 Let's do migrant crisis because, you know, eight thumbs down is not enough. I think I need to go for at least 20 thumbs down, because I think if I'm going to talk about immigration, that's how many we're going to get. Just a quick anecdote that has nothing to do with my discussion about the migrant crisis. Since Shizu, this is about Japan, Japan is, Alec, thank you for keeping track of the contributions. Really appreciate it. Ali's not here. So Alec has stepped in and kind of adding up the amount of money. We're at about $300 right now. We've got about half an hour to get to $600, so we've got a double. And so we've got to increase the pace here if we're going to get to that. Thank you for all of you who've stepped up to get us the $300. Some of you being very generous in getting that, I will get your questions in a few minutes. I promise. I'm just going to do a quick thing on Japanese migration, immigration, and then on the migrant crisis. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the migrant crisis. Just a point I want to make that it'll be relatively quick and then we'll get to the Q&A. Since Shizu Abe, I guess now the replaced Prime Minister of Japan, took office somewhere I think in 2015 or 2014. It's interesting what's happened. Japan has, as you know, a significantly aging population. The number of people in Japan is shrinking. The number of old people is skyrocketing. The expected degree of shrinkage of the Japanese workforce into the future, it's already shrinking, is accelerating. So you're going to get a lot of people leaving the workforce in Japan over the next few years, over the next few decades. And the population is dying off. I mean, you've got many, many people who don't have the demographics here. I'll get them for a future show. 80s and the 90s who are slowly dying off. The population in Japan is the fastest shrinking population in the world. Japan is also the country with maybe the most restrictive immigration laws in the world. It does not allow for net migration in. Indeed, if you look at migration from about 2000 to maybe 2016, Japan probably had more people leaving than coming in. It had a net negative migration. Japan generally is super restrictive for cultural reasons. One could argue that certain of Japanese policies are racist. They certainly have a certain view of what it means to be Japanese and to some extent of a certain sense of superiority that is involved in being Japanese and they don't want other people coming in. So you've got two phenomenas. You've got a shrinking population, which means very difficulty in growing GDP, very difficulty in producing and creating wealth in numbers that can keep the high standard of living that Japanese have. Fewer and fewer, fewer people working, more and more and more people living off of pensions and retirement. A larger and larger and larger government debt, largest debt to GDP of any country in the world, I think, is at least any developed country. Certainly in the world is Japan, well over 200% is government debt. And those are not recipes for economic success. And Japanese governments recently recognized that. And if you look at migration patterns since around 2016-17, suddenly migration has turned positive and has accelerated upwards. So that in the more recent years, Japan has increased its foreign resident population by 850,000 people, or roughly 40%. Since Shinzo Abe, who was voted in as a nationalist, as a real Japanese nationalist. And yet even Shinzo Abe recognizes that having a shrinking population is not good for the Japanese. And therefore they have dramatically expanded immigration opportunities into Japan. And we're seeing for the first time ever a significant increase in Japanese immigration into Japan, 850,000 or 40% increase over the last, what, six years or so? Anyway, I thought you'd find that interesting, particularly in the context of immigration into America. We've obviously got a migrant crisis on our southern border. You saw all the news stories about the Haitian migrants under bridge, flown back to Haiti. Almost all of the Haitians are there, and they're more coming from Central America. Are Haitians that have lived in Latin America for many years? COVID has destroyed many of the Latin American economies. Many of those Haitians were from Brazil. The Brazilian economy has been destroyed by COVID and by the government's response or lack of response to COVID. And as a consequence, they've lost their jobs. And many of them have migrated north towards the United States of America, hoping to find jobs here. Now, one positive about this is that to some extent, at least in the world out there, the American dream is still alive and well. These Haitian migrants were not coming to America to get welfare. They were not coming to America to suck your blood. They were not coming to America so that they could vote Democratic and destroy capitalism. Maybe they would ultimately, but that's not why they were coming. They were coming to America to work because America's still, people still believe out there in the world that America is a land of opportunity, that there are opportunities to live a better life, to raise kids, to rise up financially and send money back home because you make so much money. And if you add to that the fact that there's a massive, right now massive shortage of workers in the United States at every level. We are way behind in building homes, way behind the building homes. Now some of that is not in my backyard, government not allowing for building enough, not giving enough permits, all of that. But that's not the whole story. If you actually look at the story, that's not the whole story. There's a massive shortage of construction workers, typically immigrants. There's a massive shortage of H1B. There's a massive shortage of programmers in the U.S., starting salaries of places like Amazon are going through the roof, not just in the warehouse, but also in the programming space. I've talked about this in the past in the shows. The last job report showed large increases in wages. Why? Because Americans have become super increased productive? No. Two probable reasons. One, it could be inflation. That is, there's more money sloshing around. But more likely it's that there's a shortage of workers. Now there's not a shortage of workers in the world. There's just a shortage of workers in America. And by the way, both rates in America are below replacement. So America now has entered a declining population trend if you exclude immigration. Well, if in England there are loads of construction workers, send them to the U.S. because we're short of them. We're short of everything. We're short on nurses. We're short on construction workers. We're short of programmers. We're short on scientists. We're short of anybody with a PhD in a STEM profession. Because over the last two to three years, there have been a dramatic decrease in immigration partially because of Trump and partially because of COVID. So if you want to stem the migrant crisis on the border, just a quick story before we get to that. So there's these Haitians. We're trying to get to the U.S. a couple of years ago under Trump. And Trump wouldn't let them in. So they landed up staying in Mexico in the Tijuana area, so in Baja, California, south of California, in Mexico. And there's a Haitian community down in Tijuana in that area. And it turns out that they are incredibly hardworking, productive, that they are contributing to the local economy. They are, you know, it's Mexico, so they're not making any money as much money as they would in the United States, but there is a worker shortage in Mexico right now, particularly in the free trade zone, I forget what it's called, the Mercados, something like that, between Mexico and the United States, there's this zone where you can build factories that can import into the United States for no tariffs. And what's happening is because companies are trying to diversify their supply chains away from China, many companies have moved operations to Mexico. And Mexico has now a shortage of workers. So there are very, very few people from Mexico trying to get into the United States illegally. And most of people trying to get in from other countries in Latin America, and we'll get to why Mexico is doing relatively well in spite of having a horrific socialist president relative to other Latin American countries. But there's a shortage of workers, these Haitians found work, they're doing well, they're being productive, they could have been in the United States working, they could have relieved the workers shortage in the United States. But no, we keep them out, instead, they're in Mexico. Now, there are two things that can be done in terms of the migrant crisis. One is, let them in. In other words, dramatically increase the legal visas, work visas that are being provided. We provide way, way, way too few legal work visas to people coming into the United States. Dramatically increase them. And if you dramatically increase them, they will come legally. They won't be a migrant crisis. They won't be asking for asylum because they won't need to ask for asylum. Asylum is just an excuse. Give them a visa to come to work in the United States for five years. You don't have to make them citizens, you don't have to make them anything. Make them legal though, and let them come and work. There are so many industries that are struggling to find people, to work in the field, to work with horses, to work in industry. It's a massive, there's been a massive shortage for years and years and years. For people like welders, you know, a manual labor, skilled manual labor, huge shortage. Bring in anybody who could weld, send them over. And of course, you won't have a migrant crisis anymore. The second thing you can do, and is encourage economic development where they live. Now that doesn't mean give those countries money, the opposite. Giving the money just lands up in Cayman Island bank accounts in the name of the local thugs, dictators of those countries. No, the way to do it is to lower tariffs to zero. Why doesn't the United States unilaterally initiate a program, a zero tariffs for all Latin America? The whole America from Canada down to the tip of Chile should be a zero tariff into the United States unilaterally. I mean, it would be great if it was bilateral, but just make it unilaterally. I mean, ideally we would just sign a free trade zone. Now there are all kinds that we have like a free trade with Central America, but supposedly, right, but this deal and part of this deal is they can send in, they can send textiles into the United States tariff free. But in order to make the textiles, they have to buy yarn, you know, the stuff you make clothes from, from the US in order to get the tax free status. Get rid of all of that. Make the Caribbean, so Haiti, Dominican Republic, all the Caribbean islands, all the way down to Chile, all the way up to Canada. Make it for the purposes of America zero tariffs. Everybody wins. You get industry developed. This is why, by the way, Mexico does relatively well because of NAFTA, not because of any policies Mexico's, you know, engaging it, but because NAFTA allows companies to produce stuff in Mexico and send it into the United States without tariffs. And now they're discovering, these big companies are discovering that it's better for them to diversify globally. They're shutting down factories in Asia, moving them to Mexico and importing. And that's why their jobs in Mexico. Well, imagine if you did that with Guatemala and Honduras and Haiti and all these places and they could export to the United States. People would have jobs. They wouldn't have to leave their families and drag their kids across the desert to come into the United States and just create one big free trade zone in the Americas. And it's not like we need zero tariffs to send our stuff into Guatemala. The Guatemalans don't have enough wealth to buy the stuff that Americans produce. So it's insignificant. So make it unilateral and hope that they all mimic us. It's such an easy policy. It's such a no brainer. It's so straightforward. It's so America first. It's for the sake of America. It would make America great again. Lower tariffs to zero, at least for the Americas. You should do it globally, but at least for the Americas. And then increase the number of immigrants into the United States. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to youronbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.