Cass Sunstein: belief

Transcript context

…I worked with Republicans a bit in Washington, and the sentence that we agreed was the right one was “lawful pathways.” That has one implication, which is, if people want to come in and do work — let’s start with waiters, seafood processing in Alaska, various forms of construction work — and they want to come in, and there aren’t American workers there who will do the jobs, this is a fantastic thing. It’s a fantastic thing for America, and it’s a fantastic thing for those people. We actually have a program called H-2B, which both the right and the left have been enthusiastic about, maybe more the right than the left. The Biden administration went big on H-2B. It’s not perfect. It’s a good program. It’s a lawful pathway. There are ones that I think you were particularly interested in getting skilled people in who are completely amazing and can make our country more prosperous and ultimately lots more well-being — let them in. That’s lawful pathways. Then, what you’re focusing on is brutality with respect to unlawful pathways. When I was down at the southern border, I saw a Trump wall, I saw a Biden wall, and I saw an Obama wall. Now, I knew some things, but I had no idea that there were three walls, and I liked the walls. I liked the walls a lot. I thought President Trump was right to say, “Let’s build a wall,” just seeing it there. I said to the people who were running the border, “Walls are good, right? They look great.” They said, “Yes, we need walls,” but they said, “We need three things. We need infrastructure, we need technology, and we need people.” What was meant was, they can scale walls, even if the walls were pretty high. The Trump one was a little higher than the Biden one, and I said, “The Biden one’s too short, isn’t it?” They said, “No.” I said, “Well, what do you mean? It looks short.” They said, “Look over there.” Over there, there was space between the walls. They said, “They’re not going to scale the walls if they can just go there.” They said they need people and technology. Now, does that need to be brutal? No! If you have a technology and a set of people and a wall that makes it very hard for people to get in illegally, then if I can’t get over a wall, there’s no brutality, I’m just stuck. The idea of deporting people who don’t deserve to be here — there’s nothing necessarily savage about that. It’s unpleasant for the people, but it has two good features. One is that it deters future illegality, and the other is that it ensures that people aren’t here who don’t have a lawful right to be here. Now, if you’re here and you don’t have a lawful right to be here, it may be, for one or another reason, it’s okay to keep you here. It might be that there are other people who are, let’s say, Americans who depend on you. It might be that your kids or spouse are here. It might be that your employer needs you, and then there are things to be done, maybe. are other people who are, let’s say, Americans who depend on you. It might be that your kids or spouse are here. It might be that your employer needs you, and then there are things to be done, maybe. But brutality isn’t intrinsic to the notion of no unlawful pathways and of punishing people who take unlawful pathways. I think there’s a way of doing it that is more in sadness than in anger, though if people are committing crimes, of course, some anger isn’t a bad idea. If we give out visas — which we should — to many, many people for all sorts of legitimate reasons, and people just overstay the visas, which they do in great numbers, as you know, to get them out, aren’t we back to brutality?…

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