My guest this week is Manhattan Institute fellow and soon-to-be economist Daniel Di Martino. Daniel is well-versed in both the economics and the experience of immigration—he came to the US from Venezuela as a teenager, escaping the many crises that, in his account, Hugo Chavez’s administration inflicted on the country. Now finishing his PhD at Columbia, he’s a keen analyst of immigration policy who thinks there are much smarter things we could be doing to keep out the least desireable immigrants while making it easier for the most desireable immigrants to get here.
After Daniel gives a brief version of his story and that of Venezuela under Chavez, he explains what he sees as the domestic and foreign pressures on our immigration system. As he sees it, a combination of inefficient policy at home and high demand abroad has led to the current crisis. But he doesn’t think simply deporting millions of immigrants wholesale is feasible, humane, or legal, nor can we simply tell Mexico it’s their problem to deal with. There are some fixes we could make, he says, including detaining illegal migrants, hiring many more immigration court judges to process their cases, and changing which immigrants we prioritize for visas. According to his reseach, immigrants ages 18-24, those with advanced degrees, and those with high net worth would provide a massive tax benefit to the US, yet it is extraordinarily difficult for most of them to gain legal residency status. He’s got some recommendations on the policy front, but they may be difficult to implement, given the political divisivenes of the issue.
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1:15 Why Daniel immigrated to the US
5:14 What went wrong in Venezuela?
8:45 Daniel: Both the Biden administration and global trends are to blame for the border crisis
11:19 Trump promises to deport record numbers of illegal immigrants. But can he?
13:00 What’s it take to fix immigration? Money.
18:39 The flawed strategy of making immigration into Mexico’s problem
20:48 The bad information and rumors fueling asylum-seekers
23:18 Should residency visa programs prioritize the richest immigrants?
32:13 The labor market consequences of immigration
37:27 Daniel’s large-scale proposals for national immigration policy
43:00 How many unauthorized immigrants are in US right now?
45:23 The political realities of immigration reform
Recorded September 23, 2025
Links and Readings
Daniel’s writing for City Journal
Daniel’s report for the Manhattan Institute, “The Lifetime Fiscal Impact of Immigrants”
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