July 2 - The Paralyzed Politics of Immigration Reform; An Ugly Nativist Backlash to a Humanitarian Crisis; Facebook's Psyops Experiment Backfires

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the politics of immigration with the president vowing to act in the face of a do-nothing Congress controlled by Republicans who are likely to seize on the crisis at the border where unaccompanied children from Central America are flooding in. Marshall Fitz, the Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, where he directs the organization’s research and analysis of the economic, political, legal and social impacts of immigration policy, joins us to discuss whether the current crisis will be dealt with or become an election year wedge issue.

Part 2

Then we examine the manifestation of hostile nativism on display Tuesday in Murrieta, California where anti-immigrant demonstrators stopped busses full on immigrant children who were being shipped from overcrowded detention centers in Texas and Arizona that are overwhelmed by the flood of unaccompanied minors escaping from drug-fueled gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Peter Schrag, a long-time editorial page editor and columnist for the Sacramento Bee and author of “Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America” joins us to discuss the ugly backlash to this humanitarian crisis.

Part 3

Then finally, we speak with Eva Galperin, a Global Policy Analyst at the Electronic Freedom Foundation where she focuses on providing digital privacy and security for vulnerable populations. We discuss Facebook’s psyops experiment which has generated a firestorm of protest with many decrying the secret manipulation of Facebook user’s emotions to shape people’s moods, and we look into what repercussions the giant social network is likely to face with inquiries underway in Europe and elsewhere.