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Start an application at capitus.com. That's K-A-P-I-T-U-S.com. We are back and Lionel Shriver is with us now. She's a columnist with The Spectator and author of a brand new book. It's called A Better Life.
It's a novel, but it's based on fact in which we're experienced. Lionel, great to see you. It's a joy to be here.
Well, thanks so much. I know you put together this book based on real life because we have a lot of immigrants who come here, who are trying to assimilate here. A lot of them come here illegally. Can you set the stage for your book and how this all took place? Sure.
I mean, I would just say up front, this is probably one of the only Um immigration restrictionist Uh novels. Out there available.
So if you didn't like what happened during the Biden administration and you are a fiction reader, This book is for you. Right. Back in twenty twenty twenty three. then Mayor Eric Adams of New York City. proposed a program whereby he would pay regular New Yorkers to put up all these migrants in their spare bedrooms.
As a matter of fact, Eric Adams never manifested that program. But I did.
So, in my book, Family in Brooklyn takes in. to begin with, one Honduran immigrant. And I won't tell you the rest of the story. I will just suggest that it doesn't work out well. How did you research to get to that Honduran immigrant?
Number one, very common. People leave in Honduras to come here. Number two, we expect them they came to the many cities, and the governor of Texas made sure of that.
So did the governor of Arizona.
Well um excuse me, the governor of Florida, rather. Can you play out a little bit how you wanted to steep this in reality in this fiction book? Yes, this book takes place in a very specific time period between 2023 and 2024, when New York City was being inundated with literally hundreds of thousands of migrants, and at the same time had made this absurd promise. that uh the city was committed to uh the right to shelter. Which meant that if you didn't have a place to live, then the city was obliged to give you one.
And what happened? I don't understand why anyone pays rent in New York. Right. By the way, either does the current mayor, but it's too high, but eventually he likes to get to that. And so we convert a bunch of old hotels and we put people in and we give them free food and we try to make sure that they're happy, but instead they toss out the food.
There's fights in the hallways. It costs us millions upon millions of dollars. And they want to blame Texas. It seems like yesterday, Lionel. Yeah, well, that's because it pretty much was yesterday.
And we seem to have moved on with the Trump administration, obviously. Trump has successfully sealed the border. We never thought that was possible. Which we were told was impossible. Um And yet, it's worth bearing in mind what it was like before he came to power and what it could go back to.
Yes. If if the Republicans lose the White House. Um You know, I have my own, I have some problems with Trump personally, but I give him enormous credit on the immigration front. And one of the things that makes me fearful about the return of the Democrats to the White House is what they will do in relation to the border. Right.
Unless they actually learned their lesson and so they lost an election because of it. And you don't have to be irresponsible and idiotic in order to be a Democrat president, but who knows? Because there was a president that wanted to enforce the border, and it was named Bill Clinton, who talked about it. And maybe he wasn't as efficient as maybe others, but at least he talked about it. And Schumer was, of course, you've got to have borders in a country.
And Hillary Clinton at one point, but they all flipped it. I don't know what happened, but suddenly he realizes she basically wanted a borderless country. And now we have a party that said when you brought up the border is broken and people are coming through, you had a president and Majorkis, an HHS secretary, who told us we had a problem, that there was no problem, or that there was cyclical migration. You heard all those explanations. Yes, cyclical migration, which Kamala Harris invited.
Um I think that the left right now has been very successful in spinning these. Clearly controversial shootings in Minneapolis into a a whole con a perceived consensus around immigration that the American people do not believe in enforcing their own immigration law. They do not believe in deporting anybody And if you don't believe in deporting anybody, you don't really have a border. You do not have immigration law if you don't enforce it. And I think that we have allowed the progressive left to get control of the so called narrative, right?
That's the story that you're reading in the likes of the New York Times every day. And that's even been exported internationally. There have been protests against ICE in Milan of all peop places. And it's none of their business. It's insane.
And it's the same people to a degree that were upset about climate change for a while, about George Floyd for another time. This is like the radicals that were talking about the end of the world with climate change, and now they picked a new issue. I guess illegal immigrants and ICE are the new enemy. People don't realize ICE are Americans. They're law enforcement.
I thought Democrats would learn their lesson. When they said to fund the police, they lost every race there was. And James Carville, among others, says it's one of the dumbest phrases he ever heard in political history. But they're going down that path now with ICE out or to fund ICE, which is pretty much the theme on Capitol Hill today as ICE officials Todd Lyons and Rodney Scott are forced to defend themselves in front of Congress.
Well, I think that the the left is Successfully promoting the idea of ice being a gestapo, right?
So that you can take certain images out of context and it looks like, oh, we live in a police state. You can't walk down the street without being asked for your papers. And um But if you if you work out the logic of of you know defund ICE, you know, cancel ICE. The logic is open borders. That is the position.
That is the real position. And it interests me that the. The progressive left. never takes responsibility for the implications of their Their positions. That is, they never completely embrace and advocate, let's have open borders.
We don't believe in deporting anybody, even criminals. There are no aliens. There are no aliens. There is no such thing as a person who's illegal, which is nonsense. Of course, your presence can be illegal.
Uh but then never say so outright. I don't know of any politician, any Democrat in office who is saying. Yes, we take responsibility for this position. We believe anyone in the world should be able to come to the United States. Cross our borders against our laws.
Uh violate uh their visa restrictions and overstay. And that's a huge proportion of illegal immigration. We don't believe it is our right to keep anyone out of the United States. And by the way, that is a perspective which is widely shared internationally. I've lived in Europe for most of my adult life, and I can testify.
Everyone out there believes that Immigration to the United States is a human right. that that any other country can have borders, and if you violate their immigration laws, you'll end up in jail or kicked out of the country. That's fine. But the United States Being a nation of immigrants doesn't have the right to keep anyone out. Which is absolutely insane.
And for those people out there who think, well, I have a big heart.
Well, do you have a big heart when your school classrooms for your grandchildren or children go from 20 to 35? Do you have a big heart when those additional needs go to people, kids who, instead of your kid, go to some kid who does not speak English, so they're going to take up most of the time of the classroom with your taxpayer dollars? What about health care? What does it do to your health care system in the state? That's your big heart when they're overrun or your family doesn't have access because of illegal immigrants who aren't paying into the system, just using the system?
They have to play this out. And for those who think that Democrats will get the Hispanic vote because of this, look what has gradually happened through every election. It has not produced that. That was my hope that they'd sober up and go, our plan is not working. But it's not.
Well, people who are already legal residents of the United States have no motivation to have open borders. They have the same investment in how their taxes are spent as everyone else.
So Yes, the Democrats have been wrong on this point.
Some of the strongest support for Trump was right in the border regions of Texas, for example, because. Probably. These people were living with the consequences of an unenforced border. Their own properties were overrun with. Often criminals, drug runners.
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There are people that come across and say, I would declare asylum, I'm running for my life. And there's others that don't want to be caught. Those are the ones we got to catch up to, especially about $2 million. I think between 9 and 11 came Durham Biden. We have scooped up 630,000 in the first year under Trump and 1.9 million self-deported on incentives knowing that they couldn't stay.
Lionel Shriver, our guest, she's got a brand new book out. It's a novel, but based on our experiences and our columns, it's called A Better Life. I do want to talk to you, too, about. What's going to happen in New York City? Because with this mayor, he basically is getting in place, basically rehearsing what they're doing in Minneapolis.
He wants to do here at some point. Uh Tom Holman, I hope. Is going to surge resources here because we have a huge illegal immigration issue here. Massive. Massive.
So at one they are mobilizing and rehearsing now against it. How do you see this playing out? It could be similar to what happened in uh Minneapolis. Uh because you Yeah. There is a large progressive contingent in New York.
Let's face it. Uh and This is their latest cause. Uh my next door neighbor is in Brooklyn. I have a a little place in Brooklyn. you know, ice out of New York in the window.
This is going to be a popular position and it's going to be uh very attractive to people who you know, want to show off wh what good people they are. This is the new righteousness. The good people don't take anyone in. It doesn't really affect them. Those are the same ones who thought it would be a great idea to put a 34-year-old, inexperienced guy with one job before who speaks good, great on TikTok, with no managerial experience.
Those are the ones that put him in office. Those rich, successful people or that inherited their wealth in New York City. What would it take for people to sober up and understand your big heart is getting us in big trouble?
Well, you need to look at the statistics. I mean, my my Larger position is that we need to be more discriminating in the best sense about who we let into the country, who we give permanent residence and the ability to work. who who we let become citizens. We're in a position to be choosy. I don't think we should be running our immigration policy as a charity.
It is we should be operating out of self-interest. Let people in who are educated, who speak English or who are likely to learn English quickly. who are going to bring skills to our country, who are going to be net contributors. But if you look at the people that we're letting in sloppily, without discrimination, for the most part, it's anybody who managed to break the law and get away with it and their families. 70% of our immigration has been family reunification.
That's not in the interests of our country. It isn't. They come here illegally and then send for the rest. How about you know what the President famously said, though, they are coming from blank hole countries. And he said, we're going to ban all immigration from these nations.
It's a severe answer, but it's on the right track. And lastly, you had a column about the wealth tax. Big story about how many people are leaving California.
So they decide on midnight on the 20, on midnight, I believe on January, on December 31st, they're going to put a wealth tax. And it's causing most of the most successful people in California to just exit that state. This is something that the British have done in the past, and it's been an epic disaster. Could you talk about why this is important for people to understand, even if you're not a millionaire-billionaire? It's been a disaster wherever it's been tried.
Uh At a certain point Even people who are wealthy and, you know, okay, that's a lot of money. I want it. Why don't we have it for health care? That's because, first of all, they earned it. And second of all, they have been paying taxes.
That's how our governments are actually surviving on the backs of the affluent. But most of all, especially on a state level, these people are mobile. And they're not idiots. That's why they're rich. That means They're not going to just sit still.
and wait for you to uh confiscate all their assets.
So they leave. And this is uh I mean, if you're familiar with the Laffer curve, there's a certain point beyond which you raise taxation and you lose money. And this is exactly the kind of initiative that loses money. And furthermore, You know, the one that they want to bring in in California, it hasn't passed yet. Is Um It supposedly.
Only on billionaires. But as soon as you start taxing people's post-tax assets, There's no limit to how low a level of income they can start stealing from you. And now what they try to do is track you.
So, for some reason, if you move out, they're going to track you down if you have the billionaires tag, and find out where you are and try to tax you, even if you're in Arizona or another state. Oh yeah, that's uh it's definitely they're trying to turn all democratic states into roach motels, you know. You can go in, but you can't go out. Right, so just so you know, this is going to further have California lose people. Between 202015 and 2025, they've lost 630,000 people.
They lose 173 a day. This is the first time in history this has happened since they came into the Union. I know. California is supposed to be our paradise. And everyone's leaving paradise.
And they're going to nominate the guy that gave us this dumpster fire of a series of policies in Gavin Newsom. At least he's the frontrunner. Hey, go out and pick up Lino Shriver's book. She's done a fantastic job. She also writes for the spectator.
It's called A Better Life. It's a novel, but it's based on everything we lived through. Lino, congratulations. Thank you very much.
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