The Rational Middle

Zachary (Zak) Manfredi is the Litigation and Advocacy Director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP). Zak oversees ASAP's litigation matters and policy advocacy, and he often represents ASAP in strategic partnerships and coalitions. Zak joins host Chris Lyon to discuss ASAP's work and what asylum seekers want to see change about the system.

Dr. Hasia Diner and Dr. Carl Bon Tempo are our guests this week. Dr. Diner is the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at NYU, and Dr. Bon Tempo is an associate professor at the University at Albany. Their new book, Immigration: An American History, came out last year via Yale Press. The book covers stories of immigrants throughout American history. The pair join host Carter Carroll to discuss the book.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Charles Kamasaki is the Senior Cabinet Advisor of UnidosUS, (formerly the National Council of La Raza), the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Cornell Law School. He is also the author of Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die. Charles joins host Loren Steffy to discuss the book and the findings therein.

Shahid Haque is an immigration attorney based out of Helena, Montana. He runs a law firm called Border Crossing Law, and he recently launched an app to automate immigration consultations. The app, named Open Borders, seeks to help those seeking citizenship and other avenues of entering the US by giving them the information they need to be able to enter. Haque joins host Carter Carroll to talk about his career, immigration in Montana, and the new app.

Gaurav Khanna is a respected scholar whose research focuses on development economics, labor economics and applied econometrics. He is an assistant professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at USC San Diego and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Khanna joins host Loren Steffy to discuss recent tech layoff trends, the issues that H1-B Visa holders are facing, and how these visa holders have impacted American economics over the last 20 years.

Tony Payan is the Director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Payan joins host Chris Lyon to discuss Biden's recent trip to Mexico and El Paso, Texas. What does this trip mean for immigration policy, and are the outcomes going to be effective?

Charles Foster is an immigration attorney and chairman of Foster LLP in Houston. His work includes being a Senior Immigration Policy Advisor for George W. Bush, an immigration policy advisor on the 2008 Obama campaign, and many others. His work in immigration law has made him one of the foremost experts in the field.

Foster joins host Loren Steffy to discuss the new Congress, what needs to happen to come to rational immigration policy changes, and much more.

The end of Title 42 is looming. What comes next? And what exactly is Title 8?

Jeremy McKinney is the American Immigration Lawyer Association (AILA) President and an immigration and naturalization lawyer in North Carolina. AILA has recommendations for Congress on how to handle the transition to Title 8 and beyond. McKinney joins host Chris Lyon to discuss these issues and more on this week's episode.

Rajika Bhandari is an international higher education expert, writer and speaker. She came to America, from India, to further her education. Her award-winning Memoir, America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility, came out 2021. Bhandari joins host Chris Lyon to discuss the experiences of many international students here in America, and the issues that they face.

Glenn Altschuler is an American writer, as well as a professor and administrator at Cornell University. Altshuler joins host Melissa Brannan to discuss his recent op-ed and common misconceptions about immigration in America.