Century. This discussion took place online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The war Affairs Council of dallasfort worth provided the video. Welcomed to have it the viewers from cspan and numbers of world Affairs Councils from across the country. I think you are going to especially enjoy todays conversation with jia lynn yang, e author of a new book, mighty and irresistible tide,. The nation continues to be a nation that welcomes immigrants on one hand and then turns some away dependent on the shifting political mode. Joining me in the composition today is laura collins, director of the Bush InstituteEconomic Growth initiative based here in dallas at the george w. Bush institute. Todays program is sponsored by Paige Hendrix of public relations. I hope you will purchase a copy of jias book. You can purchase a book that rabankbooks. Com and you can get a 10 discount if you type in the discount code. I hope you will support the bookstore. I want to tell you a little bit about jia lynn yang, Deputy Editor at the new york times. She has been there about three years, joined in september of 2017. Prior to joining the times, she was with the washington post, as National Security editor and part of a team that won a pulitzer for coverage of President Trump and russia. Heris known for wide range of reporting which includes, as well, covering Edward Snowdens escape to hong kong. She is from a family of immigrants and is a graduate of yale university. , and ithe mic to you look forward to hearing your conversation. Laura thank you for having us here today. Recently, we have been examining the history of our nation through the eyes of the disenfranchised. We must continue to listen to their voices and support them. Thank you very much, jia for being with us. As mentioned, the book is called a mighty and irresistible tide. It is about immigration policy and the changes that happen from 1924 to 1965. I think about the 1965 law all the time, but i imagine a lot of americans dont, and even though you work in journalism and you are very connected to current events, you probably dont think about it on a daily basis either. Can you give us a sense of what inspired you to write this book and how you got interested in the 1965 law . Jia thank you so much for having me. It is such an honor to talk to all of you and a pleasure to be together right now. So i got really interested kind of on a fluke. Austin, texas for a friends wedding and i wanted to go to the lbj president ial museum and library to check it out. I love reading histories about lbj, histories about the 1960s. In the u. S. It was such a eventful time. And being in texas, it is not hard to get to the museum so i werent, and there is this room some of you may know that basically outlines all of the legislation lbj passed, which is an enormous body of work. He passes medicare and medicaid, public broadcasting, him. S from i also noticed there is a line about this law in 1955 on immigration which may be had been taught in high school, but i had long forgotten it. 1965 immigration and nationality act. I got interested because it mentions, there is a line below it that says, this law helps explain why there are so many asianamericans in my country right now. I wondered if my family was connected, because my parents came from china and taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s for college and graduate school, and they stayed after and decided to build a life in northern virginia, in alexandria. That is where i was born, in 1982. I thought, we came after 1965, maybe we are connected. So i began to look and sure enough, the more i learned, the more i realize that this law, which banned discrimination based on race, ethnicity in our Immigration Laws, helps to explain why my family is here, why so many families are here. And it is in the news all the time, because when President Trump talks about family reunification, or chain migration, is a term really in circulation right now especially among conservatives who want to restrict immigration, they are talking about this law. This is the law that began all about. We law explains for me what are debating every day when the white house comes out with more immigration proposals. It is also at the very nature of our country. Our demographics have been transforming so rapidly. We have never had so much immigration from outside europe. This law is why. So i got sucked into this journey of examining in a way family history. A different kind of genealogy. It is not about, where was my great grandfather born . It was about, why is my family even in this country . Leaving aside the question, should i have been born here at all, those moral questions. I just wanted to know, we turn away so many families in this country. We have and we still are why was my family allowed to come . What is the history behind it . It was a very personal reason. When you talk about the reason your family was able to come here, it immigration policy, we like to think about push factors and pull factors. If you are antiimmigrant or antireform, a lot of what you focus on are the pull factors, is it the entitlement system bringing people here . But when you look at past waves immigration, we often focus on the push factors what made people want to leave. I think your book really calls into question whether it was really push factors or what the situation on the ground was compelled people to come here. So can you talk about how our domestic situation the impacts immigration from abroad . Jia one thing that struck me learning this, when you hear the debate now, you hear the same arguments being repeated. We imagine that our immigration system has always looked the way that it does right now. When in fact, my book began in the 20s. We did not have a visa system. You didnt need a visa to get here. And again, some of you in the audience, if you think about how your families came, depending on when they came, they came before 1924. If you could make the journey to come here, you get here. You show up at ellis island, a lote galveston of people came through there you really just came, and a very small percentage of people were turned away. We would inspect your health and very basic things at these ports. But the vast majority of people were allowed in. We had a literacy test added in 1917. If you came, there wasnt really a mechanism for deporting people. The idea that we take for granted now that would have active deportations, that was unheard of, and for a lot of people i think unthinkable. The u. S. Mexico border was officially opened. There were no restrictions and numerically on who could come. So i just think that history is really important to understand when we talk about we tend to think of a nation of immigrants like it is a static idea, and depending on when your family came, maybe you came from germany in the 1800s, maybe your family came as part of the irish wave, or later, the jewish or italian wave that came after 1980. Then you talk about people coming from latin america and asia we sort of 10 to think about it, as this consistent, same story just different characters. I think what is important to note domestically is that our law is changing. Who comes depend on these laws. Just, can he physically make the journey, which is what was true from the beginning of our country, it has increasingly been in the last 100 years, do you fit these criteria . Do you have the right papers . It is important when we have the debate now and do hear people say, my family came the right way and these people are coming the wrong way the way people come is changing. We collectively as a democracy keep debating who can come. Who do we want here. These questions are very unresolved. My book is about how we wrestle with that and how the answers to these questions keep changing over time. Host i know from my own family, my greatgrandmother is from romania. She came through ellis island and she came before the 1924 law, which essentially shut down for all intents and purposes, Eastern European immigration. We were fortunate in that, i probably would not be here. The odds of her getting in were pretty slim. She was i illiterate, she had very little formal education. If i recall correctly, they ask what your ambition is coming to the United States, and i think she said you wanted to be a homemaker. She ended up raising her family here. I dont think we would, in the current Immigration Law say, you want to be a homemaker . Come in. That is not how it works anymore. Notmentioned that we did have a visa system before that. What was the driving force behind the 1924 law, and how did it fundamentally change immigration in the United States . Jia it is such an important law. It comes as a response and again, there are so many parallels when you begin to learn, you say, that sounds so familiar to me. It comes to a response as a of immigrantswave coming in. Right now it is a historic high as far as foreignborn americans. People from mexico from asia, it is people from italy, Eastern Europe, and russia. You are talking about push and pull factors, these are people and escaping persecution and poverty. They start showing up in ellis waves of people who seem really different from the people who have come before. They speak different leverages, worship different religions, they are catholic, they are jewish. They just seem really different. Part of the concern at the time were, wait a second, we are white, anglosaxon, protestant nation. These people dont fit that. They are changing our country to quickly. They are not the simulating properly. This is not what america is. It is changing too much. So support really builds followed of 1924 to basically bring the case down say, we dont want people like this anymore. The reason it has so much for us and why it is such an important law to understand, is that up to this point, the country is open to immigration. Very few exceptions, for instance come for my family being from china. There was the 1882 chinese exclusion act which said we dont want chinese laborers anymore. Open. Ide from that, it is this law passes because people are seeing all these immigrants coming into the city and changing them overnight. They also have the science of eugenics behind them. It is very mainstream at the time. This was before the holocaust. And people are literally ranking and assessing different ethnicities and saying, if you are italian, of the italian race, they would use that word in this context you are more prone to criminality. We studied the jews in our mental institutions and people from these countries tend to be here and other people are not here. So they are studying these ethnicities like a science, looking at genetics and eugenics. So they pass this law because they say, first of all, these people are changing our look,acy to quickly, and, there is a science that says these ethnicities are less desirable. We are not being racist. We studied the data and this is what we have determined about different ethnicities. So they basically passed a law that says, we dont want people from Eastern Europe anymore. We dont want people from asia, they cant assimilate. And we need to get back to what our country was from the beginning, which is, white, anglosaxon protestants. The loss exceeds exactly as law succeedse exactly as planned. Overnight, people start coming to ellis island you need a visa now. You cant just show up. You needed papers you did not need before. And the nature of the people coming, the foreignborn percentage drops overnight. Me, we thinkng to we have always been a nation of years,nts, these are going into the 1960s, where the percentage of immigrants falls and falls and falls, and the only immigrants around us are only people who are old. They came in the last wave in the early 20th century. There arent new people coming in. There are even historians saying in the 1950s, immigration, we dont talk about it anymore. It is not a part of american culture. Ands not this political social force that is changing our country the way we think of it now, it just falls off the radar is an issue because their there literally arent any immigrants. Host you mentioned the unintended consequences of the 1964 bill. There were a lot of unintended consequences to 1954, particularly as you start to see world war ii rampup, and we see what the nazis were doing, jews. Ularly to the what were the unintended consequences for our domestic immigration policy from that law, as we start to enter this passed . Period1 1924 is jia in the isolationist moment, the country has fought world war progressedave and said, why did you get involved in europe at all. Real, in this moment of retrenching, isolationist, 100 america. Ourselves. Concern then world war ii happens, and overnight, in a way we are still grappling with now, we become global actors. Ole, as out of our h we say that we are part of the global stage, we have obligations to other countries. So when the Second World War is happening, there is a huge demand for people to be able to flee not see germany and nazi forces on the march in Eastern Europe. What prevents them from being able to come is these, cortez from the 1920s these otas from the 1920s. There are stories of ships that show u our shores filled with refugees and return them away because leyen have the right papers. We have these quotas and they cannot come. So there is a massive refugee crisis, not unlike the worldwide refugee crisis we see right now. Urgencyins to add moral to thinking about Immigration Laws and saying, we need to up them. We are now a global actor in the stage. We are fighting a cold war now after world war ii. We fought for freedom in this war, how can we turn around and not admit these refugees . So that is what it begin beginse reassessing these quotas and saying, maybe we dont want these quotas. May be these quotas have problem. During the holocaust, eugenics is powering all of this and a semitism. After the war, people are, like, lawsnnot defend based on eugenics, it is morally racist,ible, it is weve got to change our laws. This is a time when the quotas come up against a reality and how the country is changing. People feel like they have become outdated. Host i want to get deeper into ask youer, but i would to explain what the 1964 Immigration Law is and how it changed Immigration Law, then we will get more indepth later. Jia it abolishes the quotas of 1924. Significance the of 1965, you have to know that the whole battle is about getting rid of these ethnic quotas. The country opportunities is to numericalhe sharp caps. For example, you could only have 100 people from china every year. Because the chinese were less desirable. You will allow many more from england, from germany, for instance, that if you are from , we dontr countries want you. So there are numerical caps. Based on your ethnicity, that is what determines if you can come into the country. 1965 says that system is discriminatory and were not doing it anymore. We will use a totally different set of renteria. At yourre not looking ethnicity, that is off the table. We are looking at things like, do you have family here . Skills . Ave special job that is how we will decide if you can come and be part of this country. Host i would add to that, our immigration system is fundamentally the same as it was 1965. There have been some tweaks around the edges, we have changed a little bit of it with a system works, better by and , we are based on family reunification. There werent as many european immigrants bringing their that point inat time. So with the opening and changing of the quota system, giving people from other parts of the world the opportunity to come here, that is really fundamentally where we are today. And you dont see that in a lot of the countries that are similar to us in terms of government and economy. A lot of those systems are really focused on skills, education, and what are you going to bring to our economy. Thatcus on family in a way is an outlier, and that is because of this 1965 loss. Jia and i think what is so interesting to me, if you think about the debate now some of the Democratic Party is very much for family reunification. They say it is a humanitarian instinct. If you look at the history, they are debating, if we will get rid of these ethnic quotas, if it is not based on what country are coming from or the color of your skin, there is a whole fight over, so what are the criteria . The reason why family reunification comes in is not to diversify the country, it is coming from people who are skeptical of immigration saying, there are not that many of the people we dont want here right now. Because immigration, again, has fallen off the map. Said, iftrol it and you have family here, you are more likely to come, that is a way to preserve the status quo. That is a way to keep america white. There arent that many asian immigrants. It is a way to keep the country from diversifying anymore. On the table is the question of ethnicity and race. What country do we want our like . Y to look the people in 1955, family reunification was a way to control the racial makeup of the country and to preserve it. Of course, that backfires for have is,now, what we the primary driving factor for why our country is so racially diverse now from immigration, is because of this very thing that was supposed to give us more white. That part, when i learned about, it just tells you how little of what we understand about how we got here0 and i. Host think sometimes we dont fully think through of what the unintended questions are. They do drive us to what our next reform has to be. They drive us to the way the political situation react in the future. I want to touch a little bit on that with this next audience question which asks, we have always had xenophobia as part of immigration. But in other areas, has there in policies such as family mexico,on or, remain in or attitude towards refugees and asylumseekers . I would say in reading the book, we definitely have some policies which would shock the conscience now. Jia in terms of being antiimmigration, you mean . Host yes. Jia it is really worth understanding for us, we basically said, people literally said this, the famous emma lazarus poem about the huddled masses and the statue of liberty, people literally said, we are not doing the melting pot anymore. We are not doing the huddled masses anymore. The idea that we take for granted now, that we have a refugee policy, we had the refugee policy that only happens after world war ii with harry truman. We had no refugee policy. That only happens after world war ii with harry truman. We went of basil comes here based on race we want people who come here based on race and ethnicity. That was true for 40 years. What was so important for me understanding this in the modern context is that, i spent four years working on this book, i dont myself have great answers for what our immigration system should look like. I think it is really complicated. I look at my own family and i think, should we have had priority over a penniless refugee fleeing political persecution . I am not sure the answer is yes. I dont have answers for what our system should look like. But i do feel like what i have learned is that, over time, we dont have a static system, a static idea of whether we are a nation of immigrants. Who we allow in, our notion of what makes america, that changes over time and it can be changed again. For4 is like a big marker we are going to be a white, nation. Xon, protestant 1965 there is an opposite pole that says, no, we will not face our country on the color of your skin, it will be about something else, but family and job skills. We are at a moment of debating what kind of country want to be. People in the white house, i would argue, really notice history. People like jeff sessions, i would argue, they really know this history. People like jeff sessions. They know about 1965. They will praise 1924 and they will criticize 1965. For them, they understand the history that, there is and ill you change back and forth there is a dial that you change backandforth. Our democracy has a lot of work to be done about thinking through, who do we want here, the criteria . Do we care about these ethnicities when they come here . What does assimilation look like . I think we have not reserved this. That is what is on the table right now. Every time the Trump Administration talks about immigration, this is what is at stake. That people who work on immigration policy, we also dislike the 1965 law but for different reasons. We think it doesnt work for who we are today, just like people were saying when they were trying to pass this, the 1924 law did not work for who we were at that moment in time. So there is work to be done that. I do see so many parallels in the book between the debates they were having been in the now. Es they are having what struck me was that even pre1924, there is a story about, we did not allow japanese immigrants to nationalize. Court, the lawyer did not argue the law, he did argue about who he was. He was saying things that you fear d. R. E. A. M. E. R. S. Saying today, d. R. E. A. M. E. R. S. Being young people brought here by their parents either guilty, so they are undocumented. Let you know,ome i have fundamentally unamerican. I would lay down my life for this country. I love being here. This is who i am. We are still having that conversation, just with a difficult for people now. Jia very much. That case for me is really, i will never forget it. It is this man who emigrate from japan, like in early 1900s. He comes to california for his education. He ends up in hawaii with a family. He marries, has children, gets a job working for a big sugar company. At a certain point, i dont know what moves him, but he starts thinking, i want to become an american citizen. I have been here long enough, i love this country. I am all in. Decides to show up in honolulu at a courthouse to petition for citizenship. Is, at this moment in the 1920s, our naturalization law says, only two kinds of people can become citizens. From the early days of the freeng of this country, whites could nationaliz natural. After the civil war, black slaves are freed, they are added. It could only naturalize if you were white or africanamerican. So the asian shows up and they him. Know what to do with so he represents himself in court to challenge this and takes this all the way to the Supreme Court, and says, i should be able to naturalize. He writes these very moving briefs about how, it is not about the color of my skin, it heart. T my this is exactly how people describe it now, they talk about the need to see beyond the color of their skin. And it is about values, about being american as transcending the color of your skin. In this case, this man gets to the Supreme Court and he goes theye the justices, and basically say, you are sorry, you seem like a perfectly fine person, like a great contributor to your community and to your society, but you are not white. And you are clearly not black, so you cannot become a citizen. That fight i think we take for granted and i took for granted before i worked on the book, that my parents could naturalize. It was a political fight that had to be one. And i would argue could be undone. We had laws that said you cannot naturalize if youre not white. Now i say you can. These are laws we collectively decide. And people can change them again. Host and i think this touches on assimilation so i will go to an audience question. This man was not allowed to naturalize. But for all intents and purposes, for everything we would consider someone who has assimilated and was a contributor to the community, he was not allowed to be fully american by naturalizing. For many european immigrants they pace they place emphasis on assimilation especially by their children. And i would say, looking at your book, this argument comes up over and over. That these communities are not going to assimilate, they have newspapers in their own languages, they live in enclaves and in cities away from others. What is your response to that, in terms of how we think about assimilation today . Jia lynn i think we are in an unusual spot, because one thing i learned is that yes, the assimilation debate has come up before. So i think we take for granted that people whose parents and grandparents came from italy or Eastern Europe, they seem assimilated now, they seem like white americans. I would say that is how it conceive of whiteness now. It includes, if you arduous your if you are jewish you are considered white, but during this time when they started coming, in the 1880s, they seem very different from people. They seem like they are not assimilating. They are speaking , they have a different religion and they not protestant. Statedearlier waves similar questions, german to came, the food they are eating and the irish and catholics. Those of you whose families are catholic, for a long time catholic americans were considered alien and different and treated with a great deal of suspicion. So i think, in a way, assimilation for these americans, a lot of it comes from world war ii. They fight in the war. And i think it is the military, traditional airy and our history, is a very powerful force for what we think of for assimilation. Because there is nothing quite like being willing to die for your country to establish that you are part of the country. So for these earlier waves of immigrants from other parts of europe, they were considered not assimilated. , theyer time they became were accepted into american society. But at the beginning, they seemed just as different as a middle eastern family or a muslim family might seem to us right now. So what is tricky about the current moment, is this question of, back then, the idea was, these are people from all over europe. And this is where the melting pot analogy comes from. All of these european races or ethnicities are blended together into one big stew. Now we have people from all over the world. Every country. The borough of queens probably has someone from every country in the world. What does assimilation look like now . Is that speaking the english language . Is that the food you eat . Is it how you worship . Is it whether you vote . Is it where you go to school . All of these questions are on the table. And so we have to think of our country as one that has over time, consistently had people from all around the world. They first show up and no one knows what to make of them, they seem so different. And over time they do become part of the american project. But we have never had this many people from outside of europe. And so, i think one question we have to can collectively ask ourselves is, if you are from outside europe, and they are not going to become and be white in the way past waves have come over. All of these categories keep changing. What does assimilation look like now . And i think we have not really answered those questions. I thing about my own family. And assimilation for us was come up parents are retired, but they spent years in the federal government as civil servants. My father works for the department of commerce, and he helped, he did a lot on trade and protecting North Carolina furniture makers, for instance, who are being really beaten out of their business by chinese competitors. And he himself is chinese. But it is a way of being, i am an american citizen and i stand with my fellow americans. Im devoting my career to public service. Even when i am on the opposite table from chinese civil servants. I have picked a side. Im american. For my family a looks like that. And for many others, it looks a different way. But we have not really figured out what does assimilation look like in 2020 . Jia lynn from a data perspective wet from a data perspective know that current waves of immigrants assimilate and what we would consider a. Pretty standard definition of assimilation. We hear arguments they are not learning english. We know one of the reasons people think current waves of immigrants are not learning english is because theyve not seen the end of the wave. What happens as a group of people comes over and everyone has the same argument, i keep seeing all these people picking german or people speaking spanish and they are not learning english. But we know they place a heavy ephesus on their children learning english regardless of where they are from a heavy emphasis on children learning english regardless of where they are from. And we know that in the next generation people learn english. That progression and happens to the and that progression happens to every group you have to get to the end of the way for people to stop being anxious. That is when you see the full immersion into the american experience. Also assimilation is not a oneway street. We are, as nativeborn americans also impacted by what immigrants bring in very positive ways. In the mid1990s is when sales of salsa over to sales of ketchup. I do not know that anyone is really complaining about that. Those are good things. And those are things that really matter to all of our daily lives. Jia lynn hamburgers, hot dogs come from germany. I wonder, in the history of civilization if there has been any country that has this unusual project where people come from all over and were constantly blending cultures together. Which is very difficult to do. But we have carried it off and all kinds of ways but we do not give ourselves enough credit for it. Host if you have joined us late, we are talking to jia lynn book, at her new mighty and irresistible tide. In 1950 two, what it did for asian naturalization, you have people trying to overturn the 1924 quotas 31952. 1952 renews the quotas. There is one group of people advocating for passage, that is japaneseamericans. It is for the one portion of the law because the quotas were not good for them but it would allow those who are here to naturalize. It highlights there was a lack of coming together of groups to find a solution that would have benefited everybody. You see parallels to that, to air current political discourse on immigration policy . Jia lynn i do. There are kind of three points in my book. Theres 1924, 1965. In between there is 1952. Immigration reform, as you know well, it takes years to come. It is not quite once in a generation, but it can take decades. And we are still waiting, now. We are wildly overdue. 1952 is one of those moments, where it is ok, we are going to look at the whole system and put everything on the table. We are going to think about is this working . What do we change and what do we not. All the people who oppose quotas at this moment russian. They say ok we have thought the war. We have seen we have fought the war. We have to overturn the quotas. Within the debate there is a mini debate about naturalization for asian immigrants. The people in the middle of that are japanese americans who saw their families placed in internment camps during the war. There are people who fought, we are talking assimilation through fighting in a war. They volunteered to fight in a regiment in europe. They die for the u. S. , even though they are japanese, and their parents cannot naturalize. In 1952, they are part of this debate as well. Within this outcome, which reaffirms the quotas, so the people who want to overturn them lose badly, and it is this huge loss for them. Within that, there is this development where, asian immigrants are allowed to ash and a light allowed to naturalize. This is part of the powerful armoring from japaneseamerican to say i fought in the war. Is the powerful lobbying by japaneseamericans who say i find in the war. My mother is getting older and i want her to be able to naturalize and become an american citizen before she dies. Theres is moving to achieve naturalization. That is how important it is to these people. It is just a piece of paper. I mean i do not think it is that her life changes significantly. It is not about getting benefits. It is about the symbolic way of saying, you belong. You are an american as well. In the middle of the fight he does when naturalization rights for Asian Americans. My parents would not have been able to naturalize without this and it is a watershed moment in this country. But the quota system is reaffirmed and stands until finally in 1965 it is taken out but it is this huge moment decades in the making with mixed results. Can you talk about how to 1952 catalyzed 1965. You do not get a bill like this without people coming together. President johnson was a huge character or person in all of this. Areppears before even we talking about the 1952 bill. He appears in congress and is trying to help jewish refugees get admitted to the u. S. Can you talk about the coalition being built to push through this law that has had a huge impact on the rest of immigration policy in the u. S. . Jia lynn what struck me as surprising, we hear the phrase a nation of immigrants, so much. We have not asked ourselves where this phrase comes from. It comes out of this fight in the 1950s. It is part of the history being written, often by the children of these jewish and italian immigrants who came at the turnofthecentury. To say that Central American spirit is the spirit of its immigrants. That was the thing that had to be introduced. That was a new idea. I would argue it is a powerful nationalist idea. It is this mythology of who we are as a country is that we are immigrants. Theres something very radical about that. I think we think of nationalism as usually being about being more nativist, or antiimmigrant. This turns it on its head and says what makes america is the fact that we have all of these foreigners. That is the heart of who we are. That is introduced by historians and it is taken up by people like to have kate by jfk. He famously writes a pamphlet later turned into a book called, a nation of immigrants. People embrace this mythology, a nationalist idea about a nation of immigrants. It is a coalition of jewish americans, italian americans. It is Asian Americans. It is people, many christian leaders, people concerned about refugees, and who are sponsoring refugees. This is a moment where mainline protestants are deeply involved in immigration policy making. Together, on the backs of this new moral argument, that we owe it to ourselves as a nation to continue to be a nation of immigrants, this is how they get the 1965 law. They say we are fighting the cold war. We are nation of immigrants and we are proud we are a nation of immigrants and we cannot have these quotas. Together this coalition is what theehind the 19 625 law. 1965 law. The grandson of german jews, nanny seller, all of his constituents in brooklyn are immigrants and children of immigrants, people like him. He joins congress in the 1920s and he sees from the beginning these quotas pass, and he is still there. When he leaves congress, nixon as president. He is there for the whole thing. Host he is a mainstay, part of the building at that point. Jia lynn i think he is the fifth longest serving member of the house in American History. He is there the whole time. He spent his whole career trying to change these Immigration Laws. And he is part of this coalition. And lbj is fascinating. He is not something you would imagine as being proimmigrant. But he teaches mexicanamerican kids when he is graduated from college, as a teacher himself. And he also, this is a moment where he is passing a lot of civil rights legislation. And he sees this memorial moment in the country when jfk is killed. He takes Unfinished Business from the Kennedy White house, including immigration reform, and powerfully pushes it through congress. I think that is why we do not hear about this law as much as i think we should. Because theyre so much else to Pay Attention to. Theres the Voting Rights act. Theres the civil rights act. For lbj this is just one more bill he is passing. I do not know he fully realizes how important it is, or how transformative it is going to be. It is part of this wave of civil rights legislation. In a way it is the same coalition behind these laws. Theyre all about civil rights and human equality. Immigration is very much part of it. Host im going to combine audience questions. This is addressed in your book in a couple of ways. One of the arguments against immigration is, they are taking our jobs. And there is always the question of are they an economic benefit or an economic drag. Are those arguments in your research he saw across time, or is that a new argument against immigration . Jia lynn it is always going on. What is so interesting, is that you see, as we do now, a lot of people proimmigration our business interests. I will pause, and and describe a bit how we thought about the u. S. Mix go border because that is all we thought about thick about now. Think about now. In the past when you sit when you said immigrantpeople thought about europe. They do not realize the future is not going to be about your that all. When they did talk about the border, they catch the border open. There were no numerical limits, even after 1924. Theyre limiting the rest of the world and theyre looking at their neighbors and as an active Foreign Policy they say it would be offensive to say to mexico that we do not want your people here. So the border is kept open. Also when people raise this during the debate, it is well if we do not want jews and italians and asians, we should not want mexicans either, they do not fit our culture. There were agricultural interests that push back and said we have to have a free motion over this border, back and forth seasonally, of agricultural workers, and we cannot reject them. Over and over you see business interests that are proimmigration much as you do now. Too, the labor movements were antiimmigrant for a long time because i said these people are competing with us for jobs, and we do not want them here. And one of the primary movers of 1965 that flips the switch is that labor changes sides. They become proimmigrant. They basically, the aflcio says, we are actually going to be pro immigrants. We have a lot of members who are them selves immigrants or children of immigrants. These laws are discriminatory and we cannot stand by them and they embrace the cause as well. This question of workers and competition for jobs, always on the table and very much in our history. Every time we talk about immigration we talk about jobs too. Host we actually know immigration is good for the economy. It is a nobrainer. Almost every economist agrees. If economists were setting immigration policy, we would have a much more open and we would take more people. Because that population growth actually helps grow our labor force and helps our productivity. Funny enough, that was one of the arguments made against the quotas and to overturn the quotas is that there were people saying, our population is dwindling and we need to get more fresh blood in here, and help rejuvenate the United States. Book, focusin your was on europe and people were not really considering, when we think about immigration now, we think about mexican immigration or latin American Immigration or asian immigration. But people were focused on europe. One of the audience questions is related to that. Issuees the immigration interact with our current racial situation and its resolution . This is a very difficult question and we could have an entire other forum on that alone. Briefly, from your perspective, what you think about the way that issue interact . Jia lynn i think this is the heart of it. I will speak personally. I am Asian American. Theve been thinking, at beginning of this pandemic there was a huge rise in antiasian xenophobia and we saw a lot of antiasian hate crimes and we added a front page piece about this. It led to a lot of soulsearching in the Asian American community. I think a lot of what we have to talk about is a country collectively, is that we have all these people now who are not black or white, . Right . The racial landscape of the country has historically been poles thate as these are constantly establishing the basics of americas racial landscape. And when emigrants come, traditionally the european immigrants i have been talking about, they try to become white. There are ways they do it in opposition to being black. Theyre like, i am not black, i am white. For italian americans in particular. In the beginning a lot of the racial slurs against them were calling them african or black. The term guinea is a reference to the west african slave trade. That is how not white they seemed. Two become white they had to say, i seem black, shocking to our knowledge now. We think it times are obviously white. But at the time they were considered so unassimilate ball and not part of america that they were called black. Changes, and now they are considered white. For Asian Americans, for hispanics, people who are americanborn or immigrants, theres a constant question of where do we fit . And blacke fit, versus white, where do we go . Theres a lot of conversation around to in our education system. You think about the fight over affirmative action for Asian Americans. A lot of them feel like well, i am considered white in this context because i have these advantages. But there are ways in which many Asian Americans actually have no advantages and theyre quite poor. Isaac about hmong americans i think about hmong markets. Many are highly educated doctors and engineers and i would at that is largely because our immigration lot selected for that. My parents have graduate degrees. Host it was to mastic policy. It was domestic policy. Jia lynn we specifically wanted people like this, right . How else to explain why, all the chinese immigrant before were working on railroads and now they are all doctors were engineers. It is not because Chinese People changed. It is because we selected for people like this. For Asian Americans, it is a category that is tenuous and funny. It includes highly educated indian doctors and engineers and also hmong refugees who show up penniless. In minneapolis, one of the cops involved is hmong american and they live in Public Housing with africanamericans in minneapolis. And they are having a different experience, so who are they . And what does it mean to have people from the middle east, from africa, from asia, who are neither black know what . People like my family who are neither black or white . What does that mean . We are not going to become way. Like the Supreme Court case, the man tried to argue he could become a citizen and they said, youre not white and youre never going to be. So i do not know. I would answer your question with more questions. This is the root of it. When we have this many people from around the world who do not fit this category, how do we update them . How do we think about raise in a different way . Host to that, how do we use that part of the conversation when we think about what we want immigration policy to look like having forward . There is a part in your book where they have been trying for so long to overturn the quotas. Then they do not know what they want to put in place of the quotas. How do we use those lessons in the conversations today and inform where immigration policy goes in the future . Jia lynn i think that moment is funny. It is happening when kennedy is president. He has run on this pretty proimmigration platform saying these quotas are discriminatory. He has written a nation of immigrants platform and he is all in. And it is time to propose a bill and everyone is, what do we replace it with . And they do not really know because it is complicated. In the political debate now, it is often stuck. Democrats often saying, trump white house, antiimmigrant, it is inhumane to separate families and we are not about that. We are about something else, we love immigrants. And i wonder, so, lets establish you do not want to do it trump is doing or stephen miller, what is your platform . What is your plan . Simply saying we love immigrants is, ok. Lets get past the slogans of a nation of immigrants. When you get to the hard questions of, who is going to come here . You first have to ask yourself, do we want open borders . This might sound radical but that is historically what we have had. You first have to answer the question, do we want open borders . We have done this before and it is what built this country for the first 200 years or hundred 50 years it is open borders. Do you want that . If you dont want that, you have to answer hard questions about who comes in and who does not. Then you have to ask yourself, what do we want from immigration . What are we going to prioritize . Is it job skills . Is it Refugee Status . Are we take for people who are the most persecuted . And we are not taking the wealthy, highly educated person who is going to be fine if they stay in their country . Are we taking people with the least . Are we taking people, traditionally the viennese hmong , who are in countries where we have Foreign Policy where we are fighting wars, right . If youre iraqi and you help the u. S. Military, are you ahead in line of somebody who has not work with the u. S. Military . If you are not going to have open borders you have to have hard conversations about who comes in and who does not. I think the Democratic Party to not get there and we they are stuck at, we are not trump. My next question is, what are you for . And i do nothing anyone, if you look at joe bidens platform, it is murky, what the system would be if he were in charge, i think. Host in this moment in time that ends up being a party issue. But as your book shows and as recent history, even as recent as 2013, this was really not so much a partyline issue. It was very bipartisan. There were people in both parties fighting this, sometimes fighting for or against, but they were interparty battles rather than starkly along party lines. So this is evolving and changing. We have a lot of audience questions and i wish i could get to all of them and we could talk for a lot longer. I have one last question. What do you want people to read this book who read this book to take away from it . Is there a call to action or something you want them to take away from the experience of this book . Jia lynn i think what is important to me that i learned, that i will keep with me from the experience of working on this book, is that our legal, this whole legal system we have created of immigration is just that. It is a legal system. It is a product of pluto battles. It is the product of political battles. It is the product of pluto choices. Of political choices. President s, lawmakers, americans, saying this is what it means to be american. Ultimately it is pieces of paper. If my family try to come in 1900 there was no way we could have come. We came after the 1965 law thomas a we were allowed to come. We tend to take about immigration, Many American families have almost a mythology about how your family came. Those are powerful stories and their very moving stories. I love hearing, any i meet i want to know, how did your family get here . Because everybody has this incredible dramatic story of how the family got here. I think we tell those stories over and over. But we are forgetting the other half of the story which is, why was your family allowed to come . What were the laws that allow them to come . It was not destiny that they would be automatically allowed. I look at my own family and we were not automatically had laws that bound chinese immigration and that band chinese immigration and naturalization. Now my extended family here and we are americans. For me i learned not to take for granted that there was struggle, political struggle, behind these facts. And as a result of knowing that these were things that were manmade, they can be undone. There is nothing that says a family like mine should still be able to come 10 years from now. Theres nothing that says that. We have these papers that say we are americans. But there ultimately pieces of paper and they can be undone. I think the lesson of germany, frankly, and the holocaust tell you, that you can be a german jew, who has assimilated fully, you can be in that country for how many generations . All it takes is overnight, somebody says those papers do not mean anything anymore. You are not a citizen. Im not being a scaremongering, i am saying these are laws we make that change over time. There always up for debate. Right now we have people in power who want to change the terms of it. They want to change who gets to be here. I do not come with answers on what it should look like. But for me what i learned, again the style can be turned back and forth. At each of us, all our family to penny and come, the outcome could be depending on when you come the outcome could be incredibly different. That was the most powerful thing i learned. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] host thank you to everyone for theing, via cspan or dallasfort worth road Affairs Council. We are excited that you joined us today. The book is called a mighty and irresistible tide. Please go out and purchased a book. I think it is wonderful and i have read it myself. It is full of great information. Have a great day. Jia lynn thank you for having me. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend, on cspan3. Reel america is our weekly series featuring archival film. Coming up we show you three u. S. Information agency films that celebrate phil about the american 52 under his country amid the crushing 1958 student uprising in his homeland. Then a 1974 episode of the series vision usa. It features a pedal powered miniature car. Series, we will visit jim hensons muppet studio in 1978