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Lars along with many other national and local talk radio hosts across the country are broadcasting live at the Federation for American Immigration Reforms (FAIR) 15th Feet to the Fire radio row; in what has become the largest annual gathering of talk hosts in the country to send a message to Congress and to President Joe Biden that Americas immigration needs to be fixed.

Heres a recap of all the interviews Lars conducted on the second day:

Ben Bergquam What are your carpet shoes all about?

Dale Wilcox, the executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, comes on to answer: What chance do the Marthas Vineyard 48 have in court?

If Congress shifts, can we get something meaningful done? To answer, Lars brings on Ira Mehlman, the spokesman and media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Jeff Sessions Are illegal aliens an existential threat to the country? PT 1

Jeff Sessions How should we vet possible legal immigrants? PT 2

Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, spoke with Lars about whats immigration like from the side of processing visa applications.

Whats it like with a ranch on the Arizona and Mexico border? John & Jobeth Ladd are Arizona cattle ranchers, whose property is often the entry point for illegals crossing into the country.

Mark Morgan, the former Chief Operating Officer and acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, speaks with speaks Lars to answer: How do we get people to see the immigration problems when the white house cant?

Tom Homan, the Former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tells Lars how we could fix the 3 border loopholes?

The post [Day 2] Feet To The Fire Recap appeared first on The Lars Larson Show.

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[Day 2] Feet To The Fire Recap - 550 KTSA

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About the author: Glenn Hubbard is theRussell L. Carson professor of economics and finance at Columbia University and author of The Wall and the Bridge, published this year by Yale University Press. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.

The decision by the Biden administration to forgive substantial amounts of federal student loans gave progressives heartburn as being insufficiently generous. Conservatives, for their part, decried both the budget cost and the actions distributional consequences and continued reverberances. Economists have weighed in with concerns about fairness (beneficiaries having attended college versus many taxpayers who did not), moral hazard (the prospect of forgiveness may increase demand for non-economic college choices), and inflation (from additions to aggregate demand in an economy already bearing the inflationary consequences of excess demand). These concerns are valid, but they belie a bigger economic and political problem.

The student-loan debt-relief blunder isnt a one-off, but the most recent riff from a policy approach that fails both at articulating an economic narrative and understanding the economys workings. A successful economic policy both closes the loop of the narrative of the problem it is trying to solve and takes into account market response. Failing to do so is to lose the thread and face unintended, if straightforward-to-anticipate, market consequences.

The student-loan-forgiveness action lost the thread. The underlying economic narrative is the opportunity value in education in raising skills for Americans in the contemporary economy. That narrative could well be associated with a supply-side expansion of that opportunity for more Americans, or through new support for training. The administrations blunderbuss does neither. Instead, it effects a redistribution for previous recipients of educational services and uncertainty about the likelihood of future such redistributions.

On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biden administrations plan will cost $400 billion over 10 years. That amount is about one and one-half times the 10-year budget cost of a significant federal block grant to states proposed by Amy Ganz, Austan Goolsbee, Melissa Kearney, and me. The grant would target community colleges, which are essential institutions in developing skills. It would improve access to community college and students rate of completion once enrolled. We estimated that such a block grant could close the completion gap between two-year college students aged 18 to 24 and their peers at four-year institutions by 2030. In that time it would also increase the share of Americans aged 25 to 64 with a college degree or other high-quality credential to the level equivalent to the share of jobs reflecting advanced skills. Such a supply-oriented initiative embodies fairness, while avoiding windfalls according to whether one saved for or debt-financed a college education.

Student loan forgiveness also abstracts from how underlying higher education markets work. Loan forgiveness and the prospect of it in the future raise the demand for college, raising the price of a college education, all else equal. (The block-grant approach to community-college reform, by contrast, would not. Neither did the land-grant colleges historically.) Economists have warned for decades that some forms of financial aid to students raise tuition costs, dampening their effectiveness in raising the quantity of educational services. Addressing the legitimate concerns about the costs of higher education requires a broader approach than simply raising demand.

The recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act offers another example of losing the economic thread. The new law has little to do with combatting inflation. That narrative is better centered on resolving supply-chain dislocations and reducing excess demand from loose fiscal and monetary policy. Instead, the act focuses on many spending initiatives of the earlier and failed Build Back Better Act, including various tax-based subsidies to green initiatives for alternative energy and its uses. But a policy narrative for climate change should center on the underlying externality (an unpriced social cost of carbon) via imposing a carbon price through a tax or cap-and-trade system, as well as support for basic research on alternatives to fossil fuels and associated technologies. The Inflation Reduction Acts approach to climate policy isnt just indirect, in the form of subsidies, it also raises policy concerns about corporate welfare. While the externality-and-research approach allows markets and innovation to adjust over time, and emphasis on generous subsidies alone, say for electric vehicles, could lead to excess demand for key minerals, with little policy focuseconomic or geopoliticalon their supply.

The Inflation Reduction Acts health care provisions offer yet another example. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Affordable Care Act define health policy goals as access by expanding subsidies for health insurance. In doing so they also lose the thread. The economic policy narrative in health policy is to improve value and efficiency in the provision of health care. That narrative in health policy calls for market reforms in health care and insurance and for reform going beyond greater subsidies to demand. From the Massachusetts health care reform through the Affordable Care Act and its extensions, subsidies boost demand and the well-being of individuals who are newly receiving access. But those measures also raise the costsabsent supply-side reformsof health insurance and health care for many individuals.

These deficiencies both in present economic policies and their conception leave an opportunity for a new framework with a clear narrative and an understanding of markets. Key components include ways to help more Americas bridge the gap between traditional skills and those needed in the contemporary economy, support for basic and applied research to drive innovation and its diffusion, immigration reform that balances needs for additional talent with concerns for opportunities for lower-skilled Americans, health-care reform that improves the working of markets for both care and insurance, examination of the governance of technology to balance privacy concerns and innovation, and a concerted program to attack the rising cost of living not by fiat or price regulation, but by tackling policy-induced inefficiency in markets for housing, education, and health care.

Such an approach maintains the threadclosing the loop, not leaving a loose end to pull.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barrons and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback toideas@barrons.com.

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Biden's Student Loan Policy Has Lost the Thread - Barron's

Cardinal Sean OMalley called Friday for immigration policy reform and said Catholic Charities of Boston is ready to help after nearly 50 migrants from Venezuela were flown by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to Marthas Vineyard without notice two days earlier.

Our common humanity is the lens through which our response to immigrants and refugees must be judged, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston said in a statement. Pope Francis has made the plight of immigrants and refugees a constant theme of his pontificate. The Holy Fathers witness, in word and deed, has been based on understanding immigrants and refugees as pilgrims forced by socio-economic conditions, human rights abuses, and the climate crisis to leave their homes in search of safety, security and stability for themselves and their families.

On Friday, the Venezuelan immigrants traveled from Marthas Vineyard to Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne, which Governor Charlie Bakers office said was being offered as temporary shelter for them.

OMalley thanked Baker for providing housing for the migrants. The cardinal said immigration policy is a longstanding moral, political, and legal issue that the state and the nation have delayed too long in resolving.

This week the humanity and vulnerability which immigrants and refugees share has come home to us in Massachusetts, he said. The Venezuelan refugees have come from a situation of enormous oppression and suffering in their own country.

In response, he said, the citizens of Marthas Vineyard have shown us all how common humanity motivates generosity and effective kindness. I commend young and old for their example and effective response.

OMalley said Catholic Charities of Boston had notified him that the organization is ready to work with government officials in helping immigrants who come to Massachusetts.

Not only Venezuelans, but Haitians and other Latin Americans are caught up in the crushing emergency of the U.S. southern border, he said. When non-profit agencies can partner with civil authorities, people at risk will find welcome, support and space to organize their lives.

OMalley has a long history of ministering to immigrants and advocating for reforms.

In 2017, in response to executive orders from then-president Donald Trump that clamped down on refugee resettlement and immigration, OMalley sent a letter to parishes stressing the churchs support for immigrants and refugees and calling on Catholics to heed Pope Franciss warnings against the globalization of indifference.

In 2014, OMalley led a delegation of nine American bishops to Nogales, Ariz., on the US/Mexico border, where the cardinal told the Globe that defending immigrant rights is another pro-life issue, indicating that it is a vital concern involving the churchs teaching on the sacredness of human life.

Immigrant rights have become a major policy area for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, where OMalley continues to be a leading voice on the issue.

Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox.

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Cardinal OMalley calls for immigration reform, offers help to displaced migrants - The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin addressed the issue of a depleted health care workforce in a judiciary immigration subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

He also cited the need for workers in rural Illinois areas after having toured health-care facilities, including Dixons KSB Hospital in July.

Durbin said: I traveled my state in the month of August from the city of Chicago down to the most rural areas of Illinois and the message was consistently the same they are facing a dramatic shortage in nurses, a dramatic shortage in doctors. And what we are trying to do here is find a solution to this. But as long as we are stuck on the issue of law enforcement, we cant even address this.

In his opening statement, Durbin said immigrant workers could help fill vacancies in the ranks of nurses, doctors, medical professionals and caregivers.

They are already here and we need more of them, he said.

Durbin introduced Dr. Ram Alur as an expert witness. Alur is a physician at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Marion, where he has worked since 2011. But Alur also is one of thousands of doctors who are stuck in a green-card backlog and has co-founded Physicians for American Healthcare Access to address outdated immigration laws.

Alur testified that: Doctors on temporary H-1B visas need to have their work visa renewed at least every three years through an uncertain petition process in which the employer, not the doctor, needs to file the essential paperwork. The process is a huge administrative burden to the employer and the employee with multiple agencies involved and currently is very protracted. Ive had to renew my status five times so far to be able to continue working here. In 2016, my application for permanent residence as a physician of national interest was approved, but I have to wait at least a decade before I receive a green card due to the backlog.

He said that the pandemic complicated the peril for workers on green card; a physician who contracts COVID-19 cannot work, endangering his familys visa status.

Durbin said physicians such as Alur are forced to remain on temporary visas because of the lack of available green cards. Protections for family members who turn 21 are lifted and subjects them to deportation, he added.

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Durbin links immigration reform to as a means to address health-care worker shortage - Shaw Local

I went toPerry, Iowa (population 7,836) on Friday to help train a new news guy atRaccoon Valley Radio. Perry is about an hour and a half long drive away from home. I had planned to arrive mid-morning, but at about 5:30 a.m., a gut feeling told me to leave soon. So I did.

I arrived at the radio station in Perry at about 7:30 a.m. and was told the new guy was going to start his day at a Perry Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting atQuality Marble and Tile. I figured I would meet him there and arrived about fifteen minutes early. Like any good small-town news person, I introduced myself and started chatting with people, nosing around for news. I wanted to learn who was who and who had stories to tell to help the new guy get a good start.

As 8:00 a.m. approached, I wondered where my new guy was. When the Chamber of Commerce Director started speaking at 8:02, and the new guy still wasnt there, I knew it was good that I had trusted my gut to come to Perry early. Otherwise, we would have missed the ribbon cutting.

We gathered in a circle in front of the Quality Marble and Tile fabrication shop, where they make stone cabinet tops and more. Their showroom is in Grimes. Before the ribbon was cut, the chamber director asked those assembled if they had any updates to share. Most did. It was a goldmine for potential news stories, and I passed out my business cards like I was tossing confetti.

And my news guy? He showed up at 8:18, when most of the discussion was over.

Dina Kahrimanovic, the young woman center-left in the photo to the left, did an interview with me about the business. To her right is her Uncle Niho. To her left are her mother, Samira, and her father Hajro.

When the Kahrimanovic family fled Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war, Dina was a girl. They first went to Germany and then to the United States to find their home in Iowa. In our interview, she told me about their company and their journey. Since the shop was noisy, we stepped outside and into the shade. Please listen to Dina.

She says the family started the business in Des Moines in 2001, moved to Grimes around 2010, and then moved the fabrication shop to Perry in 2018.

I wanted to take a photo of the family in front of that table (Dinas mother was busy with other tasks). Hajro insisted that the table be tilted so the granite could be seen behind them. He is very proud of the quality of stone they have and their craftsmanship.

The Kahrimanovic family are immigrants. They arrived with a vision, started with nothing, and built a successful business. We are lucky they chose us; we are all better off because they did.

As we were doing introductions at the ribbon-cutting, a young woman told us she was a food photographer. Her name isNath Rocha, and the photo of the strawberry at the top of this post is hers. Nath came to the studio for an interview.

Please listen. Let her speak to you. Hear her important voice.

Nath is from Brazil, arriving in the United States in 2016. She fell in love with a young man whose father lives in Perry, and they married. They spend the summer and fall in Perry and winter and spring in Phoenix. If you go to just one website today, choose hers. Clickhere! You wont regret it.

Nath is an immigrant. She chose us. We are lucky to have her. She has created a successful business in Iowa and Arizona and uses her art to grow local businesses and our economy.

Nath tells me she likes to photograph food because food brings us together, no matter our culture. Here is her beautiful work onInstagram. She, and her work, are a gift.

After an interesting day with the new guy, and as I was about to head home, some breaking local news came in. The Perry High School Homecoming Court was named!

As you can see from their names, many of these students are likely from recent immigrant families. We are lucky that their families chose to live in Iowa.

Iowa needs immigrants

As of this writing, Iowa has83,681 jobs open. I know business leaders want immigration reform. One local manufacturer told me she could put 100 people to work tomorrow.

In the first months of 2022, more than100 million individuals were displacedworldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations.

Immigrants have proven, time and time again, how much they have to offer, and its clear we need them to help solve our labor crisis. Congress needs to act now.

Ive written more about how much rural America needs immigrants inThe New York Times,TIME, and why immigration reform isnt happening in thissubstackif you are interested.

Im going back to Perry tomorrow to help the new guy. I hope hes on time

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A trip to Perry brings home why we need immigration reform - Iowa Capital Dispatch