This is Neil Rubin, and this is the Rubin rant. And I'm still ranting. And what are we ranting about now? More immigration.

The big hot button talking point that everybody's talking about across the country. What are we doing? Where are we going? Why is this happening? Well, I'll tell you what's happening.

I'm on the front lines and I see things that people should be very, very unhappy about. The fact that America, a country of immigrants under this particular administration, has declared war on immigration.

And I would believe that Mr. Trump, if given a chance, would stop all our immigration. Oh, wait a minute.

Except those from countries that he really likes, those being in Europe, he doesn't like people coming here from Asia, Latin America, and certainly not Africa. And what has he done?

He's made it extremely difficult for a system that has many faults, that needs comprehensive reform, a system that for many is broken, is confusing, is inefficient. But under Mr. Trump's leadership, things have only gotten worse, more confusing and more inefficient. Let's talk about investor visas.

Investor visas are a popular tool to bring capital to the United States, where individuals of wealth means decide I'd like to invest in the United States. Here's some money. I'm going to hire Americans. Give me an immigration benefit. I want to come in. I want to come in with my family.

I want them to enjoy the American life. All right, sounds like a good plan.

Unfortunately, the immigration system has made investor visas a very cumbersome and very esoteric to say the least program of conflicting and overlapping laws, regulations that bear little logic and confuse and confound those people who are willing to bring their investment dollars to the United States. The purposes of hiring American workers only to be stymied at every possible term. One of the most popular programs is something called the EB5.

We call that the Cadillac of immigration visas.

And this particular visa allows you to come in with your family, children under age 21, and your spouse, and obtain a green card almost, almost overnight. The number is very big. It used to be a million dollars. Now it's $1.6 million.

Laying that money down to start a new business with the goal of hiring Americans. And the plan requires that you hire 10 full-time workers within the first two years of the business' operations.

Sounds easy enough until you start looking at the numbers and you say, wow, 10 employees. That's a pretty big payroll.

Fortunately, lots and lots of potential investors of this program are turned away not by the money they laid down, but by the fact that they have to hire so many US workers.

Now, if it's not bad enough that this program really does not attract enough investors, whether it's the high cost of entry or the fact that you need 10 full-time workers by the second year of your business. But Donald Trump has come out with a new concept, a gold visa. No one really knows much about this program. He's hinted at it.

We don't know if it's actually in place or not.

But this program is for very high net worth individuals that Mr. Trump is going to invite over who are going to bring even more capital to the United States.

Mr. Trump hasn't given us a lot of framework on how it's going to operate and therefore most of us think this is just another ploy for Mr. Trump to divert attention away from the fact that he's trying to dismantle immigration in the United States, making it extremely difficult for people who are seeking asylum, to gain relief, for people that are coming here with their families, bringing their family members from other countries and individuals like I mentioned who are willing to invest in the United States and live the American dream.

I had an interesting concept a few years ago when I dealt with some foreign high net worth individuals who were interested in an investor visa program. And these individuals had the resources to invest either the United States, Canada has a similar program.

New Zealand and Australia have similar programs, as does the United Kingdom and other countries.

Now you say to yourself, many of these individuals want to come to America because America offers such a large consumer base and any business will work in the United States. Doesn't really matter. Service based, manufacturing based.

If you have the right mousetrap, you could build a better mousetrap and you will get your company off the ground and very successful very, very quickly. These investors had two questions for me, only two questions.

Two questions that made me question whether United States is really a place that's attractive enough for these individuals. What were those questions? The first question said, hey, I'd love to invest in the United States. I've got a great business plan, I'll make a lot of money.

I'm very successful. Let me ask you a question. What is your question? What about health care? I said, health care?

America's got the greatest health care delivery system in the world. The dumbest way to pay for it, but that's for another segment. They asked, well, what do you mean the best healthcare delivery system?

I said, we've got world renowned hospitals, medical centers, research centers, you name it, it's here in the United States, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, you've heard of these very renowned medical establishments. Well, I said this, you have access to these things. And the investor would ask, well, who pays for it? Who pays for it? You do.

America doesn't have a national health system. We don't have universal health care in this country.

We have a hodgepodge of employer based programs that are also extremely inefficient and fail to deliver needed health care in the most effective way to help Americans stay healthy. Again, a topic for another day. We'll get to the second question these investors asked me. Well, what about education for my children? Education?

This is the United States. This is the birthplace of education for the masses. We have universities in every state.

We have fine private universities, we have Harvard and Stanford and many, many other high level academic institutions. And the eyes would open wide. Oh, that sounds very nice. Who pays for it? You do, investor.

We don't have free education like they have in, say, Canada where individuals are able to attend college at no cost or very low cost. Now we have very, very high priced universities here in the United States.

A good friend of mine recently told me his daughter is attending the University of Miami, a private school here in south Florida. Undergraduate — $100,000 per year. Let that sink in. This is a good school. It's not an Ivy League school.

It's a middle of the road school, say top 25, top 50. To pay $100,000 for a bachelor's degree — $100,000 per year for your son or daughter to attend this school, to be mired in that kind of debt, to come out and get a bachelor's degree. They may have no opportunity to even get a job after graduation, but of course the school's going to want their money to enroll your kid.

Well, after telling these investors the hard facts about who pays for education and who pays for health care in the United States, these individuals turned away, moved over to the other table and started talking to the Canadian representatives. Canadian representatives told them education in Canada is free, health care is free, it's built into the tax base.

And investing in Canada looked much more attractive.

This also is the situation with Australia, New Zealand, places where investors are encouraged to come, take advantage of the system and the benefits that those countries have to offer. So you understand the United States, for all the benefits that we offer a potential investor, they are these downsides which make America less attractive.

Before 9/11, immigration fell largely on something called INS, Immigration and Naturalization Services, which was part of the Department of Justice and as it was commonly referred to in Latin culture, the Migra. What is the migra?

Well, there may be a situation where the INS would conduct a raid on a plant or restaurant and they'd say, hey, everyone here's illegal. Let's go put them in the bus and deport them back to their home country. This process was not as pronounced as it is today, but it did exist then.

There's a very famous incident called Operation Wetback from the 1950s, and in today's parlance you would never use that term "wetback." It's a very insulting term.

But the government actually used that term in the mid-50s to round up Mexicans during the Eisenhower administration and to remove them back to Mexico.

As today, this was very controversial because lots of these individuals were working in the San Joaquin Valley of California picking the fruit and vegetables Americans love to eat. But thousands were picked up, they were put on a boat, they sailed back to Mexico and released.

And within a very short period of time, most, if not all these individuals made their way back to the United States.

And everyone looked the other way because they needed these individuals to go back into the farms, on the fields and pick the produce — a situation we find ourselves in today.

Now, after 9/11, there was a great push to reorganize our government. And they created something called the Department of Homeland Security, a cabinet level agency that incorporates both the INS, which is now known as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They added the Customs Department, which used to be with the Department of Treasury, and created something called Customs and Border Protection.

These are the nice people you meet when you arrive at the airport after traveling overseas. And then the dreaded ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

These were individuals previously who were out to look for illegal goods that entered the United States that there were no customs duties paid on. But they also included the enforcement arm that used to live with the INS to pick up illegals under the ICE banner.

And since its founding after 9/11 through the beginning of this current administration, ICE was never even heard of. Most people had no idea what it was.

Of course, now it's in the news almost every single day with this current administration's ramped up enforcement of the immigration laws and detainment and removal of thousands and thousands and thousands of people, often on very, very flimsy premises. But this is something that this administration finds important.

Now you've got these arms of the Department of Homeland Security, which is confusing enough, but wait, it gets even more confusing. For people who find themselves in immigration trouble, there is a situation where they may have applied for some kind of relief.

Most everyone knows what asylum relief is about. Asylum is a very noble cause that the United States came up with after the Second World War.

Americans felt very guilty that we allowed so many individuals in Europe and other parts of the world who were living under totalitarian dictatorships or became subject to these governments who found themselves with no refuge. And after World War II, the United States said, we'd like to do something for people who are persecuted for some reason.

Most important is political beliefs.

We wanted to protect people, dissenters in other countries who were being persecuted by their own governments for speaking out, for trying to exercise their political freedoms. They also included other areas — people who are persecuted for religious purposes. They may be persecuted for certain ethnic characteristics.

And it's expanded over the years. Now, if you're asking for asylum relief, where do you go? You don't go to the Department of Homeland Security.

You go to Immigration Court, which is part of the Department of Justice. So now you have another agency involved in this mess.

And the one thing about asylum, while it's a very noble cause, it has been a situation of great overuse. Why? Because it's free. It doesn't cost anything for an alien who's arrived in the United States to claim, I'm entitled to asylum relief.

They fill out the form. There's no charge. They fill out the form, they're placed in the system, and eventually they'll be adjudicated somewhere down the line.

It could be a year, it could be five years, it could be ten years from now.

The system is that overloaded with petitions seeking asylum relief that our system is incapable of processing and adjudicating them in a timely manner. There's been talk of expanding out this particular program, having more judges appointed, having greater resources.

But like many things in our country, it's not a big priority. Money is allocated elsewhere.

So now you have a situation where you've got people in an immigration court, you have people that deal with USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security, and you say, well, how does this make any sense to somebody — a casual observer or somebody who's not in the system? The short answer is, it makes no sense.

This is a very cumbersome, very inefficient, and at the end of the day, ineffective system to deal with immigration. But this is what we've been given. Now, where are we going? Anyone's guess. There's been many efforts in Congress over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

They call it comprehensive immigration reform. Pathway to citizenship is a common term, guest worker visa program.

All of these ideas are floated around in the halls of Congress. Republicans, Democrats, everybody wants to make changes. They want to streamline the system. They want to make it more efficient, more cost effective.

But at the end of the day, there's no political will to make any changes. And for whatever reason, this particular system remains in place.

Well, moving off of the immigration topic, I wanted to move to other areas where the government is making it extremely, extremely difficult for individuals to either get an immigration benefit or worse yet, to enforce their rights that we've granted them under protection plans like asylum, the Convention Against Torture, and other programs that the United States implemented for the goal of helping those unfortunates in other countries who found themselves at odds with their own governments for talking out against the government, for expressing certain religious beliefs, for belonging to certain religious ethnic groups, even social orientations.

The United States strived to offer these people the hope that we would honor our commitment to human rights, to the dignity of individuals and the rule of law.

And since Mr. Trump has entered the White House the second time, he has been busily dismantling the immigration and asylum programs to make it harder for individuals who have a legitimate basis to seek asylum to remain in the United States.

A lot of people are getting picked up by ICE simply for being people of color in certain communities who have valid claims pending before the asylum courts.

The administration really doesn't care much about their claims and is going to make sure that these individuals are treated in a very unfair and not even-handed manner.

It's unfortunate that our government feels this way. Our Congress has done nothing to curb Mr. Trump's excesses or to enforce the immigration laws that are currently on the books.

Many courts have come to odds with the administration and prevented and blocked them from taking certain actions they've taken.

But at the end of the day, ICE raids continue. People are continuing to be picked up off the street and they're being removed from our country very, very quickly.

A recent article said that up to 40,000 individuals have been picked up on the streets of South Florida alone. And part of what makes it so unnerving is how local law enforcement has been co-opted to assist ICE in handing over individuals that are picked up for rather minor offenses — mostly misdemeanors, speeding, traffic violations — things of this nature, and being shown the door when they're turned over to ICE agents as these people are escorted out of the country.

Well, we are a country of laws and we don't want to deal with individuals who may be dangerous in our society. We were told that the ICE raids would take away incorrigible types, gangsters, drug lords, bad hombres, as Mr. Trump called them. But in reality, what we're seeing is they're going after the lowest hanging fruit.

Older people, women, children, people that don't pose a threat to our society. Yes, they may have broken the law by overstaying their permission to stay in the United States, or they may have entered with no screening at all.

Instead of making a program where these people could be integrated into society, a position which they inhabit now — many of these individuals working in very low wage jobs, low skill positions, labor intensive jobs Americans don't want anymore.

Americans no longer want to work in the field picking peaches. Americans don't want to clean hotel rooms. Americans don't want to wash dishes in restaurants. Americans certainly don't want to work in construction or in agricultural settings. So we depend on immigrant labor for this.

But we treat the immigrant labor as the enemy, when in fact these individuals should be encouraged to come out into the open, to show their faces, to get legitimate and most importantly, pay taxes and ensure that they're not committing other crimes.

Now, this would be very easy for a guest worker program to be vetted. I'm not talking about a pathway to citizenship. Pathway to citizenship, in my estimation, is the third rail in this particular debate.

People don't want to reward individuals who broke our laws by entering or overstaying a lawful term of a visa by becoming potential citizens of the United States. That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking about is giving these individuals who may have resided in our communities for decades under the radar, give them a way to show their faces, become fingerprinted into the system, give them Social Security numbers so they can pay taxes on wages, so they can contribute to Medicare and Social Security. Right now, a lot of these individuals are working off the books. They're not paying anything into our social safety net. They won't get anything out of it. But at the same token, why is this not being taxed? Why is this not being put for the benefit of all our citizens?

Instead, these individuals are being shunned, turned away. And you're already seeing the effects of this in situations where they're having difficulty finding workers to work in these rather unsavory positions.

As I said, Americans are not going to work in the fields anymore. Only immigrant labor will work in the fields. Only immigrant labor is washing the dishes. Only immigrant labor is making the beds at the hotels.

And we're throwing these people away as if Americans will take their positions back again. The American employer will not pay enough money to get Americans to do these jobs. And these jobs will go unfilled. And you're seeing it in the restaurant and hospitality sector, you're seeing it in construction, you're seeing it in agribusiness. While these issues remain pending and unresolved, our government is hell bent to have these individuals picked up and moved off our streets.

Now, there's not a great outpouring of sympathy in most sectors of our country for people who either entered illegally or chose to overstay a lawful visa — that's fine. But wholesale removal at an extraordinary expense to the US taxpayer in my estimation is not helping anybody.

And when we see individuals who are not gangsters, who are not threats to our safety on the streets of the United States being picked up en masse and removed, it is a situation which all Americans should question and say, do we really want to act in this manner? Is this what America is about? What about the promise of America? A place that will always be a draw to foreigners for one very important reason — America offers upward mobility to everybody. You work hard enough, you work smart enough, you too can rise up.

We don't have a stratified system where individuals are prevented from moving up. The benefit of hard work and diligence is rewarded. We don't have a landed aristocracy that can't be broken by people who work hard, by people who may have come from nothing but built up with entrepreneurial spirit and determination to rise up and move to a better financial situation. This is a situation that the United States should find intolerable.

How do we fix it? Contact your Congress people. Congress does nothing. I tell people this all the time. Congress passes less law now than they did when they rode horses to Washington. Most people in Washington do nothing. There's virtually zero legislation. Legislation is introduced, it's discussed largely, never passes. It's only when there's a crisis do you see Congress do anything.

And even when they do something, it's not complete. It's on an interim basis. We're going to kick the can further down the road on this budget just to keep the government open, keep the checks flowing.

There are lots of people dependent on the United States Treasury to issue them a check every month. Senior citizens depend on it. The health care structure would fall apart if it wasn't for Medicare. Medicare funds almost every hospital. And if you don't think so, ask a hospital administrator. That's what's going on in this country right now.

This is the Rubin rant. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. And neither should you.