As the new Immigration Bill heads from the committee to the full Senate, NPR turned for comment to a brilliant and seasoned asylum lawyer. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available, so they called me.

Yes, your humble blogger debuted earlier this week on the NPR show Talk of the Nation. This was my first ever appearance on radio (though sometime in the mid-1980s, I did appear on a local TV talk show as an example of a kid who did not kill himself as a result of Dungeons & Dragons).

While I am used to talking to judges, appearing on radio before a live audience is quite terrifying. I assumed that I would fall into the fetal position and cry for my mommy. But it was not to be. In fact, I thought the interview went pretty well (you can hear it or read the transcript here).

The title of the show was “Who Gets Asylum, Who Doesn’t and How that May Change.” I was the only guest to appear in-studio, with host Ari Shapiro. Other guests were Dan Stein of the restrictionist group FAIR (which wits on the Left have dubbed “un-FAIR” – we need better wits) and NPR Congressional Correspondent David Welna.

In the space of about 30 minutes, I managed to insult the governments of Pakistan, China, Eritrea, Cuba, Indonesia, Serbia, and possibly Mexico. I also (hopefully) made a decent argument for why the one-year asylum bar should be eliminated (the current version of the Bill would eliminate the bar). I tried to give many examples of asylum seekers who had been persecuted and who were worthy of protection (hence the need to insult numerous governments). And I hopefully made the case for preserving and strengthening the asylum system.

Although I enjoyed my experience at NPR, I can’t say I am particularly optimistic that the current Bill will make it into law. The most important aspects of the Bill are not related to asylum seekers, but the main provision related to asylum–elimination of the one year filing deadline–is important to many people, and thousands of legitimate refugees would benefit if the bar were removed.

We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks. At least one senator predicts that the Bill will pass the Senate with 70 votes prior to July 4th. I hope he is right, but even if he is, the Bill still has to get through the Republican-controlled House. To me, it seems like an up-hill battle. But it is definitely a battle worth fighting.