Financial Flipside

The human consequences of the current administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy have been inescapable during this summer’s news cycle. Each day seems to bring with it new stories of parents separated from children, inhumane conditions in detention centers, and the stripping away of previously installed protections for asylum seekers and early childhood arrivals in the United States.As people, we found these stories impossible to ignore. As a show about how finance and economics interact with the rest of our lives, we thought  it important to spend some time thinking about the economics of immigration. Specifically, why does so much of the rhetoric about immigration in the US revolve around money and labor? What do the numbers say? What are the effects of framing discussions about immigration in economic terms? Are there alternatives to this sort of thinking, and what might they be? We do not pretend to offer definitive answers or policy fixes, but we hope that this episode leads you to your own fruit