The Rational Middle

Hosts Chris Lyon and Loren Steffy — with the help of immigration attorneys Charles Foster and Jacob Monty — dive into America’s troubled history of employment verification, workforce recruiting, educ…

Rational Middle executive producer and author Loren Steffy talks about his recently completed book, "Deconstructed", which chronicles the history of an immigrant family that would eventually lead to …

Oscar Hernandez, an organizer at United We Dream Houston, shares his experience as an undocumented immigrant, as a recipient of DACA, and the role of foreign policy and racism on American border secu…

Texas finds itself on the front lines of immigration debate. From sanctuary cities to trade and trafficking, former Texas State Representative Byron Cook weighs in on his time in office and the work …

The southern border of the United States has been impacted throughout the last century both by the changing of political winds and real-world challenges we face in securing our border. David V. Aguil…

In the second part of this two part episode, filmmaker and educator Wendell Riley explains the trials and tribulations of trying to move from a student visa to a green card - but there are problems t…

Wendell Riley is a filmmaker, an educator, and an immigrant. In the first part of a two part episode, he shares his experience on why he chose to come to America and what made him want to stay.

Jill Campbell is the the managing immigration attorney at BakerRipley, a community center and home base for New Americans in Houston, Texas. She shares her knowledge of what it takes to become a lawf…

Gregory, Chris, and Loren recap the first season of the documentary film series Rational Middle of Immigration, how it changed their perspective on an incredibly important and consequential topic, an…

American economist and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, explains the impact of undocumented immigrants on the budgets of both the federal and local governments…

Stationed at the Center for Houston's Future, Steven has been focused on the impact of immigration in Houston since 2016. He has studied the demographic trends to extrapolate what the city's economic…

Rice University may be home to one of immigration's most interesting thought leaders in Dr. Tony Payan. We discuss the rights and privileges different kinds of immigrants have in the United States an…

Take a trip down memory lane to the beginnings of this decade-long experiment called the Rational Middle, which was founded to create meaningful dialogues around contentious issues, and how immigrati…

Known for his hardline stances, Republican Congressman and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw sits down with us to discuss his perspective on how to address the challenge of illegal border crossings, asyl…

Yael Ross is a Center Director at Children at Risk, a Texas-based research and advocacy group that aims to use data to make the case for investment in and preservation of rights for New American Chil…

Following Hurricane Harvey in September 2017, Houston found itself in the grips of a crisis. Even before the storm caused $9 billion in housing damage, the city was struggling through a workforce sho…