This is the Cater Daily podcast for Monday, January 27, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For all the concern about illegal immigration expressed by many self-styled conservatives, make no mistake.

The Trump administration is working to reduce legal immigration as well.

In fact, it's a key element of their

policy agenda and one that will make the U.S. less prosperous. I spoke last week with Cato's David Beer.

When we talk about legal versus illegal immigration, the common refrain I hear, and you have heard many times,

I just wish they'd do it legally. And the Byzantine Kafkaesque Huxleyan system that we have

for legal immigration is just, people aren't aware of it. They remain

unaware of it. And I think it is convenient for them to remain unaware of it because then they

can point to this non-existent solution over here for the solution to the problem of illegal immigration. With respect to policy, that redounds

to the benefit of the Trump administration, which appears to want to reduce all immigration,

legal or illegal, as they did in the first Trump administration. So we saw

this dramatic decline in legal immigration, and you expect that to continue. What tells you

that? Well, everything they're saying and their policy statements and, you know, what they're

talking about. The thing about last time, if you look at how long

it took for them to implement their agenda, you know, we're not going to see it take as long this time

because they already have so many of these policies ready to go. They understand how they can throttle visa issuances, even without,

you know, going through the regulatory process just by reassigning people from doing the work

and the processing of the application and the adjudications. So they understand the workings

of the government much better now

and can implement many of these policies which are teed up and ready to go to restrict legal

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