YouSaid · the spoken record

Reihan Salam

lines on the record
65
first
2015-12-07
most recent
2015-12-07
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “I see these issues as very closely related, actually. Yeah, they are. So if you look at the foreign-born population of the United States, the median age is actually a little bit higher than the population as a whole. Your point about youth and reinvigorating the country is well taken. But we noticed that some other countries like Canada and Australia, for example, which have a more skills-based immigration policy, they're using immigration to rejuvenate themselves too, but in a way that's a little bit more sensitive to these economic dynamics. 48% of the U.S. workforce that has less than a high school diploma is foreign-born in the United States. And as you know, as everyone knows, as the president knows, as kind of, lots of people have thought about these problems, these challenges facing the labor market, will tell you that if you don't have a high school diploma, you're going to face some pretty serious challenges in the labor market. But beyond that, actually, your children will face very serious challenges too, even if they have access to safety net programs and what have you, even if they're in a metro area where they're like”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It's still a huge issue. So I suppose my view is that I want to use immigration policy as a tool to help us address some of our deep-seated challenges.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Is true of Americans in the bottom fifth of our society, or you could even say the bottom two fifths of our society. There's a lot of immobility out of the bottom two-fifths. There is a way that a lot of people from underrepresented minorities feel as though they're not included in our governing institutions. They're not included in our elite institutions. There's a sense that actually it's much harder for people to climb. And I think that relates to some degree to our need to provide all Americans with adequate opportunities. And given that America is actually in this funny period of time when we're actually facing some serious challenges, and also we have entrenched intergenerational poverty in this country, we've had it for a long time. And finally, thank goodness, there are a lot of Americans who are thinking more, for example, about black exclusion and black poverty in new ways. You know, people have been talking about it for a long time, but I think we recognize that even now in 2015, we've had an African-American president. But it's still...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Actually, many affluent market democracies that accept immigrants in pretty large numbers. There are lots of settler societies like ours. And I do believe that looking to the experience of these other societies, learning from them, and also learning what are our own limitations, what are we good at versus what are we bad at? And a lot of smart people, this is particularly on the left, but a lot of smart people have been alarmed and for good reason about what...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Would say my own views about this question are pretty complicated and have grown more so over the years for a number of reasons. I believe that when you look at the broad sweep of American history, we're actually in a pretty unique period when it comes to immigration. There are a lot of folks, a lot of very smart people, who are drawn to these analogies. You know, it's basically the same as it was 100 years ago, et cetera. And I don't think that's actually true for lots of important reasons. Now, that doesn't mean Eric go, okay, then we shut the borders because it's different. That's not what I think at all. But I do think it's important to be sensitive to these changes in context. And I also think there's a tendency on the part of Americans on the right and the left to be excessively romantic about this country. So I feel as though I love America, but I also, I guess I don't think of America as entirely unique and different from every other society in the world.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Own way. And that's something I think in social policy in general. I mean, forget about immigration, period. But when you think about the African American migration to the south side of this great city, Chicago, and you think about”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “He did a lot of different things. He did a lot of odd jobs early on. He wound up passing the CPA exam, became an accountant. He was a public employee. He worked for New York State for some years. But his story is pretty interesting too. I mean, for both of them, they didn't really know anyone when they first arrived. And then a few years, maybe three, four years after they got to the country, they formed a very tight-knit circle of friends with these other immigrants who are from India, but from West Bengal, so they also spoke Bengali. And it's the way these things work. I mean, those were people, you know, my father was a very smart guy. My mother's a very smart woman, but they didn't know the ropes. They didn't know how do I navigate the system? How do I navigate these different institutions? And then they found people who could help them do that. And then my parents both helped lots of other people do that themselves. Particularly my father through his work, but my mother too and her”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Held back not even so much in a kind of narrow professional kind of sense, it was more socially. So it's one of these things where I guess the classic story you always hear is that, oh, you came for economic opportunity. And I'm sure there was some of that. But as with every immigrant, there was a deeply personal story. I mean, who uproots themselves in that way, takes them away from all of these family ties. And that's a thing that can be very painful for people too. It's a very difficult thing, and it's uneven. And you often have one spouse who wants to do it, one who doesn't, and what have you. And there are all kinds of complexities that grow out of that.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That's true. My father was a student. He was a graduate student in the United States. He had gone to Indiana University, not intending to stay. Went back. But then when he went back, I suppose he felt a little bit.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “He's the kind of person for whom living in a big city and a big anonymous city just kind of being outside of that very traditional tight-knit kind of family was something that he wanted to do. When I was growing up, I remember just he just loved being in a big city and just walking around in the mix and the diversity of people. But why American?”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, my mother is a renal dietician she recently retired. She actually, she's the kind of person who, had she been born four or five years later, her life would have been very, very different. She was an amazing student and she was on the kind of track to become a physician and maybe to become a, you know, my sisters would always say she would have become a university professor. She would have done any number of things. But she kind of came of age at this time when there's a lot of political turmoil, a lot of political chaos. She grew up in this funny householder. Father was a proto-feminist type in Bangladesh. That's right. Well, what was then Pakistan? Her father was a quirky guy who was one of the only, he was actually the first Muslim, I believe, or so my mother claims, to have graduated from the Faculty of Law at Calcutta University. And he was just a very broad-minded guy who had two daughters and two sons, but he really believed in education.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “They had different reasons. My mother came because she thought it would be better for my father. My father is the one who really wanted to come, though it was my mother who had the kind of skills that the United States decided it wanted in the mid-1970s.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Justin high school through debate, I remember one kid I met, actually the first kid I ever met who expressed pro-life sentiments was actually a kid who was a pacifist who came from this very kind of Bohemian left-wing alternative household and he was also a vegan. But it was just stuff that was not on my radar at all. So high school did a lot to really widen my perspective. And then, of course, I met kids who were, you know, let's say more religiously observant, more straightforwardly conservative who kind of stuck up for themselves. You know, they were a small minority and they kind of stuck over their convictions. And I wouldn't say I, you know, agreed with every single thing they had to say, but I started thinking differently about people who didn't share in the political consensus of my neighborhood or my broader social menu. I started to think, you know, maybe some of these guys have some reasonable things to say. They certainly do a good job of sticking up for their views. And that was...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “If not more, of a different kind. But I met these kids who had views I never encountered before. I mean, I really didn't know that many observant Christians, for example. I had never met someone who was pro-life. So meeting people with these views was a big deal for me. And it turns out some of them were my friends. Where did you?”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I suppose I was always a bit of a contrarian, and when I was a teenager I met some students who came from families very different from mine. I grew up in a household that was, I guess, liberal not in any active kind of way, but in kind of a reflexive way. I actually learn much later in life that my mother was less liberal than I had always assumed. But I grew up in this very liberal milieu, and when I was a teenager, I met New York were you? I grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up in Kensington from nine until I left home from college. And I grew up in Borough Park, a neighborhood that has changed quite a lot. I mean, all of New York City has changed since I was a kid. Well, Brooklyn in particular, and particularly these kind of ethnic Outerborough neighborhoods, there's been more change than you assume because what you read about in the papers is that kind of genderifying neighborhoods, Brownstone, Brooklyn, but actually further out, I mean, in a way, that's been just as much changed.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source