Thom Hartmann: Bay Buchanan is on the line with us. Bay is the, as a commentator for CNN she’s President of the non profit conservative foundation, The American Cause, and chairperson of the Immigration Control Political Action Committee, Team America. TheAmericanCause.org is the website. Bloomberg.com is reporting almost 1 in 6 people in the US workforce in 2007 was foreign born, the highest portion in 80 years. It was 5.2% in 1970, then Ronald Reagan came along and now it is 1 out of every 6 Americans. Bay Buchanan, welcome to the show.

Bay Buchanan: Thank you very much Thom, good to be with you.

Thom Hartmann: Thank you. You are, if I get this right, and this is one of those interesting areas where Tom Tancredo and I over the years have had a lot of conversations and I’ve taken the, what was the progressive position in the 1880s through the 1930s that every nation in the world should control immigration in a way that you know meets whatever their goals with regard to compassion may be, things like refugees. But basically should control immigration in a way to keep a middle class work force functional. And that when, for example, in the 1880s when the railroads tried to bust the nascent unions in the railroads they imported Chinese labor and you know, which lead to some pretty racist legislation. But nonetheless, the progressive position has always been, like when Cesar Chavez and Bobby Kennedy marched down to the Mexican border to protest illegal immigration from Mexico breaking up the United Farm Workers union, has been to control immigration. And my position has been put the employers in jail, go after the rich white guys and it’ll stop tomorrow morning. And Tom Tancredo has finally come around to that conclusion too after all these years. But you’re taking it a whole step further. Explain to us your thinking on this.

Bay Buchanan: Well, that period of time that you just addressed, 18, late 1800s, 1900s, early 1900s, we did another thing as well. Our immigration policy was controlled and we did what's in the interest of the United States. And so at times when you have, you’re looking at a depression, you’re looking at high unemployment, you close the doors.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, we did that in the 1930s, didn’t we? Early 1930s?

Bay Buchanan: Exactly. And so there’s different times. And in other times when things are just booming here and we need those kind of workers as you say, we bring in the workers that we need and you bring ‘em on in. I’ve always agreed, I would agree with you entirely. If we need nurses in this country, and we’re not producing the kind of nurses we need in the numbers we need, we shouldn’t give them a work permit, we should give them citizenship. Let’s bring part of the illegal immigration, bring ‘em on in, give ‘em the work permits, 12 months…

Thom Hartmann: Well, how about if we need nurses in this country we build more nursing schools?

Bay Buchanan: Well, I think in the interim you bring them, you know you make them part of your immigration policy. And then you say to your nursing schools, look we’re bringing in from Africa and other places for the next three years but get your act together because these are terrific jobs for Americans. And kind of move your people in that direction and encourage that through your policies, you know, whether it be tax policies or whatever. So I’m all in favor that our immigration should be a very specific policy that’s done in the best interests of this country. And right now we have enormously high unemployment, especially amongst those who are least able to move from one area to another, you know, those who are least, that don’t have the education or the tools …

Thom Hartmann: Among the poor and the uneducated in this country.

Bay Buchanan: Poor and uneducated. And what are we doing? We’re bringing more and more in to compete with them for jobs. I read the numbers this morning. It’s nearly 35% of black men between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployed. 35%. What are we doing, we’re bringing in people who are competing with those fellows. You know, I think when America is looking at 25 million unemployed or under employed, as the number is today, we have to stop bringing in foreign workers to compete with them.

Thom Hartmann: But see that, you know, the black unemployment in the United States, the biggest, if to put it in the context of immigration, the biggest challenge there is illegal immigration not legal immigration. You’re suggesting we should stop legal immigration which is the people who are coming in competing with the software engineers basically. I can’t tell you how many unemployed software engineers have called this program and said you know I’d be willing to work, I used to have a 100 thousand dollar a year job, I’d be willing to work for $50,000 a year but they’re bringing in people from India who are working for 30,000 dollars a year and they’re able to send money home.

Bay Buchanan: I agree with you. What we’re talking about today is that you have to, 125,000 foreign workers brought into this country, given work permits, every month. Every month. And it’s been going on for the last several years. We’re talking, what is that, 1.5 million a year, to compete with hard working Americans who used to be able to take care of their families and their children, now unemployed and we’re bring foreign workers in to compete with them today. There’s something wrong with this…

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Bay Buchanan, I never thought I would be agreeing with you and it’s, here we are. TheAmericanCause.org is her website. Bay, I think though that in, for both of us, that maybe we’re nibbling around the edges of a much larger problem. I’m looking around me right now, I’m sitting in a radio studio, I’m not sure where you are, but I’m seeing computers, I’m seeing a microphone, I’m seeing a camera, I’m seeing you know, an electronic board, a mixer board, all of these things were not made in the United States, none of them.

Bay Buchanan: Exactly. We’ve lost our manufacturing.

Thom Hartmann: That’s right. The only thing I see in this entire room that might have been made in the United States is the table top which is made out of wood. And it might have been imported, who knows. So I am, frankly I think that our immigration policy is a problem but we’ve lost 7 million manufacturing jobs just in the last 24 months in the United States and we’ve got, you know, on the conservative side you’ve got Carly Fiorina is gonna be taking on Barbara Boxer for the US Senate in California and her main claim to fame is that as the CEO of Hewlett Packard she shipped, she laid off 18 thousand American workers, shipped those jobs to China where over 20 thousand people got employed but at a much lower wage, saved HP a lot of money, she made a whole pile of money, I mean that’s a huge crisis, the fact that we have no national industrial policy, and that Bill Clinton, in particular, blew up a tariff-based trade policy that had served this country for 200 years. Shouldn’t we be looking there before we start looking at immigration?

Bay Buchanan: I’ll tell you why the immigration issue is, to me, a higher, not necessarily a higher priority, but an equally high priority. It’s because it can be done tomorrow. You know, I agree. We’ve gotta address…

Thom Hartmann: We could walk out of NAFTA tomorrow. We could walk out of the WTO tomorrow.

Bay Buchanan: Amen but you and I both know that the Congress of the United States is not gonna do that. But I am for you. Listen, you talk about California, how about Ohio. We got Rob Portman of all people running for the US Senate but endorsed by the senatorial committee, he is the one that helped negotiate the deals where, you know, the trade deals, where foreign countries can bring their, bring into this country, open up a factory and bring their own workers in. The factories here don’t even, we don’t even have a chance for those jobs. So …

Thom Hartmann: Right. And we’re giving them tax breaks.

Bay Buchanan: Yeah, exactly. The whole thing. I listen, I think you have to address immigration right now. We have 8 million illegal immigrants holding American jobs. 8 million. Well, that seems to be a real quick answer right there for a lot of Americans to at least have something to move towards as they try to get themselves out of this mess that we’ve put them in. Then you hit the legal immigration and stop bringing in the competition to the higher ones then you look at manufacturing and you bring that stuff home. Policies that…

Thom Hartmann: Right. It’s not like we don’t know how to do this, we have done this before in America.

Bay Buchanan: We can do it. And we can do it again. We are big enough, we can overcome.

Thom Hartmann: There you go. Bay Buchanan, TheAmericanCause.org, her website. Thanks Bay.

Bay Buchanan: Thanks a lot, good to be with ya, Thom.

Thom Hartmann: Thank you.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.