In the weeds of immigration policy with Dara Lind

The end of Title 42, whatever happened to comprehensive immigration reform, and more

Hi, folks. As you probably know, I used to host a podcast called The Weeds, and one of my longest-tenured collaborators on the show was Dara Lind, now a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. A little while back I realized I should do a piece on the end of the Title 42 regime at the border and should talk to Dara to get her insights before I decided what I wanted to say. Then I realized — we could do a podcast!

We really do try to get into the weeds of what exactly the Title 42 situation was, as an actual public policy matter and not just chum for cable news. And as Dara explains, once you understand that, it’s easy to understand why its end turned out not to have the consequences that many people feared. We also talk about some of the ways in which Joe Biden’s immigration approach has differed from Donald Trump’s, as well as the way in which they are similar. A broad preoccupation of mine is the way in which “the immigration issue” has shifted over time from the fate of millions of long-term residents, mostly Mexican-born undocumented people, to questions about how to handle a very diverse group of people making asylum claims at the southern border. Dara has a lot to say about that — insights about why the Trump administration wound up doing many fewer deportations than one might have expected, about how the right’s concerns have evolved, and about Ron DeSantis’ efforts to get to Trump’s right on this topic.

This time around, I think I’ve learned how to use the Substack podcast function correctly, so those of you who are subscribed to the Slow Boring feed will find the episode there. Others can listen to it right here.

Paid members can see the full transcript below.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about podcast transcripts. Personally, I enjoy using them because I can read faster than I can listen. But as a content creator, something I appreciate about podcasts is that nobody really “hate listens” so you don’t need to speak nearly as defensively as you do in print. Transcripts disrupt that by being easily scannable, which is why I never wanted to see transcripts of The Weeds or Bad Takes. But here on Slow Boring it’s easy to have the best of both worlds by making the transcript a paid feature.