Tom Suozzi
speaker
270 appearances
18 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 25 May
Tom Suozzi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 12.
Appearances
And so a lot of this is going to be how they implement it and what they do and what, you know, what can they do under existing law, you know, that this is just a repeat of. So I think it was very important for us to say that we are on board with the idea of securing our border, of making our country safer. And, you know, we are behind on this issue.
And listen, we've been fighting this for 30 years and we still haven't protected the Dreamers completely. and we still haven't protected the TPS recipients, temporary protected status. People that we invited to America after an earthquake or a war or a famine and said, come to America, you'll be safe here.
They've been here for 20 or 30 years, a lot of these folks, and they still don't have any sort of status. And farm workers, 50% of our farm workers in America are probably undocumented, meatpacking plants. So when I talk about immigration, what I wanna get to is I wanna secure the border, I want to fix the broken asylum system. And I'd like to talk about that if you have time to talk about that.
And I'd like to save these dreamers, kids, you know, that have been here 20, 30 years that are now young adults that are either working, going to college or join the military and give them status here in America. So they have to stop working, looking over their shoulder, let them travel freely, let them work and pay taxes. Same thing with TPS.
So we have to do all three, secure the border, fix asylum, and treat people like human beings and address some of these longstanding issues. So can I talk about asylum?
Okay, so the asylum law was first passed in 1980. Now, I'm 62 years old. So in the 1980s, we loved asylum. It was the Soviet, a Soviet... someone from the Soviet Union defecting to America. There was a movie with Robin Williams called Moscow on the Hudson. And it was like when someone defected from the Soviet Union, we're like, yes, asylum, come to America. We're better. They're the bad guys.
We're the good guys. Come here. It's wonderful. We love asylum. You know, people defecting from Cuba. We loved asylum.
Now what's happening is cartels and coyotes and organized crime is making billions of dollars, billions of dollars by charging people $10,000 a person to take them on this awful trek to get to our southern border, subjecting them to sexual and other physical violence, robbery, even death, human trafficking. And they say, we'll get you to the southern border.
And this is what you do when you get there to claim asylum. Now, they're gaming the system. Most of the people trying to come to America to claim asylum are coming for economic reasons. You can't claim asylum for that. You have to have a credible threat that you're being persecuted in your country because of your political beliefs or something like that.
And 85% of the people that claim asylum in America, 85%, are denied asylum. The problem is, is because the system is so overwhelmed, it takes six, seven, eight, nine years for that case to be adjudicated where you're actually denied. And the system is broken and it's outdated and it hasn't been updated for 30 years. So we need to fix the broken asylum system.
I don't think and I have a lot of smart people that I've been talking to, including progressives as well as conservatives, that we should not be accepting asylum applications at the southern border. We should be setting up. what I'm calling foreign and remote application centers. So that's far, like far away. You can apply in Columbia. You can apply in Guatemala. You can apply in Africa.
You can apply in Europe. You can apply elsewhere in the world to seek asylum at a safe location. And we'll adjudicate your case while you are there in that safe location. Remain in Mexico is a terrible policy because we're saying come to the southern border, apply and remain in Mexico while you get abused in Mexico where people exploit you, where people take advantage of you.
We shouldn't be encouraging people to come to the southern border to apply for asylum. Apply in these other locations throughout the world. reduce the volume in doing so, and adjudicate the cases. And while your case is being adjudicated, you stay where you are. You don't remain in Mexico. You remain south of Mexico, east of Mexico, west of Mexico. And if you're accepted, you come to America.
If you're not accepted, you don't come to America. But we have to stop this whole stream of people, and we have to stop incentivizing these organized criminals. who are making billions, again, billions of dollars off this system. And they think they're going to keep on making money even under the Trump administration. They're going to gain the system.
So let's do the stuff that was in the Senate bill to secure the border, the bipartisan Senate deal that Trump killed during the election. Let's fix the broken asylum system. And Trump said he wants to make a deal on the Dreamers. Let's do that. Let's make a deal on the Dreamers. Let's make a deal on the Dreamers and the TPS recipients and the farm workers and some other groups.
I think so. You know, we all we have to we can't just rely on his good faith. Obviously, we have to be strategic about it. We have to think of things that he needs from us and make that part of the negotiation and then politically say, listen, well, you said you want to secure the border. We got a way to secure the border for real, not just an executive order, but for real.
You say you want to make a deal on the dreamers. We're ready to make a deal on the dreamers. We're, we're, we're ready to do all the stuff to fix this problem. You put your money where your mouth is instead of just talking about it. Let's do it for real. Cause right now, I, you know, if they want to do a lot of stuff through reconciliation.
Now, for people who may not understand, reconciliation is just a budget bill. You can't change policy. You can't change the laws. You can change the financing of things. So you could get more money for border agents and you could get more money for immigration judges and you get more money for the wall. And, you know, you can get more money for certain things, detention beds.
you get more money for those things, but you can't change the rules regarding asylum. You can't change, you know, saying we need to stop asylum applications in between the ports of entry of the Southern border. Uh, you can't fix the dreamer issue. You can't fix DPS. You can't fix from, you know, what Trump wants to do between tariffs and deportation of so many people will be very inflationary.
And his biggest problem is to rapidly reduce prices. I'm pretty much willing to predict right now that come two years and four years from now, prices will be either the same or higher because of his policies. It's going to be very hard for him to lower prices, especially with his policies of tariffs and deportation.
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