[inaudible conversations] good afternoon, please find a comfortable seat and before we begin i need to tell you that theyll be a book signing afterwards and its outside on table h and all the authors will be there with their books and let me introduce the speakers for today. The first speaker will be darrell pinckney, and then i dont know who wants to be the second speaker but we might as well do it in order. Yasmine el rashidi, the bottle of egypt, and important pieces for the new york review and lastly on my right, masha gessen who has written several books about russia, including the man without a mace, totalitariaism. We will be talking about immigration, theres so many different ways to address it. We will start with darryl. Oh, god, i cant ad lib so i will do something to read sorry. I dont know anything about immigration. You live with an immigrant, my boyfriend said but i think of you as englishman in new york just passing through, yes, im an immigrant just passing through. Its change showed me how racialized immigration is for me as a subject. Is there a distinction between company xenophobia and racism, maybe frightened or whatever but they wont be proceeding from priority. Elizabeth ordered council to promulgate an order to expeople black from kingdom because they had become numerous, because it because they were black or historians because they were nonchristians. Did black skin did mean nonchristian and muslim. What do we know about family tree . Bethoveen had a black grandfather. According to black journalists and amateur historians, late 1940s, rogers published on his own fourvolume work, race and sex arguing that theres no unpure unmixed race apart from japanese and look good had it done them. Roger started reading in libraries across europe and returned after the war and we wanted to demonstrate that the history of the world is that of people in motion, by degrading populations, we look in wake of population movement. In the past 25 years, 200 Million People are set to have left the country side in china for the cities and some of these cities didnt exist a quarter a century ago. For how long have we been reading about African Youth drown in mediterranean, how bad things may be back in societies where they came from for them willing to take the risks given what they know and heard Angela Merkel deserves the nobel prize. Jihadist terrorists attacks in europe as much aimed against them as europeans. Secular arabs, middleclass arabs, modern muslims, people trying to get away from the regimes we would also try to escape. I remember closed tunnels two years ago and trucks got backed up, hid themselves every place they could, channel 4 news from the uk interviewed one man who had been pulled from hiding place, the face obscured, the man answered that he was from aleppo, he was a teacher and taught shakespeare. Whats your favorite shakespeare play . Had to be interrupted. A friend in germany of catholic and unmarried woman in 40s tack me aback when she disagreed with me about merkels heroism, she said, it is very dangerous to have so many single arab men in the streets of our cities. I thought of the medal my boyfriend gave me struck in germany in n protest to frances troupes and occupation after treaty of versailles. Paris have had arab People Living since late 19th century. Europe doesnt have a muslim problem but race problem. Increasingly elderly societies of western europe, youth is being wasted, young men grow up excluded and policed because of race, because of the past, because whitens is the only form of wealth some of the people in the societies have. Greek youth immigrate to australia, portugues, young people have moving in significant numbers to angola. How weird, the Pakistani Community voted overwhelming for brexit, though many brexit backers were the kind of obnoxious White British antiimmigrant and the western hemisphere, literature of immigration has emerged. Bruno diaz speaks of the shadow of the United States in the dominican republic. Never mind Thomas Jefferson for once, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton had animus against german immigrants, percentage of the germans who came after the revolution of 1830 and 1848 were artisans. In the 19th century hardly any city did not have riots between old and new labor populations. Immigration as a subject and em greapts as voters to be manipulated have been factor in american political life. Won election in new york city in late 19th century, hall try today move polling day to jewish holiday. Its been true of american lives, one of the ways white immigrants is by subscribing by racial order of segregation. The chinese act of 1882 put stop to competition for jobs from chinese labors in the west. Celebrated by white poll cigses as conclusion to the indian problem. European immigration came to stop in world war i and white asians and escaping the rural life as mark once described. Segregation existed up north through Real Estate Companies and Bank Companies that established where blacks could live n1922 declared that japanese people were not caucasians and not qualify for citizenship. Talks about the fluidity of spanish or latin america identity, places where they would be thrown as black americans, cuban or south americans, that depended where you were. Tolerance was not necessarily found in black literature set in the west or the southwest. The great depression, casual deportation of mexicans almost as the discretion of whoever picked them up. But this time there were quotas of where immigrants could come from and we learned that religious persecution did not mean much to the u. S. Government anymore. The idea of america as a proud nation of immigrants was first made popular by john kennedy in 1958. One person as expatriot, someone who can assimilate according to the standards of an obsolete cultural ideal most white americans couldnt begin to describe, but too many people from elsewhere, specially working class too many, thats an immigrant population. What i find sad is that we all know this history, even on some level White Supremacists prepare to sue those who call them White Supremacists, Everybody Knows that we are a nation of immigrants, immigrants are good for the economy and the culture. What is depressing is not the subscription on the part of so many to old settler altitudes but i had not thought debates we read about as 19 or early 20th century political and social history are back having their custards last stand who did not think democracy would have to be fought for all over again. We are so spoiled, we thought it grew naturally with Everything Else we have going in our garden of good fortune. Thank you. Thank you very much, darryl. [applause] we can do three things, if either of you want to respond to darryls presentation, you can do so, if you have prepared remarks, you can do that too or i can ask you a question. One thing that i could perhaps proud you on is that theres, of course, a distinction in law between refugees and immigrants and one of the problems in europe, i think, is that the European Union has had policies on silence seekers who never really had policy on immigrants, do you regard yourself as immigrant or refugee . [laughter] so actually this will be an answer to your question and also a response to darryl. I am every year at the corporation of new york comes up with a list of great immigrants and they they published the list on july 4th in the New York Times and this year i made the list and i thought, you know, im a great immigrant. [laughter] i immigrated here once and then to russia, the practice makes perfect, im probably the best immigrant there is. But actually, i find, you know, this idea that immigrants are good for the economy and good for the culture very disturbing and thats, im tempted to say distasteful because, you know, the narrative that that america is a nation of immigrants, first of all, ignores people who were brought here involuntarily and people who were brought here indigenously opinioned america accepts immigrants because they are good and not because america is good. Theres a real hand in that because the very idea of giving refuge is not based on how much the refugees will benefit the economy or the culture, right, and the distinction between refugees and immigrants, i think, is problematic. I mean, its obviously artificial. The idea that political persecution can be meaningfully separated from economic hardship, you know, i think is absurd on the face of it, and i and i say those as great immigrant and also as somebody who came here on a refugee visa, right, and i got my refugee visa because a jew, growing up in the soviet union and there was the United States for many, many years afforded whats called a group status to to soviet jews because soviet jews were considered to be a politically persecuted group a priority which to me is sort of an interesting case because on the one hand it is certainly true that soviet jews were persecuted, soviet citizens in generals and, yet, and i remember, you know, jews in the late 1970s being the object on the one hand extreme discrimination and on the other hand extreme envy because we arent the only ones who could get because the world thought we were persecuted and that to me its an object in artificiality of refugee status. Of course, when we came here, my parents talked about as great adventure and all of their friends talked about great privilege and part of it has to do with the fact that refugees actually dont like to think of themselves as refugees, read about that in her cutting essay, refugees about how every jewish refugee from germany pretends to be ambitious future citizen of the country and lucky enough to be accepted and to be economic migrant which is much more appealing. But at the same time it was a great privilege to be able to secure this refugee visa that wasnt accessible to so many people who doesnt face similar predicaments. We cant really deal with the migration crisis meaningfully until we address the meaninglessness of this distinction between refugees and my greapts. Thank you, i will say one thing which you might come back to, one of the problems that if you do not have distinction, happens in europe all the time, people have to pretend to be political refugees in order to get in and then that creates the impression amongst people who are against immigration that all seekers are liers, you cant live a living at home, they have to be politically persecuted otherwise they cant fit in the category of asylum seekers. This makes an even greater model of immigration policy. But i think thats actually one of the arguments in favor of what im saying which is that the whole distinction is meaningless. I mean, lets just sort of agree that most people will not want to leave their home, their friends, their families and everything they know just because they feel like it. Usually, theres some sort of extreme hardship that drives people to that kind of step which immigration of any sort is. And i think that that made the decision and should be sufficient to give them credibility. You dont have to you shouldnt have to pretend somebody something that youre not. Youre right. My great, great grandfathers immigrated from germany to england because they could get a better job and i wouldnt be alive if they hadnt done that. Yasmine, also someone who is trying to get papers here, its tricky, political persecution. Im trying to get papers here not because economically my life is going to be better, you know n ways i have a much more comfortable life in cairo but because of certain freedoms and comforts and if i stay in cairo, its not that you have to prove also that you are coming, if youre coming here for political reasons, you to prove that the persecution is severe and not that you cannot go back to your country, you know, because if you do, you will be, i dont know, be thrown into jail, but the discomfort is enough that theres an understanding that i want to have this possibility of this other life and, you know, i look at whats been happening with the muslim ban and, you know, i feel part of the problem with the system that its also completely arbitrary. Along with the facts, the things arent clearly defined in terms of refugees and immigrants and the various of that, its also completely arbitrary and i witnessed that being at the u. S. Embassy countless times and listening to these people, conduct interviews with people that might already have an immigrant possibly track visa approved. They still go through this intense, you know, rigorous questioning that may or may not from one person to another, you know, they may decide you to grant you the visa that you have been approved on the u. S. Side and they may not and i feel that that comes into the equation and on the other side of things you feel that when youre looking at immigration policies and when we are talking specifically of refugees, i feel it needs to be a bigger conversation. There also needs to be a conversation with the arab world, the question of the u. S. Accepting refugees and what the bounds of that bounds of that will be and the numbers that are going to be accepted, i feel that on our side also there needs to be, we dont have policies either, you know. There is no policy for accepting Syrian Refugees into i think it needs to the conversation somehow needs to widen to become more constructive, i think. What do you think of the following situation. Any of you could answer that which is political phenomena at the moment that at one hand there seems to be peculiar between corporate business minded conservatives, george w. Bush types, on the one hand, who encourage immigration because it means cheap labor which is good for industry and so on and in some ways a conflict between brand of opinion and people on the liberals on the left who are in favor of immigration because its racist, not to because it enriches the culture and so on and on the other side of the equation, you have people, conservatives, often people who used to be liberals who say, no, no we have to stand up for the whiteworking class. You live for the parts of the city where youre not confronted with social problems to deal with immigration and so on and you dont have to compete for jobs and so one has to the whiteworking class thats suffering. Is there an argument to be made for that or is it completely disingenuous . Well, i mean, now we are living at a time when, say, the level of immigration from mexico is at an alltime low, but this administration and anyone sort on its side is telling us, they represent a great threat to the job security of most white americans. That kind of sort of politics. I assume poverty is always political in one way or another, whether its mugabi selling votes for food, things like that and then we are living also in a time of tremendous upheaval that isnt being addressed by politics which is why many people dont trust them and why a lot of people dont know what to do, you know, we are sort of describing, talking in terms that no longer describe the world we live in and this rightleft opposition that you outlined is sort of one of them. Everything is sort of useless in this approach if the Administration Says one thing, you cant have the usual response. It doesnt sort of work anymore. So i think if anything looking at the world as everyone has a stake in what is happening might help us come up with new categories or new directions because its not going to work this way. Its not sustainable. Perhaps you shouldnt see it entirely in a racial manner either because one of the factors in brexit was that workingclass white people were not only white people, workingclass people were complaining about the fact that romanians and polish were coming to do the same job for much less money and drives them into unemployment. People talk about immigrants and refugees taking the jobs people there dont want but not all immigrants by the way are unskilled. You know, they come and they take what they can get. Some of them are doctors who are going to have to go through several years to be relicensed in the uk or in the u. S. I think theres a kind of resentment of metropolitan centers and consolidations of power on the part of a lot of people who feel let down by the promises of being good citizens. I think we are falling into this trap where the economic discourse on immigration and its difficultly coming from definitely coming from the right and what has been happening for a numbers of year is that the right says, immigrants are taking our jobs and the left says, no, theyre not, theyre taking their own jobs, they are doing a great job or theyre good for the economy, and that is a trap, right, because actually the correct response is those are not anybodys jobs and we are not talking about jobs, we are talking about human beings, right, and the argument for accepting immigrants is written on the statute of liberty and, you know, getting involved in the economic conversation enables introduction of trumps socalled Immigration Reform when steve miller said, those words in the statute of liberty are outdated or whatever he said and waived them off. Im sorry . Came later. Whatever. Irrelevant, obviously. Theres nothing in the rhetoric coming from the left that actually contradicts that because at that point i went back and i looked at hillarys, what hillary said in her platform on immigration and what bernie says about immigration in his platform and he said more interestingly than she did and his entire argument was true economic and basically said that we should be issuing lots of family visas because immigrants work better when they are surrounded by people they love, which give you the creeps. [laughter] kind of creepy. Thats the kind of thinking that ultimately enables what is contained in trumps Immigration Reform which is huge limitations on family visas for people who are here legally because well, maybe they can work just as well if theyre not surrounded by people that they love, right . Same thing about daca, we are talking thats a close true but no country could possibly afford to say we will have completely open borders, anybody who wants to come here can come here. No country has ever tried . [applause] no country has tried. Tst its unlikely to happen and very impractical. What would be the right policy to have that is both humane and practical and doable . Well, if i were to come up with a policy, i would start with sort of an imagination