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message to students
At yesterday's No Kings protest rally, I was approached by a reporter who wanted to take photos of my sign, and then wanted to (briefly) interview me. He was from Baruch College -- perhaps from a student newspaper, although he looked a bit old for a college student -- and after I mentioned that I had been a college professor for twenty years myself, he asked "In closing, do you have any message for college students? Or students in general?" I came up with something vaguely coherent on the spur of the moment, but now that I've had more time to refine and structure it, here's approximately what I wanted to say.
Anyway, after the reporter walked away, a guy named Tim walked up and introduced himself. He explained that he despised Donald Trump as a human being for his corruption, his toddler temper tantrums, his lies, etc. but he also "detested the Left". I wasn't sure what he meant by "the Left", so I asked.
He answered "All the 'abolish ICE' stuff, the 'open borders'...".
"Well, as long as we have immigration laws, we'll need an agency to enforce them. That agency may or may not be named ICE, which is actually only about twenty years old."
"Oh yeah, it was INS before that."
"Right. A majority of all current ICE officers were hired in the last year, and it's changed from a professional law-enforcement agency to a bunch of hired thugs personally loyal to Trump. They've had a huge hiring push, lowered their hiring standards, and a lot of the older more experienced officers have left because this isn't the agency they signed up for. So there's a reasonable question whether ICE can be reformed, or whether it has to be shut down and rebuilt from scratch.
Of course, we haven't always had immigration laws. The first ones were about 1870, and they were explicitly racist: the 'Chinese Exclusion Act' and things like that. It's only since something like the 1960's that immigration has been based on objective criteria other than race and nationality. And yes, there are people suggesting we should go back to open borders, but they're mostly libertarians rather than liberals. They have some interesting arguments that are worth listening to, but 'open borders' isn't generally a liberal thing."
"Well, during the Biden administration we had this flood of people claiming asylum, and no country can handle that many people coming in all at once."
"Yes, asylum is a problem. The law says you cross the border legally, immediately turn yourself in to an immigration agent, and request asylum. They're supposed to interview you immediately to find out whether you have a plausible claim for asylum, and if so, you can stay in the US temporarily while waiting for your hearing. Which is supposed to be in a few weeks, but currently there's a backlog of years, because there aren't enough immigration judges to hear all the cases. The obvious solution would be to hire more immigration judges, but Republicans don't want to do that: in fact, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year provided enormous amounts of money for immigration enforcement, but it put a ceiling on how many immigration judges they could hire. It's as though elected Republicans want asylum cases to drag on for years, want millions of people in the US sorta-legally but without permanent status. And they tend to lump asylum seekers in with 'illegal immigrants' even though people awaiting asylum hearings, by definition, are those who followed the law."
"That's what this is really about. I just want people to enter the country legally. Why don't they do that?"
"Great question. Suppose you're a guy in Colombia or Peru or someplace, you've studied the US, you believe in what it stands for, and you want to come here legally, work hard, and make a better life for yourself and your family. How would you do it?"
"That's exactly the kind of person I would want to come here. That guy should go to the US consulate or embassy in his country and ask how to proceed."
"Right, that's how you would ask the question. What do you think the answer would be? Because there really aren't a lot of ways to get into the US legally.
One way is if you've already got a job offer from a US company that's willing to pay for your visa. Joe Schmoe in Colombia probably doesn't have that.
Another way is if you've got close relatives who are already established in the US, they've lived here for a couple of years and they're financially self-sufficient enough to take care of you until you're financially self-sufficient too. Joe Schmoe in Colombia probably doesn't have that either, and Trump is trying very hard to shut that program down.
Another way is refugee status, which takes years of vetting and background checks before the State Department approves you to come to the US, and you have to be documentably a refugee from political persecution or natural disaster or something. And Trump is trying very hard to shut it down. In fact, on his first day in office in 2025, he suspended all refugee admissions: people who had already been approved by the State Department, people who were already at the airport to come to the US, people who were already on airplanes.... There's an annual ceiling on how many people are allowed to claim refugee status: in 2022-2025 it was 125,000, but for 2025-2026 Trump lowered it to 7,500, with most of those slots reserved for white South Africans.
Then there's asylum, which we already talked about. Trump is trying very hard to shut it down.
And there's the diversity lottery, which really is a lottery you have a tiny chance of winning, and Trump is trying very hard to shut it down.
There just isn't a path for 'I want to go to the US legally, work hard, and build a better life for myself and my family.'"
He actually got in more words than that, but I have to admit I did most of the talking. Anyway, we had a fairly pleasant and substantial conversation.
We're here protesting to preserve and restore democracy. Democracy is not about agreement -- if everybody agreed on everything, there would be no need for a government -- but rather about how we resolve disagreements. If you cancel people from your life every time they disagree with you on any issue, you won't have many friends or allies. And although President Trump thinks otherwise, you can't get much done without friends and allies. You have to be able to work with people on the areas where you agree, while recognizing that there are other areas where you don't, and that's OK.
I've heard of college students complaining "I'm being forced to listen to things that I don't agree with." To which I would answer "Oh, good! That's why you're here!" If you leave college with exactly the same opinions and beliefs you had when you arrived, you've wasted four years and a lot of money. You are in college to be exposed to ideas you don't already agree with, to understand what they say, to wrestle with those ideas, to understand how somebody could possibly believe them. If after all that you still reject them, fine -- you've rejected them based on actual understanding. But another possibility is that you'll find some value in them, perhaps even change your mind about an idea you thought was wrong. Even if you don't end up changing your own opinion, you'll better understand the people on "the other side". And when you understand the people on the other side, it's harder to see them as sub-humans, as implacable enemies to be destroyed before they destroy you; they're really just human beings who agree with you on some things and not on others.
Anyway, after the reporter walked away, a guy named Tim walked up and introduced himself. He explained that he despised Donald Trump as a human being for his corruption, his toddler temper tantrums, his lies, etc. but he also "detested the Left". I wasn't sure what he meant by "the Left", so I asked.
He answered "All the 'abolish ICE' stuff, the 'open borders'...".
"Well, as long as we have immigration laws, we'll need an agency to enforce them. That agency may or may not be named ICE, which is actually only about twenty years old."
"Oh yeah, it was INS before that."
"Right. A majority of all current ICE officers were hired in the last year, and it's changed from a professional law-enforcement agency to a bunch of hired thugs personally loyal to Trump. They've had a huge hiring push, lowered their hiring standards, and a lot of the older more experienced officers have left because this isn't the agency they signed up for. So there's a reasonable question whether ICE can be reformed, or whether it has to be shut down and rebuilt from scratch.
Of course, we haven't always had immigration laws. The first ones were about 1870, and they were explicitly racist: the 'Chinese Exclusion Act' and things like that. It's only since something like the 1960's that immigration has been based on objective criteria other than race and nationality. And yes, there are people suggesting we should go back to open borders, but they're mostly libertarians rather than liberals. They have some interesting arguments that are worth listening to, but 'open borders' isn't generally a liberal thing."
"Well, during the Biden administration we had this flood of people claiming asylum, and no country can handle that many people coming in all at once."
"Yes, asylum is a problem. The law says you cross the border legally, immediately turn yourself in to an immigration agent, and request asylum. They're supposed to interview you immediately to find out whether you have a plausible claim for asylum, and if so, you can stay in the US temporarily while waiting for your hearing. Which is supposed to be in a few weeks, but currently there's a backlog of years, because there aren't enough immigration judges to hear all the cases. The obvious solution would be to hire more immigration judges, but Republicans don't want to do that: in fact, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year provided enormous amounts of money for immigration enforcement, but it put a ceiling on how many immigration judges they could hire. It's as though elected Republicans want asylum cases to drag on for years, want millions of people in the US sorta-legally but without permanent status. And they tend to lump asylum seekers in with 'illegal immigrants' even though people awaiting asylum hearings, by definition, are those who followed the law."
"That's what this is really about. I just want people to enter the country legally. Why don't they do that?"
"Great question. Suppose you're a guy in Colombia or Peru or someplace, you've studied the US, you believe in what it stands for, and you want to come here legally, work hard, and make a better life for yourself and your family. How would you do it?"
"That's exactly the kind of person I would want to come here. That guy should go to the US consulate or embassy in his country and ask how to proceed."
"Right, that's how you would ask the question. What do you think the answer would be? Because there really aren't a lot of ways to get into the US legally.
One way is if you've already got a job offer from a US company that's willing to pay for your visa. Joe Schmoe in Colombia probably doesn't have that.
Another way is if you've got close relatives who are already established in the US, they've lived here for a couple of years and they're financially self-sufficient enough to take care of you until you're financially self-sufficient too. Joe Schmoe in Colombia probably doesn't have that either, and Trump is trying very hard to shut that program down.
Another way is refugee status, which takes years of vetting and background checks before the State Department approves you to come to the US, and you have to be documentably a refugee from political persecution or natural disaster or something. And Trump is trying very hard to shut it down. In fact, on his first day in office in 2025, he suspended all refugee admissions: people who had already been approved by the State Department, people who were already at the airport to come to the US, people who were already on airplanes.... There's an annual ceiling on how many people are allowed to claim refugee status: in 2022-2025 it was 125,000, but for 2025-2026 Trump lowered it to 7,500, with most of those slots reserved for white South Africans.
Then there's asylum, which we already talked about. Trump is trying very hard to shut it down.
And there's the diversity lottery, which really is a lottery you have a tiny chance of winning, and Trump is trying very hard to shut it down.
There just isn't a path for 'I want to go to the US legally, work hard, and build a better life for myself and my family.'"
He actually got in more words than that, but I have to admit I did most of the talking. Anyway, we had a fairly pleasant and substantial conversation.
no subject
Well-said. That guy might not end up changing his opinion, but by engaging with you in a thoughtful conversation that dug below the surface, he came away with a new way of thinking about the problem. He met someone who -- contrary to the caricature he came in with -- actually agrees with him that we need rules; the new realization for him (if he chooses to accept it) is that those rules are broken. And maybe that gives him a new way of framing the problem he wants to solve.
Which is one of the things that university students learn how to do when they are exposed to ideas they disagree with and have to engage seriously with them -- which feels like an endangered curriculum these days, but is really really important.
no subject