The World and Everything in It: May 15, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Nicolas Piotrowski, I am the president of Indianapolis Theological Seminary. I appreciate WORLD because it presents the news without sensationalism or bombast, and then provides commentary from a Christian worldview, which is the true worldview. I have no doubt you will enjoy today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The U.S. Supreme Court considers the way laws that protect people from stalkers define what’s actually a threat. Does the intent of the stalker have to come into play?

JUSTICE THOMAS: Some of these statements are not threatening in and of themselves, and yet someone could be triggered by those statements.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat, we’ll talk about the debt ceiling, some relief from high consumer prices, and a big pushback to companies that punish people over politics.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, one hundred fifty years of immigration law:

BARACK OBAMA: Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, May 12th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: 

Border update » Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the situation at the southern border has calmed down somewhat since an initial surge last week as the Title 42 immigration rule expired.

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: The United States Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters.

Down from 10,000 per day earlier last week to 4,200 arrests on Saturday.

Despite the recent drop, the Border Patrol predicts arrests will soon spike as high as 14,000 a day.

Republican Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales says the border was already out of control … and it’s worse now. He described a migrant processing center in El Paso, Texas.

TONY GONZALEZ: It’s meant to house a thousand people. It’s housing over 3,000. In one of these rooms, it’s meant to house 120 people. There were over 700 people in there.

Border/immigration debate » Authorities also say the number of migrants in custody at the border could spike from 27,000 to 45,000 by the end of the month.

With that in mind, the Biden administration plans to ask an appeals court today for permission to release migrants inside the United States without orders to appear in court.

Authorities say it takes up to six times longer to process migrants to appear in court than to simply release someone with instructions to report to an immigration office in 60 days.

Republicans continue to blast the administration over the border crisis. Florida Congressman Byron Donalds:

BYRON DONALDS: What’s happening now is because of Joe Biden’s recklessness, his desire when he became president to just rip up all of the Trump-era policies that actually had our border secure. And now they’re scrambling to create a solution to the crisis the Joe Biden created.

The administration is touting new legal immigration pathways in an effort to deter illegal crossings. It is offering parole for up to 30,000 migrants who apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport.

Democrats say Republicans are to blame for the border crisis over what they say is a lack of willingness to work together on immigration reform.

Severe Weather » Migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande into the United States could be taking an even greater risk than normal after massive rainfalls this weekend in parts of Texas.

National Weather Service meteorologist Tony Fracasso:

TONY FRACASSO: We've seen numerous reports of flash flooding warning now has been sitting for a little while, it’s kind of evolved. And you'll see a couple more days’ heavy rain moving through, especially Texas. also up into basically central plains.

The deluge is expected to swell the Rio Grande along the border.

Hundreds of migrants have died trying to cross the river in recent years.

Debt ceiling » President Biden is set to meet with top lawmakers at the White House again this week to discuss raising the debt ceiling.

Most Democrats insist that Republicans agree to raise the debt limit without reducing overspending at the same time. Sen. Chris Murphy:

CHRIS MURPHY: There’s an opportunity to talk about their really unpopular agenda of cuts, but the time to do that is when we’re negotiating the budget.

Talks were cut short last week and postponed until this week. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy:

KEVIN MCCARTHY: President Biden and Sen. Schumer are stuck on “no.” They have no plan, no proposed savings and no clue.

Even a House GOP bill passed last month would see Washington continue to overspend, just at a slower rate. It has been projected to add $14 trillion dollars to the national debt over a decade instead of the $20 trillion now expected.

Officials say without a debt ceiling deal, Washington could begin to default on its debts next month.

NC abortion » The Republican supermajority in North Carolina’s state legislature is gearing up to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a new pro-life bill that would protect unborn children from abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy down from 20 weeks right now.

The Democratic governor vetoed it at a rally on Saturday:

ROY COOPER: Tell them to sustain this veto! Ask the Republican leadership to stop it!

Republicans have just enough votes to override the veto if there are no defections.

The bill allows exceptions for medical reasons and in cases of rape and incest.

Gaza ceasefire » Air raid sirens blared in Israel over the weekend, but for the most part a fragile cease-fire between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to be holding on Sunday.

In an early test for the truce, Palestinian militants fired a rocket that landed in an open area of southern Israel last night. Palestinian media claimed the launch was caused by a technical error as militants were trying to deactivate the rocket.

I’m Kent Covington.

The U.S. Supreme Court considers the way laws that protect people from stalkers. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday, May 15th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down five opinions last week. We’ll get to those later.

But first, the case of a convicted stalker. His name is Billy Ray Counterman.

He became obsessed with a female singer in Denver named Coles Whalen. Counterman sent direct messages to her public Facebook page. She never responded, yet he sent thousands of messages over a few years’ time.

The messages taken together show a man who believed they had an intimate relationship, using pet names for her and complimenting her beauty.

EICHER: She blocked his account numerous times. He’d get angry, but he persisted by making new accounts to get around the blocks.

His obsessive messages turned dark and disturbing, and you’ll hear the justices go into more detail about that.

Ms. Whalen came to fear that Counterman would harm her. She began to withdraw and stopped public performances.

She worried he was mentally unstable and unpredictable. Eventually, she was able to combat his stalking by winning a restraining order against him.

REICHARD: Here’s what Colorado’s stalking law forbids: “knowingly…repeatedly…[making] any form of communication with another person…in a manner that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress and [that] does cause that person…to suffer serious emotional distress.”

In 2017, a jury convicted Counterman under that law and he received a prison sentence of 4 ½ years.

He objects to the prosecution because the jury wasn’t instructed to consider his intent. Colorado law doesn’t require that, but he says it should. Some other circuits would consider speaker intent, and he says he intended no harm to Whalen.

Listen to his attorney John Elwood, in this exchange with Justice Amy Coney Barrett:

JOHN ELWOOD: Speakers have to have some kind of confidence in advance about whether what they’re saying is going to wind them up in trouble. In the past, intent has been a bulwark because speakers know their intent. So if intent matters, that gives them some comfort in that they can say what they are going to say without criminal punishment. But, when the standard is what a reasonable person would think, then you're thinking, well, what does that mean? And, frequently, you don't know what the answer to that is. We could have a conversation -- the conversation about "I will kill you" could have gone on another five minutes and we might not have, you know, gone to ground.

JUSTICE BARRETT: Maybe you should be careful if you're going to say something like "I will kill you" or "I'm going to burn it all down" or "I'm going to shoot up a school."

ELWOOD: Well, again, you know, my mother said to me virtually every day of my childhood.

BARRETT: "I'm going to kill you"?

ELWOOD: "Drop dead." Yeah. (Laughter.) And yet, you know, I was never in fear because of that, and so, you know, context meant a lot.

BARRETT: Hopefully, context gave you some reassurance. (Laughter.)

REICHARD: Elwood would go on to argue that there ought to be only narrow and well-defined exceptions to the guarantee of free speech. And that includes factoring in speaker intent when deciding whether something is what the law defines as a “true threat.”

Here’s how the high court defined a “true threat” back in 2003. This is Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

JUSTICE O'CONNOR: The protections supported by the First Amendment are not absolute and the Government may prohibit true threats. True threats encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual. Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat.

EICHER: Note Justice O’Connor’s words “… the speaker means to communicate…” That’s the rub. Counterman says he did not “mean to communicate” a threat. And that implies a need to consider his intentions before convicting him of stalking.

Arguing in support of the conviction under Colorado law: state attorney general Phil Weiser.

PHIL WEISER: True threats have always been prosecuted without protection by the First Amendment. Petitioner now seeks to impose a specific intent element onto this inquiry that’s required neither by history nor precedent….later….Requiring specific intent in cases of threatening stalkers would immunize stalkers who are untethered from reality. It would also allow devious stalkers to escape accountability by insisting that they meant nothing by their harmful statements. This matters because threats made by stalkers terrorize victims, and for good reason—90 percent of actual or attempted domestic violence murder cases begin with stalking.

REICHARD: Figuring out a workable test to balance free speech with unprotected speech is no easy task. Listen to this exchange between Weiser for the state and Chief Justice John Roberts:

JUSTICE ROBERTS:  Here's one of the statements for which he was convicted: "Staying in cyber life is going to kill you. Come out for coffee. You have my number." In what -- in what way is that threatening, almost regardless of the tone?

WEISER: When it's put into the context, Mr. Chief Justice, what is being said here is, if you don't come out for coffee with me, bad things are going to happen to you. There's others --

ROBERTS: Well, this is -- I'm sorry. This isn't remotely like that. It says, "Staying in cyber life is going to kill you." I can't promise I haven't said that. (Laughter.) “Come out – come -- come out -- come out for coffee. You have my number.” I think that might sound solicitous of the person's development. I mean, if we're talking just about what the statements are, how is that – what tone would you use in saying that that would make it threatening?

WEISER: The threat in that is, if you don't come out and meet me, your life's in danger. And the stalking context here, like many stalking situations, has someone who believes they're entitled to the attention and the affection of a victim.

REICHARD: All this reminded me of something I read years ago in Gavin DeBecker’s book The Gift of Fear: I’ll quote from it: “It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different—men and women live in different worlds … at core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”

EICHER: This fear isn’t unreasonable when you consider the history. The state’s brief mentioned a report on stalking victims … and quoted from it, saying “verbal threats are a strong and statistically significant predictor of violence,” thus “reinforc[ing] the need to take verbal threats seriously.”

Justice Elena Kagan put it this way in reference to Counterman’s messages:

JUSTICE KAGAN: And two and a half years of sending somebody unwanted emails when that person has consistently tried to block them and tried to stop them, some of those emails being pretty violent, "Die. Don't need you."; others of those emails suggesting pretty strongly that he is watching the person, "Only a couple of physical sightings," "Was that you in the white Jeep?" So I want to take it as a given that this can be objectively terrifying.

REICHARD: Given that, she went on, couldn’t Counterman be convicted on a standard of recklessness, meaning a speaker commits a wrong if he knows it might create a risk of harm?

Part of Weiser’s answer caught my ear:

WEISER: It's both delusional individuals and devious individuals. A delusional individual who is a stalker will often say, I believed we were in a relationship, I thought what I was saying was benign. And it's possible they could believe that, and yet, once they're really rebuffed, they can then turn violent, which means the following: Do you have to wait until the person actually engages in violence before you do something about what is an objectively terrorizing threat? And this is crucial for the law to be able to protect.

EICHER: Weiser pointing out that it’s not just a message or two. The effect is cumulative: many, many messages over time that create the context of danger and distress.

And yet, in this age of internet miscommunications and people so quick to take offense, where is a court to draw a line?

Which may explain why courts are split over whether a “true threat” requires the prosecutor to prove the speaker meant his words that way.

REICHARD: I’ll add another layer: Ms. Whalen’s brief mentions that Counterman had already spent time in prison for leaving threatening voicemails to several women. Violent messages, threatening murder.

That couldn’t come out in his trial, of course. That would have prejudiced Counterman’s defense.

The justices imagined situations where mere misunderstanding could get caught up in prohibited speech. I’ll link to the argument in this transcript should you want to listen for yourself. A lot of gems I didn’t have time to include here.

This is a genuinely difficult legal case and I don’t see how it would split along predictable ideological lines.

EICHER: Okay, we’ll very quickly run through the five opinions the court gave us last week.

First, a victory for California’s ballot initiative regulating the sale of pork within the state. California bans pork from sows that are kept in confined housing.

The specific question was whether one state’s restrictions that greatly affect another state’s operations ran afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause. Here, the answer was no.

REICHARD: It’s a fractured opinion with lots of concurrences in part and dissents in part. I’ve had my eye on this case from the beginning, so I’m working on a deep dive into National Pork Producers Council v Ross. So far my reporting has taken me both to the Supreme Court and to pig farms in Iowa and Virginia for a mud-level view.

So be listening for the Legal Docket Podcast season four, this summer.

EICHER: Pig sooie!

Next opinion was unanimous in judgment: the court decided that a gender-dysphoric individual seeking asylum in the U.S. can fight his removal in court. The question was whether a court of appeals can review a migrant’s claim that the Board of Immigration Appeals got things wrong before exhausting administrative procedures. The answer was yes, so the case will proceed in appellate court.

REICHARD: Okay, opinions three and four are related disputes. The court threw out the fraud convictions of a former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo and a contractor in Buffalo. This revolved around rigging bids for favored contractors. Governor’s aide Joseph Percoco argued he was not in power when he received payments. Contractor Louis Ciminelli argued he had not withheld financial information the way the government said he did. This does not end the matter. It simply returns the two cases to lower court for further proceedings.

EICHER: Final opinion today, this one 8-1. The justices decided against a Puerto Rican media organization that seeks documents from the board that oversees the island’s financial restructuring. The court found that territorial governments do have sovereign immunity and on that basis need not be subjected to a lawsuit seeking access to its records.

REICHARD: Only five oral arguments left this term to cover! But lots of opinions still to come. And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It's time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnsen Group. He joins us now. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, David, I'd like to start with something we're hearing over and over and that is the political drama unfolding in Washington over the debt ceiling. There's a ton of brinkmanship here, Republicans taking the position they should be able to extract some modest spending restraint before they agree to an increase in the debt ceiling, Democrats saying effectively, this is economic hostage taking. David, you've got really good Washington sources. What are you hearing? What do you think will happen?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I think almost everybody believes it's media drama, not Washington drama, not market drama. Bond yields fell this week; you know, when you're worried about something defaulting, you want a higher yield, not a lower yield. The bond market is laughing it off, the stock market's laughing it off. There is brinksmanship, and I don't think you get like a total resolution anytime soon. I think that there was progress behind the scenes. The fact that there was a second meeting scheduled that was put off as staffers were continuing to work through more details in Washington is generally a good sign. They weren't putting it off because they're at a standstill, they're putting it off because there was a little more work to be done.

So ultimately, the key moment, we've talked about this before, was when Speaker McCarthy got the Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for certain spending cuts and so forth. Had he gone to Washington and said, We will not raise the debt ceiling, and we have nothing to offer, then the White House would have laughed it off, and the whole country would have blamed the Republicans. But once speaker McCarthy passed that, then it put the burden on the White House to negotiate. And you're right, there's a lot in the White House saying nope, too bad, we just want what we want anyways. But plenty of Democrats are telling the White House, hey, you're gonna have to negotiate now - they've raised the debt ceiling. So I don't know how exactly it shakes out. I don't know when exactly, but I do know that it shakes out. And along the way, I expect a fair amount of media hysteria.

EICHER: So David, just to be clear, the reason you think that is because you're expecting someone to cave in?

BAHNSEN: Well, not only that, but the Treasury has $4 trillion of revenue. So you don't, you don't have to default on debt when you have revenue to pay it. Now, if you have 5 trillion of expenses and 4 trillion in revenue, there's a trillion of something that doesn't get paid. And that's over the course of an entire year. We're talking about what will be a week or two, I think one time it went 20-something days. We're not talking, so you know, a billion here, a billion there. Yeah, it's real money. It's not defaulting on the debt. And everybody knows that.

EICHER: Alright. Last week, we received the consumer price index for April, the producer price index for April as well. Was there big news in those reports, David, or would you point to any other indicators for how the economy is going at this point?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, it was huge news that inflation is continuing to drop like a rock. And if it weren't for the just utter nonsense of the shelter component of CPI, which came in at 8.1% - and that represents 34% of CPI - so there was a 4.9% year over year inflation in CPI, which is the lowest it's been in two years, and that was 2.75% of that 4.9% is coming from the shelter component. And I believe that the real annual inflation right now of rents and houses and so forth is anywhere from negative two to positive two, not positive eight. So soaking wet, my guess is inflation is down to 3%, and probably something with a two in front of it. The PPI is now only showing at 2.3% year over year, so it's collapsed. And in fact, intermediate unprocessed goods are 19% lower than they were a year ago. And intermediate processed goods are down 3%. So you have actual deflation on the wholesale side of goods. The annual inflation on core goods is flat. So the numbers in CPI and PPI this week clearly show the downward trend of inflation. But luckily for the people who want to use it as an excuse for ongoing monetary tightening, the shelter component with its huge lag it's still measuring rents from a year ago, not right now, is enabling the number to look higher than it really is.

EICHER: Right David? I know you saw this the, Wall Street Journal over the weekend had a big splash on conservative efforts to fight big corporations taking sides in political and religious debates and specifically siding with the secular left most of the time. JPMorgan Chase is the case in point, that big bank is accused of debanking some customers because of the views that they hold. Now for background, that is something that one of our listeners to The World and Everything in It brought to your attention last year; now you're doing something about it, introducing a resolution at the annual shareholders meeting of JPMorgan Chase. The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow, and you have an argument that you've made in favor of the resolution. And that's going to be played for the shareholders prior to a vote. So first of all, David, thank you for doing it. And thanks for sharing this recording, which I'd like to play a bit of, toward the conclusion, when you're noting that the company is trying to deny this problem simply by saying that it has no quote unquote, explicit policy of viewpoint discrimination. Let's have a listen.

BAHNSEN: That's the point of this resolution to respectfully ask the company to investigate this matter of great importance and report the results to us, the owners of the company. If all is good, the report will demonstrate that and if it is not, the report is an opportunity to fix it.

EICHER: Alright. So David, the big day is tomorrow, what do you expect?

BAHNSEN: Well, I certainly don't expect that the resolution will actually pass. I mean, the way that this stuff works is the board has voted against it. And there are institutional shareholders, that the vast majority of them, that proxy their votes to the shareholders services that go along with what the board says. And yet, I think that has gotten a massive amount of support that where even if they don't formally adopt the resolution, it's forced the board - and certainly the “C suite” - to have to respond, I'm still not convinced to this day, that Park Avenue, you know, where the actual leadership headquarters of JP Morgan are, was behind any of this debanking of either conservative or religious groups. I think it's happening on a regional level, and that they do not have the controls in place to keep this political and religious discrimination from happening. And I believe that this has now brought a significant amount of attention to it, to the C suite. And I'm modestly optimistic that there's going to be big changes, and I don't think it would have happened without this resolution and the buzz that came from the resolution. That's the key is we just got a big gift that they turned down this resolution from being on the docket, because then that forced us to be able to appeal and win on appeal with the SEC. That became the story that shined a light on the underlying story of what's going on and why. And really, we've had good conversations with the C suite where I believe that there will be change. But I think that this will fail and yet get more votes than some of the other left wing resolutions that are on the docket as well from groups like the Sierra Club and other radical environmentalists, and then kind of make a statement that will hopefully lead to ongoing conversation and action. We have no intention of letting this thing go after the shareholder vote.

EICHER: Well, David Bahnson is founder managing partner and Chief Investment Officer at the Bahnsen group, his personal website bahnsen.com, his weekly Dividend Cafe you can find at dividendcafe.com. We will certainly be praying the Lord's will be done at JPMorgan Chase tomorrow. David, thank you again for doing it. And I hope you have a great week. We'll talk to you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick. Appreciate that.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, May 15th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. With the ending of Title 42 last week, immigration and border enforcement is once again in the spotlight. But policies from over a century of immigration law play a part in what’s currently happening at the Southern Border. Here’s WORLD’s Paul Butler with an historical survey.

EDUCATIONAL FILM: The story of America is mainly a story of people who came here from other lands.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: America’s immigration story is perhaps one of the more recent in world history, but the movement of people from one country to another is almost as old as the earth itself. Every nation at one point began with one group of people arriving on its shores. Who eventually had to create policies of how to welcome—or at times prevent others—who wanted to enter.

Soon after the founding of the United States of America, the federal government passed the Naturalization Act of 1790. It laid out the rules for citizenship, as directed by the Constitution. But it placed no meaningful restrictions on immigration.

Then, starting in the early 19th century, waves of immigrants began arriving from Europe:

EDUCATIONAL FILM: Because of poverty and famine, many Irishmen left their land. Attracted by the hopeful opportunities in America.

Large numbers of German and Scandinavian immigrants soon followed. As more and more immigrants arrived, the federal government passed laws regulating who could come into the country.

Congress enacted its first comprehensive immigration bill in 1891. The act created a government agency to regulate immigration—empowering it to enforce immigration laws and to deport unlawful aliens.

FILM: At the immigrant station on Ellis Island, they were examined and questioned: Any criminal record? Any communicable diseases? Any physical disabilities?

The Immigration Act of 1891 also set forth detailed guidelines for who could be turned away: including those likely to become “public charges.”

Three decades later, the U.S. government created border patrol in the Immigration Act of 1924. It also imposed numerical limits on immigration for the first time—severely restricting immigration from Asia and other non-European countries.

FILM: Quotas were established for different countries allowing only a specified number of immigrants to enter each year.

Many supporters of the act expressed concern over the changing demographics and national values after decades of immigration.

Now during the Cold War, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. This act emphasized “good moral character”—a standard dating back to the Naturalization Act of 1790. It required applicants to be favorably disposed to the U.S. and persons of good character. Those who weren’t could be turned away or deported.

Then in 1965 Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Services Act. President Lyndon Johnson believed it corrected a grave injustice enshrined four decades earlier:

LYNDON JOHNSON: Those who can contribute most to this country to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit will be the first that are admitted to this land.

The 1965 act eliminated national-origin quotas—opening pathways for immigrants from Asia and other countries who had previously been restricted.

Political unrest and war in the 1970s led to a peak in immigrants fleeing Asia. The 1980 Refugee Act made it easier to enter the country as refugees…though the legislation capped the number to 50,000 per year.

Moving to the 1980s, high unemployment in Mexico led to increased pressures at the southern border…politicians like Ronald Reagan campaigned on immigration reform in light of those challenges. During his second term, congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986:

RONALD REAGAN: Our objective is only to establish a reasonable, fair, orderly and secure system of immigration into this country and not to discriminate in any way against particular nations or people.

This act levied sanctions for knowingly hiring illegal aliens. It increased border enforcement, created a new category of visa for seasonal agricultural workers, and provided amnesty to illegal aliens already in the country.

Four years later, George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990—nearly tripling the number of visas for immigrants with US job offers. The bill also created a lottery program that opened up immigration for those from so-called “low admittance” or under-represented countries.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, he signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It required stronger verification records, increased border enforcement, and it restricted welfare benefits for non-citizens.

BILL CLINTON: It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years and we must do more to stop it.

Under George W. Bush, a catalog of targeted immigration laws crossed his desk after the September 11th terrorist attacks. More attention was given to physically preventing immigrants from crossing at unauthorized locations.

GEORGE BUSH: The system is broken because there are people who are exploiting human beings for personal gain.

The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 increased the number of Border Patrol agents. It mandated that schools keep a database of non-citizen students and required foreign nationals to carry biometric identification.

As more and more illegal immigrants found ways across the border, political debate heated up.

BARACK OBAMA: Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws, undocumented workers broke our immigration laws.

During Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House, immigration reform stalled out in congress. So Obama took executive action, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program.

BARACK OBAMA: To make it more, fair, more efficient and more just specifically for certain young people, sometimes called dreamers.

President Donald Trump turned to executive orders as well to address the crisis at the Southern border while the government attempted to bring illegal immigration under control. In 2017 he limited asylum claims, called for border wall enhancements, and greatly reduced the number of immigrants allowed into the country.

DONALD TRUMP: Everyday customs and border patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country.

In his first year as President, Joe Biden issued nearly 300 executive actions on immigration—many of them reversing the previous administration’s executive orders.

A couple weeks ago Biden announced new measures to address unlawful migration. But just last week, the number of people caught crossing the Southern Border illegally topped 10,000 per day with processing facilities greatly exceeding their capacity. Statistics like those from U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicate that it is going to take more than executive orders to fix the problem. It’s up to congress.

JOE BIDEN: For more than 30 years. Politicians have talked about immigration reform, and we've done nothing about it. It's time to fix it.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book, I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Oregon puts gender ideology ahead of the forever homes of foster kids. Legal correspondent Steve West will have a report.

And we’ll meet a lawyer who helps women who want to place their babies for adoption.

That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist writes: Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law. Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law. Psalm 119, verses 53 through 55.

Go now in grace and peace.

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