 modern day debate. Today we are debating whether or not workers need protection from immigration. So really interesting topic to name. Really happy to introduce Jacob and Dale, their first time debaters today. So we're super excited to have them on. In case you haven't seen us before, we are a nonpartisan debate channel. We focus on debates on religions, science and politics. So if you like debates, if you like those topics, definitely be sure to subscribe. And also we have the links to Jacob and Dale in the description. So if you like either or both of them tonight, then definitely be sure to check out their content as well. So the structure of tonight's debate is going to be 10 minute openings. Dale is going to actually start and because he's the affirmative. And then we're going to have an hour or like 15 minutes of open discussion followed up by 15 to 20 minutes of question answer. So if you do have a question, be sure to put it into the super chat so we can get to it at the end. So we're going to go ahead and introduce our speakers tonight. Jacob, again, his link is in this description. What can you tell us about your link? What is on your link and what should people expect? Yeah, so I am. I'm a secretary treasurer of the labor council here in North Alabama. I'm a union member. And so that is kind of my primary primary descriptor. I also have a weekend show on the same radio station that Dale does Saturday mornings, 9 32 11 on WVNN. I co host the Valley Labor Report with David story. He's the president of a local machinists union. And so every Saturday morning, we talk about, you know, we talk about worker issues in Alabama and nationwide and recent and more recently internationally. We also have a YouTube channel. You can find us at the Valley Labor Report on YouTube and you know, Facebook, Twitter, all those places. Perfect. All right. And Dale, what would people be able to find at your link? Well, I have a couple of things going on. I am a radio talk show host Monday through Friday in North Alabama. You can listen to my show anywhere at WVNN.com. I've got a couple of YouTube channels that have just kind of started up here recently. I've been creating a program called cable news craziness, which is a media critique segment I do every single day. I just started posting that mostly done on Facebook, but we've moved it over to YouTube as well to put that out there. I'm a TV talk show host as well. So I have a lot of different platforms that I utilize. Jacob and I actually have known each other for a pretty long time. He's a regular guest on my radio program. You can hear him tomorrow morning. I believe he's on at 7 30. So we'll get to spend a lot of time together over the next two days. And I always enjoy when Jacob comes on. I'm a talk show host. I'm a conservative. There's no question about that. But Jacob will tell you, I love mixing it up and having conversations with people I disagree with almost as much as I like and having conversations with people I agree with. I love fighting with my listeners and pretty much anyone else. And I'm looking forward to today. Very, very cool. Well, thank you so much. So definitely be sure to check both of both of them out. We're really excited to have some new people debating. So but without further ado, Dale, if you want to go ahead and take it, the floor is yours. All right, I'm going to make this pretty simple. They said we have about 10 minutes. I'm not going to need anything near that amount of time. Let me explain this as simple as I see it. Immigration and workers are impacting each other every single day, especially in the negative. Now, why do workers need to be protected from immigration? Well, it's simple. The law of supply and demand, especially in the world in which we are living in right this very second. We see a lot of unemployment in our country skilled and unskilled and bringing in unskilled labor to compete is harming those at the very bottom, those who need it the most. It's easy for people like me and people in my industry to say, Hey, shut everything down. Stop everything because I can do my job from my house if I want to. I can stop and do anything I need to from my house. So why would I care if we're going to put a bunch of people out of work, but that's what's happened here. We've put a bunch of people out of work because of the terrible thing that is happening. I'm not alleging that we shouldn't have done any of that. What I'm merely pointing out is that should make us look at what's going on with our immigration system and say, maybe bringing in more people right now is not really a good idea. I have all four America being that shining light on the hill that people want to get to and they want to be able to come to America. But this should be a situation where we benefit from it as well. We cannot just be the place where people want to go. We have to be a place that takes care of our own people and can take care of the people we're putting in as well on the low wage scale and on the high wage scale. I mean, you'll see in Congress, they're trying to put together something where they bring in a bunch of individuals from India, give them a special status to come in and work in technology. I'll tell you, I know people that work in the tech field. I'm from North Alabama. Many people don't know this, but it is a hub of engineers and rocket scientists and all sorts of things. My wife has an engineering degree from Auburn at MBA from Alabama. We know for a fact that just recently, TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, was working on bringing in people with H1B visas and the workers there were going to be laid off, but not until they went and trained the individuals who were going to replace them. We've seen this at Disney and multiple other tech companies. And when immigration comes in like that, that is not for the worker. That is for the company. And I'm always amused to see people who normally think corporations are evil and businesses are evil, advocating for ways for them to cut salaries, cut individuals, cut benefits and bring in people that they can basically take advantage of. We saw that here. The president of the United States, our congressman and others got involved and said, no, no, no, that's not a good idea. This is a quasi government entity and you're going to put American citizens out of work in order to bring in skilled labor. Don't get me wrong. This is not unskilled labor, skilled labor to do those jobs at a lower cost. And again, we're seeing that everywhere. So the unskilled labor gets hurt in a very similar way, but at a much higher cost. I'll give you a perfect example. I was doing something at my house. Actually, this room that I'm in right now was being built. And my contractor came to me and said, look, Mr. Jackson, I cannot complete your project with the way we said we were going to because ice came in and did a raid on some facilities or some buildings that were being built by illegal labor. So the legal labor that I had paid to do my house left the person, the contractor and went to work for the individuals that had all their illegal labor taken away because they had to get that job done so they were paying more. So in that particular incident, I could look at a very small level and say the illegal labor went away and the wages for the workers went up. Now that sucked for me. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was absolutely terrible. And because here I was sitting with a half finished room, I have a little kid running around trying to play with screws. My bathroom was half done as well. And I know that's a first world problem. But it's a first world problem that was created by an influx of illegal labor. And then when it went away, what you saw was the prices go way up. So you can't tell me that the law of supply and demand works on everything except for labor because it's clear, very clear to me that the less labor you have, the higher cost you're going to pay the higher cost is going to be for the companies to have that labor. You want to know why prices, excuse me, you price they're down because of this. If you want to know why wages are down, it's because of this as well, what you are seeing is a massive full of labor, skilled and unskilled coming in, competing with American citizens. And that is doing the one thing we know it does, suppressing wages, we can talk about $15 minimum wage here, we can talk about unionizing this, and we can talk about all that stuff. But the simple fact of the matter is, if there is more labor in the pool than jobs available, you're going to have a real problem getting wages to go up organically, you're going to have to force it through governmental means, minimum wage increases, etc. So if you're asking me why workers need to be protected wages is the number one issue here. And yes, we'd have to pay more for a lot of different things. But that money would be going to American citizens who are here and who want to work. I'm all for bringing people in when we need individuals to do that job, which sounds cruel and callous and then people will question that. But I will tell you this, when we bring someone into this country legally, it should be to the benefit of the individual coming in. And it should be to the benefit of the company. And it should be to the benefit of the country as well. If we want to talk about illegal immigration, there is absolutely no reason to have an open door where people can come in and whenever they want, that is going to hurt those at the very bottom of the food chain every single time. So do workers need to be protected for immigration? Obviously. All right. Well, thank you so much, Dale. Jacob, the floor is yours. Yeah, so, you know, there is a lot there that I that I don't that I don't disagree with, especially the fact that workers in the United States have been taking a beating. You know, since the 70s, wages have stagnated while ours worked his reasons has risen. Retirements have become more precarious because of the broad elimination of pensions in lieu of 401ks jobs have been automated away and shipped overseas due to disastrous trade deals pushed by politicians income and wealth inequality are the highest that they've been since immediately before the Great Depression and the average worker to CEO pay ratio has increased from 25 to one to 320 to one. And I posit that the culprit of all of this destruction in the lives of working Americans is obvious. It's the boss. It's the corporate oligarchs and their benefactors who have benefited from all of this destruction. And they've been able to do all of this by buying off politicians by destroying unions, which are the chief vehicle for the advancement of workers interests and by stoking social resentment among their base. And that is that's what, you know, that's what all of this is. I do not believe that that all of the destruction that American workers have seen is because of immigrants documented or otherwise, it is because of the powerful interests at the top. And this has been important. And that's at the center of the conversation today. Corporate executives out for their own interest and certainly not yours, right wing billionaires, you name it, they stoke social resentment in order that their base votes on these issues instead of their economic interests. You know, one of the more interesting examples is gay marriage. Lots of people voted on that five years ago. But now that marriage equality has become the law of the land, no one talks about it anymore. Of course, you know, there are more sophisticated, there are more sophisticated social concerns that they try to paint as economic concerns, which is immigration. In conversation surrounding immigration, you'll have somebody point to a real problem that workers faced, often some of the very same ones that I outlined previously, like low wages, poverty, unemployment, crime, to stir up resentment. And instead of pointing this resentment where it belongs at the boss at politicians or the system that allows so few to get unimaginably wealthy while wages stagnate, this resentment is pointed at immigrants. They'll tell American American workers that the problems they face are not the fault of anybody with any real power in this country. They'll tell American workers that the problems they face are because of immigration. There are a lot of examples, of course, but there's a really good one from a column just a few weeks ago that Dale wrote. He said that nearly half of Alabama's small businesses were not comfortable with their cash flow. That's a real problem, obviously, where businesses are strapped for cash. That means problems not only for the business owners, but for the workers that they employ. And that's, you know, that's something that I'll regularly, that I will readily admit to. But instead of using the statistic to point towards real and obvious solutions like increasing the Paycheck protections program or some other way of supplementing a business's income, he points us to securing our border as a solution for Alabama businesses not being comfortable with their cash flow. That's ostensibly because cash strapped businesses would be more likely to exploit vulnerable undocumented immigrants. And so border and so border security would theoretically protect workers. The problem here is that even if we take this solution to the extreme, like many on the right would propose, if we had deport every undocumented immigrant, if we increase border militarization and set aside all of the cartoonishly obvious negative side effects that the necessity of an infinitely increasing border security budget would cause, if we set aside the destroyed communities and families, if we set aside the economic devastation of entire sectors of the economy being destroyed, the cash flow of small Alabama businesses would be the same. And so so is the case for almost every other problem that folks point to when they tried to lay the blame on immigrants. The problem would not be solved. And even the thin tether that Dale used to connect the problem to his non solution that being a study that found that undocumented workers would work for 42 percent less than native workers breaks under scrutiny. For one, we know that the vast majority of US workers are simply not affected with respect to their wages by immigration. That's that's just a fact. Study after study has shown that a very, very, very small portion of the American workforce is affected by immigration. And even for the small segment of the working population that is in competition with undocumented immigrants for their jobs, the downward pressure is pretty small. Even conservative economists like George Borjas, who, you know, his research is used constantly by nativists and reactionaries in support of anti immigrant arguments. They have found that the downward pressure on wages by undocumented immigration is in the single digit, in the single digit percent percentages. We're looking at two, three, four, five percent decreasing wages. And then the question is, why is there downward pressure at all? Why are immigrants, especially undocumented ones willing to work for lower wages? We know that it's not because of some innate or generic characteristic of their person, but it's a result of the myriad of political decisions that have been made regarding their position in society, specifically the precarity of their ability to live here. And that goes for documented and undocumented immigrants. There are many immigrants here on work visas that make them, you know, as they would say, legal, quote unquote. But if your future, your ability to make a living is tied to a corporation continuing to sponsor you, what is the likelihood that you speak up about workplace injustices? What is the likelihood that you try to organize the union to secure better wages? The likelihood I would posit is pretty small and for obvious reasons. And we can amplify that effect significantly for undocumented workers who can be deported at the drop of a hat or more specifically the call of a boss. We can see that this happened and happened not all that long ago. This happened in August of 2019. Ice raided chicken plants in Mississippi and rest and arrested 600 workers on the job for immigration violations. This was immediately after the union representing these workers won a multimillion dollar sexual harassment lawsuit. What's the result of that retaliation going to be? It'll obviously be a lot harder for workers to fight. And this will not only affect wages and working conditions of the undocumented workers in the plant, of course, which of course there are still, but it'll affect us born workers in the plant as well. Us born workers, I think would be much better served by robust protections for their immigrant sisters and brothers, both for their right to live here and for their right to organize. Because that would make them less exploitable and thus set the labor market on a more just playing field. Because while an exploitable migrant population may decrease wages by a couple percentage points here and there for a small segment of the population, unionization raises wages by 10 to 20% on average and by even more the further down the income scale you go. And not only that, but unions make workplaces safer, decreasing fatalities by more than 30%. And in fact, in nursing homes where the staff was represented by a union, there were 40% less COVID fatalities. When you take all of this into account, the answer, I think is pretty obvious. US born workers don't need protection from immigration, US born workers and migrant workers need protection from the boss. All right, thank you so much, Jacob. We can go into our 15 minutes to hour long discussion. Is this where I start? Okay, I'll start. Let me just say this. I agree with Jacob agreeing with me. Because if you heard what Jacob had to say here, well, we agreed the same person benefits from all of this. That's the corporation. He can cast him as a boogeyman and he can talk about the unionization and all these other things. If that's what he wants to, he can also talk about gay marriage and other social issues as well. I thought we were here to discuss immigration. If we're going to discuss immigration, let's talk about those chicken plants. We're 600 individuals were taken after a raid or disappeared after a raid. Those 600 individuals, they were illegal aliens. That's just a reality here. And those 600 people were working in chicken plants next to American citizens and other American citizens want those jobs as well. And you can make the argument that the wage is too low so an American won't work there. Well, there's a reason. You have 600 people working in chicken plants for wages that are as Jacob would tell you that not good enough. What's the best way to make that better? Well, you have less labor that's willing to do that and then the wage will go up. You can't continue to bring people in, as he said, and maybe he didn't use these words, that operate as sort of an underclass that that can be plucked and used for labor and then when you have problems with them, you can discard them and push them to the side. The answer that Jacob comes up with is bring more of them in. I don't know what the answer there is unless you're going to legalize every single one of them that's already here, every single one of them that comes in here after that and you just continue to allow them to come no matter what, open up the borders and let everyone in. If anyone believes that's going to be good for the workers, I don't know where they get that from because it just doesn't really make sense. And again, we can discuss unionization and all these other things, but that's not really what this is all about. The unions ironically have jumped on board with a lot of liberal positions that we have seen over the last couple of years and it's to their detriment, it's to their detriment. They have lost power amongst themselves, they have lost power amongst the general population and they see this underclass as potential members to their union that they can then use in order to raise wages. I mean this is obvious, that's why half of what you just heard wasn't about immigration at all. It was about evil corporations who take advantage of an immigration system in order to keep wages down, so we should reward those evil corporations by allowing more people to come in here and be taken advantage of. That was a union rat for more unionization and we should come back and debate that sometime, but I thought this was about immigration. No, everything with labor, when you're talking, the question was centered around workers and do workers need protection from immigration? And so anytime you're talking about workers, anytime you're talking about labor, then of course unions are going to be implicated there. And, you know, Dale mentions this multiple times. He mentioned that undocumented immigrants are an underclass, that they're easily exploitable and, you know, he acts like this is a natural, a natural fact that this is unchangeable, that this is just the way that society will operate here to for and forever more when that is simply not the case. The reason that they're exploitable, the reason that they work for low wages and poor working conditions, immigrants, whether they're documented or undocumented, of course the effect is worse when they're undocumented, but it's the case when they're documented too. When we have these H-1B visas that tie the right of a person to live here to their employer, of course they are not going to be very likely to speak out. Of course they're not going to be very likely to unionize for higher wages, better working conditions, things like that. And so the question, you've got two possible solutions. One is to artificially decrease the labor supply, deport all of the immigrants that are living here currently, cut off all future immigration, and that it just doesn't make sense. We've got whole sectors of the economy, depend on immigrants documented and undocumented. We've got whole communities that are they're all interspersed with native-born American citizens. It just would not be feasible. And so the other option then is to, like Dale said, give them legal status, allow them to not be so easily exploitable. They don't have to be in a position where they're so exploitable. If you give them the right to live here, then they will be able to better exercise their right to unionize because, you know, something that a lot of people don't know is that everybody working in the United States has the right by law to a union. Of course it's very difficult to exercise that right when, at the call of the boss, ICE will come in and break down your windows and deport you, you know, but everybody does have the right to unionize in this country currently. But that is hampered by they're not having the right to live here. If you give them the right to live here, they're not going to be as easily exploitable and they'll be able to come together with their US-born sisters and brothers to fight for better wages and working conditions. And that's how working people have always bettered their condition. Working people have never successfully bettered their condition in the world by cutting off other working people. They've always had to band together. They've always had to stand together with each other, with normal every day working people to fight for better wages and working conditions. And that's how they've won it. They've never won it by cutting off people that work just like them. It hasn't happened. Nobody is advocating this deportation of all these individuals. You may hear it on the campaign stage. Donald Trump was president for four years. He also controlled Congress for part of that. It never came up. It's never going to happen. There aren't a big enough there's not a big enough movement inside the Republican Party to do any of that. That is never going to happen. It's a straw man. It's thrown out there to scare people because that's what this is about. This is about fear and throwing out this 300. They're going to deport all these people. We got to watch out. There's been no movement to make that happen. And if anything what we should be in favor of is what's been actually advocated by the Trump administration. They said let's deport people who have been to jail. Who are supposed to be gone already. Who should be out here. Look at our prison system up and down in every single state. You have a massive illegal immigration population there. That's causing problems. We've gotten so far off the track because you just want to talk about unionization over and over and over again. When the issue is immigration and what you truly want. And I don't blame you for this. You're a labor activist. This is exactly what you should want. You want the legalization of all this labor. So then you can unionize that and legalize them unionize them and get higher wages for everybody involved. That's a completely fine goal to have in this situation. But the simple fact of the matter is you have gone over and over and over about how evil corporations are. About how evil the boss is. About how evil it is. And I would argue to you nothing we kind of agree on some of that. Because what you're saying is they're taking advantage in order to keep the wages down. But why in the world would this evil corporation just take it on the chin. We've seen it over and over and over again. As we watch this happen the plants will leave. They will go elsewhere as they already have. And it will just accelerate that further. If we're talking about and we shouldn't be talking about what we are mass unionization of 11 million immigrate illegal immigrants. I mean it's never going to happen. So we shouldn't be discussing. And B that's not the solution here. There was a couple of things that you mentioned there. One you mentioned an illegal immigrant population which seemed to imply that there's a problem that American workers face a problem from the criminality of undocumented immigrants. Which is which I'll you mentioned in passing. So I'll say in passing that we know that that's not true. Study after study has shown that undocumented immigrants once they get here they commit fewer crime than native born fewer crimes but still crimes. I mean the idea that it's fewer but what we know we know that because Americans kill people more. It's ridiculous. No we the reason that that is an important thing to know that undocumented immigrants commit less crime than the native born population is because of course we have a finite law enforcement resource. We have finite law enforcement resources. And so do we commit those law enforcement resources to deporting undocumented immigrants or no we're not even doing that. That's not happening. And and additionally you said that the Trump administration has actually is pushing for the deportation of criminal undocumented immigrants which is you know which is I take that I'll take that or leave that. That's actually not what he's doing. He has actually made it more difficult to deport criminal undocumented immigrants because he has made it more difficult for immigration judges to put a non-criminal or nonviolent criminal or non-criminal I can't remember if it's non-criminal or non-violent criminal undocumented immigration immigrant deportation cases aside. Previously under the Obama administration judges had a lot of leeway over the cases that they heard whether or not to deport an undocumented immigrant. And the Trump administration has taken away a lot of that leeway which means that immigration judges cannot more easily bring to the front of the line for deportation violent criminals which is ostensibly there and hire more immigration judges in order to to make this go faster. What happened? It was opposed because they knew that the end result of more immigration judges would be more deportations. Yes that's exactly what was the premise that they had used and they said no no no we can't do that we can't do this. The coming up of the works is intentional it is an intentional thing that we have seen happen here you slow down the whole process you gum it up completely it doesn't work and then it just implodes. Sure that's I mean what whatever I'm not familiar with with the effort to hire more immigration judges and I'm not of I'm I'm not familiar. No no I was bringing the I was bringing that up because with what we have I didn't bring up the the hiring of the immigration judges I brought up the Trump administration making it more difficult for immigration judges to deport violent undocumented immigrants which is just which is just true we've got these resources we've got this amount of immigration judges and the Trump administration made it more difficult for them to put violent criminals at the front of the line and so that that that great workers legal and otherwise into the country wages would go up that's the argument. The argument is that if if the immigrants that we allow into the country not not necessarily making an argument for for open borders per se but yeah I think we should probably have a more liberal liberal immigration policy I think that I think that in fact we should have the immigration policy or I think that a start would be the immigration policy the immigration system that exists in the minds of lots of conservatives which is they think that if you're a good person and you know you're not a criminal and you're going to come here and you're going to be you're going to do good work you're going to pay taxes do your thing then you then you're able to come that's the system that lots that exists in the mind of conservatives I think that would be a fine system and if you allowed them to come here with the same rights to live here as you and I have the same rights to to fight for better wages and working conditions in or out of a union then yes obviously wages would rise because the reason that they work for low wages the reason that they work in such a terrible working conditions is because of the precarious position that they occupy in society it's not so it it is your argument and so make sure I understand this correctly it is your argument that a completely unlocked immigration system and you say I want open borders per se but I think we could probably dig into that and you would probably want almost every expectation of open borders and we could do that if you want to but your argument is basically that if we allowed an open immigration system legal and other wise that somehow wages are going to magically go up inside or outside of unions so the laws of supply and demand are going to cease to exist in the labor field because we're going to allow let's just say that we have 11 million we've been saying that for like 15 years at least so shirts maybe 12 million by this point so we'll allow all those people to participate as you said without fear of being deported which you say they're living in under every single day yet more more keep coming and you're going to then say oh yeah the doors open so we just allow whoever else to come in as well and that right there is going to make corporations go let's pay them more let's let's give them more oh more unskilled labor yes yes that's exactly yes more skill labor because we haven't seen what happens with that we haven't seen what has happened to the construction trade with an influx of illegal unskilled labor talk to anyone that's worked in the construction trade over the last 20 or 30 years and they will tell you the same thing talk to any roofer that you can find and I know many of them who have lost their jobs and because they lost their companies because they wouldn't hire illegal labor illegal unskilled labor because the other people would pay them less and they would be able to take more jobs bid for less it put those companies out of business so again this magical thinking that more people in just give them legal status and businesses evil businesses and keep that in mind with evil bosses they will then say oh I want to pay more money for this it doesn't make any sense there's no evidence that that will happen no I do not think I do not think that better wages and working conditions are going to come at the um out of the benevolence uh the kindness of the heart of of these corporations I think that it will come out of a necessity because supply and demand are not the only two the only two factors that you deal with in an economy which is obvious because uh you know like there have been multiple studies that have shown that on in uh lots of ways immigrants are actually a boon uh in the American economy and uh um you know when when you have more uh immigrants living here you're going to have more need for housing you're going to have uh more need for grocery stores you're going to need more restaurants there you know even under the even under just the two supply and demand when the supply goes up because of immigrant labor the demand also goes up because they have a demand for goods and services and uh uh and another thing that you have to uh take in mind is what these workers would be willing to work under and where they can more reasonably be confident in their ability to to to demand higher wages and better working conditions then yes wages would go up and that's not and that it's not a uh that's not some crazy um wishful thinking because we know study after study has shown that uh unionization increases wages 10 to 20 percent at least in union worksites and higher union density increases wages in non-union worksites by uh uh by a factor of several percent and so you know of course when you have workers that are more confident in their ability uh to to organize for better wages and working conditions yes they're going to have better wages and working conditions and it's not going to be out of the good graces of the boss it's going to be because workers organized i don't understand the argument that if we allow more immigrants to come into the country it will create more grocery stores therefore it will create more jobs as they take the job of the individuals that are already here it does not take like do you do not take the grocery stores like i don't understand like you don't understand i agree you don't understand but that's not the point the point is i'm not saying that that doesn't happen i agree with you if you bring in 300 more people yes they're going to need more services more resources more restaurants more all these things there's no question about that we see that every single day when we live in a community of the country that is booming and we are watching everything just blow up around here even during the last downturn even during covid we're seeing that happen that there's a reality here in influx of individuals will of course require that meet more things be built to serve those individuals and nobody disagrees with that but the problem here is you take individuals and you displace them and what happens is and we talked about the construction thing this is the easiest way to do it that what happens is the individuals come in and displace those individuals who are doing construction and then they leave those jobs and they have to go to the service sector and when they go to that service sector they make less money are there more of them absolutely there are more service sector jobs when people come in for that oh yeah are there more hospital jobs absolutely that's a case but that is actually i don't think anyone's going to disagree with that well one of the few instances where you'll agree that the resources that are gobbled up by illegal immigrants does not outpace what they bring to the community at the low end it's about 45 or 54 billion dollar drain on the system if you take all the taxes and all the resources and everything that they bring to the table and i'm talking about social security that they will never collect payroll taxes was stolen with stolen green green cards excuse me social security numbers all those things there's a drain on the system but yeah i don't disagree i don't disagree yes more grocery stores will exist yes and more apartments will exist as well all of that is absolutely true but the question is does it increase the wages and the answer is no because if you take a job where someone is making a livable wage which i know that certainly you should probably love making a livable wage and you take that from them and you put someone in there who is also unskilled let me call them unskilled but they're laborers and you take them and you replace them with someone who pays less and then that individual who had that job for the last 20 years has to go do something else sure they are going to be in another job but they are going to make less money and that is going to impact them are there more people earning money yes absolutely are they actually helping wages go up no it's a displacement i mean they don't disappear they just go do jobs that make less money that's an obvious thing that happened you're i mean you're just you're ignoring the fact that the reason that they take these low wages is because of their precarious situation they would not i didn't ignore that i i made that point in the very beginning of this conversation yeah it's absolutely what they do they have no choice that they have absolutely no choice if they had a choice didn't they would choose not to take those low wages and that's what i'm saying if they had a choice to have better wages and working conditions that's what they would choose and if they'll give them the right to live here then they would have that choice there would be more of them and that would not increase the wage that's not look what's happening right now at the border look what's happening there's going to be a surge and now that the tyrannical monster donald trump is gone and maybe better work we'll get out there you guys can kick some of that wall down and let more people in that's possible they are excuse me that's happening right now there are more people coming into the country because they know they know that enforcement is going to go down the the amount of attention we pay to enforcement is going to go down under the biden administration he's already talked about docka and all these other things which never went away in reality and we're talking about more of that and that's fine those people have been here there's an argument made for allowing them to stay there's even an argument made for legalizing them but at some point in time the american people should be able to say okay okay okay hold on we're going to take all these kids that were brought here or when they were young that no fault of their own and we're going to allow them both then we have to allow another couple hundred thousand every single year to come in or a million to come in we have to allow that at some point time we have to be able we should have been able to say okay thank you but no thank you and we tried to do that it didn't work and you're going to see more labor come in and you got to ask yourself this question seriously as that labor comes across the border at the beginning of the biden administration when joe biden changes the rules at the border and says we're we're going to do more catch and release we're going to allow people to just disappear into the ether we're going to do more of that you got to ask yourself this question is the american worker going to benefit and if you can answer that question without the word unionization it might mean something but i will tell you at this particular point in time barring the mass legalization of all of these individuals and then instant unionization of all these individuals i don't know how to help you and you know it's funny you talk about unions a lot but you seem to ignore the fact that union power has diminished significantly so it's almost like the unions have lost their stroke so they have to find new people a new underclass to bring into that union in order to rebuild their power and guess what i don't think it's going to work you said you know you named off different things and you said will it be good for the american worker and of course the answer is that depends if lots of undocumented immigrants are allowed into the country without robust worker protections and without protections for their ability to live here then no that's not going to be good for the american worker because the the reason that they will be easily exploitable will continue to exist and honestly i don't i don't really see that changing under under a biden administration because i don't see i don't see a you know hopefully we will see a path to citizenship or at least a path to permanent legal status for all of the all of the undocumented immigrants that are living here which would of course nothing else let's say that you know let's say that we keep the stream of an of documented immigration the same and the choices are either to give the undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship or not giving them a path to citizenship is obviously going to benefit american workers benefit the american economy as a whole but if we allow the the conditions that they're they're living in to perpetuate then of course it's not going to be good the thing that i would have is that where is the i don't i don't understand this argument because at this particular point in time barring an executive order of some kind where dot where joe biden just says okay we're going to legalize everyone that's here there is no way in hell that there is going to be some form of legalization coming through the united states and you can win georgia hell you put doug jones back in alabama it doesn't matter you're still not going to get that through right and the total hard hard and the simple fact is as you make these arguments about things you know joe biden's not going to do you you'll get docka back and in reality most people believe that that's a good thing to do and could be used as a bargaining chip to actually fix some of the immigration problems but that's not on the cards what's in the cards is a return to where we were where undocumented illegal immigrants come across the border and take jobs from american citizens in depressed wages that's the reality of the situation we are living in right now and all this pie in the sky stuff about letting some guy come across the border when joe biden's uh inaugurated and legalizing him that ain't gonna happen no i just said that i like i know you just said to me what i said to you i said that it's probably not going to happen what we're talking about you i'm pointing i'm pointing out to you that what you're saying is that you're acknowledging without that happening that the wages are in fact going to go down as immigrants come into this country that's just a fact because the scenario that you need to have in order for the wages that you think would go up is never going to happen there's going to be another mass embassy it's never going to happen not anytime soon there's not going to be another mass embassy well what we're doing what as in our position as you know media pundits you know what however we want to say that you know i've i've got a day job and i and i've got different stuff that i do with the union but in our position as media pundits we're supposed to argue not only for what uh uh for what uh you know inform the audience of what can happen and what should happen under those under those uh restrictions so on and so on but we're supposed to argue for what the world should look like and what can and and what uh what ought to happen you know without without all of these you know political restrictions and that's and that's what i'm saying i'm saying that in uh i'm saying that the ideal for the american worker is that undocumented immigrants here have a right to live here they have a right to organize and that any future immigrant that comes here has the same rights what you know we can talk about the number you know i'm i'm i'm open to a higher or lower number but any immigrant that comes here ought to have full rights to live here and to organize and that and and that's just that's just true that that is what country in the world what country in the world gives any immigrant that wants to come into its borders full rights instantly none it's it's a made-up thing and you say yeah we shouldn't be restrained by politics no you're not even strictly strained by reality because if we want to operate that if we want to operate that way then why don't we just talk about building a two-sided or a two walls and a moat with alligators in it and gun turds at the top and then we'll get banned and we'll deport all the illegal immigrants well i mean that's what Trump was talking about hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on because if we're going to do that i guarantee you that that would cause american wages to go up there's no question if we did that if we eliminated 11 million people right away and got them out of the country put them in vans as you reference earlier it did that i mean as long as we're not restrained by politics or reality or any of those things let's pick them up and air drop them into mexico no matter where they're from and i promise you this wages will go up so let's just forget about reality and just talk about whatever you want no that's not what i that that that that's not what i was saying what you said no no i said any any immigrant that we do allow into the country and i said specifically the number can be higher or lower or whatever but any immigrant that we do allow should have full rights to live here and to organize maybe not necessarily citizenship or voting rights we could you know that that's debatable as well but any any person living here should not be able to be deported at the drop of a hat because that is bad for them and it is very bad for american workers that is demonstrably bad for american workers and you know you mentioned you mentioned all of these silly things and almost every single one of those silly things that you talked about was something that the president of the united states has advocated for you know he's wrong i mean is the reality is he's wrong not only can he not not only could he not pull that off he didn't have the support there's a party to do some of that stuff and what he did do was fought every step of the way barack obama created a DACA program out of thin air and the executive order and up until last week dot in turn was trying to end that thing and it just like no you can't end an executive order with an executive order what in the world are we even talking about it here's here's you said that deporting every single undocumented immigrant here is a pipe dream you said that uh putting a moat and alligators and gun turrets and all of that along the border that's a pipe dream that's a pipe dream and you recognize that you recognize that these are you know these are undoable things just politically impossible so then every undocumented immigrant here you basically accept that they're they're going to stay here they should have a path to at least legal why residency right if you do that no why because it's good for American workers no it's not good for American workers of course it is tell me tell me tell me hold on no tell me is it is it good Dale is it good for if we've got you know the sunk cost that that we've both agreed to is that there are 11 million or so undocumented workers in America it's actually 20 but whatever yeah sure even 20 who get you know let's say let's say there are 20 million undocumented problem let's say there are 20 million undocumented workers and you say that it is a pipe dream to get rid of all of them so then we've got two options with 20 let's say 20 million undocumented workers in this country we've got two options then we allow them to continue to be in this in this precarious situation where they're always looking over their shoulder for an ICE agent to come and come and deport them and thus they will be very unlikely to fight for better wages and working conditions in a union or outside of a union or we can give them legal status and allow them to to the right to live here which would obviously be good for them but you can obviously not good for the American worker you cannot allow the 20 million lawbreakers to come into the country and then say okay you're here that's fine you're legalized now get out there and get those higher wages because what does that do at the same time you refuse anything that would stop more people from coming here and they tried to make a deal they tried to make a deal that was DACA for border security and Nancy Pelosi said absolutely not and you support that decision correct I'm not sure what the specific decision that you're talking about is good more man listen listen listen would you have traded DACA for more border security I'd be open to it okay well Nancy Pelosi wasn't open to it you're more open minded than she is so you could have had some of this this legalization here that you could have but Nancy Pelosi wasn't open to it she said absolutely not they claim that just the idea here is laughable because we're not gonna get to a situation where we just continue to allow whoever wants to come into the country to come into the country with minimal pushback and then say okay legalize them do we legalize the ones that are here the day Joe Biden is inaugurated or do we do it two months later for those who have been here for 60 days give them 60 days to get in it's not gonna happen that way and the simple fact is the idea that allowing more and more and more to come in which is exactly just using your let's go ahead and legalize 20 million of them because that will help the American worker somehow that is not going to stop more from coming into the country especially if under your scenario you give them rights from the second that they walk through the door and I bet you want to give them a union card as well since you love talking about that hand them a union card when they get in there as well and say come on in and start bargaining that is not going to increase wages it is going to increase the labor pool even further and depress the wages of those who need it the most you talked earlier about how it's oh it's a minimal impact just a small single digit group of people who are actually impacted by illegal labor you said that that was you those are your words well if you're one of those single digit people which by the way if we're talking about a country of 300 million people and then a single digit is what three million people so here we are having a conversation where we just scoff off 27 million people oh no maybe it's only 8% 24 million people and the impact that that has on their wages and then the impact it has on that grocery store you were talking about in the restaurant and all these other things as if that's just minuscule and irrelevant to the conversation it's very relevant no no no no of course it's relevant and that's why I mentioned it you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna slough off facts that are you know ostensibly harmful to my argument it's very important to look at those people because like you said their lives are affected what the reason that it's important to recognize that the effect is in fact so minuscule is because it's an easily fixable problem we can look at something like you know Brian Kaplan is this is a right-wing libertarian type person who is in favor of a more open border type policy and he says you know we could look at something like a one-time tax on immigrants coming into the country and that can offset that can offset taxes that are charged to people that are in this group or something like that and you know there it's such a small segment of the population that it would be easy to through government machinations alone to offset that hit to their income but even without government machinations the reason that it's important to point out that it is a very small and specific subset of the population that their income declines by one or two or three percent is because that can in fact be turned around by unionization because unionization increases wages by 10 to 20 percent and you're telling me that the you're telling me that the bricklayer who loses his job because an illegal immigrant comes in and legalizes him and takes it as long as that guy who took his job joins the union the guy that got laid off that it's not working at a fast food restaurant his wages are going to go up 20 percent that's that's silly that's a silly thing no it's not it's exact hold on no it's not what I said I'm sorry dude just let me where this breaks in let uh Jacob finish his answer since you asked a question I just want to give him some time to finish his answer all right no I mean that's no of course people that lose you know people that lost their jobs to a worker that that was undocumented and that was that's easily exploitable and works for lower wages of course that's not gonna help him but under a paradigm where workers where workers have the right to live here have the right to organize that is gonna happen either not or not nearly as often and when I say unionization increases wages 10 to 20 percent obviously that means at the work site that is unionized like obviously that's that's obvious yeah the guy who lost his job doesn't get his increase that doesn't make any sense you've still hurt that guy the guy that lost his job you know to the extent that such a person exists yes we need to look at what you you know I mean it's it's a very like I said it's a very small segment of the population and there are ways to ameliorate those concerns through government machinations through decreased taxes on those populations through income subsidies public programs things like that that would more than offset the income loss and you know we can talk about again unionization in the service sector places in Scandinavia where almost all workers are unionized people that work at McDonald's make the equivalent of like $22 an hour here and they're doing the same job and you know there's no reason that workers here in the united states that work in the service sector shouldn't be making shouldn't be making living wages and you know we often forget that in the past you know manufacturing jobs did not always they did not always give living wages and good compensation package packages it was not through the benevolence of the boss that that happened it was not even through the labor market it was through organizing it was through workers coming together and fighting for better wages and working conditions that you could support an entire family on one job at gm yeah well you're not gonna happen in service sector yeah you're not no it cannot happen in the service sector if you get to the if you no of course it can't hey if you're talking about supporting us a family of four on a service industry job here's what you're going to get you're going to get a bunch of kiosks that you walk into and you push a bunch of buttons on and then you have someone bring you your food that's it that's all that's gonna happen that's where it's going these benevolent companies that you're talking about do not exist they do not exist wages went up because it was boom time that's that's part of this as well that we have to remember we have to remember the economy grows and wages grow and all these other things that's a big part of it as well it's not it's never and you'll admit this it's never out of the benevolence of the individual paying the wage it's out of a necessity in order to get the labor to move their product that's all it's about and we can continue to talk about this a thousand different ways and unionization this and unionization that more unionization which i think you'll admit is moving in the wrong direction from where you want to be it is not going to lead at the higher wages it's going to lead to less plants it's going to lead to less places to work it's going to lead to that amazon i know you want to talk about this is probably having fitness in already in besamer alabama you guys are working very hard to unionize a plant down there and you seem to think that that's going to work and they're going to get that done and i will defer to you on whether or not it is going to actually be unionized but the question to be what will they do next will amazon watch their first plant get unionized and go huh i guess we lost that one or will they retaliate and maybe not officially maybe not right away but will they retaliate to send the message i don't know the answer that but i think you know the answer to that and it is that amazon is an evil nasty horrible corporation with an evil nasty boss and the idea that he's going to take it on the chin in besamer alabama seems somewhat unlikely i don't know why you want to give those individuals more power to pay people less i just don't it doesn't make any sense but that's where we are i'm going to just jump in really fast here dale since you started jake if you want to respond and then we can move on to the questions is that good with both of you yeah that works all right go ahead jake if you can respond yeah so i'll just hit on two points you know you mentioned boom time you mentioned it was a boom time when the wages went up at these manufacturing facilities and you could support a family on one income from gm and this boom time you know we didn't actually say the dates but of course we all know that it's the 40s 40s 50s and 60s and why was it a boom time it was a boom time because uh the um we had a demand side economic policy instead of the supply side economic policy of the reagan years we had high taxes a high progressive taxation uh system which got as high as 94 percent in the top income bracket we had strong union unionization we had 32 percent of all american workers were unionized and uh we had strong public welfare uh systems and so the reason that that it was a boom time is because lots of people had high wages they were buying lots of things which required more jobs which you know and so the answer to you know the way to make another boom time is to make jobs that have higher wages and better working conditions which you do through unionization and worker organizing and this thing go on to the questions hold on but before we go on a question I do want to say just this no the reason why it was boom time is because there were more work than workers because something that happened on the planet that required the american workforce to create where no one else could because we destroyed a large portion of the planet and giant a giant workforce as well that's why it was boom time okay the united states escaped from world war two with its in the industry sector unscathed while we bombed the europe's into the stone age that's what happened that's why it was boom time it wasn't because of tda programs and fdr's new deal that's a laughable thing oh yeah i mean of of course that that had part that had to do with it but of course another part of it had to do with the fact that these people who were making war time making war time working in the war time industry for you know repurposed gm plants and stuff they had more money to spend and so we we saw the largest talking about after yeah and so we saw we saw the largest economic growth you know in the country's history several years after the end of world war two but then you know you said that will amazon take it on the chin you know will unionization hurt plants and you know the the fact of the matter is that most plants that have most jobs that have gone overseas were non-union jobs there are it jobs there are things that were not heavily unionized and most most jobs that have gone overseas were not unionized were not in sectors that were heavily unionized and we have lots of unionized jobs that are still here in the country that are that still work really well that are still very profitable in fact we've got it right here in north alabama indicator ula which is a company that yellow hammer news you know a place that that you write for a lot they love they love to sing the praises of ula and ula is union their machinists are union they have and and because they're union they have the the best benefit package you know in north alabama basically they constantly have other ceo say oh you know don't pay your workers so much because we can't compete and you know they pay their workers so much because they're organized and so you know um i can't say exactly what amazon will do i think it'll depend in part on uh the political situation and if we had political leaders in alabama that were willing to stand up for workers and uh across the nation then amazon would be certainly more tied they would have their hands would be more tied than they are now but even still you know i don't know what that i don't know what they're going to do there are lots of places that have union worksites and union um union employees and they're extremely profitable and extremely efficient so you know all right and with that if both of you are okay with it we'll get into the questions okay actually the first one is for dale um and actually the only one so far um it's from sigifredo sarabia they say at dale is this a mexican thing yes they make up almost half because of geography i'm not sure exactly what they mean by that does your arguments fit indians chinese filipinos koreans etc that take a whole education back to their country for progress no would be the short answer the only nationality that i've referenced is actually indian since all of this started so that's not uh it's not it but hey it's a good way to frame the argument that maybe the person who you disagree with might be racist without knowing anything about it that's smart good good take all right and i think with that i think those are all the questions um but i really appreciate you both coming on thank you so much i i know uh you guys are both really busy so i really appreciate your time and also absolutely to the viewers thank you for taking your time and watching this but um without uh further ado have a wonderful rest of your evening keep on separating the reasonable from the unreasonable and um definitely join our debate tomorrow on democracy with uh brenton lingo and the distributist we're really fun to debate so definitely tune into that thank you everyone