Refugee but my parents were refugees. Theres a fracturing of the share experience. Me life was different in the United States, the life was different in canada, my sisters life is different in england. Did all right relatively speaking but that vastly overlambingers and yep oliving together in the same language and the same cultural context, the same as it were social abilities, we share that experience, unity of time and place and experience that we shared, and then gets fractured and get bren up. Even if we had moved to the same place, there would have been a fracture because i spoke english better, was not a professional who lost his job to migrate. Had not lost my social contact and so on. So what happen is this fracturing of a shared experience within the family and one of the ways again to agree with reyna is to tell stories or write to build the bridges, theres something about building a bridge between the new country and old country within this community, within a family, multiple bridges trying to communicate this experience. And trying to unify the experience and to create a shared experience within the act of writing and literature and a book. So, in other words, i live with my family in my becomes but no in the real world. So the Trump Administration is trying to eliminate or reduce family reunification as a criteria for giving people ability to enter the country. Even though im indian i didnt come here as a skilled immigrant. I came here because of the familiar reunification category. My aunt sponsorrer met mother and siblings and family. In the conversation as i said about immigrants is about these people who coming here and they lack certain moral value. This is the impression that if you are to listen to fox news you get about immigrants. And if you actually want to see what family means to immigrants, you should do what i do which is good to a place called Friendship Park on the u. S. Mexico border which its just south of san diego. Theres actually a wall which goes down a section of california and kind of ends right by the ocean, theres a small stretch on land which under the Nixon Administration the u. S. Government decide was the only place along the entire southern border where if your family was on the other side of the border, you could go and meet them facetoface andite used to be that you could if you didnt have the papers to cross over or if you an had the Work Authorization and couldnt go back and come back interest the u. S. , you could go to this Friendship Park and have a picnic with your family. More recently, theres been a fence built across this little stretch on land and Border Patrol which administered Friendship Park has decided to make it all but impossible for people to meet their family, but still, it used to be until recently you good could go thereon weekends and for ten minute goes up to the fence and put your face up to the fence and see your family. So i spend two weeks there last year. The most heartbreaking reporting of my career. I saw families like reynas, had been torn because one member of the family decided to come over the border, almost always to work and to send money back. Send back to their families. But the notebook, and i mexican man came up who hadnt seen hint mother far 17 years and goes up to the fence and his mother comps up on the other side, and they put up their faces, and he later told me i could smell her. I could free her breath on my face. He told her how much he loved her. How much he missed her. She told him how much she loved him, misses him. She asks if he is eating right. And in the end, they cant touch because of this thick ugly iron fence. They cant hug each other. But the hole in the fence are only large numb to put your pinky through so he puts his pinky through and his mom puts her pinky through and the touch pinkies. That at theyre allowed. Call the pinky kiss. All along the firs, mothers and children, best friends, siblings, touching, just kissing othe pinkize. If you ever had a run door with someone in your family, good down to Friendship Park and see what happens when theres a stake which keeps you from four family there are laws that are made by bureaucrats and lawyers sit thing different offices which keep you from your family. See how much family means to these migrants. See what theyre doing for the migrants. It was the most heartbreaking but also the most hopeful reports because i saw what family real in means to immigrants. Its the expression of the heart through the touching of the pinkies. [applause] aleksander, you rite our history i unsi wake an longing for a home that could never be unassuageable longing for a home you could never have. It that an inevitable part of migration, the parallel ryan yours run through in your head, wondering what things would have been lick in different sir, different decisions had been made . I think i busy miswith defining what home is in is in become for myself and whoever else care about that. But what happens with migration and i think theres is a different between immigrants and refugees but its a difference in agreeing but not in kind of migration is always traumatic and the refugee escaping war, thats much larger, stronger different than one who just gets up and walks, not just someone kuo gets and up walks across the bore remember. Theres a difference. Important. Someone like me who flew in and decided to stay. Nevertheless, it divides a life, migration, the fact of getting from one place to another. Divides the life into the before and the after. And reyna also mentioned that. So your life and life of your family, life of your friends might be divided between the before and the after, the unity of time is broken, and also the unity of space. The way we lived before the war in sarajevo, in the same pace all the time. We have an entirely different notion of privacy. My father leans over my shoulder when im working on the computer and without any compunction because we all were in the same space. So think thats what makes home fully impossible, is this rupture, this traumatic rupture that dividing of the life into the before and the after, into the here and there. And so the struggle this is not necessarily entirely traumatic, but doesnt have to be devastating and entirely destructive, trauma. There are ways i hope to view this productively, one of which is writing, trying to find a new kind of unity to create new homes or to have two homes even. When guy to sarajevo i go home and then come sayreover vote back home to princeton and before chicago. So you can have more homes than one but somehow that unity, that i remember experiencing, that sold solidity, the feeling of homeless is i have no desire to own property and could live out of suitcase. This is how i feel because this might all be gone sooner or later, just like my early home went away and no longer available tomorrow the possibility of the home not being available is forever present to all of us. For years ive always been jealous of people who had a home town. The place that to them meant home. We moved around a lot as well, from beirut to california and different parts of thank you United States and i felt they had something i couldnt have. Reyna, you touch on this in your book, describe a conversation with youve younger sister and she asks due think things would have been different if the never left, would we all be together as a family . Theres a sort of longing there as well for something that is lost. When i was younger, i used to have this conversation a lot with my siblings, how what our life might have been like if we had stayed in mexico, if my parents hadnt immigranted, a hadnt broken up once they got here and think bought the family we used to be as opposed to the family we are now. But now when guy back to mexico, i have a different perspective on that because when i go back, i have a uncles and aunts that stayed there, and i remember my mother, whenever she went back to mexico, she was trying to get her brother to come out here because her brother, like the rest of the family, was very poor he was living in a oneroom shack with seven children and could barely afford to feed hem and my measure say whoa dont you do to the u. S. To make money no support your family. And my uncle would say i would rather be poor but together. And he refused to leave. But when i good to mexico and i look at my cousins who didnt finish Elementary School because my uncle pulled them out as soon as they were old enough and they had to start working to help him put food on the table, i think about the consequence of his choice versus my Parents Choice of immigrating and trying to find more tends for us. So i dont have these nostalgic memories of my childhood or i dont fantasize about what my life might have been like because i see it. I see it when i go. Its in my face that poverty. Its in my face, and i remember and i know that thats what my life would have been like. And i had this really interesting experience because i was recently published in mexico for the first time. Ive been published here in the u. S. For 13 years. But in mexico i just got published there two years ago for the first time. And i went to mexico to do some events. Coming back to any native country as a published author and i was doing events with this mexican writer from mexico, and most mexican writers from mexico are from the upper class, and i was sitting there with them, and i was thinking, if i hadnt immigrate i would be their maid right now instead of sharing the statement with them. And that is when i felt grateful for what my parents did for me and for what we went through. It soothes that pain i still carry with me when i am faced with the reality of where i am now and where i could have ended up if things had been different. Your book is called a man tess stow and you say men fess sew and that manifesto and you said it was written in sorrow and rage and hope witch have get absence of the rage and of the sorrow. [laughter] where is the hope . How do these three emotions come together in your back . Hope is the thing with feathers. If you look around the world this conversation around immigration, its difficult to be hopeful. The fear of migrants of doing incalculabley more damage to country. Exhibit a, brexit. The biggest own gold in british history. But there is this is where the hope comes in. So, have no option, they have to move. Literally drown in at the country. When people move, is the happy ending story. Its good news story. Greater migration helps everything. It helps the countries that the migrants move to, particularly the rich countries because the rich countries arent making enough babies. The United States would collapse if people were to stop immigrant immigrating here. The reason that america does well is we have always been good at importing the talent we need, both skilled and unskilled. And if you really want to look at hope, im a new yorker, two out of three new yorker are immigrants or their children. And new york has never been more prosperous, more dynamic, safer. Immigration works and we can see it in the great cities of the world, london, new york, los angeles, washington, dc. I was Walking Around d. C. Today and yesterday, and everywhere dish mean, never had such a great choice of restaurants to eat at. I can so when people move, its not just that its nice choice of food or music. Economically it makes sense the Social Security fund this year will actually give out more in benefits that takes in in revenue. In 15 years, if you retire in 15 years, youll only get 80cent odd then dollar what youre entitled to and the only thing that can save the Social Security fund is immigration. So this countries arent making enough babies, immigrants are younger, they enter the work force to greater numbers than the native born, the immigrants are coming to our shore is a rescue. And its also good for the migrants because in the case of refugees, its literally a matter of life and death. If four people who my grit for economic reasons greatly improve the standard of living. An american who moves to Silicon Valley will increase the income by fivefold, and its also great for the countries they move from because if you really want to help the peaest people in the world, let people from those countries move here. And send money become in remittanceses. Remittanceses are the best and the most targeted way of helping the global poor the money orders that migrants sent they good directly to their families to help a brother with an education, mother with a hospital bill, to build a school, to build a home. And its not siphoned beau by governments. Remit tans last year were 700 billion which is four times more than all the foreign aid given to the poor countries in the world. For immigration is a goodness story and a good news store. Human migration is a good thing of always moved and will continue moving and we ought to take it as our birthright. [applause] the last question ill ask before we open it up to questions from the audience, with immigration, with the movement of people being such a defining political issue, of this time, certainly in the out but around the world, does that create any special urgency, responsibility, burden, in telling immigrant stories today for you as writer. Host yeah. Definitely. I think urgency. But i also like that word, the burden, because that is i feel that as an immigrant writer, i feel this big responsibility to speak up for my community and sometimes i feel that why dayton just be a writer . Why die always have to be why do i always have to be the immigrant writer . And that has created some challenges in me, like the way i see myself as a writer, how do i fit in to American Literature . Do i fit interest American Literature . And then i remind myself that the immigrant story is the american story. So, yes, i do fit into American Literature. And i feel that i have been given a gift, and i need to make sure that i use this gift that i have for language and the opportunity that i have to be published, to use that, to spectrum up for my community. And to raise my voice for those whose voices have again unheard, and i take that responsibility very seriously. I also feel that here in this country, we tend to judge immigrants by what one immigrant does. The whole Community Gets judged by it. Usually in a negative way. Right . If one immigrant does something bad, then all the whole immigrant Community Pays for that, what that one person did. And i would like to reverse that. Why cant we judge all the good things that immigrants do . Individually, what we do, what we bring here, our skills and our talents, why cant you look at one immigrant who is doing well and say, wow, our immigrant community is doing this. This is what they bring here. Lets celebrate their contributions. So thats what i would like to see more of. If we are going to represent our community we e win we do something bad, its also represent our community when we do something really wonderful. [applause] one of the project is start it working on after 20142015 is interviewing bows knowns who bosnians who migrant ode various places and the basic question is, how did you get here, wherever her is,back or st. Louis or australia, and one of the person is interviewed she selling highend real estate in florida but as a teenager she survived the siege of sarajevo and was giving preparations to the trump family after obtaining a business degree and among the trumps whats donald too and after her presentation he came up to her and she is good looking, and so he came up to her and asked he said whats your story, start from the end . And to me that is symptomatic of trumpism and the model of how i would pet it, representation or immigrant experience where all that matter is what you are here now. No history, no story, no past no other place no other time. And so of course trumps case its the ultimate pathology of everything, including that. And so to me, as a writer, theres everything as reyna says i agree with again because there is this situation which i willynilly, i speak for some people who have similar experience, bosnians as least. But i also feel a need to cover the whole range of the experience. Not only just where we are at right now, which is very narratively rich as it is, but how we got here. Whoever we may be. To me its also a narrative of opportunity. A lot of books that can come out of that because each journey is a story. Each migration is a hold world of stories. Narration is migration squared if you wish and it the wealth. If you take out immigrant writers from American Literature youll be stuck with suburban affairs for thes of your life. [laughter] be just sitting by the pool and drinking cocktails. [applause] i think theres a battle of storytelling around the world. If you look at all this populists as theyre called, trump, boris john join and my gel far ramming he uk, modi in any birthplace, putin in russia, the only strong men populists. Theyre gifted storytellers of thats what a populist is. A populist can tell a false story well. And the only way to fight him is by telling a true story better. [applause] so, as writer, as a journalist, i like factchecking. Not everyone in washington, dc likes fantastic checking. Hire a professional fact checker to go through my book and i have 50 pages of end notes. The thing we need to tell these stories which are back up by numbers, and have a strong argument, and often people who try to tell immigrant stories, particularly in academic ya, they have the have the right number but not the passion. Or they equivocate. We on the left like to be knew archessed nuanced. There isnt another side. Cannibalism, for instance. And the one hand some people say, eat your fellow man is wrong. On the other hand its a cheap and readily available source of protein. No. The marketplace of ideas in flesh. The immigration for you, you have to be told with passion and backed up with facts and with numbers. But this is why people like trump and mohdi and putin or afraid of journalists and write he. Authors getting persecuted and shot in prison, all over the world. Were the ones who the truthtellers and i take my motto, the great the czech poet who won a nobel prize he said for anyone else not telling the truth can be a tactical maneuver. He can just stay silent when theres a moral crisis or an emergency but the writer who is not telling the truth, even if he is just staying silent, i