this, immigration restrictions that prevent exchange between immigrants and destinationing countries or likely the most policy induced distortions in our economic global economy. could you explain that? >> in the post world war ii war we've seen reductions and barriers, we've seen increasing restrictions of people and laborers around the world so the policy induced barriers,differences the productivity between place are massive and laborers respond to this. in the united states when we have a booming economy in one state and recession in the other, people move between them. we have in this world, countries that have such barred governance that people can't make a difference between the global economy. when we free them from one country to the other, productive goes up massive and economists estimate that if we eliminate the barriers to labor, they're roughly the global output. double global output. there's nothing close to that. >> what's the policy solution in your view? >> well, this book explores the difficulties of one policy solution. so the obvious policy solution, free trade and labor, like free trades and goods and services to realize the gains. however, people are not the same thing as goods. >> they can commit crimes and political institutions and that's what the book addresses. if we allow for the free movement of people when they come from a system of governance systems, rule of law. lack of economic freedom. whatever the complex social dynamics are, those responsible for that being the case when the people migrate, do the views responsible for general rating those institutions in the country migrate with them. to put it in simple terms when cubans leave do they bring socialism with them or bring the labor and not change our political institution. if they impact our economic institutions to make the united states more like cuba's, then not only would they get the gains in labor by moving her, but all of us would become less productive, too. economists call in a new economic case for immigration restriction. and what wretched refuse does, it the most comprehensive of the problem today. we've cut the data a whole bunch of different ways to immigrants impact the institutions of destination countries or do they not impact them or enhance them? ultimately that's an empirical question. >> and is the answer all of the above? >> well, the answer is, there's not systemic evidence that they harm our institutions that are responsible for our productivity. so we look across about 110 countries, looking at initial stocks of immigrants, flows of immigrants over a 20-year period what happens to our economic freedoms and property. what happens to corruption over that time period. how does it affect rates of terrorism. for the most part we find no impact in immigration. sometimes a positive impact particularly with regard to economic freedom. and we also do case studies and look at the united states when we had a more open border policy from our founding to 1920, the how it limited the size of the welfare state compared to what was going on in europe and we also look at modern case studies in israel and jordan where they experience mass migrations in recent sometimes and generally those mass migrations enhanced economic freedom and we don't have the mechanism laid out in the book. there's a selection bias, when someone i am immigrates to another countries, particularly the united states, doesn't represent the country that they're leaving. the cuba example is a strong one. but i can't think of another anti-socialist block in the united states, than in florida, they don't come for cuban socialism, they come for capitalism. >> and the social science, there's really no support for that, but over 30 years economists have been debating the wage impact and immigrants on the native born paplation-- population. immigrants displace americans in one industry, more jobs in another industry. just like international trade. international trade through labor and migration, it changes a mix of jobs so we do the things we're more productive at and the immigrant or foreigner does the thing that they're productive at. we have infinite demand for goods and services and we have more workers we add more jobs to create more. and when it comes to wages, economists have passionately looked at the impact of immigrants heatedly. what it boils down to, strong disagreement whether the unskilled immigrants from the united states depress the wages of high school drop-outs of the united states and if they do, is it by up to 7% or a little lower, and does it last for a year or two or any longer? >> that's not really that important if we're thinking about the big picture how the immigrants impact the institutions that could impact everybody's productivity. the popular debate on television and the news, but not all on free trade and labor, the real reason are not jobs and wages and high school drop-outs for the most part. >> speaking of the news, when you see what's going on on the u.s.-mexico border, people coming in or trying to get in and being sent out and the wall being built, what's your reaction? >> so, my reaction is that we wouldn't have as much illegal immigration problem if we created legal immigration, saying it's nearly impossible to immigration light -- legally. you can't immigrate legally-- they could come when they didn't have is greater immigration. >> how do you lower the emotional discourse that we have about immigration in this country? >> well, i try to approach it without an emotional impact and just look at the economic impacts, try to explain it to rational people and then to look at the big concerns, about institutions and crime that we look at wretched refuse and hopefully put the facts that people can weigh it and come to better conclusions. i think we're making better decisions when we're using our hearts and not our emotions. >> where did you come up with the name. >> the title for the book, wretched refuse comes from the statue of liberty, and with the question mark, is it the wretched refuse? and then how do they impact our political economy and our institutions, and the answer is they're not the wretched refuse, they make america a better place. >> who is your co-author? >> alex from the cato institute and a great economist and great partner on this book. >> going back to the policy implications of free labor movement, would there still be a process for citizenship or is citizenship an outdated mode, too? >> well, you know, i think there's lots of legitimate concerns people have with immigration. i know a lot of times it's bundled with current policy environment of how we do things now. i don't have a strong objection if you want to make citizen requirements harder let people come and migrate and work if you want to make the window before they have access to citizenship insteed, 10 years, 15 years, english language, pop culture references, too, lots of things that people care about, i don't have a strong opinion on that. if it is a path in order to let us allow more people to legally come then i'll all for it. >> two questions about two different issues, you address this one a little bit, but changing the nature of a nation, does mass immigration do that? >> so i'm not sure what we mean by the nature of a nation. culture of course is a complex phenomenon, it's a spontaneous order. it's always going to be evolving. our american culture today is not what it was in the early 19th century and our political institutions have changed in order to mirror that. mixing immigration will obviously change what that spontaneous order is. i think we'll do a good job teaching what made america great and welcoming immigrants into those ideas. rather than i think a lot of our problem in the united states is americans moving away from traditional american values, private property rates and the rule of law. >> and what about the issue of terrorism? >> that's basically a nonissue. if people want to commit terrorist acts to get visas in the relationship we when look at at this, really being in a conflict, a civil war drives rates of terrorism. >> and in 1986 there was an immigration amnesty, president reagan, is that due again in your view. well, listen, we've got more than 10 million people residing illegally in the united states. whether it was president trump viewed as anti-immigration or obama before him, they're not all being deported. it would rip this society apart to do try to do that. they're here, i can't see how we benefit by having them here illegally when they could be here legally. let's bring them above the board and get them on the books and make it official, but i also think you have to couple that with an increased path to legal migration because if you don't just like before you'll have the reset button on more people come illegally. allow more legal immigration. the wretched refuse, question mark. >> we take you live now to the u.s. senate for a brief pro forma session, part of c-span's commitment to live gavel to gavel. standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable ben cardin, a senator from the state of maryland, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m. stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m. you can watch live coverage here on c-span2. >> starting out on booktv it's the recent boston book festival. throughout the day use author discussions about the legacy of slavery, race and identity, women in the workplace and many other topics. but first it's a discussion on covid-19 and future pandemics. >> it's my really best player actually to be able to moderate this panel of two really distinguished scholars and citizens who have been mentors for me. i'm not sure they understand that our new that yet, for a long time and for whom i've had the privilege to both learn from and be challenged by through their thinking and the way they engage in the world. tonight i have a deep honor of helping to guide us through a ta discussion with nicholas christakis about his most recent book "apollo's arrow" and sandro galea to discuss his book "the contagion next time." hopefully everybody has an opportunity to read these books. if you haven't i would really encourage you tightly to go read them because they

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