Episode 96: Immigration - We're Doing It All Wrong

HoosLeft Podcast

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Episode 96: Immigration - We're Doing It All Wrong

Guest: Brad Meyer - Candidate for US House of Representative (D-IN09)

Scott Aaron Rogers

Sep 26, 2025

Transcript

AUTHOR’S NOTE: DUE TO SOFTWARE CONFLICTS WITH THE NEW MAC OS TAHOE, VIDEO VERSION WILL BE DELAYED. SORRY.

Episode 96: Immigration - We’re Doing It All Wrong

Guest: Brad Meyer - Candidate for US House of Representatives (D-IN09)

https://hoosleft.us

https://bradmeyer.org/

Welcome to the HoosLeft Podcast, a show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from an unapologetically leftist perspective. My name is Scott Aaron Rogers and I’m recording from Bloomington.

A couple weeks ago, I introduced you to Brad Meyer, a seventh-generation Hoosier, born in Indianapolis, raised in Brownsburg, and educated at Purdue. He spent a 35-year career in business and technology - 20 of those leading manufacturing teams in small-town southern Indiana. He spent the last nine years as a U.S. Navy civilian engineer working on incoming missile and drone defense, leaving the Navy just months before early retirement to run for Congress because he couldn’t just -in his own words - “keep [his] head down and shut up.”

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that episode yet, I encourage you to check it out. We had a high-level discussion about his motivation for making such a life-altering decision, how he intends to overcome the built-in Republican advantage in our district, and what’s wrong with the Democratic brand. We talked about the dying American dream and how Democrats can’t be afraid to go big to resurrect it.

But we both wanted to take the time to dig deeper into several policy areas, and this will be the first of many such discussions. Today, we tackle immigration. Now, for the majority of human history, people have been moving freely across land and water - the concept of nation-states and borders are a relatively modern idea. Yet, for as long as I’ve been politically aware, the influx of migrants into the United States has been a politically fraught issue - and fertile ground for the us-versus-them demagoguery that defines Trumpist populism.

The Newt Gingrich of my youth was not the first to tug at this thread of xenophobic sentiment in America, though. From Irish and Chinese immigrants in the 1800’s, to Southern & Eastern European Catholics and Jews in the first half of the 20th Century, and later to Indian and Middle Eastern transplants - newcomers to the country have always been a target for hatred.

Why? Every wave of immigration brought new ideas, new flavors, new innovations, and an unmatched work ethic. Economic growth has always followed. But facts have never mattered to those who exploit societal division for power and profit; the very perception of precarity - that you are just getting by and now there is competition for what little you have - is plenty to be useful to those who already have very much.

As we know, Donald Trump whipped up a frenzy of anti-immigrant fervor that he rode all the way to the White House - twice. But, just a couple years before he first descended the golden escalator, President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators very nearly achieved a grand bargain on immigration. Just last year, another group of legislators from both sides of the aisle produced a bill they thought could pass, only to see it collapse under pressure from Trump.

But now, in response to this administration’s aggressive, authoritarian, anti-immigrant crackdowns, Americans are reconsidering their views on migration. According to a recent Gallup poll, About 8 in 10 Americans now say immigration is “a good thing” for the country, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year.

Did the full horror of MAGA fascism snap the population out of their frenzy? Is a long-term solution possible after this fever breaks. In the following conversation, Brad and I will discuss this potential opening, what we’ve been doing wrong the whole time, who benefits from this broken system, and why Democrats have been ineffective at messaging on the issue.

Real quick before we get to the interview, please consider supporting HoosLeft with a paid subscription. This is an independent media project; I don’t paywall content; and I don’t rely on advertising. Only individuals like you keep this thing going. I refuse to gatekeep valuable information in the middle of a political crisis, even to my financial detriment. So please, if you find value in this work, go to HoosLeft.us and subscribe at the paid level - it’s only $5 a month, or $50 a year, to help me write more, research more, and organize more. Not ready for long-term commitment? You can make a one-time contribution on Cash App or Venmo. Links are in the show notes. Me, and my old body, would like to spend less time on construction, and more time constructing a better future for Indiana, but I need your financial support to do so.

If that doesn’t work for your budget at this time, you can still help out by liking and sharing on social media, commenting, leaving reviews, providing feedback, and forwarding articles to your people. We are building a community of Hoosiers dedicated to making this state, and its government, work for all of us, not just the elite few. Please join us.

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Now, here is my conversation with Brad Meyer.

Things We Talked About:

US Labor participation rate: https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-labor-force-participation-rate-in-the-us/country/united-states/

Presence in US without authorization is a CIVIL offense: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/immigration-prosecutions

Illegal hiring is a CRIMINAL offense: https://www.foxrothschild.com/publications/employers-may-face-civil-and-criminal-penalties-for-immigration-violations

Unlawful employment of aliens can be a FELONY: https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1908-unlawful-employment-aliens-criminal-penalties

About 40% of illegal immigrants overstayed a visa: https://www.statista.com/chart/16701/visa-overstays-outnumber-illegal-crossings/

will finish show notes later

Once again, that was Brad Meyer, Democrat running for Congress in Indiana’s 9th Congressional District. We’ll be seeing him plenty over the next several months to talk in greater detail about all of the issues most important to Hoosiers.

But for now, thanks for listening. I’ll be live at 10:30am Sunday on Project Next Media network’s YouTube, FaceBook Live, and Twitch streams, where I host HoosLeft This Week, Indiana’s most thorough weekend morning news and politics talk show. Check it out live if you get a chance - it’s a lot of fun, if you can call following the news in this timeline fun. I bring together a diverse group of panelists from the democratic socialist left to never-Trump conservatives and we look at the week’s headlines from around Indiana and beyond. We’ll also take time to examine one big thing, a different deep dive every week. I hope to see you there in the comments, but if you can’t make it live, the program will be available as a podcast Sunday afternoon.

Thanks again to Brad for taking the time to dive deep into these topics with me, and thank you for listening. If you can, help him out with a contribution - a link to his ActBlue page is in the show notes. And if you’re feeling extra generous, also consider sharing some funds with me via a paid subscription at HoosLeft.US, where you’ll find my entire archive. I rely solely on the generosity of kind patrons like you to make this information available for free to everybody. In addition to the website, you can find me on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads at HoosLeft.US and on Facebook, X, TikTok, Mastodon, and YouTube at HoosLeft. Direct message me at any of those sites with feedback, tips, ideas, and concern or email me at scott@hoosleft.us. While you’ve got the old email machine out, please forward the show to a friend and have them pass it on, too. Let’s keep building this project - and a truly democratic state - one conversation at a time. Until the next one, this has been the HoosLeft podcast. I’m Scott Aaron Rogers. Love each other, Indiana.