Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 143 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're all doing well.
I hope you're ready to practice your English.
As always, this episode will be good practice for your listening skills and you'll probably learn a few new words and phrases.
So in today's episode, we're going to talk about another controversial topic.
I think that's two in a row.
This isn't normal for me.
By the way, when we say in a row we're saying consecutive.
So if I say two episodes in a row, I'm saying two consecutive episodes.
So the last episode and this episode are both about kind of controversial topics.
So that's not normal for me.
I don't usually do episodes on controversial topics.
But just by accident, it's happened.
But that's okay.
In today's episode, we're going to talk about Immigration.
Don't worry, because I don't have a strong opinion about this topic, so you don't have to worry about me talking about how I feel about this and other people are wrong or whatever.
No.
I'll just talk about the whole issue in general, focusing on immigration in the US, of course, immigrants that come here.
And I'll talk a little bit about my experience with immigration, because my wife immigrated to the US.
She's a permanent resident here now.
And I'll just give you an overview of this topic.
The word overview refers to a general summary of something.
So I'll just kind of give you an overview about this topic.
But I'm sure it will be interesting.
And before we start, remember that if you want my help to understand English speakers when they speak fast, then make sure to sign up for my membership so you can get access to my listening practice seminars in which I show you the different sound patterns in English that are hard to understand and I help you understand them.
So the link to that is in the episode description down below.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And, of course, if you want my other podcast, my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to other English speakers from around the country about different topics, you And I give you the transcript and give you the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.
Then make sure to sign up for that podcast.
The link is also down below in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash us conversations.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about immigration.
So, as I mentioned, I'm not going to try to present all of my thoughts and opinions, my stance, on this.
Your stance refers to your position, what you believe about some topic.
So I'm not going to present my stance here here some political stance.
No, don't worry, i don't have a political stance.
Like i mentioned, i don't really have a strong opinion about this, but I want to talk about it because it's always a topic that people discuss in politics and just among each other here in the US.
They could be talking about legal immigration or illegal immigration.
And it's really important to understand this distinction because, think many people in other countries when They hear about this topic in the US, They don't make this distinction.
They don't understand if what's being discussed is regarding illegal or legal immigration.
And I remember when I was living in Mexico and I was talking to student of mine and I don't remember what country they were from, but this student asked me where I lived and I told him that I lived in Mexico.
And then he asked me wait, is it gonna be hard for you to go back to the US now because of the big border wall that they're building?
And And I laughed maybe I shouldn't have, but I laughed because it was hilarious to me that this person thought that me, a US citizen, that I would have trouble going back to the United States because of a wall being built.
You can see that they had a very different idea about what this wall was than what it was in reality, right?
Obviously, there's not a big wall that keeps every single person out US citizens, legal residents and just no one can enter into the country.
Of course not.
That's not what this is about.
So that's an example.
I can think of someone who doesn't really get the distinction between topics related to legal and illegal immigration, because obviously a border wall would not keep legal immigrants out or citizens out.
That wouldn't have an effect on that, because that's not what the border wall is meant for right, it's not meant for legal immigrants or for us citizens to not be able to enter into the country again.
So I want to really clarify that.
And I want to talk about legal immigration first and then illegal immigration.
So legal immigration sucks.
Let me just say it bluntly.
When we use the word blunt immigration.
When I say something bluntly, I'm saying it very honestly, in kind of not a pretty or nice way.
I'm being blunt.
And to be blunt, legally immigrating to the U.S. sucks if you don't live in the country currently.
If you live in the country, it can still suck, but maybe less, because you're already in the country, maybe as a tourist or a student, or maybe you're in the country and you get married somewhere to an American citizen, a US citizen, and then you are adjusting your status to become a resident.
That still isn't fun, but at least you're in the US living there while the process is happening.
But if you don't live in the US and you're applying from abroad, from some other country, It's a long, terrible process.
I know this because my wife did this.
We lived in Mexico when we did this and it took multiple years to finish this process, even though my wife was married to me at the time.
She was married to a US citizen, but it still took us a long time to legalize her so that she could live here.
Many people are surprised when they hear that, when I tell them that.
They assume that if you marry a US citizen, you can get residency pretty fast, even if you live abroad at the time.
But no, it doesn't work like that.
That's why I say that this process sucks, because if you're not in the country, and especially if you're doing this residency process because you got married to a US citizen, then this process can keep you apart from your spouse, for example.
Maybe he or she lives in the US and And you live in a different country and you're just waiting to get approved so you can go and live in the US with them.
That situation is terrible.
It really is, thankfully.
When I did this, when my wife did this, I lived in Mexico with her, obviously.
So we were together.
But many times people don't do this.
The US citizen still lives in the US and then the spouse lives abroad and they're separated during this process and the us citizen has to travel to go see their spouse once in a while and it's not fun, and so this whole legal process is long, it's bureaucratic, it's hard.
It seems like it's something a lot harder and longer than it should be, particularly if you got married to a citizen.
Obviously i'm talking about that in particular because that's my case, but obviously people do this process for different reasons, not just because they married a citizen right, but if that's the case, then it's probably even worse waiting through this process.
And in general, people in the US don't feel as negatively about legal immigrants, of course, as they do about illegal immigrants, because of course, there's a huge political debate about immigration and about illegal immigration in particular, illegal immigrants in the US.
But I think that yes, there are some people that still feel negatively about how many immigrants come to the US legally, but I don't think that's the majority of the people here.
I think most people don't have a big problem with legal immigration.
They're more concerned about illegal immigration, right?
So legal immigration is a long process.
A lot of people hire lawyers to help them with this.
We didn't, but a lot of people do this.
They have to wait and pay a lot of money and they have to do a lot of things and comply with all of these rules and then eventually hopefully, they become a legal resident in the US.
But, as you can see, it's not fast and easy and of course that might cause some people to illegally immigrate because of how hard and long it seems to do it legally.
So I'm sure that that pushes some people to just try to do it illegally instead.
So let's talk about illegal immigration.
So this can happen in a number of ways.
Some people can enter the US illegally by crossing the desert in the north of Mexico.
I'm sure some of you have seen this in movies or heard about this where people are crossing this desert in the north of Mexico.
Sometimes they hire people who we call coyotes coyotes in English, these people that smuggle people across the border.
When you smuggle someone or smuggle something somewhere, you are taking it illegally or taking them illegally to some place.
So people might hire someone to smuggle them across the border, or people might do this on their own and they might swim across the river that divides the country, And this is a dangerous process.
It can be really dangerous to cross the desert and try to enter the U.S. like that on foot.
That's really hard and you can imagine that many people don't make it.
In other words, they don't actually arrive to the border or to the US.
So that's one way that people can come illegally across the border.
And maybe a more common way.
I don't have the numbers here so I can't say for sure if this is more common or not, but I'm guessing a more common way is for people to get a tourist visa or maybe a student or work visa or something like that, for the US, and then they come to the US and then they just stay forever instead of going back home before their visa expires.
And this is something that can be tempting for people to do if they're already in the US
And they just need to stay.
They don't need to go anywhere.
They can just stay.
Of course, life can get complicated after that because they're not there legally anymore.
But they can make it work many times.
When you make something work, we're saying that you... make it happen or succeed or go okay, right?
You make it work.
So you can make it work.
And so that's a temptation that some people have to overstay their visa, as we would say, and maybe just stay forever.
So that's another way.
And another way that people might immigrate illegally is by faking a marriage, meaning they get married to someone but they're not actually acting like a husband and wife.
They're just doing it legally to have the papers and then they don't even know each other and don't care about each other.
They don't live together or anything like that.
The foreigner pays the US citizen to get married to them and then that's how they do it.
This might sound pretty strange to you, but I've met people that have done this.
I had a student that did this and he told me all about it, how he was living illegally in the US because of his fake marriage right.
So this can happen.
That's another way.
And one other way that people might come illegally is and this is probably a little strange for a lot of you to hear is that some people are just allowed to enter illegally, even though they don't have a legal document to enter, they might be allowed to cross into the US.
And this is something that I think we don't hear a lot about, but I know that it happens because I've seen reports of this where many people are just allowed into the US even though they don't have a document to show that they have permission, and then usually when they cross, they are assigned some type of court date where they have to go to court and maybe discuss their case of why they should be allowed into the US or i don't know exactly, but something like that.
But of course, it would be easy for people to just ignore this and just go into the us and then live their life.
So that happens actually.
So these are some different ways that people immigrate to the us without doing the legal process right, And of course, there's a big debate about this.
You've probably heard this before.
Some people are really against illegal immigration.
Some people are not against it.
Some people are in the middle.
A lot of people have an opinion about this.
And, of course, some of the things that people don't like about this is that illegal immigrants might be able to live their life here without paying things like income tax or things like that.
If they're working under the table, which means that they're working in an informal way, they're getting paid in cash maybe, and there's no record of their labor, so maybe they don't need to pay taxes on the money that they're earning, for example.
Some people still do probably, but some people maybe know.
Obviously people always get scared about jobs being taken, That foreigners will take their jobs or that there are criminals coming in or that people don't assimilate to US culture.
Assimilate means that you kind of adapt to become part of that culture.
So people don't like when people come and don't assimilate.
So obviously there are a lot of different reasons why people might not like this.
And then some people might disagree and they might want people to be able to come if they want to work and have a good life and help their families out, and people might think that it's good to let people come in, regardless of where they're from or their level of education or whatever.
Some people think that it's better for people to come and It's not a problem, so to say.
So there are two different sides, two different perspectives, of course.
So that's a little bit about illegal immigration.
And to close this controversial episode, which I hope isn't too controversial for you, I wanted to mention again that I honestly don't have a strong opinion about this issue.
I'm not just saying that because I don't want to offend people.
I honestly don't have a strong opinion about this.
I think, if i try to form an opinion, i guess i would say that i want people to be able to come here.
If those people come with good intentions and follow the rules and at least try to adapt and uh, you know, just want to come to um, Have a better life.
I want those people to come.
But of course I don't want people to come who are bad people and who are criminals or who will abuse the system, take advantage of the system or whatever.
I think a lot of people would say this, and it's not a very political opinion.
I think it's just me talking about what I wish would happen.
I don't know how that could happen.
I don't know of a process that would perfectly uh, discriminate against bad people who want to do bad things and also allow all the people with good intentions to come in.
I don't know.
I'm just expressing an opinion because you probably want me to give an opinion about this, but I honestly don't have a strong political opinion about this.
So I just wanted to talk about this issue in general.
This will always be a debate.
I don't think this debate will end ever.
And this is a debate in many countries.
Maybe in your country, where you are, this might be a political debate there too, about what to do about illegal immigration.
Just remember, when you hear things regarding this in the US, that there's a distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
It's important to know what's being discussed.
If they're talking about a big wall, they're talking about illegal immigration, right?
If they're talking about green cards or visas or things like that, then they're talking about legal immigration.
So there are two different topics here.
Right.
So I think that's it for today.
I won't talk any more about this topic. that's pretty much a general overview of this topic.
And I'm sure a lot of you have stronger opinions than I do about this.
And that's okay.
And, of course, I hope this episode was helpful for your listening and that you're starting to understand more English from listening to these episodes, and I hope you're learning a lot of new words.
And if you want to practice with my advanced episodes, you can also do that by becoming a Listening Time family member.
As I mentioned before, the link to my membership is down below in the episode description.
And if you feel ready to practice listening to two people talking instead of just one, then make sure to sign up for my US.
Conversations podcast.
It's a lot of fun.
You'll really enjoy those conversations that I have with other English teachers from around the country.
The link is also down below.
That's patreon.com slash us conversations.
And, as always, please give this podcast a five-star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and write a review and share it with any English learners that you know.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
