Episode 2260: Felipe Torres Medina laughs and cries about the American immigration system
Here are the 4 KEEN ON AMERICA take-aways in our conversation about the dysfunctional American immigration system with Felipe Torres Medina1) Background & Immigration Journey* Felipe Torres Medina is a comic writer for "The Stephen Colbert Show" and author of the new book America Let Me In about the US immigration system* Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Medina moved to the US at 21 on a student visa to pursue a master's in screenwriting at Boston University* Medina received an "alien of extraordinary ability" visa (talent visa for artists) after graduation, and eventually got a green card after marrying2) On the US Immigration System* Medina describes the immigration process as expensive (costing "tens of thousands of dollars" in legal fees) and filled with bureaucratic challenges* He emphasizes that legal immigration requires "tremendous privilege and money" that most people don't have* The book takes an interactive "choose your own path" format to highlight the maze-like nature of the immigration system* He points out that there hasn't been comprehensive immigration reform since the Clinton administration (nearly 30 years ago)3) Comedy as Commentary* Medina uses humor to process his experiences and create community around shared frustrations* He was inspired by writers like Julio Cortazar, George Saunders, Tina Fey, and Carrie Fisher* The book aims to educate Americans who "have so many opinions about immigration" but "don't know what it entails"* He mentions that making the book interactive and game-like adds "levity" to a tense topic4) How to Fix the System* While critical of Trump's immigration policies, Medina says the book isn't specifically about Trump but about a "flawed and messy" system created by multiple administrations* He suggests moving US Citizenship and Immigration Services out of the Department of Homeland Security to change the narrative that immigration is a security threat* His proposed reforms include creating better pathways for educated immigrants and hiring more USCIS staff to reduce backlogs FULL TRANSCRIPT* Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. It is Sunday, March the 9th, 2025. Interesting piece in the times. A couple of days ago, The New York Times, that is about the so-called British flame thrower who is a comic best suited to taking on Trump. They're talking about a man called Kumar. Nish Kumar looks very funny, and apparently he's very angry too. I have to admit, I haven't seen him. It's an interesting subject. It suggests that at the moment, even in spite of Trump and outraging many Americans, the state of American humor could be amped up a bit. My guest today is a writer on The Stephen Colbert Show and a comic, or certainly a comic writer in his own right, Philippe Torres Medina. He has a new book out on Tuesday. It's called America Let Me In, and I'm thrilled that he's joining us from Harlem in Manhattan today. Congratulations, Phillip, on the new job. What do you the new book? I was going to say job. That's a Freudian error here. What do you make of the Times's observation that American humor isn't in its best state when it comes to Trump?Felipe Torres Medina: Oh, wow. That's that's an interesting question. First of all, I love Nish Kumar. I think he's a wonderful, wonderful comedian. He's very funny. He has a level of wit and his observations are just wonderful. I hadn't seen this article, but I really appreciate that the times recognized him because he's been working very hard for a lot of years. I think more than American humor not being fit for the moment. I think at least personally for me, a little bit of addressing Trump again began. And addressing Trump in general is, you know, jokes have to be new. And after basically ten years of Donald Trump every day, all the time, it's certainly hard to continue to find new angles. Now, the dysfunction of the administration and perhaps sometimes the cruelty and whatever they're doing does provide you with material. But I think it can cause you as a writer to be like, oh God, here we go again. More Trump stuff. You know, because that's what we're talking about.Andrew Keen: Do you see your book, Philippe, as a Trump book? America? Let me in. It's about immigration. I mean, obviously touches on in many ways on Trump and certainly his hostility to immigration and immigrants. But is it a Trump book, or is it a broader kind of critique or observation about contemporary America?Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, I never set out to write a book about Trump or a Trump book. My goal is to write a book about the immigration system, because I went through it, and as a comedian, I encountered in it many contradictions and absurdities that just kind of became fodder to me for comedy. So I try to write this book about the system, but the system was caused by many administrations in many parties, you know, now, the current hostility or the current everythingness of immigration, you know, immigration being kind of in the forefront of the national discourse certainly has been aided by Republican policy in the past ten years and by Donald Trump's rhetoric. But that doesn't mean that this is a book about Trump or as a response to Trump. It's actually a book responding to a system that is flawed and messy, but it's the one we have.Andrew Keen: Yeah. You described the book as a love letter to immigrants, but it's not a love letter to the system. Tell me your story. As you say. You went through it so you have firsthand experience. Where were you born?Felipe Torres Medina: So I was born in Colombia. I was born in Bogota, Colombia, which is the capital of Colombia. I lived there most of my life. I moved to United States when I was 21 on a student visa, because I came here to do my masters. I did my master's in screenwriting at Boston University. And after that, you know, I started working here as a comedian, but also as a writer. And I was able to get an alien of extraordinary ability visa, which is a very pretentiously named visa, kind of makes you sound like you're in the X-Men, but it it's just what they call talent visas for artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, educators, whatever. And so I got one of those and then several renewals of those. And then, you know, thanks to my work as a writer, as a comedian, initially as a copywriter in advertising, I was able to I bought I met the love of my life, got married, and then I have a green card and that's why I'm here.Andrew Keen: Yeah. As and quoting here, it sounds rather funny. An alien of extraordinary ability. Do you think your experience is typical? I mean, the even the fact that you came for grad school to to Boston puts you in a, in a kind of intellectual or professional elite. So is your experience in any way typical, do you think?Felipe Torres Medina: I wouldn't say typical. I would say my experience is the experience of many people who come here. And I think it's the experience of the people who are, quote unquote, the immigrants we want. Right. And, you know, if we're going to dive into the rhetoric of the of immigration these days, I came the right way and did everything, quote unquote, the right way. You know, but what this book and also this journey that I took to immigrate here proves is that it's it's only possible with tremendous amount of privilege and tremendous, tremendous amount of money. You know, it's a very expensive process for the majority of people.Andrew Keen: How much did it cost you?Felipe Torres Medina: Oh, I think in total since I started. I mean, when you count the fact that for most, like master's programs, you don't get any sort of financial aid unless you get, like a scholarship from your own country or a sort of like Fulbright or something like that. There's already the cost of a full master's program.Andrew Keen: But then you weren't coming. I mean, you didn't pay for your master's program in order to get immigration papers, you know.Felipe Torres Medina: Of course, that, but I, I had to pay for my master's program to be able to study here. You know, I didn't have I didn't have my any sort of aid. But, you know, discounting that in terms of immigration paperwork, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars because you have to hire immigration lawyers to make sure that everything's fine. And those are quite expensive.Andrew Keen: Was it worth it?Felipe Torres Medina: Well, yeah. You know, I met the love of my life. I live a.Andrew Keen: Very. I mean, there are lots of loves of. You could have met someone else, and that's true. Or you might have even you might have even met her or him at an airport somewhere else while they were on vacation.Felipe Torres Medina: That's that's possible. But yeah, I mean, I live a I live a good life. I do what I wanted to do, you know, I, I took got my master's because I wanted to write comedy professionally and I get to do that. And I do think when I set out to do this, I was like, well, the place with the best film and television industry in the world is and was then and still is the United States. So I was like, well, I have to go there, you know, and I was able to become a part of this industry and to work in this art form.Andrew Keen: You didn't get any job. You You got the combat job? Yes. I believe you drew the the short straw, right? I bet nobody else was right. Just Stephen Colbert.Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, I'm very lucky. And but again, it's a mix of luck and hard work and all those things. So yeah, I don't I don't regret moving.Andrew Keen: So some people might be watching this maybe some some MAGA people. I'm not sure if MAGA people really watch this, but if they were they might be thinking, well, Philippe Torres Medina, he's a good example. He's the type of person we want. He jumped through many hoops. He's really smart. He's really successful. He brings value to this country. Is now a full time writer on the Colbert's show he came from it came from Latin America. And he's exactly the kind of person we want. And we want a system that's hard, because only guys like him have the intellectual and financial resources to actually get through it. Well, how would you respond to them?Felipe Torres Medina: I would say that I appreciate the compliment, but I wouldn't necessarily say that that's the best way to move forward on immigration now. I will say this book is a humorous take on the whole immigration journey. And so what? Like I tell different stories of different people coming here made up or inspired by real life. And one of the paths that you can take in this book, because this is kind of an interactive choose your own path book, is mine. But I think what this book tries to prove is that even if you do everything right, even if you, you know, have the money, sometimes it's very, very hard. And that, I think, does put us at a disadvantage when it comes to having a workforce that could be productive for the country, especially as birthrates are declining. You know, we are headed toward a but, you know, people have described as a barrel economy. If we don't simply up the population and the people who are upping the population and actually having children are immigrants.Andrew Keen: One other piece of news today, there's obviously a huge amount of news on the immigration front is apparently there's a freeze on funding to help green card holders. You've been through the process. You write about it in the new book. But how much more difficult is it now?Felipe Torres Medina: You mean under the current administration? Yeah. I wouldn't know. I you know, I think that.Andrew Keen: This idea of even freezing green card. Yeah. That holidays, even if you have a green card, you get frozen.Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that, you know, I think that that's what Trump did in his first term, more or less with legal immigration, was to create roadblocks and freezes and these kinds of things to kind of just like stymie the process and make it slower, make it harder, even for people who, again, are doing everything right to be able to remain in the country.Andrew Keen: And I'm guessing also some of the DOJ's stuff about laying off immigration judges and court stuff, they're taking office to leave. Apparently 100 immigration court staff are retiring. This adds to it as well.Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS is a very particular part of the government because it is one of the few parts of the federal government that funds itself. Again, going back to cost the fees that they make are so big, they make so much money that if there's a government shut down, actually, USCIS does not shut down. It's one of the few parts of the government that didn't need to shut down, because they make so much money out of the immigrants trying to come here. So it's a really, really strange part of the government. It kind of doesn't know where it belongs. So seeing like the the DOJ's cuts that arrive into the and that may be implemented into USCIS. Kind I'm not familiar with any Dodge cuts recently on USCIS, but I suspect that they would be strange because it's a it's a very strange division of the federal government. It's not like the Department of Education or the like the Forestry Service. It's it's it's own kind of like little fiefdom.Andrew Keen: Are you wrote an interesting thing or you were featured recently on Lit Hub, where this show actually used to get distributed about how to write a funny book about American immigration. Of course, it's it's a good question. I mean, it's such a frustrating bureaucratic mess at the best of times. I do write anything funny, Philippe, about it.Felipe Torres Medina: Well, I think the, the to me, the, the finding a format to be able to explore this, this chaotic system. It's so, so complicated. It's like a maze. So to me, having this kind of interactive format allowed me to have some freedom to be like, okay, well, you know, one of the things that they taught me in my comedy education, when I was training at a theater here in New York, the Upright Citizens Brigade is the premise of if this is true, then what else is true? You know, so if this absurd thing is reality, then what? How can you heighten that reality? And for me, you know, the immigration system is so absurd. It's it's so Byzantine and chaotic that I was like, okay, well, I can heighten this to an extra level. And so when I keyed in on, on this format of like allowing the person who's reading it to be the many characters to inhabit the, the immigrants and also to be playing with the book, you know, going out and going to one page, making their own choices. It allowed me to change the tone immediately of the conversation because you say immigration and everyone's like, oh, you know, it gets tense. But if you're saying like, no, no, this is a game, you know, we're playing this game. It's about immigration, but it's a game. All of a sudden there's a levity to it, and then you take the real absurdities and the real chaos of the system and just heighten it, which is basically what you do with comedy at all times.Andrew Keen: Who are the the fathers or perhaps the mothers of this kind of comedy? The person who comes to my mind is is Kafka, who found his own writing very funny. Not, and I'm not sure everyone necessarily agrees. He, of course, wrote extensively about central mid European bureaucracy and its darkness and absurdity. Who's inspired you both as a comic writer and particularly in terms of this book?Felipe Torres Medina: Well, actually, Kafka also has a great book called America.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Which is a wonderful first paragraph about seeing this. Seeing the Statue of Liberty.Felipe Torres Medina: Yes. Which is also kind of about this. But I would say my inspirations comedically are, you know, I don't think I would have written this book without, like, the work of Tina Fey. I think Bossy Pants was a book where I was like, oh, you can be funny in writing. And Carrie Fisher is a big Star Wars nerd, you know, to like great, funny writer writers who are just, like, writing funny things about their lives. But I think the playfulness of it all, actually, I was inspired by this Argentine writer, Julio Cortazar, who wrote a novel that in English just translated as hopscotch. And this novel is a huge, like, structural disrupter, you know, in the like, what we call the Latin American boom of writing in the 60s, 70s and 80s. And he wrote this novel that is like a game of hopscotch. You're jumping from chapter two chapter. He's directing you back and forth. So I read a lot of that. And I, you know, I read that in my youth, and then I read it. I reread it as I was older. And then there are writers like George Saunders, who can be very funny while talking about very sad or very poignant things. And so that was also a big inspiration to me. But, you know, I am a late night writer, so I was interested in actually making it like, ha ha, funny. Not just, you know, sensible chuckle funny, you know, kind of like a very, like, intellectual kind of funny. So I was also inspired by, you know, my job and like Colbert's original character in Colbert's book, America, I am American. So can you the writing of The Onion and, you know, the book, The Daily Show Book America, which is just kind of like an explanation of what the federal government is and what the country is written in the tone of the correspondents or the the writers for The Daily Show back in the original Jon Stewart iteration. So those books kind of like informed me and made me like, realize, oh, I can you can make like a humorous guy that's jokey and funny, but also is actually saying something isn't just like or teaching you something. Because the biggest reason I started writing this book is that Americans don't know their own immigration system, and they have so many opinions about immigration, particularly now, but no one knows what what it entails. You know? And I don't just mean like conservatives, you know, I don't just mean like, oh, MAGA people. Like, I was living in New York in the Obama years or like the late Obama years, and none of my liberal Brooklyn, you know, IPA and iced matcha drinking friends had any idea what I was going through, you know, when I was trying to get my visas.Andrew Keen: The liberals drink IPA. I didn't know that I drink IPA, I mean, I have to change my. Yeah. It's interesting you bring up in the first part of that response, the, the the Argentine novelist. There's something so surreal now about America. An interesting piece in the times about not being able to pin Trump down because he says one thing one day, the next thing the next day, and everyone accepts that these are contradictions. Now, the times describes these contradictions as this ultimate cover. I'm not quite sure why they're a cover. If you say one thing one day, in the next something the opposite the next day. But is there a Latin American quality to this? I mean, there's a whole tradition of Latin American writing observing the, the cruel absurdities of of dictators and wannabe dictators.Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah. I mean, it's it's part of our literary tradition. You know, the dictator novel you have. But again, just as the feast of the goat, and you have Garcia marquez, my my compatriot, you know, like that.Andrew Keen: Was one of my favorite magnificent writing.Felipe Torres Medina: It's it's possibly, I hesitate to say, my favorite writer because it creates ranking, but.Andrew Keen: Well amongst your.Felipe Torres Medina: Favorite, among my favorite writers, 100 Years of Solitude. Obviously that is possibly my favorite novel, but he has also, I believe it's the Autumn of the Patriarch, which is his novel about. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there is a there is. I wouldn't say it's a South American or Latin American quality to it. I think it's just once you encounter it, it is so absurd that art does have to come out and talk about it, you know, and, you know, you see the in a book like the Autumn of the Patriarch. That is a character full of contradictions. That is a character who, in chapter one, hates a particular figure because they he they think that they're against him and then is becomes friends with them and then hires him to be his personal bodyguard. You know, that is what dictators are, and that is what authoritarians do. It is the cult of the person. It is the whims of the person, and the opinion of the person are the be all and the end all to the point where the nation is. It is at the whims of, of of a a person, of those of those persons contradictions. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily a Latin American nature to this, but I think Latin America, because we experience dictatorship in many times supported or boosted by the United States. Latin Americans were able to find a way to turn this into art. And quite good art is what I would say.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and of course, it's the artists who are best able to respond to this. As you know, it's not just a Latin American thing. The Central Europeans, the Czechs in particular. Yes.Felipe Torres Medina: Milan Kundera.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Written a series of wonderful books about this. But the only way to respond to someone like Trump, for example, who says one thing one day, the next thing the next day when he talks about tariffs, he says, well, I'm going to have 25%. And the next day, oh, I've decided I'm not going to have 25%. Then the following day he's going to change his mind again. The policy people, I'm not very helpful here. We need artists, satirists of one kind or another humorist like yourself to actually respond to this, don't we?Felipe Torres Medina: I think so. I think that that that is what. Helps you? I mean, it's the emperor has no clothes, right? That's how you talk. And it's about all kinds of government, obviously. Autocracy or dictatorship is one thing, but at all in all systems of government, these are powerful people who think they have they know better and who think that they are invincible. And you know what? What satire or humor and art does is just point out and say like, wait, that's weird. That thing they just did is weird. And being able to point that out is, is a talent. But also that's why people respond to it so well. People say like, yeah, that is weird. I also notice that. And so you create community, you create partnership in there. And so all of a sudden you're punching up, which is something you want to do in comedy. You want to make fun of the people who have more power, and you're all punching up and laughing at the same thing, and you're all kind of reminding each other. You're not crazy. This is weird.Andrew Keen: Yeah. I mean, the thing that worries me. I was on Kolber on the Colbert Show a few years ago in the original show. I mean, it's brilliant comic, very funny. But him and Jon Stewart and the others, they've been going so long, and they. I'm not saying they haven't changed their shtick. I mean, writers like you produce very high quality work for them, but it's one of the problems that these guys have been going for a while and America has changed, but perhaps they haven't.Felipe Torres Medina: I mean, it's an interesting thing to bring up, particularly with with Stephen, because his show was completely different. Ten years ago, it was a completely different show. He was doing a character. Yeah, right. And now he's doing a more traditional late night show. I think I think the format of late night is a very interesting beast that somehow has become A political genre. You know, it didn't used to be with Letterman. Didn't you see with Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno? You know, they would dabble in politics. They would talk about politics because it's what people are talking about. But now it's become kind of like this world. It all has to be satire. And there's some there's some great work. And I do think people keep innovating and making, like, new things, even though the shows are about ten years old. You know, you have Last Week Tonight, which my wife writes for, but it's a show that does more like deep dive investigations and stuff like that. So it's more like end of the week, 60 minutes, but with jokes kind of format. But I do think, yeah, maybe like the shows, can the shows in the genre in general, like there's genre I could do with some change and some mixing it up and.Andrew Keen: Well, maybe your friend Kumar could.Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah. Well, what? Let us get.Andrew Keen: A slot to his own late night show. And I wonder also, when it comes to I don't want to obsess over Trump or that course it's hard not to these days, but because he himself is a media star who most people know through his reality television appearance and he still behaves like a reality television star. Does that add another dimension of challenges to the satirical writers like yourself, and comics like or satirical comics like Colbert and Jon Stewart?Felipe Torres Medina: I think it's just a layer of how to interpret him as a person. At least for me, it's like, okay, well, you have to remember that he is a show man, and that's what he's doing.Andrew Keen: Yeah. So they're coming back to your your metaphor of the air and power and not having any clothes on. He kind of, in his own nodding wink way, acknowledges that he's not pretending to wear any clothes.Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, and, well, sometimes he is and sometimes he isn't. And that is. That's the challenge. And that's why writing jokes about him every day is hard. But, you know, we we.Andrew Keen: And the more I know I watched Saturday Night Live last week that Zelensky thing and it was brilliant. Zelensky and Musk and Trump. But I'm very doubtful it actually impacts in any way on anything. Well, and I.Felipe Torres Medina: Think that that's also a misconception people have about comedy. You know, comedy is there to be funny. You know, comedy isn't there to change your mind if it does that, great. But the number one impetus for For Comedy should be to make you laugh. And so the idea that, like, a sketch show is going to change the nation. I don't know. Those are things that I think are applied on to comedy. They're kind of glob down to comedy. I don't necessarily think that that's what it the, the people making the comedy set out to do so. I think if if it made you laugh and if it works. The comedy has done its job. Comedy, unfortunately, can't change the world, you know. Otherwise, you know, I'm sure there would have been a very. There are many good Romanian comedians who could have done something about it has.Andrew Keen: You know, time to time. I mean, Hava became Czech president for a while. You, you, you know, that you sometimes see laugh, laughter and comedy as a kind of therapy when it comes to some of the stuff you do with Kovat. Are you in in America? Let me in. Are you presenting the experience, the heartbreaking experience? So certainly an enormously frustrating experience of the American immigration system as a kind of therapy, both for people who are experiencing it And outsiders, Americans in general.Felipe Torres Medina: And for myself, I think.Andrew Keen: And of course, yes. So self therapy, so to speak.Felipe Torres Medina: I think so, I mean, it is for me a way to like comedy is a way to process things for me. It comes naturally to me, and it is inopportune at times when dealing with things like grief and things like that. But I mean event, anyone who's gone through grief, I think, can tell you there's one moment when things are going really bad and one of the people grieving with you makes one joke and you all laugh and you're like, this. This somehow fixed for one second. It was great. And then we're back to sadness. So I think comedy, you know, as much as again, I go back to what I said a second ago, it's about making you laugh and that making you laugh can create that partnership, can create that empathy and that that that community therapy, I guess, of people saying like, oh wait, yeah, this is weird, this is strange. And I feel better that someone else recognized it, that someone else saw this.Andrew Keen: It certainly makes you saying, hey, you wrote an interesting piece for The New Yorker this week. In times like these, where you, you write perhaps satirically about what you call good Americans. Is the book written for good or bad Americans or all Americans or no Americans? Who do you want to read this book?Felipe Torres Medina: Oh my God. I want everyone to read it and everyone to buy a copy so that I've got a lot of money. All right. No, I think it's written for most Americans and and immigrants as well. People living here. But I do think, yeah, it's written for everyone. I don't think I wrote it with particular like, kind of group in mind. I think to me, Obviously with my background and my political affiliations, I think liberals will enjoy the book. But I also think, you know, people who are conservative, people who are MAGA, people who don't necessarily agree on my vision of immigration, can learn a lot from the book. And I purposely wrote it so that these people wouldn't necessarily be alienated or dismissed in any way. You know, it's a huge topic, and I think it was more of a like, I know you have an opinion. I'm just showing you some evidence. Make with it what you will, but I'm just showing you some evidence that it might not be as you believe it is, both for liberals and conservatives. You know, wherever you are on the spectrum, liberals think it's super easy. Conservatives that think it's super easy but in a bad way to move here. And I'm here kind of saying like, hey, it's actually this super complicated thing that maybe we should talk about and we should try to reform in some way.Andrew Keen: Yeah. And I think even when it comes to immigration, often people are talking about different things. Conservatives tend to be talking about quote unquote, illegal immigration and progressives talking about something else, too. You deal with people who try to get into America illegally, or is that for you, just a subject that you're not touching in this book?Felipe Torres Medina: I address it very lightly toward the final pages of the book. I first of all, I can, like, claim ownership on all immigrant narratives. And I wrote this about the legal immigration system because it's what I've navigated. Again, I am not an immigration lawyer. I am not an activist. I'm a comedy writer who happened to go through the immigration like system, so I but I did feel like, you know, okay, well, let's talk for a second. You've seen how hard it is because I've shown you all this evidence in the first couple stories in the book. And again, I say in the last pages because because of the interactive nature of the book, this could there is potentially a way for you for this to be the first, one of the first things you read in the book, but to where the last pages of the book, I say, okay, let's talk about you. We've seen how hard it is. Let's talk about the people who do so much to try and come here and who go even harder because they do it in the like, in the unauthorized way, you know, or the people who come here seeking asylum, which is a legal way to come to the United States, but is very difficult. So I do present that, but I do think it is not necessarily the subject of a comedy book, As I said earlier, when you're dealing with comedy, you want to be punching up. You want to be making fun of people in authority figures or in a sort of status position that is above the general population or the the voice of the comic. And with with undocumented immigrants and people trying to come here in irregular ways. It's it's very hard to find the humor there because these people are already suffering very much. And so to me, the line is threading the line of comedy there. It can very quickly turn into bullying or making fun of those people. And I don't want to do that because a lot of people are already doing that, and a lot of people who are already doing that work on this in this administration. So I don't I don't really want to mess with that.Andrew Keen: Philip, I'm not sure if you've got a a Spanish translation of the book. I'm sure there will be one eventually.Felipe Torres Medina: Hopefully.Andrew Keen: If people start reading this in Colombia, where you're from, Bolivia or Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, they think themselves, this is so hard to get in, even legally. Even if you have money to pay for lawyers, they might think, well, f**k it, I'll just try and get over the border illegally. And do you think in a way, I mean, it's obviously designed as a humor book, but in a way this would encourage any sane person to actually give up. I mean, go try and try and go somewhere else or just stay where you are.Felipe Torres Medina: I think, I think the book has a tone of I'm I'm a pretty optimistic person. So I think the book does have a tone of optimism and love for America. I do love the United States, where I, while presenting it as a difficult thing, I am also saying, like it? It's pretty good. You're going to have a good time if you make it here. So I don't think it will be a deterrent. Whether it's some sort of Trojan horse to create more people, to try and go through the border. I don't know, it'd be pretty funny if a funny book tended ended up doing that, but.Andrew Keen: It'd be great if we just got hold of the book and blamed you for for for all the illegal immigrants. But in all seriousness, it was been a lot of pieces recently about, according to the New York Times, people going silent for fear of retribution. As a comic writer and someone clearly on the left, the progressive in American politics. Do you think that there is a new culture of fear by some of your friends and colleagues in the comedy business? Are they fearing retribution? Trump, of all people, doesn't like to be laughed that some people say that he he only wanted to be president after Obama so brilliantly and comically destroyed him a few years ago.Felipe Torres Medina: I think in comedy, you know, I think people are tired of talking of Trump because, again, as I said, ten years of writing about him. I don't think anyone is necessarily afraid of talking about him or making fun of him. I think that is or his administration. I think that is proven like this past week with explosion of memes, making fun of J.D. Vance, his face, you know, to the point where J.D. Vance has tried to hop on the meme and be like, ha ha! Yes, I enjoy this very much too. Good job members. So like, obviously, first of all, he doesn't like it, but I think everyone is. And I think this is something that America does so well. Americans like to make fun of politicians, period. And even though I think in certain spaces of, you know, politics and activism, there might be fear of retribution that is much more marked. I think the let's make fun of of the Emperor for having no clothes that make fun of them is an instinct that that it's not going away and it won't go away any, anytime soon.Andrew Keen: Philip, finally, you've written a funny book about immigration. But of course, behind all the humor is a seriousness. Lots of jokes. It's a very entertaining, amusing, creative book. But it also, I think, suggests reform. You've given a great deal of thought. You've experienced it yourself. How can America improve its immigration story so that we don't have in the future more satirical books like America Like Me and what are the the reforms, realistically, that can be made that even conservatives might buy into?Felipe Torres Medina: Well, I think one of the biggest things is, if you look at it historically, there hasn't been comprehensive immigration reform since Clinton. Which is ridiculous. You know, we're nearing on 30 years there, and we're. We're basically 30 years since. And, you know, I'm 33, so it's a whole lifetime for a lot of people with no changes to a system, no comprehensive changes to a system. And that just means that, like it is going to become outdated. So obviously it's very hard right now with the tenor, but what we really need is for people to sit down and talk about it as a normal issue. And this is not an invasion. This is not a national emergency. It is simply an issue, an economic issue. And I think one of the biggest things, and one of my personal suggestions is that. The US Citizenship and Immigration Service has always been, as I said, this kind of strange ancillary part of the government. It started as part of the Department of Labor, eventually joining the Department of Justice. Then it goes back to labor. It kind of always bounces around. They don't know where it fits. And in after 911, it became part of the Department of Homeland Security. And I think that creates a an aura around immigration as something that is threatening to homeland security. You know, which is not true.Andrew Keen: Yeah. I see what you're saying. It's become the the sex when it comes to, in the context of Victorian something that we don't talk about, and we use metaphors and similes to, to, to describe. And I take your point on that. But what about some and I take your point on the fact that the system hasn't been reformed since Clinton. But let's end with a couple of final, just Doable reforms, Philippe, that can actually make the experience better. That will improve that. That might be cheaper that the the Doge people might buy into that both left and right will accept and say, oh, that's fair enough. This is one way we can make immigrating to America a better experience.Felipe Torres Medina: I think, rewarding if we're talking about this idea of like, we want the best immigrants, educated people. I think actually rewarding that because the current system does not do that for most people trying to get a work visa. They're subjected to a lottery where the chances are something like 1 in 16 of getting a work visa to be here, and that is really bad for companies in general. It's something that the big tech firms have been lobbying against for years, and because there's no consensus in Congress to actually do something. We have been able to address that. So I think actually rewarding the kind of like higher education, high achievement immigrants. In a way that isn't just like if you have $5 million, you can buy a gold car. Yeah, and.Andrew Keen: That's what Trump promised.Felipe Torres Medina: Right? Actually rewarding it in a way that's like, okay, well, if you have a college degree, maybe you don't just get a one year permit to work here, you know, maybe you can. There is a path for you to if you made your education here, if you start your professional life here, if you are contributing because all these immigrants are paying taxes or contributing, maybe there's a path that isn't as full of trapdoors and pitfalls. I would say that that that's one of the biggest things. And honestly, higher up, like I, I do think maybe this is my progressive side of me, but it's like get more people working in USCIS so that these waits aren't taking forever and getting more immigration judges, you know, hire people who are going to make this system efficient, because that is, I think, unfortunately, what Dodge thinks that the, you know, we're going to slim it down so it doesn't cost that much. Yeah. But if you slam it down, you don't have enough people. And there's a lot of people are still trying to come here and they're still trying to do things. And if you don't have enough people like working those cases, all you're creating is backlogs.Andrew Keen: Yeah. I'm guessing when those transforms the American immigration system through AI, you'll have another opportunity for you to write a book. Yeah. I mean, I let me in an important book, a very funny book, but also a very serious book by one of America's leading young comic writers full time, writing for Stephen Colbert, Philippe Torres Medina. Philippe, congratulations on the book. It's out next week. I think it will become a bestseller. Important book. Very funny too, and we can say the same about you. Thank you so much.Felipe Torres Medina: Thank you so much for having me.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
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