases.
00:25:46
Noah
It's like, you know, we'd rather, we'd rather make recurring revenue, treating the thing than make one time revenue, fixing the thing.
00:25:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Okay, so...
00:25:57
Noah
I worry that I don't, I don't think I know that.
00:25:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah, yeah.
00:25:59
Noah
i just, I worry about it.
00:26:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i So... the The thing is, if you want a kind of like, quote unquote, common sense immigration bill passed, like the kind of bill that you and I would agree on.
00:26:12
Noah
Mm-hmm.
00:26:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah and and And presumably, like if you know if you create like a super committee of like Noah and Pegg, like you would get a bill that every reasonable conservative and every reasonable liberal would agree with.
00:26:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um If you want that bill passed, with a Republican president and a Republican majority, you need to convince because Republican voters and Republican activists um are traumatized by the 1986 event when ah ah Reagan passed an amnesty bill and the bill included both amnesty and enforcement provisions and the amnesty was implemented, but the the enforcement never happened.
00:26:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so... If you want Republicans to agree...
00:26:59
Noah
Wait, no, the corporate enforcement was stripped out, right?
00:27:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
What?
00:27:04
Noah
Wait, the corporate side, I mean, the they they added some border patrol people, ah agents in that, but the um but the corporate side was stripped out. Like the, you know, the um they the they were going to have ah um not E-Verify, but a similar system where you'd you'd have to do that.
00:27:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:27:22
Noah
And they they took it out of the bill. It wasn't in the 86 bill, but it was in the 2013
00:27:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. Yeah. No.
00:27:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
concern ah I don't remember the details of the 2013 bill at the top of my head.
00:27:33
Noah
I think I'm pretty sure like E-Verify was in that 2013 bill.
00:27:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i
00:27:38
Noah
Hold on. Let me let me make sure.
00:27:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I don't remember a single bill that came close to passing in the time that...
00:27:42
Noah
Let me make sure.
00:27:45
Noah
Yes, it did. The E-Verify was in this the bill that failed in the Senate.
00:27:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:27:51
Noah
in 2013.
00:27:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, they were telling the Senate.
00:27:52
Noah
It included amnesty, but included enforcement, actual like, you know, robust enforcement instead of. And so 1986 added a bunch of Border Patrol agents, but they didn't do much.
00:28:03
Noah
Right. It didn't have much effect because it stripped out the corporate side enforcement.
00:28:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:07
Noah
But then in the early in the
00:28:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:28:10
Noah
late nineties and early two thousands, we added a lot of real enforcement. We built fencing along all the main crossing points, which made it much harder and more dangerous to cross. We, um, we, uh, you know, really increased the number of border patrol a lot.
00:28:25
Noah
And we also cut immigrants off of various forms of federal welfare in 1996, but then, but enforcement in terms of a big fence and a lot more border patrol happened.
00:28:35
Noah
And you can look at research saying this had a major effect under George W. Bush. Enforcement didn't solve the problem, but it worked. And one of the reasons why the giant illegal immigration boom of the 90s and early 2000s came to an end, you know, one reason was the Great Recession, but one reason was massively stepped up enforcement. So we didn't get an 86, but it's not to to say that enforcement is is powerless.
00:28:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i hey
00:29:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that i'm I'm making a different point. I'm not saying there was never any enforcement ever.
00:29:05
Noah
Mm-hmm.
00:29:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm making a different point, which is that if you if you want a majority of Republican voters and and elected officials to sign on to an immigration to a common sense immigration bill, you need to first establish trust that you are serious about enforcement.
00:29:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so... My, you know, my sort of, if i if I was a conspiracy theorist, which of course I'm not, um i I would think that's Trump's plan. I would think that that is what he actually wants to do because he's he's a he's actually a moderate on immigration, right?
00:29:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:29:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
He wants to spend like three years enforcing maximally and then ah during year four, he's going to, you know, throw Stephen Miller in the mouth of the Sarlacc and then do an amazing bipartisan integration deal
Mass Deportations and Crime Rates
00:30:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
with ah Chuck Schumer and John Thune and the Chamber of Commerce and so
00:30:04
Noah
Yeah. yeah
00:30:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But the only way that bill is going to pass is if he's first deported 10 million aliens or whatever, some very, very big number. Because for all that you just said about enforcement and and and all that, like and immigrant population the the illegal population in the US s has been growing.
00:30:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you know Maybe there were years where it was sort of flat or a little built down, but like over the past 20 years, it's just been growing massively. like it's just It's impossible to walk around and not see it.
00:30:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So there there is an issue here. And you want... if you want voters who care about immigration to sort of be willing to hear out a lot of the very reasonable stuff you've said, which I agree is very reasonable, you first have to sort of earn some trust.
00:30:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And maybe that's irrational, but it's also very human. And the way you earn trust is by doing, you know, ice raids and, you know, memes on Twitter about ah immigrants getting deported.
00:31:12
Noah
Whose trust are you earning?
00:31:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Republican voters who are ah who who care deeply about immigration about illegal immigration but are not you know full-on restrictionists.
00:31:27
Noah
Republican voters.
00:31:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:31:30
Noah
So that Republicans in Congress will support them.
00:31:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
the the media The median Republican voter... is A, extremely angry about immigration, a because of that issue, and B, because it's a sort of synodarchy for elites not being responsive, government not being responsive, democracy not being responsive, and so on and so forth. And we can talk about these broader issues.
00:31:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so he's very, very angry about immigration and especially illegal immigration. But he's also like not a restrictionist in the sense that his ideal immigration policy would be like zero legal immigration forever.
00:32:06
Noah
Right.
00:32:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
there's There is zero constituency for that in in the Republican Party. There is less constituency for that than there is for open borders in the Democratic Party.
00:32:16
Noah
Right. So, um, you,
00:32:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But he's he's he's not going to listen to arguments about legal immigration until he stops being angry about illegal immigration. and And he's only going to stop being angry at illegal immigration when you know he sees a raid down the street from him, when he sees that you know the the population, Costco, the population is different and so on and so forth.
00:32:39
Noah
Right. But we see Trump's approval rating on immigration falling. And. It's falling, i believe, among Republicans, too, although it's from a very high base.
00:32:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:32:55
Noah
um But it's but it's falling a little bit. And so some people like. I I'm not sure I've seen evidence of the trust being built, i Maybe it's maybe it's there.
00:33:07
Noah
um People still approve of Trump on border security, but then approval of Trump on immigration general has gone down because people see these abuses.
00:33:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:33:14
Noah
They see the ICE raids everywhere. They see the you know, they hear about the, you know, alligator Alcatraz. Don't call it a concentration camp. They hear about the detention centers and the you know, they hear about the the like
00:33:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i mean It's a meme. it's it's it it's It's a detention center and they they made a moat around it and they called it Alligator Alcatraz because it's in Florida. It's it's just a detention center.
00:33:39
Noah
Yeah. What's the conceptual difference between detention centers and concentration camps, by the way, just out of curiosity?
00:33:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I don't... i I think it's all fake. Uh...
00:33:54
Noah
I mean, how do i how do I tell when ah one of those words is the only appropriate word or versus when the other word is the is appropriate as well?
00:34:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
You know, I've never given that issue ah much thought. ah I mean, it's a mix of why are people sent there and be what happens to them while they're there.
00:34:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um As far as I know, nobody is being sent to alligator i'll get or elgaor oh Alcatraz for being Jewish or gay or communist.
00:34:21
Noah
I think that's right. I think that's right.
00:34:31
Noah
Right.
00:34:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Not yet, anyway. Dun, dun, dun. ah and And look, I haven't looked at the reports about how horrible it is there, but i i I would bet a good amount of money that we haven't reached, you know, Auschwitz tier yet. Sure.
00:34:47
Noah
True, but I mean, you know, i think that most concentration camps that history are not death camps. For example, the Boer concentration camps that the British used in the Boer War were the original.
00:34:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
or
00:34:58
Noah
That was where the name came from, I believe.
00:35:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that That's what I heard because the the term concentration camp just means detention center, right? It's just we no longer use it because it's tainted.
00:35:05
Noah
I think. Right, you're right. And I think it but I think it means I think if you have a detention center where people are sent there ah for group characteristics instead of individual actions.
00:35:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:35:17
Noah
then I think that ah that's kind of the salient thing to me. That, you know, if we want to backfill this term with a meaningful definition that we can then apply.
00:35:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Sure, but again, like i i there's some sense in which it's ridiculous to even have this conversation because the idea that you know whenever we're discussing detention, we have to like go back into World War II history to find out whether we're doing a Hitler or not, I find kind of silly.
00:35:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Like... you know the The French Republic used to have the Banyu, which were ah labor camps in French Guiana, so in the jungle. They were pretty bad.
00:35:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like The detention there was was famously very bad.
00:35:59
Noah
Yeah. Yeah. right.
00:36:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah you know and they They sent Alfred Dreyfus most famously, but like also the people who were sent there, you know apart from Dreyfus, who was innocent, were mostly sent for like you know murder and robbery and rape and so on and so forth.
00:36:03
Noah
yeah
00:36:09
Noah
right
00:36:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Do I lose sleep over the fact that you know my country under a democratic regime sent people to like a pretty gross labor camp, but also you know usually only murderers? like i don't I honestly don't really care.
00:36:37
Noah
I mean, like you know i would care.
00:36:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I certainly wouldn't care if we reinstated it tomorrow.
00:36:43
Noah
I would care. I think that's you know that's that's not...
00:36:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I would be very happy for France to create alligator or alligator Alcatraz in in in French Guiana.
00:36:53
Noah
I mean, those those French Guiana labor camps are pretty horrible, man. like the conditions in them were really horrible. Like, I don't think that any, those people deserve to be treated like that, especially because as you noted, some people, ah were sent there who, you know, by accident and then, oops, you, you, if you're sent to, you know, some people are always going to be sent to a place by accident.
00:37:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah?
00:37:16
Noah
There, there will be accidents and, you know, yeah.
00:37:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
in practice ah In practice, it's very, very low. you know it
00:37:23
Noah
Really? Okay.
00:37:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes
00:37:24
Noah
But what's low? I mean, like, it depends, you know, if low, if your total number of people is like a hundred thousand and you're, you know, you have like a, um, you know, a 0.1% uh, thing that's, that's a significant number of people.
00:37:41
Noah
So.
00:37:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i mean i I find this whole discussion so funny because, of course, how um
00:37:51
Noah
i'm trying to explain I'm trying to explain the the viewpoint.
00:37:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
how many how many girls raped by illegal immigrants are you know the right number? how many like We're focusing on the pain and the suffering of you know either criminals or illegal immigrants, depending on what we're like speculating about, which...
00:37:57
Noah
um
00:38:07
Noah
right
00:38:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And it's just something that i I'm not interested in because what I'm interested in is the health and welfare of my fellow citizens. And so in the case of the Guyana camp hypothesis, I'm interested in the health and welfare of law normal law-abiding French citizens, which is improved if there is strong deterrence against people committing murder and robbery and rape and arson.
00:38:31
Noah
Now
00:38:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And the case of illegal immigration, you know again, there are very significant harms that come to very ordinary people. due to unchecked mass third world immigration. And I have a lot more empathy for them than I have for anybody who decided to break the immigration laws of any sort of civilized country that I care
Disruption of Crime Networks
00:38:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
about.
00:38:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so I, you know...
00:38:53
Noah
now I have a question for you.
00:38:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i don't I don't want them.
00:38:54
Noah
I a question for
00:38:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I don't want us to be like actively sadistic towards them or like throw them in a volcano or anything. But beyond that, I i just I really don't care. And and and and maybe you think that's just horribly cruel.
00:39:06
Noah
Okay.
00:39:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I just I just think it's normal.
00:39:09
Noah
Well, some people are gonna, some people are gonna think that that, that is cruel and you have to, you know, accept that some people care about that. Like people, people care, but, but I think you're right that we should also focus on the benefits of mass deportations and carried out by various mechanisms. So you were talking about like, you know, mass detention in, in bad conditions, but, but we get, you know, at the end of the day, we get a benefit. We get fewer people, fewer of the, you know, illegal immigrants in the country.
00:39:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:39:38
Noah
And so here's a question in the United States, I'm not talking about France, um, because you know, we're bigger.
00:39:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:39:45
Noah
Um, that's where I am right now in the United States. If you were to, ah deport 10 million illegal immigrants, let's say, would the total number of native born Americans who get victimized by violent crime go up or would it go down?
00:39:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:40:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
The total number of Native Americans who were victimized.
00:40:11
Noah
The total number of native born Americans. So I'm saying, suppose we don't care, ah or, or let's, let's native born Americans and legal immigrants.
00:40:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:40:19
Noah
Okay. So we, we,
00:40:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:40:20
Noah
ah but people who are in the country lawfully, who are not illegal immigrants, would the total number of violent victimizations of those people increase or decrease if we were to deport 10 million illegal immigrants?
00:40:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:40:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, it would decrease. Are are we going to do the whole like illegal immigrant crime rate thing?
00:40:39
Noah
But it will so illegal immigrant crime rate doesn't quite answer this. If it were illegal immigrant crime rate, we'd know the answer right off the top of our head. But the thing is that since most of the crimes committed by illegal immigrants are against other illegal immigrants, it doesn't answer the question that I was asking, which is about victimization of people who are legally in the country.
00:40:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, I see.
00:40:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:41:00
Noah
but So I don't actually know the answer to this. um It depends on some parameters that that we don't really know. but um i I did some guesstimation and I had AI do some guesstimation and it looks like it looks like the total change would be about zero.
00:41:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:41:18
Noah
um Because again, like you said, you know illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than the native born. um
00:41:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Sort of.
00:41:26
Noah
And then, yeah, I mean, they like, like on average, it's just an average, right? Like we have a lower crime rate than they were born on average.
00:41:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah Yes.
00:41:36
Noah
And since a vastly disproportionate amount of those victimizations are against other illegal immigrants,
00:41:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:41:46
Noah
Basically, illegal immigrants are living in these enclave, mostly living in these enclaves where they don't encounter other people much. And when they do, it's usually through like work, going to work where they're not going to, you know, those are the people who do work and they're not going to commit a lot of crimes.
00:42:01
Noah
The crimes they do commit are against others of their own kind in their own neighborhoods, um primarily. And so because of that, I think that if you're looking at the safety of people like me, you know, citizens of America, the native born, my safety is statistically on average.
00:42:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:42:19
Noah
I don't know about me personally, right? But statistically on average, it's not enhanced by all those mass deportations.
00:42:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:42:25
Noah
i don't become a safer person statistically, I think.
00:42:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So, OK, so couple of things there.
00:42:35
Noah
Where am i benefiting?
00:42:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:42:36
Noah
Where am I benefiting from the mass deportation?
00:42:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
it So first of all, it it would, so first of all, it it certainly wouldn't make you worse off, right, in terms of public safety.
00:42:38
Noah
What do I get?
00:42:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It wouldn't cause an increase in crime if you
00:42:46
Noah
it might make me a little bit worse off. It might make me a tiny bit worse off, it largely unchanged. let's assume yeah Let's assume that it's exactly zero instead of almost zero.
00:42:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
secondly Secondly, empirically, the links between illegal immigration, certainly in the US, and sort of organized transnational crime and drug trafficking are so real and so extensive. like Every human trafficking network is also a drug trafficking network and vice versa, right?
00:43:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And and And drug cartels in the U.S. have distribution networks in the U.S., in part because there has been laissez-faire, relatively laissez-faire attitude towards enforcing immigration laws, right?
00:43:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so...
00:43:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Your ah mass ah ah you you're you're sort of purely abstract sort of ah ah percentage calculation just doesn't take account the fact that if you're removing en masse these sort of enclaves, as you said,
00:43:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah because most illegal immigrants live in these enclaves, which ensures that most of the crimes they commit, but you're also by definition
00:44:03
Noah
You know, enclaves. Yeah.
00:44:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah striking a huge blow against people all sort of South American and South American originated ah transnational crime, which includes ah all sorts of horrible human trafficking and which of course includes the the the the drugs and and the drug epidemic in the US.
00:44:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And yes, the fentanyl that does come from, i mean, some some ingredients are made in China and then they they get them to Mexico and they do the final manufacturing in Mexico and then they bring it to the US.
00:44:42
Noah
and And this is not counted as violent crime.
00:44:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So again, like in the real world, like yes, absolutely.
00:44:45
Noah
Just to support what you're saying.
00:44:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like Criminality would just drop like a rock and and and and it would be much beyond you know the probability of sort of Noah Smith ah getting stabbed while he's walking to the store.
00:45:02
Noah
right.
00:45:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And another point about you know ah those ah who gets victimized by those crimes, like a lot of those communities also have a lot of legal immigrants. right They have a lot of you know Salvadoran Americans or whatever who are legal citizens, and they're disproportionately also the victims of illegal immigrant gang-related crime. right it's it's like It's women who are being pimped, it's ah who are being forced to work as drug mules or lookouts or whatever, or or just generally the criminality of you know lawless, poor areas.
00:45:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and so
00:45:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
those people who are US citizens also deserve protection from that kind of crime. And so Noah Smith, economist, commentator, his crime rate isn't going to be affected, but like poor minority US citizens in poor areas, their crime rate, their probability of being victimized by crime will change.
00:45:50
Noah
The argument here is that we shouldn't look at violent crime rates. We should look at indirect crime indirectly caused by like the drug trade and things like that.
00:46:02
Noah
that what you're asking?
00:46:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Sorry, I just finished my point so I didn't hear what you were saying.
00:46:09
Noah
Sorry. I was saying, so you're, huh.
00:46:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's not a debate if I don't talk over you.
00:46:12
Noah
If ah so, you're basically saying that the indirect effect on crime rates via curbing of the drug trade would be in addition to whatever direct violent crime rates we observe.
00:46:24
Noah
And so, you know, because when people import fentanyl into the country, it's not counted as a violent crime, but it could encourage violent crime because then people fight over the fentanyl or whatever later on on down the chain.
00:46:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:46:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:46:36
Noah
And maybe those people are citizens or illegal immigrants or whoever.
00:46:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:46:40
Noah
Right. And so it gets gets counted as non illegal immigrant crime, but the links would be broken, thus making drug enforcement easier.
00:46:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right right
00:46:49
Noah
OK, yeah, I buy that. That's possible. I'm not I'm not 100 percent sure how true that is, but I buy that that's that's possible. That that, you know. Asylum seekers, even if they don't carry the fentanyl with them, you know, because if you turn yourself in with Fent,
00:47:06
Noah
You know, cause remember these are almost all this so-called illegal immigration right now is people crossing the border illegally and then immediately turn themselves into the authorities, right? It's quasi legal.
00:47:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:47:15
Noah
Right. And then, um, and so those people, no,
00:47:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, that was true under the Biden administration because they had the CPB program. So they were inviting people to do this. It was essentially like a way of just like bringing in, you know, as large amounts of people as possible with just no vetting and just like the thinnest veneer of legality.
00:47:25
Noah
but it's also our law. It's our basic law,
00:47:31
Noah
but you could
00:47:36
Noah
What I'm saying is that this is this is our law. Our law says that you have to do that. That is America's asylum law.
00:47:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, it it it is a it is a a sort of extremely, you know, ah
00:47:53
Noah
I don't like the law, but it is our law.
00:47:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
tendentious interpretation of the law.
00:47:57
Noah
Not necessarily.
00:47:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:47:58
Noah
No, it's not because the law very clearly states that you're not, that asylum claims cannot discriminate against people based on um whether they enter the country legally or legally.
00:48:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, i and i and i and i just I understand that, but there there's there
00:48:10
Noah
that law ought to be changed. That law ought to be changed, but it is our law.
00:48:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
there's there's There's lots of technicalities in every direction because of there's the credible fear standard. And so you have to show credible fear, except that the way people show credible fear is totally you know people's explanations are taken ah at face value.
00:48:22
Noah
Okay.
00:48:25
Noah
No, but... Wait a second. Oh, I understand. But um what I'm saying is that, listen, the credible fear standard determines whether people will be given asylum once they get the hearing.
00:48:39
Noah
And in fact, That is the basis for the fact that we deny most asylum applicants because they don't have credible fear. They're just economic migrants and we boot them out. That's what we do to most asylum seekers.
00:48:51
Noah
The problem is that we're, because of that law that I described, we're not allowed to, so when they turn themselves into the border patrol, we're not so allowed to simply put them in a truck, drive them back and say, bye.
00:49:04
Noah
You know, we're not allowed to do that.
00:49:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. I understand that.
00:49:05
Noah
They have to get a hearing. And so that's the law. That's the problem. um And that's the law that I think should be changed, but, but you know, currently law.
00:49:16
Noah
And so um nobody who does that is going to have fentanyl on them when they turn themselves in, because then you're arrested with fentanyl. So maybe some people could like plant fentanyl in the desert, and remember where to come back and get it. But then primarily um what you're talking about is human networks.
00:49:36
Noah
that the that the ah quasi-legal immigrants that are then in the country, you know, send text messages to the mafia and help them help them smuggle drugs in by being their person on the their contact on the other side.
00:49:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean,
00:49:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
as as far as I know, I've never seen anybody dispute that the networks that traffic people across the border are the same networks as the networks that traffic drugs across the border.
00:50:06
Noah
They may be, but but I assume they are.
00:50:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And that they're linked to the distribution networks
00:50:10
Noah
They are the same networks. I agree. But what I'm saying,
00:50:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
in American cities that cause all of the violent crime because then there are fights over drug turf and like all of the crime that comes with drug trafficking.
00:50:22
Noah
agree however However, it's not clear that, so border security, obviously, you know, stopping people at the border, catching more people at the border will obviously disrupt those networks. But why does mass deportation disrupt those networks? That's what I'm trying to get at here.
00:50:37
Noah
Because
Costs of Illegal Immigration
00:50:38
Noah
remember, the overall question is, how does mass deportation help Noah Smith?
00:50:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh.
00:50:42
Noah
How do I benefit as an American person from this? What do I get? and And this is this is trying to answer that question.
00:50:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. ah I mean, so first of all, the the the problem the problem is there i mean those networks sort of continue to exist in those enclaves. I mean, i don't i i don't know how else.
00:51:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i don't understand I guess I don't understand what you're not understanding, which is like, you know,
00:51:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i i i'm
00:51:12
Noah
If I deport people, how does that disrupt the drug trade?
00:51:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm Bob in El Salvador. I paid $10,000 to a guy to get me to across the border. Some other guy picks me up and gets me to New York where i start to wash dishes or whatever.
00:51:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That entire thing was executed by a very large, very organized transnational criminal network.
00:51:42
Noah
I see. So the idea is you start off as a mule and then you claim asylum.
00:51:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um i i don't I don't know exactly where the process is.
00:51:50
Noah
You drop off your, you you come across the border with your client,
00:51:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i just i i just It just seems obvious to me that you can't ah deport large numbers of people who came in through those networks without disrupting those networks.
00:52:10
Noah
Okay. All right. um So even though I don't entirely understand the mechanism by which the networks are disrupted, I'm open to the possibility that there is such disruption, but I would like to see some empirical evidence that this works.
00:52:22
Noah
Do you know Okay.
00:52:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i I'm not a criminal. like I mean, you know, it just seems so obvious to me
00:52:29
Noah
We all have AI now, man. We all have AI to do a literature search.
00:52:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:52:32
Noah
We can just ask the robot.
00:52:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that I don't have a study on on on water being wet either. I mean, i it it just seems like because those...
00:52:40
Noah
we can't We can't just say sounds legit and make policy on sounds legit. Like we got we can need some evidence here and we've done lots of deportations. We've done mass deportations and we should there we should be able to tell.
00:52:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, we should. I'm
00:52:54
Noah
So let me let me ask a robot real quick. Do we have evidence of whether, yeah, yeah, I am asking Chai GPT, of whether mass deportations disrupt drug networks into the US.
00:52:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
but are are Are you asking chat GPT right now?
00:53:11
Noah
And um you know at some point, it'll come up with an answer. And then we'll have an answer, some of which may be hallucinated, but we can always go run it down and check.
00:53:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. ah are you are Are you doing deep research?
00:53:21
Noah
so
00:53:24
Noah
ah No, 03, which is the engine behind deep research, but is a little faster.
00:53:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:53:30
Noah
um it will It will get the things without like asking follow-up questions. Anyway, and it won't be as long. um So, all right, I'm just, but I'm not telling you you're wrong, okay?
00:53:41
Noah
I'm saying I want to understand the case because we've, you know, we've talked about the the potential harms of mass deportation.
00:53:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:53:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, we haven't been fighting enough. this is This is terrible television.
00:53:50
Noah
Yeah, but we've we've talked about the potential harms, but I want to understand like what I, as an American, get. And and I think, honestly, you've so far missed the big one.
00:54:01
Noah
which is the fiscal cost of providing for all these people at the local and state level. that's the That's the thing that made all the New Yorkers mad.
00:54:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
there's There's that. I mean, i didn't know. and There's that. Yeah, absolutely. i have
00:54:12
Noah
I think that's the main cost that New Yorkers got mad about because people were getting...
00:54:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i mean, certainly in blue states, it is enormous.
00:54:18
Noah
Yeah, yeah, it's enormous. Even in red states, there's some government support.
00:54:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Because...
00:54:23
Noah
It's not zero.
00:54:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes. And this ah this is the other thing about the the liberal talking point about, oh, you know, illegal immigrants don't get benefits, except that the enforcement is up to the states.
00:54:25
Noah
And so it's big, it's really big.
00:54:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And it's very well known that especially that in quote unquote sanctuary states, they they basically they basically don't. Well, they don't ask for your status.
00:54:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so you could just it's it's based on the honor system.
00:54:44
Noah
Well, they do get state benefits.
00:54:46
Noah
They get state benefits.
00:54:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so, you know.
00:54:49
Noah
but they But they already do get, they get state benefits and and local benefits depending on state and local law.
00:54:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:55
Noah
That's always been true.
00:54:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:54:56
Noah
And if states and some, you know some programs are block granted to the states and the states can do whatever they want with it.
00:55:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:55:03
Noah
And the federal government can't determine who that gets given to.
00:55:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:55:06
Noah
Anything that the states do can be, and and in fact, this is the main fiscal cost of immigration.
00:55:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:55:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right. I'm saying they they explicitly give benefits to to illegal aliens, but also in the case where they're not allowed to give the benefits, they still give it to them because they don't enforce the prohibitions.
00:55:15
Noah
We do.
00:55:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:55:22
Noah
Right.
00:55:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah This is well known about Medicaid in florida in California. I don't know specifically about Medicaid in New York.
00:55:28
Noah
Right.
00:55:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um there there's There's several other cases.
00:55:33
Noah
Okay. So the GPT-03 is finished. ah Do you want to hear what it says?
00:55:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay. ah Sure.
00:55:40
Noah
All right. We'll ask, consult the robot. I love robots. It says, so far, no rigorous empirical study shows that deporting large number of non-citizens meaningful meaningfully interrupts the flow of fentanyl, cocaine, meth, or other drugs into the United States.
00:55:52
Noah
The available evidence instead suggests that most illicit drug couriers caught at or inside the border are U.S. citizens using ports of entry, not migrants arrested between them.
Evolution of PEG's Views on Immigration
00:56:02
Noah
Interior deportations overwhelmingly remove longtime residents whose most serious offense is low-level drug possession or sales, not cartel logisticians.
00:56:10
Noah
After two decades of high deportation rates, U.S. street prices, purity availability, and overdose deaths has showed no sustained improvement. Large-scale removals can even feed criminal criminal groups abroad by delivering experienced recruits to gangs and cartels in Mexico.
00:56:23
Noah
some
00:56:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
did did you did and that That last one was was hilarious. It's like, no. no ah Removing them does doesn't reduce crime because they're not criminal. And also it increases crime in other countries because you're exporting criminals to other countries.
00:56:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah There was also another sleight of hand in the idea that immigrants who...
00:56:43
Noah
Right.
00:56:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
immigrants ah who with drugs in the US ah are a small time or they they're just arrested for possession. Overwhelmingly, when somebody's, you know, it's like, oh, there are nonviolent drug offenders in prison. It's that the offense was bargained down.
00:57:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But the actual fact is that that person was caught dealing drugs and then they took a a plea deal so that there wouldn't be a trial. But like like that person was absolutely doing drugs.
00:57:16
Noah
I mean, that's what a nonviolent drug offense is. Like, yeah, it it wasn't a, you're not talking about a violent offense changed to a nonviolent offense through a plea bargain.
00:57:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
What? Yeah.
00:57:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, well, OK, but you and you understand what I'm saying.
00:57:28
Noah
so that Occasionally that does happen, but it's pretty rare.
00:57:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's like 99% of the time, like 99% of or 90 something percent of ah criminal convictions in the US are plea bargains.
00:57:44
Noah
Sure, but you don't, violent offenses typically do not get changed to nonviolent offenses in the plea bargain. If you bargain it down to a lower offense in the same category, so you could bargain felony assault to misdemeanor assault, I don't know.
00:57:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, right, i see.
00:57:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Right, right. Well, yes. so but like so you know if right
00:57:59
Noah
Or felony possession to misdemeanor possession.
00:58:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
If somebody's in prison for possession, it's not because they were caught you know smoking a joint. It's because they were actively dealing and they got plea bargained down to to possession. And so i'm i'm just I'm just pointing that out in context of the GPT-03 saying, you know,
00:58:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Oh, ah illegal immigrants who get arrested in the US mostly just get arrested for for possession or nonviolent offenses. It's like, well, you know that's that's due to the that's most likely due to the plea bargaining system. It doesn't mean that they're not ah involved in serious crime.
00:58:45
Noah
Um, it's just because that's just base rates, man. That's the fact that most offenses are nonviolent.
00:58:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Sure.
00:58:53
Noah
Like that.
00:58:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Anyway.
00:58:53
Noah
So, so yeah, anyway. Um, but I mean, I don't think violent offenses are getting plea bargain away. It's just that most offenses are nonviolent to begin with. Anyway. Um, so I guess what do I, the idea is what do I get from mass deportation? I get,
00:59:10
Noah
um lower taxes at the federal, state, and local level by some amount, a bit of lower taxes.
00:59:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:59:18
Noah
And then I get potentially, if you believe Peg and not the robot, I will get less Fent in the country, less Mnoth. less ft in the country
00:59:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:59:31
Noah
less
00:59:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Which is pretty big. like You, you will, you will get. lower organized crime, you will get lower disorder because there are there are forms of disorder that broader than crime. ah you know ah the i i remember I'm old enough when there was this guy on Fox called Tucker Carlson who was ah canceled for saying that immigrants make cities dirty, quote unquote.
00:59:49
Noah
Well, you are old
00:59:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But like there are absolutely cultural norms around littering and they are and they differ by population. And like there's absolutely a link ah And like there are all sorts of forms of disorder and decline of quality of life that come with ah mass illegal third world immigration. So public safety, taxes, ah and and generally ah a sort of ah greater sense of democratic responsiveness and accountability because you you you will you will have the the the the justified feeling
01:00:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
of living in a country where you know the laws that are written on the book get enforced and the government enforces the laws, instead of living in this very bizarre world where you know ah everybody knows that there's one set of laws on the books, but that's not the real law that exists in the real world, and everybody obeys by a different set of laws, which is incredibly corrosive to public trust, trust in institutions, trust in democracy, and so on and so forth.
01:01:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Denmark is a very good example of this. i was speaking with somebody from Denmark ah recently who as our viewers may know, you know is is the sort of case study for like very strong anti-immigration policies ah by a sort of center-left government. And he was saying like, on top of like the benefits to like crime and public safety and so on and so forth, there was a a sort of renewal of civic and democratic engagement because people were like, oh, you know, we say we want this, we vote for it and then we get it. Like that the system works, that's good.
01:01:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. and And that's definitely something that America needs right now.
01:01:44
Noah
Yeah, I mean, maybe, but but when I look at Trump, you know, and I think, you know, when I look at Trump's actual actions on immigration, i see trust falling. i see I see disapproval, you know, rising and Trump underwater on his on immigration, which was a signature issue.
01:02:07
Noah
And I think a lot of your case here, that this is is ultimately a good thing, rests on this sort of supposition that this is some kind of preamble, that this is some kind of inevitable base satisfying move before Trump pivots to a reasonable compromise.
01:02:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I didn't, i I, no, I sort of floated it as a sort of semi, you know, semi-serious conspiracy theory.
01:02:26
Noah
You talked about that.
01:02:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm not saying this is Trump's agenda and this is, like, I think, I would like that to be true.
01:02:36
Noah
Okay. Okay. You don't think this is actually likely? Understood.
01:02:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I would like for the, the, Trump and the Trump administration to sort of solve the illegal immigration problem in a way that's so decisive that it sort of moves us to moves the country to a different chapter and then people can have the actual important discussion, which is what what's the kind of immigration system we want. Now that we know...
01:03:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that we can enforce the laws now that we know that it's not a big joke to change the law or to rewrite the law. What kind of law do we want? I absolutely want that. ah And I think it's a necessary, not sufficient, but necessary ah preliminary step.
01:03:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But I also think that the illegal immigration problem is is worth solving on its own. i it's just It's just so alien to civilization and good government to like just have like millions of people in your country just because they showed up one day and and then you're like, oh, but they've been here for a very long time, so I guess they just get to stay here now. like ah That's deranged.
01:03:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's I really think it's a very serious, it's a it's public safety problem, so it's an economic problem, and so on and so forth.
01:04:01
Noah
So you feel that for you, for you personally, mass deportations build your trust in the system.
01:04:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
01:04:10
Noah
And that makes sense.
01:04:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
mean,
01:04:11
Noah
And I'm sure that there's a non-trivial number of people who think like you. who think like that and who agree with you. But when I look at what the you know what the average American thinks, I don't see people taking heart from this policy. I don't see trust our institutions rising from the ICE deportation rampage. I don't see it.
01:04:35
Noah
I don't see this in the data. I see disapproval rising.
01:04:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, it's it's only been going on for six months. i you know I haven't looked at the polls, and and i'm you know I'm a policy guy.
01:04:43
Noah
Farrell?
01:04:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I very deliberately don't look – I mean, I look at issue polls, but I don't look at like Trump polls. So i I don't have an opinion on like which polls are good or bad and and so on and so forth.
01:05:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And you know there are definitely fake polls out there. like That's not a conspiracy theory or just like very bad polls.
01:05:07
Noah
There's a lot of polls and on this topic. And then the aggregators like, you know, Nate silver and G Elliot Morris and these other guys.
01:05:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
01:05:15
Noah
try to do their best to figure out what's going on look at the quality of the polls.
01:05:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
01:05:19
Noah
And, you know, i I understand that polls aren't a perfect guide to public opinion.
01:05:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
01:05:23
Noah
There's many problems with polls, but I don't see.
01:05:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
01:05:28
Noah
um Yeah, maybe out there trust is silently being built, um but it doesn't it doesn't look like it. I don't see it. I just see people who, you know, the minority of people who are just enraged about immigration.
01:05:46
Noah
you know, think, yeah, get them. This is the thing we've been waiting for for a long time. And of course, of course, there are people who, you know, from from all the way from like the 80s and 90s have just been like, you know, get them out, get them out. And and just been yet getting increasingly mad since the 80s and 90s about this.
01:06:02
Noah
And those people are going to be pleased. Like there was never a time when you thought this wasn't a problem, right?
01:06:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah There was, yeah.
01:06:11
Noah
When? When did you think this wasn't a problem?
01:06:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Before Trump.
01:06:14
Noah
Like under Obama?
01:06:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
01:06:17
Noah
Huh. That's interesting. Cause we had a, we had a wave of asylum seekers, all those unaccompanied children.
01:06:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
oh you you you you you could You could Google it. I wrote columns in favor of immigration amnesty in 2014, 2015.
01:06:28
Noah
I see. And it was, when did you, when you change your mind about this?
01:06:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I got radicalized.
01:06:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah When America elected a crazy orange guy.
Extreme Policy Hypotheticals
01:06:38
Noah
Then you agreed with the crazy orange guys policies because of he's a crazy orange guy.
01:06:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Well, the open question is like what level of immigration is sustainable without causing too much sort of social and political and cultural disruption. And the fact that your country elects a crazy orange guy is a pretty good hint that, you know,
01:07:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you've had that point and you should therefore backtrack.
01:07:04
Noah
Right.
01:07:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i It wasn't like an overnight thing. Oh, Trump won. Therefore, I completely changed my mind on immigration. But like the fact that so many Americans were so...
01:07:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah ah passionate about this and sort of prioritizing this over everything else absolutely made me think, oh, like I'm the one who's missing something here. I'm the one who doesn't fully understand what is happening.
01:07:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and and And, you know, i i I couldn't tell you like a moment where I was yeah where I became sort of ah extremely anti-immigration. ah But yeah, that it's a sort of... it i say that jokingly, but yeah it's kind of ipso facto.
01:07:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And again, if you believe in democracy, as we all do, it is kind of Ipso facto the case. like if I'm not saying you know every every poll is right, and when 51% of the country says something, it's it must be right every time.
01:08:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But when you have this level of public dissatisfaction for so long, it it should tell you something. um And so I learned more about fentanyl. I learned more about you know what was happening in sort of white working class communities in the Midwest of the US. I i learned more about you know wages and and so on and so forth. and and And I became radicalized. Absolutely. And now I i absolutely believe that it's
01:08:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you know the most important issue for America, for Europe, ah and that it's sort of it sort of preconditions everything else, ah because it's both on its own and because it's a ah symbol and a kind of synagdarchy for
01:08:51
Noah
Thank
01:09:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
a host of other issues related to public trust, related to whether government exists for the interest of the whole population or an elite and so on and so forth. And so, yeah, so that's that's my answer to your question.
01:09:21
Noah
Okay.
01:09:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, I i haven't. I absolutely, I was i was pro-immigration for because I was a good enlightened, elite, ah
01:09:35
Noah
Okay.
01:09:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
white collar graduate degree, blah, blah, blah person.
01:09:37
Noah
yeah Yeah. let me ask you a follow-up question then, which is, what would what is there any degree to which Trump could overstep in his immigration policy that would make you change your mind about this and think, okay, the costs of this policy are too high.
01:09:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
01:09:59
Noah
And what would that be?
01:09:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
01:10:00
Noah
What would that look like? What would make you change your mind on that?
01:10:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, I can imagine like immigration policies that I would disagree with, but like Trump couldn't legally do that. Right. The most thing he can do is like deport people who are already here. And I'm OK with that. And, you know.
01:10:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, and or or, you know, I mean, we can come up with, like, science fiction scenarios where, you know, he sends death squads into out alligator alcatraz and blah, blah, blah. But that's not going to happen.
01:10:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
all know that.
01:10:32
Noah
You don't really need science for that. We have the weapons.
01:10:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, we have the weapons.
01:10:38
Noah
We don't need to invent anything. It doesn't need to be AI doing it. i don't know. um
01:10:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i
01:10:42
Noah
But yeah, so you think death squads or mass execution of illegal immigrants would flip you on this?
01:10:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I would consider that a bridge too far. i so An open question for me is the extent of the economic disruption.
01:10:53
Noah
Okay.
01:10:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
01:11:00
Noah
Hmm.
01:11:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And because I do think that if you start, you know, because now there's such a backlog of criminals and unemployed people, but, you know, the big open question is what happens when they start actually hitting into, like, people who are employed and so on and so forth.
01:11:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And I fully expect some level of economic disruption, which I don't mind, but I think it's an open question just how much there will be.
01:11:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um That being said, it in some, I don't want to say perverse way, but in sort of paradoxical way, the more economic disruption there is, the more that I would see that as evidence that the system was just fundamentally broken and really needed to be resetted. like if the If it really is the case that the American and economy absolutely needs...
01:11:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you know, $5 an hour waiters or or or whatever absolutely needs this sort of like servant caste ah to operate, then then, you know, it's all the more evidence that the that we need to shift to a very different system very quickly.
01:12:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. ah
01:12:21
Noah
So economic stuff is not going to make you change your mind, but, but death squads would. I have one more. What if we start seeing, what if we start seeing, us large numbers of us citizens detained or deported?
01:12:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
01:12:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I mean, yes. Like, if there if there was some sort of, like, crazy thing where... Yes. um
01:12:49
Noah
Okay.
01:12:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Sure. I mean, Yeah.
01:12:51
Noah
What if here's another one?
01:12:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
01:12:52
Noah
What if Trump in suppose with or without the Supreme Court's blessing?
01:12:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
01:12:58
Noah
But lets what if what if Trump changes the law and birthright citizenship to strip citizenship from people whose ancestors were illegal immigrants or suspected of being illegal immigrants?
01:13:13
Noah
And so we have mass stripping of citizenship from large numbers of American citizens.
01:13:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, suspected of, i mean, obviously, you know, if it's suspected of being illegal immigrants, it's like a giant blue pole.
01:13:22
Noah
What I'm saying suspected, I mean, you can't prove they were legal. And so therefore you don't have citizenship.
01:13:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, right. so you and So basically, everybody would have to prove that their ancestors were legal.
01:13:33
Noah
After some certain date, let's say when they think that proof is available, because obviously for my ancestors who came in the late early there was
01:13:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Otherwise, they get...
01:13:41
Noah
there was no proof
01:13:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
01:13:43
Noah
you know, there no proof of legality because we didn't have those systems in place yet. But suppose that we say, okay, so if you came since sometime 1965, I don't know, whenever, and then, and you, and we can't prove that you can't, that your ancestors came legally, we can strip you citizenship and then send you alligator alcatraz and then, or deport you to el Salvador, wherever the fuck.
01:13:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
01:13:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
01:14:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
01:14:06
Noah
What about that? Because that that is sort of what I painted as the worst case scenario in Trump's first term. I said, this anti-immigrant backlash, how far could this go? What's the worst thing I can possibly think of that we might actually do?
01:14:19
Noah
And it was that. And I can't put this idea in 2017, so a long time ago.
01:14:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well,
01:14:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, I mean, the the you saw, and and it's just a meme, it's not going to happen, but you saw the thing about Memdani, right? Which is there there is a legal provision that basically, ah if you're a naturalized US citizen and you're a communist, that means that that basically it the law presumes that you must have lied during your naturalization process,
01:14:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
about being a communist and that therefore ah you can be stripped of citizenship and deported.
01:14:50
Noah
we can strip your citizenship of that. We do have a law that allows you to do that perfectly legal.
01:14:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um i've i you know
01:14:58
Noah
Okay.
01:14:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
it' it's If Trump started sort of vigorously enforcing that law, i mean if you know ah prison there there would be a threshold where I'd be fine and there would probably be a threshold where I would no longer be fine.
01:15:00
Noah
So suppose one of your ancestors...
01:15:08
Noah
No, I'm...
01:15:13
Noah
Right, and keep in mind, by the way, I'm not talking about stripping citizenship from people who naturalize, which the law you're discussing is about stripping citizenship from people who naturalized.
01:15:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right. Yes. Right.
01:15:21
Noah
That law will not allow you to strip citizenship from the kids of those people.
01:15:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
01:15:26
Noah
So if you lie and say, I'm not a communist and you are a communist, right, right.
01:15:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. so i i understand that's different I understand that's different from the question you asked. I'm just i'm like...
01:15:32
Noah
I'm talking about stripping citizenship from people based on their ancestry.
01:15:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well...
01:15:40
Noah
Would that be enough to turn you?
01:15:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
whether whether whether they're Whether their parents came here illegally is not exactly the same thing as their ancestry, right? Because...
01:15:49
Noah
I'm talking about their parents or their grandparents, let's say, or just say parents, just say parents, your parents came here illegally.
01:15:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. ah I don't...
01:15:57
Noah
You're born here. You're but because they came illegally. You're not a citizen and you must now leave. What about that?
Complexities of Naturalization and Citizenship Laws
01:16:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I...
01:16:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um i
01:16:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm trying to come up with a way of saying, you know, I'm not wild about it, but I also wouldn't, you know, like, light my hair on fire and start, you know.
01:16:26
Noah
If people were punished with revocation of citizenship for what their parents did,
01:16:34
Noah
that wouldn't, that's, I can't think of a single case where we punish people for the crimes of their parents in this country or where we ever have.
01:16:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well...
01:16:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, you're right. ah Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. No, i would I would disagree with that policy.
01:16:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
01:16:53
Noah
for me, that would be like, yeah I mean, I don't support Trump's mass deportation policy in the first place because I think it's, you know, there's much easier alternatives that are much less disruptive.
01:17:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
01:17:03
Noah
But I think but i think this that policy that I just described of punishing people with citizenship stripping for their parents being illegal immigrants, which I think is on the table.
01:17:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
01:17:16
Noah
you know, they discuss it, they talk about doing it. um
01:17:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I've literally never heard this.
01:17:20
Noah
That would scare the hell out me. I would be really scared.
01:17:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i mean, that i swear I'm not trying to dodge your question, or like but like I've literally never heard this.
01:17:27
Noah
You didn't dodge it. You didn't dodge it. You know, okay, you didn't dodge it at all. I'm not accusing you dodging it. You did not. You addressed it. I'm saying that i that I have heard this being discussed, and I could send links, whatever.
01:17:40
Noah
um And that that is a policy that would deeply scare me and and make me think, you know, um like i'm not looking I'm not living in a country with basic human rights anymore.
01:17:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No, I understand.
01:17:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I understand. I understand. ah i I, yeah, i I think it would be a dumb policy. the The reason why I'm being so hesitant is that, you know, we draw this bright line between legal and illegal, citizen and non-citizen, and rightly so, because those are important and meaningful legal categories. But at the same time, you know there's a bunch of people who got citizenship who probably, if the law had been well-designed, wouldn't have gotten citizenship.
01:18:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And so i i i understand the point you're making. Denaturalizing someone because they're of something their parents did, I agree that's a bridge too far. But denaturalizing someone because they should never have been naturalized to begin with,
01:18:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah is not something that I object to as a matter of principle.
Denaturalization Preferences
01:18:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um and and And by the way, i like my preferred version of this policy is you should never have been naturalized to begin with.
01:18:54
Noah
So denaturalizing someone who lied about being in the country.
01:19:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Goodbye. here's ah Here's a big check. here's ah Here's a check for like two years of your past income. Go build a new life in Uganda, Mr. Mamdani.
01:19:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Good luck to you. Best of luck to you.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
01:19:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
01:19:19
Noah
Is mom dying natural?
01:19:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i don't think I don't think that would be you know terribly inhumane or Nazi.
01:19:25
Noah
All right. Well, I think that's a good place to stop. I can't think of, I think that we've basically covered like the main, um you know, we didn't talk about things like high-skilled immigration or cultural impacts.
01:19:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah. i mean there we we did We basically didn't talk about economics, even though you're you supposed to be an economics guy.
01:19:44
Noah
Yeah, well, we could have a follow-up where we do another, but I got to go eat lunch.
01:19:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, and I've got to go eat dinner because we live in a big planet. ah
01:19:52
Noah
Yeah, but this is fun.
01:19:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
We have...
01:19:53
Noah
And this is fun. i liked it. We could do it again. um Yeah, I think we we we covered basically the whole issue of mass deportation and illegal immigration and illegal immigration and all that.
01:19:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Sure. yeah
01:20:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. yeah we yeah we did we did Yeah, we did mostly deportation, but not really the economics of immigration.
01:20:11
Noah
Right. Next time we could talk about should we be bringing lots of people legally and what would that what should that look like?
01:20:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
All right.
01:20:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. Yes. Yes.
01:20:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
01:20:18
Noah
Cool.
01:20:18
Noah
All right. Well, signing off.
01:20:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
All right. Cool.
01:20:20
Noah
Talk to you later.
01:20:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Bye. Ciao.