Immigration

There are currently just under 65,000 migrants in New York City's shelter system, stretching the city's outworn social service systems. Today on the show, we follow one asylum seeker's journey from Venezuela to New York and explore why the process is lengthy and complicated.

Related episodes:
Is the 'border crisis' actually a labor market crisis? (Apple / Spotify)
'Welcome to the USA! Now get to work.' (Apple / Spotify)
The migrant match game (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

We wade into the heated debate over immigrants' impact on the labor market. When the number of workers in a city increases, does that take away jobs from the people who already live and work there? Does a surge of immigration hurt their wages?

The debate within the field of economics often centers on Nobel-prize winner David Card's ground-breaking paper, "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market." Today on the show: the fight over that paper, and what it tells us about the debate over immigration.

More Listening:
- When The Boats Arrive
- The Men on the Roof

This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Willa Rubin, edited by Annie Brown, and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle call the surge at the US Southern Border a "border crisis."

One camp says we need to focus on addressing the conditions in other countries that cause people to leave. The other says we have to focus on deterrence and enforcement.

But...what if both camps are actually ignoring a major piece of the picture? Today on the show, an overlooked cause and potential solution to the situation at our southern border that has nothing to do with the border at all.

Related episodes:
Why Venezuela is no longer in freefall
Welcome to the USA! Now get to work.

ICYMI, preorder our new Indicator t-shirt at the NPR shop. For more ways to support our show, sign up for Planet Money+ where you'll get sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, and access to even more Indicator merch.

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

President Biden just issued an executive order that can temporarily shut down the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers once a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded. On this episode, we dig into how the political panic surrounding what many are calling an immigration "crisis" at the border, isn't new. And in fact...it's a problem of our own creation.

This week Code Switch digs into The Ministry of Time, a new book that author Kailene Bradley describes as a "romance about imperialism." It focuses on real-life Victorian explorer Graham Gore, who died on a doomed Arctic expedition in 1847. But in this novel, time travel is possible and Gore is brought to the 21st century where he's confronted with the fact that everyone he's ever known is dead, that the British Empire has collapsed, and that perhaps he was a colonizer.