Show Notes
The Melting Pod brings you stories of our dysfunctional immigration system, and where we go from here. Join experts Claire Trickler-McNulty, Amanda Baran, and Doug Rand, who’ve served inside the federal government for two decades and four presidents of both parties. We’ll give you a deeper understanding of the immigration headlines, and we’ll bring you extraordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell – about how we got here and where we're going. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
More from The Melting Pod
Every day, all around the world, 13,000 U.S. Foreign Service Officers are responsible for a potentially life-changing decision: Should the person in front of me get a visa to the United States? Rena Bitter oversaw this global operation as Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, the capstone of her 30-year career as a diplomat and ambassador. Now retired, she can speak freely about how the visa process really works, and how Trump 2.0 is dramatically changing who gets to travel and study here, along with the nature of the Foreign Service itself. She also tells us what it took to carry out the largest airlift in American history to rescue our Afghan allies, why she loves international students, and how in government you have to know when the juice is worth the squeeze.
What happens when you spend decades suing the government, and then help run the government? Back in the 1980s, Lucas Guttentag started the Immigrant Rights Project at the ACLU. He and his team argued hugely consequential cases across the country and all the way to the Supreme Court, securing fundamental due process and nondiscrimination rights for the most vulnerable immigrant communities. Then, during the Obama and Biden eras, Lucas went to work for his longtime courtroom opponents: the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. We’ll explore the games lawyers play, what it’s like to pursue change from inside a giant bureaucracy, how the courts became a potent weapon for anti-immigrant forces – and, in the end, how to win.
We plunge beneath the latest immigration headlines to make sense of the senseless. What is the human cost of revoking deportation protections from over a million people? Why is the newly proposed H-1B fee precisely $103,265? Why are your taxpayer dollars giving ICE electric-shock gloves and robot dogs? Plus planning for a Democratic House majority to rein in these abuses (and a likely Constitutional crisis in the meantime).
What is asylum? Simply put, the United States must not return someone to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution. Following the atrocities of World War II, Congress created a U.S. asylum system under international treaty and federal law. But in recent years, as many more people sought asylum at the U.S./Mexico border, this moral and legal obligation became a political lightning rod.
Every year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) makes millions of highly consequential decisions that affect individual people’s lives. Applications for green cards, work permits, asylum and refugee status, even U.S. citizenship – they’re all handled by the 20,000 civil servants at USCIS. The agency has always had its struggles, but under Trump 2.0, political appointees have actively undermined and targeted civil servants like never before.