Alabama's Morning News with JT
Andre Barnes on how immigration policies failed black Americans
- Joining us now to talk about how immigration policies have failed black Americans is HBCU engagement director, Andre Barnes. Andre, welcome and thank you for being with me this morning. - Good morning. - Thank you so much for being with us. I do wanna get your thoughts on this and then talk about these immigration policies of Joe Biden right now and what a debacle it is. You know, including black Americans. But I also wanted to get your thoughts on the debate this past Thursday night in a nutshell. You think it's a good idea for Joe to continue moving forward for November 5th? - Well, you know, everyone saw what they saw. And, you know, when we're looking at elected officials, they're just like regular people. They have, you know, their ups and downs. I'm not clowning him on his ups and downs, but I do think he needs to have a conversation with his family and his inner circle and decide what's best for them. - Well, they did over the weekend and Jill and the crew said, "All right, we're coming out of the gates. Let's go," and they're doubling down. So the decision has been made by the family anyway. I'm not sure what Barack and the rest of the crew that are actually running his presidency have to say about this. I guess that's yet to be seen. So we'll keep an eye on that. One thing's for sure, Biden's policies when it comes to our border and immigration, it's been disastrous. I mean, just pick one topic or area of where it's been disastrous. But let's talk about how it's failed Black Americans. - Yeah, so we've seen in the last quarter that 600,000 jobs have gone to immigrants and while Americans have lost 300,000 jobs, we cannot sustain that sort of effort of joblessness towards Americans because we look at Black Americans, they are 50% of homeless families and also around 40% of the unemployed in America. So there's a real problem. We need to ensure that Americans have jobs and when we have all this mass immigration, it really affects Black Americans. - You know, I saw rather that you mentioned in your piece, Representative Barbara Jordan who was from Texas and served as the first other Black woman in Congress and also chaired Clinton's Commission on Immigration Reform and staunchly opposed border policies that have failed Black Americans for centuries. But some of her thoughts and policies and work she was working on unfortunately did not get implemented because she passed away. Do you see bringing some of that back in your efforts to get some of her wishes completed? - Absolutely and this is what numbers USA was founded upon. They are founded upon the recommendations from the Barbara Jordan Commission. She wanted 500,050 per year and the 50,000 included refugees, 100,000 were skilled workers and then another 400,000 was another category of workers. So that would be what it is per year. It wouldn't be this unfettered immigration policies that we're seeing now. Like all were about a sensible immigration, legal immigration, totally fine, but let's make it sensible. Let's make the policies make sense. - All right, let's talk about, you know, where we are as far as Black votes. We see that it looks like more support for Trump is coming every day and the Black community overwhelmingly votes Democrat and it looks like those numbers are still slanted in that direction as far as the majority is concerned. But more and more Hispanics and Black Americans are coming off of the Biden train and jumping on with the Trump train here. Where do you stand on the election? Are you ready to commit to either candidate at this point? - Well, right now I can tell you about what Black Americans have been saying to me about what they're seeing in this next election. I've gone to Chicago, I've gone to New York, I've gone to LA. And what people have been saying to me time and time again is that these immigration policies are not in their best interest. Like I've talked to grassroots organizations in Chicago, actually just left Chicago a week ago and had a whole event around getting information out there about the policies and talking about the policies with factual presentations and bringing out questions that the community members had about immigration. And I'll say, hey, I invite an immigration advocacy group to talk about their side of the picture as well. Let's present our facts together and make sure that Americans have the facts about what's happening. But what has been happening is a lot of times the immigration advocacy groups do not want to have that conversation. They do not want to present their facts, but I'm going to keep reaching out because people need to know the facts. And the facts are is that these policies are not helping Americans. - Who gets your vote? - Who gets my vote? Right now I can say that it is Donald Trump. I like to stay out of the fray, but right now I think he's the best candidate. - I'm moving forward. - Andre, great to talk with you. I really appreciate you. Andrew Barnes, HBCU Engagement Director there.