Immigrant Workers Died Repairing Bridge Named After Slaveholder

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:52 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1021. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:59 Matt: Doing great, Thomas. Having a great weekend. How about you?

0:01:01 Thomas: Good, good. Based on today's topic? What's happening?

0:01:05 Matt: I just couldn't come up with any bridge jokes. It's also kind of bleak, but we're gonna be talking about a bridge.

0:01:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Physically, you I feel like that bridge looks now. I think that's my tie-in. Isn't am I the only one? That's how I feel all the time. Like when it was a normal bridge, that's not how I feel. And then after a giant thing hit it, then it was like, I love, I know we're going to talk about it, Matt.

I know where you get into it, but I, this was one of those times where, you catch the bridge like main cable news story because I don't watch any of that stuff because it's just like going live now to a bridge that used to be there for the next seven days straight, like 24 -7. Silly me, I had never, the thought had never occurred to me that there could be conspiracy theories around this very obvious thing.

It's like, look, I get, I mean, 9-11 conspiracy theories I think are, are, you know, very silly, but like, at would be like if, like, you, a whole planet hit the Twin Towers, like, the thing that hit the bridge is gigantically huge and the bridge is not like that, I, where's their room for a conspiracy theory, but no, there is, they, they find a way?

0:01:17 Matt: Well, Don't know. Yeah. From what I can see, it's people who don't know anything about maritime operations. Not that I do, but I've learned a lot about maritime operations today. Well, the other culprit is DEI, as you might have heard. So there's a whole, yeah.

0:02:21 Thomas: Anything? Ooh, I was just going to say, yeah, DEI doesn't melt that, that, the melting point of DEI is, you know, it's a lot lower than you might think. So that's the key, but can't wait to get into all of that nonsense. Plus maritime law that I'm, I'm told you've boned up on.

0:02:32 Matt: Yeah, steel beams. Yeah.

0:02:43 Matt: War of 1812 and Francis Scott Key and immigration, of course. So plenty more.

0:02:44 Thomas: Holy crap. So good. Yeah. There's, there's a Lotta stuff here. After the break, which you can skip if you are on patreon.com/law, we will get on over to Bridgegate. I don't know. Are they calling it that? I just, okay, good.

0:02:48 Matt: All right.

0:03:00 Matt: No one is calling it that.

0:03:02 Thomas: No, Bridgegate was already a thing. That was the thing where he saw, was that?

0:03:05 Matt: Yeah that's taken.

0:03:06 Thomas: Yeah, that's right. It's taken. Sorry. They retired it. I should have consulted the Hall of Gates. That's like, yeah.

0:03:06 Matt: Yeah we can only add to so many words anymore, more well.

0:03:17 Thomas: Right, Matt. A giant thing hit a bridge. Wasn't good for the bridge. What else? What more to the story is there?

0:03:24 Matt: I actually woke up to this video, I guess I saw it right away. When I, when I woke up, it was on the New York Times front page, and I just kept watching it over and over again because I'd never seen anything like it before. And I started going deep on some of the issues because there's so many different things going on here. I mean, you've got a ship, ship the size of the Eiffel Tower that rams into a bridge named after the author of the national anthem at speed of a rocket launch, and there's just so many different thing, things that have kind of untangled from this involving evolving.

0:03:38 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah. Wait, I'm sorry. Speed of a rock launch? I thought it was a very low speed.

0:03:48 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was the force, excuse me, the force of a rocket launch. It was eight miles an hour, but yeah. But a hundred million Newtons or something.

0:03:50 Thomas: Oh, okay. Ah, that makes more sense. But when you get that, I know when you gets the mass of a container ship, I mean, I mean, it really is crazy. I think it was going, what, like six miles an hour? I mean it's almost nothing. They have to give it knots, which is like, that's not.

0:03:58 Matt: Yeah?

0:04:07 Matt: Hardly anything.

0:04:10 Thomas: Please, skip the part where you first tell me what it is in knots because I guarantee you what percentage of people are like, oh, wow, that many knots. Okay, that is miles per hour would not be helpful, but knots, that es what really tells me. But anyway, yeah, no, but it really es.

0:04:11 Matt: Yeah right. Yes. What if it were a car? That's what I want to know. Yeah.

0:04:27 Thomas: Yeah. Is it the Americans will use anything but the metric system? But I don't know what knots don't sound very metric. So, but anyway, yeah. So tons of momentum, obviously, um,

0:04:32 Matt: Pretty much. Yeah so Yeah and sadly six people died and I'm going to talk about them, of course, these lives that were lost. But yeah, it comes at a time, of course when Donald Trump is out there just 10 days before this disaster, he was out there talking about how he doesn't consider some migrants to be human. A long string of comments about how they're poisoning the blood and how there's criminals and animals, and he's been lying a lot about how Mexico and Central America are sending people from its jails and and its asylums. And all six of these men were from Central America and Mexico, and they very much had lives very familiar to me with the people that I represent and work with, and couldn't be further from the kinds of things that Donald Trump is saying. And I wanted to talk about them. I wanted to talking about sort of what this all means, this moment in American history, this American collision, as I'm thinking of it. But I guess I got to ask first, how do you feel about the national anthem?

0:04:40 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, So sad. Yeah, I hate

0:05:24 Matt: Thomas, it's awful it's so terrible, it's

0:05:25 Thomas: It. I I'm so sick of it. Look, I don't know if you've had to hear me do this thing and, uh, I, I do' t want to take away from the weight of the situation, which we will will get to, but many times do you need to hear a song in your life? How many times? Your favorite song! My favorite songs! I, I don't have a one favorite, but like, in my whole life, would it be 500 times? I don, you know, maybe at most how many times have I had to hear this shitty song. I into hockey and some other sports, uh, and so you have to hear the the military industrial complex parade before every single hockey game. Everyone, it's a bad song thank you, finally someone will say it in addition to me

0:06:02 Matt: It's bad, it's a bad song, it's just it's not good no it's it was a late 18th century drinking anthem, like it was a drinking anthem that was given terrible lyrics, the the entire third verse of the song is about how there's a how terrible it was that like freed slaves went and joined the British to fight us, like now they should all die, uh like seven other verses Yeah No, no, we don't just sing the first one, because that's the inspiring one, but there's a bunch of weird stuff in there.

0:06:21 Thomas: Oh is that the, like the secret, the hidden, the ones we don't use anymore, or is the actual lyrics that, oh, okay. So truth be told, you could have told me that they do sing that one. And I would have been, I would believe you because I tune it out. Like, I'm so sick of it that my brain just goes like the, you know, the old color bars before the, the cable you thing that we used to have a TV.

0:06:45 Thomas: I the grammar of it is weird. Like, I appreciate some old obscure grammar, sure, but like when we're all singing it, and you know, there are people who were born like after 1820, and, you and, other years more recent, and so they're like, "or the rampart, nor that," like the whole like dependent clause crap that it starts with is very counterintuitive to where you don't even know what it's saying anymore. Yeah.

0:06:45 Matt: Plus the range, to be able to sing it at all. It's just multiple actives.

0:07:13 Thomas: It's the worst. Yeah.

0:07:16 Matt: It's too much. And it actually gets worse. It gets a lot worse than I thought, because I learned a little bit more about Francis Scott Key today. Of course, I'm bringing this up because that was what the bridge was named after that just fell. And Francis Scott key, first of all, I think it's interesting that our national anthem was written by a prosecutor.

0:07:32 Matt: I think that's... went on to become the fourth U.S. attorney for D.C., but he was a local DC prosecutor. And Not a great career, but much worse than that, uh, owned people. He ownedpeople for his entire adult life. And I had never actually thought about that until today, or I don't think I knew that until today. Um, he was somebody who owned people and had no problem owning people, and

0:07:25 Thomas: Oh. Wow. Well, Well, yeah, but back then every single person had to own slaves, and there was no choice about it. It was actually mandated, and no one could be against it at all.

0:07:56 Matt: Right. And And Everyone Thought that Was fine. Right.

0:07:59 Thomas: Yeah, they did. Including the slaves. They were super cool with it.

0:07:59 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Right, no, he actually, he prosecuted abolitionists actively. He thought abolition was a real threat to the country. Yep. He actually prosecuted a physician to death. He didn't put him to death, but he died in prison just shortly after getting out of prison out of tuberculosis. But he prosecuted someone for possession of abolitionist literature. It was actually the first sedition case in the United States ever prosecuted. This is who this guy was. And I feel like of all the founding fathers and everybody else, Francis Scott Key has really gotten a pass.

0:08:05 Thomas: Wow. Holy crap.

0:08:29 Matt: That's what I've decided after this.

0:08:18 Thomas: Oh my God. Wow. No kidding. Why? I hope this bridge was like his horcrux actually. And then the, and then the anthem goes away like that. Has anyone sung it since? Oh, that would be so good.

0:08:36 Matt: That'd be great if it just vanished.

0:08:38 Thomas: Oh, that would be the best, someone goes up to sing it, like, before a game, and they're like, "What, what?" And they just have no idea what's happening. They're like, "I can't, I, can sing, you try, you try." "Oh, I can say it, no I can't sing it either." That wouldbe the... Oh, that'd be the... You're right, this guy gets a pass. I mean, I had vaguely heard about, like, oh, they're... The song has the racist, like, secret, you know, if you put the, the record on reverse, then it's no, but, the, yeah, but, I, way worse, that, is, how, is, is it always so much worse than you think when it comes to racism in America? It's amazing. Look

0:08:39 Matt: Yeah.

0:08:55 Matt: Third verse. Yeah, no.

0:09:11 Matt: Thing, I mean, everything about... So there's the legend of Francis Scott Key, right? He's being held in a British ship because he's just gone over to negotiate the release of a physician who was captured during the War of 1812. He himself was opposed to the War, War of 1812, which was actually opposed by more people in America than any other war ever, including Vietnam. Northeast almost seceded over it. Was really not a good war. I didn't even realize we started the War of1812. I actually thought the British invaded us, but it

0:09:34 Thomas: Know anything about, I don't even know what year it was, I'll be honest, I know nothing about this war, I can't remember who we fought, Canada or something. Well,

0:09:43 Matt: Actually fought in 1812. But no, it was started by the US because we didn't like the way the British were interfering with trade. And one of the things we really didn't like is that the British was supporting natives who were rising up against American colonization, including Tecumseh, who I think should be an American hero, that's a whole other thing.

But we were fighting the British with basically no army to the point that our army was a joke at the time, that they were able to invade D.C. and burn it down and move on to Maryland.

And so Francis Scott Key, a few weeks after the burning of D.C., finds out that this physician has been captured, goes over to try to negotiate with the British on a truce ship, goes along with a naval officer to negotiate his release, actually manages to negotiate as released because he points out the physician had actually treated a bunch of British soldiers and he was a good guy, well -known in the community. But the British held on to him because they were about to attack Fort McHenry, and they didn't want him to go back and reveal what they're about to do and all the ships that were there. So he got to watch the entire invasion of Fort McHenry. And that's where the song comes from, of a prosecutor sitting on a boat, watching the British in a stupid war attack this fort, and America loses,

0:10:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:47 Matt: Except that the flag goes at the pole.

0:10:47 Thomas: I'm guessing he'd also taken like a hit to the head, and that's why the grammar is so weird. Can you just start with the subject of it? The whole song is about something that you don't know what the subject of it is until the big reveal at the end. The subject's actually a ghost. He's dead the whole time. It's like the flag or some shit. I hate that song so much.

0:10:59 Matt: And he steaming about No, me too, I'm glad we agree on this. I

0:11:07 Thomas: You've into a hidden reservoir of hate that I'm so sorry to. I'm probably going to edit most of this out, Matt, but you're hearing it. You're getting to hear how much I hate this song.

0:11:14 Matt: The only good thing that might come out of any of this is they might rename the bridge. Let's hope, maybe, maybe we can get a petition going to rename the ridge to something else, um, right, just like at the bottom of the the harbor. That one can still be there. Yeah. So yeah, know what happened. We saw the video. It was a terrible disaster. Freak accident, not a conspiracy, not any kind of DEI mismanagement. It was just a ship that lost power and smashed into a support beam. And I was thinking, my first thought, of course, is this is our infrastructure problem, but it's really not. The fact is it was finished in 1977, actually built mostly by immigrant labor at the time, and ships were smaller. And they just weren't prepared for that kind of thing.

0:11:25 Thomas: Hold on. Now that's a crumpled piece of shit. It. Now let's keep it named Francis. Got to keep it. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. I

0:11:58 Matt: They weren't ready for that to be smashed into.

0:11:59 Thomas: Didn't even think of that. They weren't

0:12:01 Matt: So, yeah.

0:12:01 Thomas: Ready for amazon .com basically, right? It's

0:12:04 Matt: And all the cheap shit that we get from China, they just weren't ready. So, I was thinking, know, you about that time and sort of what immigration was like in 1815, because at the end of the war, there was actually a major influx of American immigration. It was one of the first big waves of immigration. And, you know, back then, all you had to do to become a citizen was be a free white person of good character. That's, you know, pretty easy, right? Right. Just it's I'm a free white person of good character. You just have to live here for two years.

0:12:04 Thomas: Just, yeah, just -hmm but okay sure.

0:12:28 Matt: Yeah. You know, you just live in the United States for two years. Of course, everybody else is out. But, you know, that's just how it was. So this massive influx of immigration that sort of starts around that time is when we get most of the early Irish immigration. Obviously, the golden age of immigration doesn't come out till later in the 19th century. But know I was just thinking a lot about some of the immigration issues around this because the victims of this, the eight men who fell 150 feet into the water, six of whom died. Of the first things I noticed when I was reading about this is that one of them was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, but the other one walked away.

0:13:00 Matt: He actually refused medical treatment completely. And it made me wonder right away what was going on there, right? Because I know that people often don't want to be identified in these circumstances if they're not working legally or here under those kinds of circumstances.

0:12:35 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah yeah so awful yeah.

0:13:14 Thomas: In fairness to our capitalist nightmare hellscape could also just be someone without insurance. There's a lot of horrible capitalist reasons why that is, but in this case it have something to do with immigration.

0:13:20 Matt: No, that's also true. That's very true. The men who died, there was two from Mexico named Alejandro Hernandez and Carlos Hernandez, two from Guatemala named Dorian Castillo and Jose Lopez, and from Honduras named Maynardo Suazo, and one from El Salvador named Miguel Luna, and their immigration status isn't totally clear. I know that one of them, it was reported, was about to be going back to finish the process, which tells me that he was almost certainly going through what we call provisional waiver, which means he probably would have been waiting for four or five years going through a family member, almost certainly a spouse, process and that takes at this point about 43 and a half months just for one piece of it through this immigration system. And that's just to show hardship to your spouse so that you can go back and process the rest of the visa.

0:14:03 Thomas: The meantime, the hardest jobs... I don't understand how there's a single privileged person in this country who doesn't feel at least some amount of guilt that the people who we won't even even allow to officially be citizens of the country are doing the hardest jobs. Like, they just are. Doing a hard job. And I'm sure there are many people listening who might also be doing that. There's a lot of hard jobs. I'm not saying nobody else does hard jobs, but like the fact is like a a privileged privileged person. I get to do kind of intellectual work, which is a great gift.

It's a very, very, very fortunate thing. Don't want to get too like, you guilty over it, but like I do genuinely feel quite a lot of like guilt that we can't. I, that's why I will never stop trying to at least like things politically, you know, like at least do what I can to advocate politically, because it is just so depressing that people, you six of whom have died were doing the hardest thing, the most necessary, difficult jobs that a bunch of asshole MAGA people wouldn't even do. And they get nothing but hate for it.

0:14:20 Matt: Yeah.

0:14:33 Matt: It's a privilege.

0:15:02 Matt: 3:30 in the morning, filling potholes so that we don't have to be inconvenienced, right? So the traffic isn't inconvenienced. And a cold March night in the middle of the night, filling potholes, which is important work, especially around here where we have nothing but potholes.

0:15:03 Thomas: Yeah. God. Yeah, I only make potholes. I've never done the opposite of that.

0:15:18 Matt: Yeah. Right. And I'm constantly driving directly into them. Um, know these people, I just, from all accounts, I spent a lot of time today just sort of reading about them and their lives and everything that we know, um, a fund that we'll link to, uh, for the families, that's run by the city right now. And you know that we only really notice these people when something goes wrong, and it's just especially harsh when the rhetoric is what it is right now, and all we're hearing is about the crisis at the border, right? And And it also made me want to talk about some of these other economic issues around this, because it's really so far from what these people are saying. But real quick, let's just see who the real culprit is.

0:15:29 Thomas: Yes, truly disgusting.

0:15:53 Thomas: We get a totally chill, cool take? Should we go to completely level -headed chill? Oh,

0:15:59 Matt: From our friend of the show, Maria Bartiromo.

0:15:59 Thomas: God. Yeah, friend of multiple of my shows, Maria Bartiromo.

0:16:05 Clip: Ship involved in the collapse of the bridge is 948 feet long, called the Dolly, a Singaporean flagged container, but of course you've been talking a lot about the potential for wrongdoing or potential for foul play given the wide open border. That is why you have been so adamant. Why have the Republicans had such a hard time securing this border? The President says he's not going to take executive action.

0:16:19 Thomas: It's the Florida senator, huh?

0:16:26 Matt: It's the identifying the wide -open border.

0:16:28 Clip: You know that. Where

0:16:28 Matt: Just like, it's the most awkward transition. Uh don't know what she's talking about she's

0:16:31 Thomas: Like that, like the, like the boat came through the border. What is she talking about? Like they were scheduled for this interview and then they're like well oh we, this bridge. So he's like, no, I'll work it in. Don't worry. We're, we're Republicans. We only have two to three talking points and they're all linked to everything we say all the time. So it's fine. Totally fine. It'll be seamless.

0:16:44 Matt: Yeah and they got the other one in there too with dei right so So, um, you know, literally there was a tweet that was just DEI did this with a, with a bridge collapse. You probably do it where there's woke up as I just on that.

0:16:52 Thomas: Yeah. God. Is Is the DEA in the room with you right now?

0:17:03 Matt: Yeah. Right. From what I can tell, it's because Baltimore has a black mare, um. Has something apparently to do with a ship losing power. I don't really don't know. Oh, I'm sorry. Also because the company has an inclusivity page on its website where they're trying to promote. Yeah. So that'll do it. That explains everything.

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0:18:48 Matt: This is coming at a time when the rhetoric has just been ramped up to the point that it's very, very concerning. A good time to talk about what undocumented people and lightly documented people, because we don't know exactly what the status was of these people, but I just know from my own clients that there's a chance that at most they had work permits, that they had the ability to work here. And we'll talk about how that happens and how you actually get a work permit. But these are the people that do the most dangerous jobs. And right Right now, construction and roofing are some of the most dangerous jobs in the country consistently. And that's the jobs that you often find undocumented people in, especially undocumented men. Being a police officer is like 18th.

0:19:00 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm, was just going to make the joke, but I don't even need to. You're already way ahead of me. I was like, oh, you mean after police officer? Because that's obviously the most dangerous job. No, that's like, It's what not, it's not in the top five.

0:19:25 Matt: No, it's right there. Yeah. Right. No. No, yeah. It's way Down there. We had a terrible thing that happened in Massachusetts a couple of months ago where a couple couple of electrical workers were killed along with a police officer, and there was this massive funeral for the police officer and hardly any talk about the workers, right? And that's just, that's the way we do it.

0:19:44 Thomas: Yeah, and the electrical workers were doing something useful that, we like, need.

0:19:48 Matt: That we need. That we shouldn't abolish. And so we have this narrative, though, that these people are here somehow taking our jobs and somehow in any way negatively hurting our economy. And I will tell you, there was a report that didn't get a lot of attention a few months ago that I tried to bring up as much as possible from the Congressional Budget Office. And this, again, this is not some frothing radicals, right? This is the Congression Budget Office that's supposed to just try to figure out the numbers around basic American life. And is pretty shocking even to me, they looking at the surge of immigration that began in 2022, the thing that we call the border crisis, I don't call it that, but we'll talk about another time, uh, found that this one surge starting in 2022 is going to add a projected seven trillion dollars to the economy, economy just

0:19:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:27 Thomas: Seven? Well, that's a lot. Over over how, that does seem incredible how

0:20:31 Matt: We're growing the the labor of the workforce and we're, they're often filling jobs that are very, very hard to fill right now, and they're, they're also keeping inflation down because they're filling these jobs and creating more. And this is sort of a classic mistake that people make when they talk about immigration, about how they're coming into steel slices of the pie. But of course, what they're doing is making a bigger pie.

0:20:48 Thomas: Yes. Gosh.

0:20:49 Matt: And they're come in at a time when we are building more houses than ever, when there's much more demand for housing than there's ever been. Was reading about how construction companies were saying if they didn't have this new sort of influx of labor, that it would take twice as long to be building some of these houses. Speaking, this is the the stuff that keeps the country going.

0:20:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:04 Matt: These are the people that make cities happen, and you, we're making it harder and harder for them to live in cities. And we're pushing them further out, places like Boston and New York and Baltimore, I think, too. You know, it's these immigrant enclaves that have always guaranteed American success, that where people get started, they get on their feet, they live with friends and family, they get their job through friends and family and they get going. And these are the stories that aren't being told.

And these are things I try to talk about as much as possible. Immigration, generally speaking, is good for everybody. It really is, economically. Of 2040, that same report found that the immigration is going to be the main driver of population growth in this country, which is also important, because that's around the time, going past that, when a lot of people are going to be relying on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid in bigger numbers than they are now.

And we need people at the bottom of those systems paying into them so that everybody else has a chance to benefit. And in order for these things to succeed, you have to have something like a three or four to one ratio to keep the pyramids, keep going, um,

0:21:04 Thomas: Well, That doesn't sound very sustainable, but yeah, yeah.

0:22:01 Matt: But that's the way it's designed, um, know if we didn't have all this immigration, uh, if we don't have immigration generally, because, you know, they're some of the the nuttier people on the right talk about a full immigration moratorium, right, of actually trying to stop all legal immigration. And that's just not possible. That's not something we can do. That's, that's economic and demographic suicide, um, time when you've got the trades and everyone just asking for more immigration, for more pathways, there are not visas available for these kinds of jobs for the most part. It's very hard to get, very limited.

0:22:23 Thomas: The Very Obvious counter to, "They're taking our jobs" is, "Hey, what's the unemployment rate recently?" It's actually historic Lows again, like, it's the need more People we, we actually do need, it's great, as you say, good for everyone. You know more about it than I do, but it's long been, you point that I return to. They always add to the economy. They're always, the other thing, I know I could do this anytime you're on because this is like your main issue, but the thing that bothers me so much, I just am so disgusted by entitlement that people feel they have for no reason. Like literally, I did nothing to be born here. I didn't do anything. I did no things. People who immigrate here often go through a lot, like probably more crap than I've ever gone through in my life to get here.

0:22:34 Matt: And right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:16 Thomas: I didn nothing. Crazy to me. Why?

0:23:16 Matt: You can't imagine. Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:20 Thomas: I never understand it.

0:23:22 Matt: Every generation makes it harder for the next generation. That's just the American way. Typically speaking, just I mean, this is the story of immigration over and over and over and not in this, not only in this country, but everywhere, but that you have people come in with limited literacy and working very, very hard in things like construction and meatpacking and roofing and healthcare, right? The people that kept us going through COVID, the people that kept us alive, that were working so hard in our emergency rooms were often lately documented People as well.

0:23:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:23:49 Thomas: Actually never heard that lightly documented term. Technically speaking, what does that refer, refer to exactly? Wow.

0:23:51 Matt: Yeah, Let's talk about that. Again, I don't know exactly what the immigration status was of the people who died. So I don't want to say that they're undocumented, but I can presume sort of from context, from about these people, it doesn't sound like they would have been here for long enough to have benefited from TPS from Honduras or El Salvador. So that's one thing when I'm talking about lately documented. Temporary protected status is what it sounds like.

It's a form of status that's extended during certain times to certain people. So, for example, TPS has been extended recently to both Syria and Ukraine for obvious reasons. These are places people can't go back to. And Nepal got TPS after the big earthquake there. Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. 2010. El Salvador actually got it in 2001 after a series of earthquakes and mudslides, and it's just been extended on and on since then because it's actually very good for everybody involved.

It's good for El Salvador to keep sort everybody who had TPS right now from El Salvador returned to El Salvador, it would be a disaster. They're not ready to receive that many people back. But more importantly, programs like TPS are actually a major sort of foreign aid program because you give people the ability to work here and send money home. And it's much more more effective than us just giving El Salvador money. Been very good for their economy.

0:24:56 Matt: They use the American dollar as their currency because they have so many people that are sending money back. Honduras got TPS in 1998. So anyone who's been here since 1998 from Honduras or 2001 from El Salvador gets the benefit of TPS. They get to continue to renew their status. And when I say lightly documented, I mean that they are not on a path to residency or citizenship. This is temporary.

0:24:56 Thomas: That's Interesting. Okay.

0:25:15 Thomas: Okay.

0:25:16 Matt: They're not allowed to continue on to anything else. Not not lately documented in the sense that every 18 months, they have to renew it again. So they're just getting vetted over and over and again, right? And there are lots of ways to fall off that path. And I've seen it happen too many times. But of course, the Trump administration, John Kelly, a DHS secretary, and John Kelly had been the central commander for America. He'd been the military commander for that whole region. He knew the issues. He knew what those countries were facing and what was going on there. And he still insisted that that we had to cancel all TPS programs, which they tried to do. One of the TPS programs.

0:25:22 Thomas: Yeah. Of Course. And Then if we did that, that would mean just all the people living here under that would be like deportable or

0:25:53 Matt: Most I mean, of them, by definition, don't have deportable criminal records, so they wouldn't be a high priority. But if you get something like the Trump administration, and Trump is promising mass deportation, he's promising Eisenhower -style mass deportations, which is horrifying. Some really terrible things happened.

0:26:06 Thomas: Don't Know What that means, but it doesn't sound good.

0:26:09 Matt: Well, it was literally called Operation Wetback, so that's a good good start. That'll let you know. Yeah. Wetback was actually a legal term at the time. It's now a racial slur.

0:26:13 Thomas: Oh, God. No way. It was a legal term?

0:26:18 Matt: Was. Yeah, it was actually used on the floor of Congress to talk about, because they distinguished wetbacks, the people who just come over the river from drybacks, from the ones who'd been here long enough that they were more would talk about there was like a process, you could go and like dry out your wetbacks by taking them down to the border. I'm sorry, I have to keep keep using that word, but that was the word they kept using.

0:26:34 Thomas: What? This is, yeah. I can't believe there wasn't like a parliamentarian who was like, hey, do you maybe just not, can we find a word for it that's not so horrible? Like, and then they're like, nah, it's 1950, whatever it is. We don't care. Oh my God.

0:26:50 Matt: 1954, when Operation Wetback killed a lot of people because they very brutally deported people under terrible conditions. And I think maybe it got to be more of a pejorative at that point. Yeah, no. And we've always relied on lately or undocumented people for farm labor, as you know. There's been a kind of a constant back and forth over the border that has kept that going. Agricultural work is also very dangerous and very exploitative in the same way that construction work can be. Meatpacking is at this point majority immigrant labor, right? And those are conditions I honestly, and I am a vegetarian, but even apart from that, I think I would rather be homeless than work in a meatpacking plant. I would actually think rather sleep on the street than do that. I cannot imagine the circumstances or the conditions, even like in today's meatpackings plants, which are nowhere near what they used to be.

0:27:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yet another problem that would be fixed with more regulation rather than less, but okay. Oh.

0:27:38 Matt: Yeah, and you might remember that during COVID, Trump actually specifically waived the rules to make sure that meatpackers had to go to work and work side by side because it was too important to keep the meat industry going.

0:27:48 Thomas: Interesting.

0:27:48 Matt: A of people died for that. Yeah, so if we're talking about lightly documented people, what I'm generally talking about is people that only have work authorization at the most and probably won't get anything more. And even getting work authorization is a privilege. It's very hard to do. You can't just generally fill out a form and get employment authorization. You have to have a basis for it. And the basis right now for the people that are coming over the border, thanks to Biden policies, it's much easier.

And so there's two different ways that you can get it right now. Now, they're giving it to people with humanitarian parole, which is how a lot of people that are coming to apply for asylum at the border are being allowed in so they can come to court and finish their process. And then also, once you apply for asylum, you get to have a work permit after 150 days.

And that policy put in a long time ago to make sure that there was some kind of disincentive to apply for asylum because they didn't want people to just get a work permit stapled to their receipt. It does slow things down.

And there's been a lot, lot of push from governors of the states where a lot of the migrants are coming, including this one, to try to get the federal government to waive that so that we can get work authorization faster because people are here to work and they will work as soon as you give them work permits. And if you don't give them walk permits, then you have the risk that they're going to go to the gray market.

They're going buy social security numbers or fake green cards or whatever and prejudice their cases in the future and make everything a lot harder. So again, your employment authorization, whole the system, it forever to get it for the most part, especially renewals right now. It can take 14 to 16 months just to get a single plastic card that says you're still able to work here. An archaic system. It takes forever. This is what we're working with. And I'm going to guess from context that a number of these people who died in this disaster did not have work authorization, just from what I've read,

0:29:19 Matt: Including the person who was going through the provisional waiver process, which you don't get any right to employment authorization for the four or five years it's going to take to go through your spouse if you came over the border. That's, yeah, how we punish you. You would think you'd get at least a basic permission to be here as long as you're allowed to be her and do that process. But you just have to fit into the economy the best you can. In So

0:29:39 Thomas: And By Conservative logic, wouldn't that be more of a drain on the system if we're not letting them work? Oh.

0:29:45 Matt: Agree.

0:29:45 Thomas: Wouldn't We all be incentivized, both of this issue, to be like, well, okay, let's get, let's allow folks who are going to be here, let's allow them to work and, by the way, pay taxes as fast as possible. Right? Sure.

0:29:45 Matt: Right.

0:29:56 Matt: Yeah, yeah, sure, and go work at the Trump hotels, right? I mean, he's got a lot of people, you know. A lot of places that need him, um, just on principle. There's this still this, this talking point about how they're taking American jobs, they're competing with American labor in places as like meatpacking plants and roofing, I guess. Even, I think, just today, said he wants immigrants from nice countries. So you know what that means. Republican solution, since you mentioned it, actually, was in 2018, the closest thing they had to anything resembling a solution to this was called the RAISE Act.

And that was proposed by Tom Cotton, a noted insurrectionist, who proposed a point system, like a joke of a point systems. So I want to talk about point systems other time, but this is something that works in other countries and it's, it's a little controversial because it does favor, uh, wealthier, whiter, more english -speaking immigrants and essentially assigning points based on different things, uh, you bring into the table. So actually, I'm gonna send you a graphic here because this is worth studying for a second. Oh, particular version of the point system was such a joke.

0:30:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:50 Thomas: Yeah, I hope we're not about to do Thomas takes the point system. I find out I'm like really not worth anything. I wouldn't be let in a million years

0:30:55 Matt: Because... Actually, we should have... Actually. Wait a minute. We should actually... Hold on.

0:30:57 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. All Right.

0:30:59 Matt: Yeah. I'll send it to you.

0:30:59 Thomas: Thomas takes the point system but

0:31:01 Matt: Let's see how many points you get. Might actually... I don't know if you're going to make enough. I don't know. We'll see. This I the Tom Cotton point system, by the way, that the one proposed by Obama had both a low skill and high skill track and would have favored you and others much more, um, I'm gonna guess that you don't have a Nobel Prize. I don't think this has come up before. Check out the achievement section down

0:31:17 Thomas: Damn. That's the first mark against me. Okay. There's a lot of text happening here. This was a graphic design is my passion kind of Tom

0:31:23 Matt: Yeah. I'll walk you through it Yeah. This is the, this is fair, the Federation for American Immigration Report. They're very bad at this. Yeah.

0:31:28 Thomas: Cotton. Yeah. So this. Is very much a graphic design, so apologies.

0:31:33 Matt: Yeah, do.

0:31:34 Thomas: I need to get it on the correct screen and zoom in forensically. Okay, what am I looking for? Achievement, let's see, Nobel Prize in specific equivalents. Though, let me check, I might have. I is that one of them. I was gonna say I have, like, a participation trophy or two from Little League. Like, is that, that anything? Olympic medal and equivalent, only 15 points. By the way, here's what I want to know. Do those stack? Do you get, so like Michael Phelps is like, he can actually become president here's the problem with this system. We're going to be, it's going to mean an influx of swimmers because they're Olympic events. So many medals. There's too many of them. That's

0:31:42 Matt: You have a Grammy somewhere in the basement. I Yeah, so If True.

0:32:15 Thomas: Why all the top medalists are swimmers, a million million different events. That's not fair. I think I found the hole in the system here. Matt, is that what you're going to tell us? Some track and field represented. That's what I'm saying.

0:32:16 Matt: Uh.

0:32:25 Matt: You get zero points on achievement, is what I'm saying, it's

0:32:27 Thomas: Oh yeah. Definitely zero points in achievement. Oh, I have an age. I do believe I have age. There's points based on age. Okay. I accomplished six points on age, but I'm rapidly approaching losing two of those points. Oh wow.

0:32:44 Matt: You're you notice the distribution here, it's kind of interesting. 18 to 21 is six points, but 26 to 30 is 10 because that's, you know, prime working age, um, yeah, so far you have six points. Let's good job.

0:32:45 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. And I got that by dint of being born. That's similar to how I've accomplished everything else in my life, really. Fluency score. You know, I think I would probably pass okay on a fluency, you know, English lane.

0:32:56 Matt: Yeah. Sure, I'm gonna give you a 12, let's be generous. You get the top 10th SL All right, so you get, so you're up to 18 points.

0:33:06 Thomas: Okay. All right. I'll leave it jammed. Yeah. All Right. I'm at 18

0:33:11 Matt: How's your investments doing, little one?

0:33:11 Thomas: Points. Investments. Oh my God. Okay, so you get investment level. The bottom rank is 1.35 million to 1.8 million. That's six points. 1.8 million and over is 12 points. What a stupid. Okay.

0:33:31 Matt: It's the American dream.

0:33:34 Thomas: Now I need to get my friend Heath on from from The Puzzle and the Thunderstorm podcast to just argue about the horrible gaming system. So he and I are really, we love playing games and we're really competitive and we play, and he also tries to cheat every game, you know, so he's always trying to find the exploits. This is bad game design. You get get zero points from having investment level zero dollars, or by the way, negative dollars, I don't know, to 1.349 million.

0:33:48 Matt: Sure. Sure, yeah. Yeah.

0:33:59 Thomas: That's zero points. But if you cross the 1.35, you get six points, which is worth the same as my being born or whatever that I meant. And if you just make another 450,000 in your investments, then you've doubled that point. A stupid... This is the the dumbest thing.

0:34:15 Matt: We want rich people. Well,

0:34:17 Thomas: I cannot wait for people to see this horrible graphic and how stupid it is. So no, Matt, I don't get any points for those. Do have a bachelor's, so that's six points. Okay. What am I at again?

0:34:18 Matt: Oh.

0:34:29 Matt: Right, so that's Uh, what are you up to here?

0:34:31 Thomas: Oh, I'm at 24 because we gave me 12 on the fluency. That's lucky. How many points do I need by the way 30 okay

0:34:34 Matt: Well, You're at 24, so yeah, you're, you need to get up there, six more, I think you might be boned because you don't have a job officially, according to this, uh, don't have a job offer, yeah, self-employed, so that's your problem.

0:34:39 Thomas: And Oh my God, I don't? I could work some paper. I can have Lydia offer me a job. Okay, what kind of job does she need to offer me to get me in this country? Well,

0:34:57 Matt: We you're going to need a salary that's two to three times the median salary in podcasting, guess. Yeah.

0:35:01 Thomas: Oh, it's like within industry. Oh.

0:35:03 Matt: Yeah, in, in regions. So this is actually the only part of this whole thing I like, is they do actually reward you if you go to a place that's like rural, right, and if you get something, you know, so it encourages the idea was to encourage development of industry in places says it didn't have it. So if you're in rural Kentucky versus New York,

0:35:09 Thomas: Oh. That makes sense so I, everyone is at the edge of their seats because I'm at 24 points and I need 30 to get in this country, and the job, the job offer, well, I'm already boned because I, don't, like you say, I don't have a a job offer, but I assume, you know, like we can make something work paper-wise, but it would have to be 2x to 3x the median, me, which is, I don't, yeah, if, I do not know what that is, but maybe, like, I am trying to think when I worked at the state, like, am trying think what that would mean, I have no idea what that dollars -wise is, maybe, I will just barely squeak by, but I have a bad test day and do not get my fluency, you now, what if I just, you you know I am a little groggy that morning and I'm not as fluent as you might think, I could be out of this country. I could be gone.

0:35:24 Matt: Yeah. Right. Yeah. The median for podcasters in Central California too. So there's some math you're going to have to do there. So

0:36:05 Thomas: No one knows the answer to that question, man.

0:36:07 Matt: That's what lawyers are for. We can come up with an answer for you. It notes at the top of the graphic, you will be considered for, but not guaranteed admission, even if you get those 30 points. So, you know, there's still other factors, but But this was the Tom Cotton extremely simple. And this is it. What you're looking at, this graphic, this is the entire system. The Obama proposal was far more complicated. And by the way, Canada and lots of other countries give you points if you have family members in the United States. You get a significant number of points, right? Because then you're going to be coming in with connections.

0:36:17 Thomas: Oh, that's so stupid.

0:36:33 Thomas: All right. But if it requires them, I'll just give those points up.

0:36:37 Matt: No, you just have to have them. It's fine. This proposal, this Tom Cotton proposal, would have actually eliminated the parent visa. So you can have a Nobel Prize. You can come over here, but you can't bring your parents. No, just money. That was completely, this is their solution, is just how much money do you make? How much money can you make? Not thinking about the value of your job, right? You could be doing Bitcoin investing, right? Which is pretty much worthless, I'm sorry, compared would think, yeah, compared to doing potholes at 1:30 in the morning on a major bridge.

0:36:38 Thomas: Okay. There's A negative value, I would say. Yeah. Just Just the environmental impact and stuff. It's terrible. Seriously. No, the generating the coins is ridiculous.

0:37:06 Matt: Right, right, of course. Yeah, no, it's terrible. Yeah. I mean, just the fact that we call them Mayans, it's just, yeah. Yeah, so this is just, is a joke. It is a parody of a point system. And this is their solution. And it is true.

0:37:12 Thomas: Yeah. It's a joke. Designed this graphic shouldn't have been let into the country. I'll tell you that. There's no way they have enough points.

0:37:24 Matt: Hope they are well below the median salary for graphic designers. It is fair, which again is one of the worst organizations on earth. So I am not surprised.

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0:37:31 Matt: Um.

0:38:57 Matt: Just this is just an example of one of the many point systems that's been proposed, but it's by far the worst one. And I have issues with the point system as a basic general fairness thing, but if you're going to do one, you're gonna have to have one that actually reflects the workforce that we need, and this does not. I don't see anything on here. This is like rich people that speak English. That's not the workforce that we needs, um, what keeps the country going.

0:39:01 Thomas: Yeah, this is bad.

0:39:16 Thomas: Investment level. That is so unbelievably stupid. Stupid. Love the idea that if you could be a Nobel prize winner who doesn't speak English and is above 50 years old, or by the way, maybe you're 17 years old actually, that's below the age thing and you don't have a degree somehow. Well, okay.

0:39:20 Matt: Yeah, no,

0:39:32 Thomas: That's not going to happen, but yeah, yeah, it's true. But like the point is you would need another five to get in, to meet the bottom threshold from a Nobel. Why did they pick that? That's such a a stupid person way of thinking of like, okay, here's what will make sense. Nobel Prize in specific equivalents.

0:39:32 Matt: You could have ice -cold agree, it's possible, who knows, but yeah, it is, it totally is. Yeah, and and it's so silly too, because under our current system, a Nobel Prize winner can just walk in with an EB1A visa, there's an extraordinary ability visa, right? And if you've won something at that level, you're going to get it. So like, we already covered this, like, we're fine. Apparently, this would be replacing that, which is very stupid. Um, want to make sure that like the most talented people on earth can just walk in here without a job if they want to. Like, that's a pretty good immigration policy.

0:39:59 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:40:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:13 Matt: Um, yeah, so this is just a little detour to explain to you the difference between the real world, where we actually need construction workers and health care workers, and the Republican world, where these are the only people that we want to immigrate from the nice countries. Um, we We get, we get people immigrating from like Monaco and Luxembourg, I guess, and they have nowhere to live because there's nobody building houses. So, yeah, immigration policy from the right, though, of not actually thinking about the holistic problem or what we're actually doing with the economy. A quarter of the US workforce in construction is undocumented at this point, and they're being exploited. Being hurt on the job all the time. They don't get the same kinds of benefits. There were, on 9-11 alone, there were 6 ,000 undocumented immigrants that took part in recovery efforts. Of them didn't get rewarded for that. Push, a very unsuccessful push to try to get them residency just to give them a green card, which I think is pretty reasonable, given, as you know, what happened to the people that did cleanup

0:40:26 Thomas: This is nonsense, yeah yeah yeah

0:41:03 Matt: Efforts on 911 and their long-term health consequences. The people that, I mean, the reason that we can afford to buy a salad, the components for a salad is because we have people that are being exploited on our farms. Know, these are the things that we don't think about, that we do not have to think about.

0:41:12 Thomas: And It's not the topic for this show, but the next level of guilt I feel is, yeah, we shouldn't have a system where we just get a certain, like, group of people to do the worst jobs. Like that also sucks, like, it's double suck, you know, like, it's, on one hand, it's like, yeah, we need immigrants to, because there's so many, you know, jobs, there's, for a million reasons, but then it's also a weird thing. Well, it's like, well, wait a minute, is that even a good, like, that me, um, Maher, always, he always found the most asshole way to argue for immigration, you know, where he was like you, you know, he'd argue with Republicans, he was, He's like, if you got rid of all immigrants, then, you, you going to go out there and pick the food? It's going to cost so much. And it's like, yeah, I guess. But also that sucks. Doesn't that suck, too?

0:41:27 Matt: Yeah, right, right.

0:41:56 Matt: Yeah. Right. There has got to be, but it is capitalism. You have got to have winners and losers, and to avoid, avoid making economic arguments in favor of these things, but I think it does actually resonate. Everybody can relate to these arguments, and I do think it's worth noting the economic contributions. Something like after Katrina, for the disaster relief, 100,000 people moved to the Gulf Coast to help clean up after Katrina. About half of that workforce was undocumented, and they literally rebuild the region.

0:41:59 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:42:25 Thomas: Just at least deserve your. Respect. At least deserve you not insulting them and demagoguing over. Like, I think it's a weird argument. I feel weird about it being like, yeah, see, immigration. They do all these, you know, horrible jobs that we don't want to do. It feels gross and weird. It's kind of also, it there is an element of truth to it. But also, like, at the very least, don't you respect those people? Don't you? Shouldn't, I don't get it. Don't, shouldn't Republicans respect those kind of hard workers? Like those are the hardest working people doing the jobs that a bunch of rich Republicans pretend they do in like truck commercials or whatever, in like country songs, know, you like it's

0:42:28 Matt: Yeah, right. And

0:43:01 Thomas: Crazy.

0:43:02 Matt: That our great -grandparents and grandparents did. Roofing and construction and landscaping are very respectable work.

0:43:07 Thomas: I've done roofing. I did roofing, it's

0:43:09 Matt: Yeah. Sure. Right. It's hard work.

0:43:11 Thomas: Really hard.

0:43:12 Matt: Afraid of heights. I don't think I do too well. Something like dairy farming, which I hadn't really thought about until I started representing dairy farmers, but that is really hard work. You have to get up at weird hours. It's around the clock. It's round the year, right?

0:43:23 Thomas: Yeah, because they found a way to keep the the cows pumped up with drugs so that they're, yeah, sorry.

0:43:25 Matt: That's not great either but Yeah, um, but the thing is that dairy work actually pays very well around here because they cannot get people in Vermont to do it. Uh There's a a lot of people from Mexico that they come all the way from the southern border up to the northern border to do these jobs. And you know, before they started to organize, they were getting hurt all the time and they were being exploited. And you know, it's hard, hard work.

And Bernie Sanders over and over again has proposed a basic dairy farming visa, and it just hasn't gone anywhere. And because there's no, there this is a classic example, right, of a job that needs to exist. As long as we have dairy, you have to have people working on these farms. And a job the people just generally aren't going to do, and we have workers that want to do it.

And just a very simple solution is just to create a visa so dairy farmers can bring people legally to work on these firms. And we just can't do it. So So instead, we have people living within 100 miles of the border on dairy farms, which means that CBP can come onto the property because there's a constitution -free zone along the border,

0:44:17 Thomas: Wow.

0:44:17 Matt: That they can harass them as they constantly do, thatthey can treat them the way that they would be treated at the border and living in fear. People who are just trying to go to the dentist or go to Walmart or whatever else. I've had any number of people that I've worked with who are dairy farmers who have been arrested under circumstances that you wouldn't believe. Doing nothing, but just going to work and going to school and everything else. We know what we're doing. The professor of immigration, calls it imported colonization, that we're essentially just importing people to have and set our country. She calls them impossible subjects, the people that just aren't supposed to exist and are supposed to be here, that keep the country running. And that's, to me, the first thing I thought of when I saw those names because I recognized where those names are from.

0:44:40 Thomas: Wow, what a term. I've never heard that. Is from a book or something? Because I want to read whatever that is. That's a, oh, wow okay yeah that's

0:45:01 Matt: Oh, that book is called Impossible Subjects by Maesai. It's a great book. It is something I cite in class a lot. Dense in places, but it's beautifully written and she has a lot to say. Wanted to make sure that we talked about the very human reality of these people. These are not people being released from jails and asylums the way that Trump is talking about. Aren't subhumans. It was so sad to me to hear this kind, kind of rhetoric being applied to these people who I've spent so much time with in the last 18 years.

0:45:04 Thomas: Jeez we

0:45:37 Matt: I wanted to talk about the maritime law I just learned about. And the Titanic, of course, has to be involved here. So the bridge alone was worth about a billion dollars. And at this point, it's hard to say that anybody's really responsible for this. It does seem like it was a freak accident. It doesn't seem like there's much they could have done to avoid it from the an additional investigation, at least there's going to be a full investigation. I learned a lot about maritime law today.

It's the one field of law I think I know the absolute least about, and I do live right next to the ocean. I feel like I should learn something about it. One almost does sound like a joke. The Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 is what they still rely on for this. And as of April 1st, the owners of the ship actually already filed a preemptive claim, essentially, under this Limitation to Limit Liability act of 1851. I just want to explain how it works because it's so strange to me. Was most famously used by the White Star Line after the Titanic went down. And they actually maneuvered because there was a pretty open question at the time. Of course, the Titanic went down in the middle of the Atlantic and there's no jurisdiction anywhere. It was a British ship. It had people from all kinds of countries on it, but mostly Americans and Brits.

And they got it into American courts and used this law, this law from 1851, because they were able, believe it or not, under this law to limit their liability down to the value of the ship and the contents of the the lifeboats. That's

0:45:42 Thomas: Oh yeah

0:46:52 Matt: What it came down to. So they ended up paying $664,000 out in 1912 or whatever it was, when there were hundreds of claims seeking $16 million in damages. Again, $16 billion in 1922 money, I'm sure it was a lot more.

0:47:03 Thomas: It's a lot of money, so they double benefited from not having enough lifeboats, huh?

0:47:08 Matt: Such thing as a wrongful death suit or wrongful death claim on the high seas at that time. So, they were really just arguing about trying to find other ways in this for loss of life and personal injury and lost less cargo. There's that's true.

0:47:14 Thomas: My pirates must have really liked that, there's but a lot of swashbuckling, I bet, back then. Wait, sorry, there's actually a Titanic law from this?

0:47:21 Matt: Nice the Titanic law, though, limits liability. This is the 1851... what people call it. It's been around since 1851, but it's most famously used in the Titanic case. 46 U.S. Code 305.23, general limit of liability. Except as provided, et cetera, et sera, the liability of the owner of a vessel for any claim, debt, or liability shall not exceed the value of the vessel and pending freight. So you can't collect more than what the ship was worth. And that's after the accident. So it's worth a lot less at this point.

0:47:31 Thomas: Oh okay okay oh really? Well, does that work, because the Titanic was worth nothing after the

0:47:58 Matt: Right. I don't know. Mean, there's salvage value, but it was at the bottom of the ocean. I don't know. I'm not a maritime law expert. I can't stress enough. I'm just going from what I've read here. We should talk to a maritime law expert at some point. They're out there. There are a few of them.

0:48:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Or James Cameron, one or the other. I mean, I guess it was worth a lot to him. Maybe he should go back in time with technology also James has, and he can inform them that actually this is worth quite a lot still.

0:48:12 Matt: Yeah. He's Probably. Hmm. And collect Yeah. The Stipulation, the interim stipulation has been made in this suit, um, so the value of the vessel at the time of the voyage did not exceed, uh, million. Substantial investigation, the damage, the vessel, because it is still floating, like, you can still salvage this thing, but, uh, they're thinking repair costs are going to be about $28 million. Salvage costs are going to need about another $19.5 million. So they're estimating at this point, the value of the vessel is about $42.5 and the pending freight is worth about $1.1 million. They're, they're claiming, and I this is so far, that the casualty of what is, they're calling it, was not due to any fault, neglect, or want on the part of the petitioners, the vessel, or anybody else, who was actually just a totally freak accident, right? Act of God, the power goes out. They're saying alternatively, if you can find that there's any fault on our part, it then we're going to limit the value to this $43 million number and

0:49:03 Thomas: So if it's a freak accident, then are they just not liable at all?

0:49:08 Matt: Apparently not. Uh, whereas with the Titanic, obviously somebody was liable, like, that was, you know, pretty stupid.

0:49:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, the iceberg. They sued that iceberg so hard.

0:49:12 Matt: Yeah. That's true. That iceberg, yeah, it's, uh, deep pockets, uh,

0:49:17 Thomas: After that, it was underwater. Sad.

0:49:20 Matt: That's true, those are iceberg jokes, folks, we got them.

0:49:25 Thomas: Look, you, you didn't, you are obligated contractually to have a pun or something in the beginning, and when that doesn't happen, the whole show, you know, okay, so blame that for all this nonsense, yeah,

0:49:31 Matt: That's True. I'm running a pun deficit, it's true. I owe you a couple of pounds. So that's an interesting thing to watch, to see how this develops, about the liability. But that was news to me, that the most they could possibly be held responsible for for a billion -dollar bridge collapse is $43 million. And

0:49:50 Thomas: Hmm. So the bridge doesn't factor into that?

0:49:53 Matt: It's only the value of the actual ship. And this is ancient law. This goes back a long time, not just 1850, 1851, but this is a principle that developed in maritime law all kinds of reasons.

0:49:53 Thomas: Huh. Well, But liable to whom? Because I guess if the bridge was like a $25 bridge, would it like, oh, you can only be liable up to that amount. And so it was like, if it was a discount $25 bridge, it'd just be $25, or so, is that what it is?

0:50:17 Matt: It caps your liability. Liability.

0:50:18 Thomas: See. So it does factor in, I guess.

0:50:20 Matt: It just caps what you can actually collect from the company that owns the vessel. You do is you go into court preemptively within a certain period of time, and you file this petition of exoneration from a limitation of liability. And you ask that the court basically just issue a judgment saying that this is the most you could ever be charged for if you're found responsible. And of course, there's going to be years, probably, of litigation trying to figure out who's responsible and try to get as much as they can out of it.

0:50:41 Thomas: That's interesting though.

0:50:42 Matt: But yeah, no, No, that was news to me.

0:50:42 Thomas: You just do the thing first to be like this is the most. And it makes sense because then, I mean, if if it's not going to be very much, then people will make the decision of like, oh, is it even worth taking these people to court? You know, depending on maybe not in this situation, but depending on different situations.

0:50:54 Matt: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it makes me want to learn a little more about maritime law. I don't know that I'll ever use it, but it's interesting to read about.

0:51:01 Thomas: It makes me want to make sure I'm driving a very cheap boat with no lifeboats if I'm going to run into anything. Yeah, no cargo.

0:51:06 Matt: Sure. With no cargo, very importantly. Yeah, and this actually, this boat, unfortunately, also had some hazardous materials on it. I think about 764 tons are leaking into the harbor now.

0:51:12 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Tons of oil and stuff. Fuel.

0:51:16 Matt: There's 21 people stranded on it, too, who don't have visas because they were crewmen. So they're waiting it out. I think it's still in the harbor. So just a lot of complications here, what a mess, but I, in conclusion, it's time for a new national anthem. Most importantly, you and know, just look out for the immigrant workers around you, because they're doing a lot for you, yeah.

0:51:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, keep doing our best to vote for the people who are a little bit better on these issues. I don't I'm not even again, Matt can tell us more about that. It's not as though, you our side is amazing on this issue. But keep trying to, for one, keep trying to make our side better on it, you that's something we're doing. Then also get our side in there. Because the other side makes infographics that are so embarrassing. I want to delete this from my internet history, like just in case the AI or somebody, like if anybody's watching, like in case they don't, I don't want them to think I did this. Like it's that bad. Bad and evil at the same time, that's, it's amazing how they, they tend to hit that, you know, that combination. Yeah.

0:51:50 Matt: I Like to work toward a world where we don't have a permanent underclass of exploited people, that's the country I'd like to live in. We can get there, but right now it is. There's a lot of interest in keeping, keeping things the way they are.

0:52:19 Thomas: Yeah. Not Yeah.

0:52:26 Matt: At the very least, when these people have these kinds of sacrifices, I think that it's on us to at least acknowledge them. So that's what I was hoping we could do today.

0:52:30 Thomas: So Yeah. Uh, absolutely, um, we'll link that fund you talked about, for sure, um. So much of this is so depressing, I don't know why we have to live in this society or this world that treats immigrants this way. But like you said, I mean, we really got to do everything we can to fix that. But thanks for the little deep dive, not a pun. Just, even though it's maritime law, it's just, a just deep dive is just the thing that you say, not trying to make a pun, you know, and And also much to about the kind of lightly documented part. I did not know so many of those things. I mean, why would we make it so hard for people to work and pay taxes? Okay, I won't get started again, but it's good to know.

0:52:52 Matt: Those are Mondays. That's right.

0:53:06 Matt: No, so many people ask me how I can get a work permit and I have to tell them you can't. You just have to survive. Yeah.

0:53:10 Thomas: Crazy. A stupid, okay. Right, Matt, thanks so much. And thanks, everyone, for listening. The show at patreon.com/law. And of course, before that, take a look at that link to, you donate to that fund, because that's a really good cause. And really, it's the least we can do. You so much for listening, everyone. Thanks, Matt. And we'll see you on Wednesday for T3B.

0:53:30 Matt: You soon.

0:53:30 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:53:47 Thomas: You an Arrested Development fan by any chance? Okay. Good. I will likely play your correct captain before this part of the show.

0:53:50 Matt: I love the maritime law jokes. Yes, of course.

0:53:58 Thomas: It's the best. It's

0:53:58 Matt: Yeah, I level the maritime timeline jokes.

0:54:00 Thomas: So good. Wow.