Ira Glass Act One, Where Have You Gone, Barbara Jordan? Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You. OK, so government gets shut down over a border wall. President says there's a national emergency. Democrats say there isn't one. But there is a moment before all this, before this whole conversation went into the divisive, nobody is listening to anybody hell that it seems to be in today. There was a moment back in the '90s when Congress had a bunch of people with completely opposing points of view on this sit down, hash it out, and come up with a solution to the whole thing. And they came up with one, a comprehensive one that would have fixed so many of the things that we're arguing about today. We wouldn't even be talking about this today this way. All of this would've played out differently. And at the center of the whole thing was this one woman-- charismatic, principled, beloved by Democrats and Republicans, and so different from anybody we can think of in politics today. Her whole mission and philosophy of politics was so different from anything you see today. One of our producers, Miki Meek, like me and a few others here on our staff has become kind of obsessed with immigration these last few years. She has the story. And we start with a little context.

Miki Meek In the 90s when all this happens, immigration hadn't become this nationally charged partisan issue. It was a topic that made most people's eyes glaze over. Most of the country didn't even know that a historic migration from Mexico to the US was underway. That is, unless you live in a state like Florida, Texas, or California where most of the undocumented immigrants were settling. In those states, voters were getting angry. So the politics of immigration started to change. And the big bang that really launched everyone into this new world happened in California in 1994-- a ballot measure called Prop 187.

They keep coming-- two million illegal immigrants in California. The federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires us to pay billions to take care of them.

Miki Meek Prop 187 banned undocumented immigrants and their kids from getting public benefits or going to schools, and made teachers and doctors turn over the names of anyone they knew or even suspected was undocumented. Huge parts of it were unconstitutional. The Californians voted for it by an overwhelming margin. For Democrats in the state, this was a wake up call. And one of the things that's so interesting when you listen back to all this stuff now is that they do not sound like the Democrats today. For instance, here's Senator Diane Feinstein from California. She was against the harsh restrictions of Prop 187, but at the same time she wanted to crack down on illegal immigration and she called for it on the Senate floor.

Diane Feinstein There is simply no time to lose. Too many people are still able to illegally cross our borders and too few states, most notably California, carry the burden of having to support, educate, and often incarcerate, the hundreds of thousands who enter this country illegally each year.

Miki Meek This is her in the mid '90s, and this next thing she says is eerily prophetic.

Diane Feinstein Ladies and gentlemen, let me say to you what I, honest to God, believe is the truth. If we cannot affect sound, just, and moderate controls, the people of America will rise to stop all immigration. I am as sure as that as I am that I'm standing here now.

Miki Meek You can almost picture her putting her hands up at the border of California, trying to prevent xenophobia from spreading. These were very different times and both sides moved quickly to figure out a solution. So Congress put together a team, a blue ribbon commission, to come up with proposals that Congress could turn into laws. I know how boring this sounds. Commissions are the joke of government, the place politicians send issues to die-- bureaucratic, ineffective. But I promise, the story I'm going to tell you is not that. For starters, they packed this commission with people who are so different from each other that it's almost comical. On one side there was the guy who co-wrote Prop 187 and on the other side, a Democrat who helped almost three million undocumented immigrants get amnesty here. I spoke with all the commission members who are still alive. There's five of them.

Michael Teitelbaum I told my wife that this commission will not be able to agree on whether it's Monday or Tuesday.

Miki Meek This is Michael Teitelbaum, a demographer that Republicans appointed.

Michael Teitelbaum I didn't know all of the appointees but I knew some of them. And my conclusion was that there was such a wide range of opinion on this very contentious set of issues that there would be no way this commission could reach a consensus on anything.

Miki Meek That's where this remarkable woman came in, the hero of our story. Her name was Barbara Jordan, and she was a civil rights icon, a democratic representative from Texas who also incidentally was black and gay. She's been dead for more than 20 years now. And to understand the unique spot she held in American politics, some background. She grew up in Houston, went to segregated schools and then law school. Started running for office in her 20s and broke a bunch of barriers. In the '60s she became the first black woman elected to the Texas legislature. And then in 1972, the first to serve in the US Congress from the south. She became this breakout national star during the Watergate hearings in 1974. At the time, she was just a 30 something newcomer on the House Judiciary Committee that was deciding whether or not they were really going to impeach the President of the United States. And it's pretty much what you'd expect, a bunch of older white men on live TV sounding like your typical politician, giving their opening statements. Until it came time for Jordan, who wore this big boxy orange suit, bright camera lights glaring off her black rimmed glasses-- a freshman Congresswoman, and at that point one of four black woman ever to serve in Congress. And when she opened her mouth, she spoke in this style that was grand, but also personal.

Barbara Jordan Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man. And it has not been easy, but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible. Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States-- we the people. It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that we the people. I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.

Miki Meek When I first heard this, I put it on repeat. I love how she sounds. Even then, her voice was considered unusual, like JFK or Churchill, with maybe a little Katherine Hepburn thrown in there, which turns out is just how she spoke, whether she was on a stage or not. And at that moment during Watergate, millions of Americans heard her for the very first time and lots of them were like, wow, who is this woman talking this way?

Barbara Jordan --but through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in we the people. Today, I am an inquisitor. And hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution. A president is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.

Miki Meek She explained, the president is not above the law. He is not above the Constitution. It was a galvanizing moment. People remarked how fair minded and serious she was. Dan Rather, who covered the Watergate hearings, said later that when Jordan finished there was no doubt in his mind that the president would be impeached or have to resign. He said she created this feeling of, as hard as it seems we have to go on with this. We don't have a choice. Jordan's office was immediately swarming with camera crews and flooded with fan mail from all over the country. Her appeal cut across party lines. One man even put up 25 billboards that said, "Thank you Barbara Jordan for explaining our Constitution." She had suddenly been catapulted into this spot where people looked at her as a moral authority at a particularly cynical moment in politics. In Congress her colleagues like to joke that Jordan had the voice of God, which is kind of true. Her mom and dad were Baptist. Dad did some preaching. Her mom gave a lot of speeches, too. That's just how she grew up talking. Jordan was a champion debater in college. She says that's where she picked up the style of speech. Two years after Watergate, Barbara got asked to give the big speech at the Democratic National Convention-- the keynote. The other keynote speaker that year was John Glenn, senator and astronaut. The crowd barely paid attention to him. Then Barbara Jordan took the stage.

Man This is by far the biggest ovation anyone has received here in this opening session of the Democratic Convention. This time the convention has really come alive.

Miki Meek This video is totally electrifying to watch. The clapping went on for three minutes straight before Jordan could speak.

Barbara Jordan Thank you. Thank you. There is something different about tonight. There is something special about tonight. What is different, what is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker.

Miki Meek She was the first African-American to give the convention's keynote. Afterward, there was a movement to make her Jimmy Carter's Vice President, though she quickly swatted that down. She issued a press release saying, he'd never pick someone who's both black and a woman. Cut to 1992, 16 years later. Jordan's retired, leading a quiet life in Austin with her partner and teaching at a university, but the government needs someone to head its bipartisan immigration team. Susan Martin, a veteran of immigration policy fights on Capitol Hill, leads the search. Jordan had never worked on the issue, but she was Martin's first pick.

Susan Martin I had never met her but I thought that she stood for integrity, and balance, and fairness. And she started off saying she was just too busy. She thought it was an important issue, it wasn't that at all, but she couldn't do it.

Miki Meek At that time, Jordan had multiple sclerosis, sometimes needed a wheelchair and walker to get around. But Susan said she kept trying to convince her, telling her anti-immigrant views were spreading. The rhetoric was getting more racist, and starting to divide the country. Jordan was alarmed by all that. She didn't want immigrants to become scapegoats. So she said yes. As someone who's been watching this immigration debate play out for the past few years it was incredible to hear what Barbara Jordan pulled off, how she managed to get people who didn't think they could agree to agree. She brought them to unanimous consensus on nearly everything. She forced them to stake out a middle ground on stuff that was controversial then and still is today. I asked all the commissioners how exactly she got this thing to work. They told me that Jordan first set up a bunch of ground rules for how they could make decisions together, all nine of them. Again, here's Michael Teitelbaum, one of the Republican appointees to the commission.

Michael Teitelbaum I remember her saying, we are nine in number but we are not the Supreme Court. If we vote 5 to 4, on something that is a meaningless set of recommendations. So I don't think we should be seeking small majorities for opinion A or B, but we should be seeking instead broad consensus. And everybody agreed on that.

Miki Meek For Barbara, this approach was bigger than just the commission. She didn't see compromise as a sign of weakness. She saw it as a moral imperative. She taught this in her college ethics and political values classes. She believed it was actually immoral to not compromise if your job was to legislate. When she was still a politician, she had a reputation as a pragmatist who despised ideologues and party purists. She liked drinking and playing guitar with conservatives after hours and she had no problems cutting deals or making friends with her polar opposites. In fact, in the Texas Senate, she thought it was the only way she could get any change to happen. She'd take opportunities where she could find them, which is how she later got West Virginian Senator Robert Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan member, to help her get enough votes to expand the Voting Rights Act to Mexican Americans. On the commission, Jordan also worked with everyone to come up with language that would establish tone which was just as important as the actual policies themselves. The tone would be respectful, send a message that they were listening to both sides. So on one hand, she was tough on illegal immigration.

Barbara Jordan We've got to have the strength to say no to the people who are not supposed to get in. We need to make deportation a part of a credible immigration policy.

Miki Meek But at the same time, she was pro immigration.

Barbara Jordan The commission believes that legal immigration has strengthened the country and it continue to do so. We strongly denounce-- denounce on our commission-- the hostility which seems to be developing around immigrants. That is not healthy when we seek to blame immigrants for all of our social ills. We cannot sustain ourselves as a nation if we condone divisiveness in this society of immigrants.

Miki Meek To me, one of the most impressive things I learned about this bipartisan commission is just how all out they went for five years. Early on they were constantly on the road because they wanted input from the rest of the country. In El Paso, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Nogales, and a bunch of other places. They held public hearings that were basically open mic sessions, that lasted for hours. They also did ride alongs with border patrol, toured refugee camps in Kenya, and met with government officials in Mexico. While they were there, one of the commissioners told me this poignant detail. When they got to buildings that didn't have ramps, they just picked Jordan up in her wheelchair and carried her in. When you compare today to back then, the single biggest difference is that it was possible for the two sides to just sit down and talk about how to cut down on illegal immigration, mainly because politicians were still all over the map on the issue. Positions hadn't hardened along predictable party lines. Yes, Republicans were generally more skeptical about immigration, and Democrats were more in favor of it. But there were also lots of pro-business Republicans who wanted cheap labor, and pro-union Democrats who did not. They wanted to protect American workers. So this was a moment when things were more malleable, before immigration became such a loaded symbolic issue. It was a moment before so many families moved here. Most of the undocumented were young single men coming for jobs. And it was a moment when, unlike today, both sides, Democrats and Republicans, agreed that illegal immigration was an urgent problem. Here's Bill Clinton giving his State of the Union in 1995. At that point, the undocumented population had grown to around five million, less than half of what it is now.

Bill Clinton All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants.

Miki Meek In case this isn't clear, at the time protecting the working class from an influx of cheap labor was still a central part of the Democratic Party's platform. And the way to protect American workers and stop people from entering the country seemed obvious to the commission-- make it impossible for undocumented workers to get jobs. This was the easiest point of agreement for the commission. They voted to hit businesses with big fines and even jail time if they were caught hiring undocumented workers, and to create a mandatory electronic system that employers would use to check if job applicants were legal to work. This eventually became known as E-Verify. A thornier issue was birthright citizenship, the thing that President Trump said he wanted to end just before the midterms. This is the law that says if you enter the country illegally and have a child here, that child is a citizen. Jordan settled this really quickly. She flexed her moral authority because birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. Here's one of the commissioners, Bruce Morrison.

Bruce Morrison There were members, I won't name a particular members, but there were members who had the anchor baby line. And Barbara made clear where she stood on the 14th Amendment, and that was one of the few examples where she just put her foot down and basically said, you know, over my dead body.

Barbara Jordan The 14th Amendment reads all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens.

Miki Meek The 14th Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision which said black people born in America could never be citizens.

Barbara Jordan I am not about to advocate changing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Those parents are not citizens but that child is a citizen. And as a citizen of this country, that child is entitled to benefits and they are not to be taken away.

Miki Meek The most explosive issue the commission faced, the most difficult question Jordan guided them through, had to do with immigrant families arriving in the US. Specifically, should people be allowed to bring their whole extended families over-- parents and brothers and sisters, and once they get green cards their spouses and kids? President Trump calls this chain migration. He thinks it's unfair and dangerous, foreigners taking advantage of the system. But Jordan's commission came up with a totally different way to frame this issue. She talked about it in a way that's much more humane than how we hear it talked about today, with no fear mongering. Though it took them a year to figure this out the commission said, let's just be practical about the situation. They said, look at how things are going now with family visas. It's a total backed up mess. At the time, if you were a US citizen with a sibling in the Philippines, the wait time to get into the US was 18 years. The commissioners felt the US was making promises it couldn't keep. Again, here's former commissioner Bruce Morrison.

Bruce Morrison This, to me, was the number one issue facing our immigration system, that we were dividing families, that we were making people choose whether they should break the rules by being here illegally to live with their spouse, or whether they should be exiled. And that's a choice no family should make.

Miki Meek They said, let's prioritize. Most people can agree that the most important thing is for parents to be together with their kids as quickly as possible. So they said, let's only give visas to parents and minor children, and not admit anyone else. This would knock lots of people off the waiting list. Say for instance, you are an adult citizen and your brother and two sisters had been waiting for a decade. Suddenly, sorry, there's no space for them. Also, if your kids were adults, they'd be out of luck, too. So it was a tough policy, but it was generous, too. Doing this would cut the long backlogs, free up more visas. And they agreed to temporarily give out even more to bring in all the kids and spouses on the waiting list as quickly as possible. Then once that list was cleared, they'd make sure new applicants got reunited with their families in the US within a year. They also built in special exceptions to allow in adult kids with disabilities and kids who put in applications as children but aged out because of long wait times. Of course, there was no getting around the fact that this approach would leave more than a million siblings and others out in the cold, unable to move to the US. And not surprisingly, this upset a lot of people, including Republicans. Representative Dick Armey told The New York Times that the commission's proposal was a quote, "misguided attempt to make legal immigrants the scapegoats for America's problems." Protesters picketed the commission at public hearings. Here's a reporter pushing Barbara Jordan during a press conference in DC.

Reporter Many of the critics of these recommendations have qualified them as anti family and inhumane. How do you respond to that?

Barbara Jordan These recommendations are not anti family. Our recommendations make it easier for spouses and minor children to unite and not remain apart for such extended periods of time. And we had testimony from people, immigrants, who said I would love to have my wife with me, or my young son or daughter. And how do you say to, that person, but we've got to get somebody else's brother or sister? It was a matter of reinforcing a priority in the nuclear family.

Miki Meek In 1995, President Clinton came out strong backing the commission saying their recommendations were consistent with his own views which were quote, "pro family, pro work, pro naturalization." The commission's report waded into the most controversial issues and made big, tough recommendations. They'd eliminate the diversity visa lottery and shrink the number of visas for low wage, unskilled workers. They called for harsh sanctions against businesses that hire undocumented workers. They'd gradually moved from an immigration system that brings in mostly family members to one that brings in workers who have skills the US lacks. They said every few years, Congress should review how many people should be admitted into the country based on what the economy needs. And for the short term, they propose cutting overall legal immigration by a third. But at the same time, there was another side to their recommendations. The commission wanted to keep refugees flowing into the country. They wanted protections and due process for people who get caught up in the immigration system and alternatives to detention for them. They insisted that legal immigrants were entitled to public benefits and welfare. They called for stricter enforcement of hate crime laws. They wanted to fund job training for American workers who were displaced by immigrants and to give money and advice to communities with new large immigrant populations, hoping this would make the whole transition less fraught and resentful. By late 1995, it's clear that getting all this passed won't be easy but they have the president and the immigration subcommittees in the House and Senate on their side. And at that critical moment, Barbara Jordan got sick because of complications from leukemia which she'd had for a while but kept secret. She died within weeks. She was 59 years old. Again, here's Susan Martin, the woman who first hired Jordan for the commission.

Susan Martin I found out because I got a call from her partner. And all of the commissioners and all of the staff were just, you know, they can't believe it's happened. But it was also a very serious political loss because she had the stature and the voice to be able to make sure that the commission's recommendations were heard.

Miki Meek That kind of authority, that's what was missing when Congress finally took up the commission's recommendations in 1996, without Jordan there to guide the debate. An astonishing variety of people came out and rallied against them. Immigrant rights groups teamed up with agribusiness and manufacturing to water down the sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers. High tech firms opposed the cuts to worker visas. Religious groups didn't want any changes to family visas. And they won.

Alan Simpson Because she wasn't there to push them. It's that simple. She wasn't there.

Miki Meek This is Senator Alan Simpson. He was the chair of the Senate immigration subcommittee and had a front row seat as the proposals fell apart.

Alan Simpson And when she disappeared, then the interest groups came in and said, boy, she's gone now. We'll just get in and chop this baby to bits, which they did.

Miki Meek Soon enough, President Clinton backed away from his earlier endorsement of the commission and ended up signing some of the most punitive legislation against legal permanent residents. It restricted their access to food stamps and Medicaid and made it easier to deport them. Barbara Jordan's vision of a grand compromise was dead. The commissioners and Senator Simpson all told me, if she'd lived--

Alan Simpson We'd have something better than whatever they got now, that's all I can tell you. I don't know what aspect it would be, whether it would be enforcement or border enforcement or legalization or whatever, whatever, whatever. But it would be a hell of a lot better than whatever you've got now.

Miki Meek Today when Barbara Jordan's name comes up in politics, it's mainly from Republicans. That's one of the things that got me interested in her in the first place. These immigration hardliners waving around the name of a liberal black woman, a civil rights icon, saying she's with us. Here's former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of her biggest fans.

Jeff Sessions The late civil rights pioneer Barbara Jordan found that quote, "immigration of unskilled immigrants comes at a cost to unskilled US workers." I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Miki Meek Here's Laura Ingraham on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly.

Laura Ingraham Well, I think Barbara Jordan had it right back in 1995. She was a Democrat Congresswoman, African-American, head of the Commission on Immigration Reform. And she said, look, deportation is crucial, right? Because--

Miki Meek Even President Trump released a statement dedicated to Barbara Jordan, crediting her with his whole America first approach to immigration. The group that's been responsible for making Jordan this darling of immigration hardliners is called Numbers USA. They've even put her on TV again. This ad ran during the last presidential campaign.

Barbara Jordan The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force. Many American workers do not have adequate job prospects. We should make their task easier to find employment, not harder.

Announcer Paid for by Numbers USA.

Bruce Morrison I was shocked.

Miki Meek I asked all the former commissioners what Jordan would think of her name being used this way. Some weren't that offended by it, but one of the Democratic appointees, Bruce Morrison, remembers the first time he saw it.

Bruce Morrison I mean, I was shocked because if she were alive, somehow you can imagine the volcano going off and burying these people under its eruption of outrage, because she always engaged in things in absolute open good faith. She didn't mis-characterize what people said. She didn't play these games of taking people's statements out of context, and sort of try to make her a symbol of something she did not represent and did not support. That's a kind of theft of a precious commodity.

Miki Meek I get why Republicans cite her so much. They're saying, these ideas we're advocating, they're not crazy. Reasonable people thought these were reasonable solutions. Though Bruce Morrison points out, when the commission proposed these things they were part of a bigger package which also included things these Republicans don't support. And beyond that, Barbara Jordan's whole political vision was proudly about compromise and finding common ground. It's jarring to see her being cited by partisans as part of a bitter political war. Meanwhile on immigration, the Democrats seem to have left the playing field. In the midterms, a common strategy for lots of candidates was to stick to the stuff that wasn't controversial like the Dreamers and then change the subject to health care.

Ann Richards The truth is, I'd counted on Barbara preaching my funeral. She always did make things sound a lot better than they were.

Miki Meek This is one of her good friends, former Texas Governor Ann Richards, speaking at her funeral in Houston. They used to go to Lady Longhorns basketball games together.

Ann Richards And now if we're going to be honest we have to say that there were some people who managed to resist Barbara's persuasive manner. When I was a county commissioner, Barbara was building her house out in the country down at the end of a narrow little tree-shaded lane. And it was about--

Miki Meek Richards said it was about a mile long, and there was a woman who owned some property in the middle of it. And this woman, she put a gate across the lane and padlocked it.

Ann Richards And it may be hard to imagine Barbara really hopping mad but she was. And she called me up and she said, Ann! Ann! This old woman has put a gate across my lane and the lane is used by everyone. And I want that gate down. And years later I was going out to the house for a party and I thought about that old woman. And so I said Barbara, whatever happened to that old woman? And Barbara suppressed a smile and got that voice of the Lord inflection in her speech, and she said, well, Ann, that old woman died and went to hell. And that's pretty much how it went with Barbara. If reasoning didn't work, and prodding didn't work, and the law didn't work, divine intervention was bound to just overcome whatever.

Miki Meek To fix the situation we are in now with immigration feels like it might actually require divine intervention. Things are way more complicated now than they were in the '90s. For starters, the undocumented population has gotten a lot bigger. It's gone from 3 million to 11 million. It's no longer mostly single young men crossing back and forth across the border. We now have families who've been living here for a full generation, who've raised children. And as Barbara Jordan always feared, immigrants now get blamed for all sorts of problems. We're now in a situation she never anticipated. The problem today is much worse than anything she'd ever imagined. And the two parties are so much further apart. They listen to each other so much less. It's hard to picture how even Barbara Jordan could get much done.

Ira Glass Miki Meek is one of the producers of our show. Thanks to the other members of the Jordan commission we talked to, Bob Hill, Lindsey Lowell, Nelson Merced, Warren Leiden, and Paul Donnelly.

Barbara Jordan Many fear the future, many are distrustful of their leaders, and believe that their voices are never heard.

Ira Glass This is Barbara Jordan speaking in a very divisive time just a couple of years after President Nixon's impeachment hearings and Vietnam at the Democratic National Convention.

Barbara Jordan But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny, if each of us remembers when self-interest and bitterness seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny. We are a generous people, so why can't we be generous with each other? But this is the great danger America faces, that we will cease to be one nation, and become instead a collection of interest groups-- city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual, each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good?