Zeke Hernandez

To commit crimes.

that they're here to change the cultural heritage that you love so much.

Meaning that immigrants are here to take stuff and they're villains, right?

And so if a villain is at your door, you should kind of block them and build walls to keep them out.

What's interesting to me is not that there's always been an anti-immigrant message or the villain message.

What is fascinating to me is that in some ways, the more pro-immigrant message is what it is.

And it's what I call the immigrants as victims, right?

Right.

You know, the needy outsiders who who are who are just desperate and we have to extend a hand of of kindness and charity to them, even if it costs us a lot.

Right.

And so then we you know, we have kind of the bleeding heart type message that is perhaps more open to immigrants.

But but but what's interesting is that villain and victim can be perfectly consistent with each other, because even if you have a bleeding, welcoming heart,

It still opens up, leaves open that possibility.

Well, maybe this is very costly for our society, both economically and culturally.

And the reality is that immigrants are neither villains nor victims.

But as long as we keep kind of telling ourselves these stories and public opinion and our policies keep swinging, right, and the pendulum goes from villain to victim and back and forth, we end up with really dysfunctional policies.

So

I would say that the way we start is very simple.

We start with a very different premise.

Immigrants are good for us.