Author that spotlight the work of fascinating people. I love booktv, and im a cspan fan. And today we bring you coverage from the Fourth Annual san antonio book festival with panels on immigration, the politics of marriage, crime and more. Tomorrow were live with biographer will haygood for three hours on in depth. Hell take your questions and discuss all of his books including his most recent, showdown, on the life of Supreme CourtJustice Thurgood marshall. And this week on after words, America Online cofounder steve case looks at the future of the internet. Plus, the life of suffragist and abolitionist julia ward howe, a report on the chinese ecommerce site alibaba, and the marines universitys how to defeat isis. For a complete schedule, booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations] good morning. Thank you, everyone, for coming out for the third annual san antonio book festival. Fourth, i am sorry. Have i done this before . I have been involved in all of them but thank you for coming up to the book festival. I want to remind you this mornings session is being filmed by cspan2. At the end of marissas comments when we get to the q and a there will be a microphone, we have questions and hope you have questions and a reminder that after the session, you can go around the corner where they will be selling books and a portion of all the proceeds go to San Antonio Public Library foundation. One of the best days we have had whetherwise and i think it is going to stay that way. It is my honor, i was going to say, to moderate, to moderate this panel on the book white backlash, immigration, race and american politics. We are a nation of immigrants for whom immigration has always been a contentious issue. We are a multiracial republic torn by race, slow in accepting the gifts, immigration and race are woven into our history and politics, Stars Stripes into our flag. Long before the leading republican candidate for president talked about holding an imaginary wall between the United States and mexico the issue of immigration has slowly been building a metaphorical wall within our borders, those resistant to immigration and those americans who welcome it. A divide that threatens our politics and elections. The insightful, important and groundbreaking book white backlash, immigration and race in american politics published by princeton university. They write this book is about race as much as it is about immigration, immigration changing in the United States, those changes are frequently noticed or filtered through the lens of race, when white americans consider immigration the images in the heads are likely to be latino immigrants. Our pleasure to have one of those writers with us this morning. Marissa is associate professor at the university of california san diego, also a resident, senior fellow at the brookings institution, her Research Interests on american politics particularly in areas of latino politics, racial politics, political participation, voting and the mass media campaigns. She is author of campaigning to the new american electorate and coauthor of new faces and voices and numerous articles. Please welcome marissa. [applause] thank you for that kind introduction and thank you for coming. A pleasure to be here today in your beautiful city and i want to briefly talk about the goal of this book as well as the Main Research question this book tries to address, immigration is a central part of the United States. We are often thought about as a country of immigrants which we are and today more than ever immigration is playing a salient role in american politics. In the past 40 years, the us has transformed tremendously demographically, today those who are foreignborn make up 12 of the population, and with that change there also comes racial change in the sense that latinos have surpassed blacks as the largest racial and ethnic group in the United States making up 17 of the population and by 2050 demographers predict the majority status. This demographic transformation raises hope and fear, hopes because immigrants continue to fill a vital economic role, and culture and diversity in multiracial and multiethnic society. And engender fear among many individuals in the public. There is often discussions that immigrants are taking jobs away from nativeborn americans, leading to cultural demise or loss of National Identity as well as the fact immigrants have been talked about as overly relying on our welfare system. All these fears have potential to lead to a backlash, essentially that is the main question we posed in our book. How is this transformation affecting us politics. We examine whether immigration is affecting core political decisions of white americans, white americans make up the majority of the public, and the majority of the voting public so it is especially important to look at how immigration influences their partisanship, voting behavior and policy positions. And not the way these political behaviors, we are one of the first to look at the central role immigration can play in core political decisions, so our theory is pretty straightforward. First argue immigration is just something too big to miss. Immigration is 20 of the population, immigration is a key issue in politics today. We only have to look at what has been happening in the president ial race to know that nearly every conversation in nearly all of the debates immigration played a central role in all these conversations and on top of the fact that immigration is becoming more and more relevant to everyday life there is a prevalent threat narrative that exists in the country, largely felt by media as well as political elites. This emphasizes negative aspects of immigration, not so much on the positive side. Whether or not these costs and benefits are true, most of the American Public believes in this narrative. 70 think immigration is a burden to society and these are Public Opinion polls taken mostly of white americans, 62 think they add to the crime problem and 59 think white immigrants take away jobs from nativeborn americans, and finally along with this prevalent threat narrative between 2 Political Parties have distinct positions on immigration. Republicans have a much more restrictive position on immigration whereas democrats either are agnostic on immigration or tend to support a more inclusive or progressive form of Immigration Reform and policymaking. In summary we make the following argument in the book, that whites see the us as changing racially and ethnically, many believe immigration is driving negative changes and the Republican Party offers stronger opposition to immigration, for many this is a powerful motivation to defect to the Republican Party. We have seen this before, we only have to go back to the 1960s to see how whites defected to the Republican Party in support of civil rights in the 1960s, we have seen immigration backlash at different points in history depending on the wave of immigrants coming in, and conducted in europe we have seen largescale support among the public for these right wing antiimmigrant parties, and the backlash we are documenting is not novel or new but just part of a longer thread of our history in the United States on the way immigration can shift these poor political decisions, the way we test our theory is we analyze a large number of survey data that look at Public Opinion, voting behavior, voting preferences and the pattern we uncover offer general support for this fear he so more negative views of undocumented immigrants is associated with higher percentages of individuals who self identify as republicans as well as more support for republican candidates. On the other hand if you have positive views of documented immigrants that is associated support for the Democratic Party as well as stronger affiliation for your democratic partisanship. What is notable is these relationships between how you think about immigrants or attitudes toward immigrants and partisanship and voting behavior holds true, important to explaining who you vote for and what party you belong to like demographics, religious affiliation, political ideology, etc. The book goes into other analyses where we look at indepth content analysis to provide evidence that in fact the media does and is biased in coverage of immigration largely through a negative lens as opposed to a positive lens in the way they talk about immigration. We also find the size of immigration affect the policies states and acts estate with larger latino populations and exmoor punitive policies but when the latino population is large enough the policy starts to shift to the left. The overall pattern our Research Uncovered is white americans with negative views of immigration are more likely to identify as republican, vote republican and support punitive policies that have negative effects on immigrants such as criminal justice policies as well as education and healthcare. Implications of our research we think is immigration, make the case that immigration is at the core of us politics. It is no longer a periphery issue that is an important issue every couple of years but plays a much more central role in that and what we are witnessing today is a growing white backlash and despite the common rhetoric after and that is far from the reality, race is more important today than ever before which is quite obvious again if we just look at how the conversations and debate is going over the president ial race. I want to leave one thought as i conclude. Is there a response to this backlash . How have others responded to this backlash, particularly those who are being attacked or feel they are being at the center of this backlash which is the immigrant population in the United States. If we look back in history, there is potential here for a positive outcome, going back to what governor pete wilson of california in 1994 when he passed and supported restrictive measures limiting social Service Benefits for undocumented immigrants. What that actually did was mobilized latinos in california to naturalize. Among those eligible, registered to vote and turn out to vote, so we are seeing some of the same movements happening with the president ial election, many of those trump is attacking them. Personally. That is motivating many latinos throughout the nation to be to become citizens, register in higher numbers and mobilizing to vote. If we look back in history and see these instances were groups are being targeted by political elites. One of the positive benefits is increasing rates of turnout and political participation among the group who still is far from achieving their full political potential. I will end there and pass it on. I have a couple questions to open up to the audience. One of the things, despite all the animosity immigration has historically created in the United States it never led to the demise of a Major Political party. What does that say about the ability of the Republican Party, speaking about that to be able to adapt. Certainly to say we are making this argument, not everybody in the Republican Party has this restrictive position on immigration, that is not the case and that is one of the beauties of the political system. The differences and polarization among the two parties. At the end of the day we preserve the institutional structures of our political system despite this disagreement for democracy, it is important to have disagreement. It benefits the system tremendously. As for the future of the Republican Party, one thing to think about is this strategy they have been employing towards immigrants, a very successful shortterm strategy as we can see in the president ial primaries, thinking about the longterm implications for it, it really has more of a potentially negative outcome in the sense if republicans want to engender support among young folks who turned 18, those registering to vote for the first time, those eligible to vote for the first time especially if you are of immigrant origin having this rhetoric is not your best prospect for getting their loyalty, and Party Affiliation for the future. Republicans are playing a strategic game, for a longterm process perhaps not the most an example of the conservative party in canada, what do they do to change their electoral fortunes . What they did was to adopt policies, correct . That were more inclusive, but we have not seen happening among the Republican Party. And a lot of conversation after the 2012 president ial election, it is time for republicans, they have the opportunity to change the conversation, the framing of how they want to shape their party, we have not seen evidence to that, quite the contrary. That is a decision they made but not to Say Something that cant be changed in the future. Any questions for the audience . Doing the research, any significant difference between the people who oppose ilLegal Immigration and just immigrants in general . That is an excellent question. That is often the concern, we are talking about two different kinds of immigration, talking about ilLegal Immigration. And all our analyses even when we look at questions that only ask about Legal Immigration the relationship stays the same. This isnt research we have done but other political scientists and scholars found when you ask the American Public about immigration, what they think about is undocumented immigration. They dont think about Legal Immigration. In the media, so much what the framing is about, what we asked to think about immigration, we associate immigration with illegality, and associate with latino, and lots of psychologists who uncovered this implicit relationship that we made between immigration, citizenship and racial or ethnic group associated with that. Thank you. My concern or my question, all immigrant populations have gone through a process before being acculturated and assimilated. Coming into this area, do you see hope or assimilation. For latinos just like the irish and italians . The book doesnt looked we dont look specifically at assimilation, culture patterns and excellent researchers who have looked at that question and certainly there is strong evidence about latinos assimilating and incarcerating at similar rates as previous immigrants, the one big difference compared to earlier counterparts, european immigrants of nonwhite racial status latinos have, that makes their process of assimilation and enculturation markedly different from earlier european immigrants after two or two or three generations could assimilate into white america. Latinos, asians, immigrants, that is not something easily possible. And spanish in terms of their lineage, since spain is a european country, and racial identity. And they do not acknowledge spain and spanish, my reasoning for that, it is largely how latino immigrants were welcomed in the United States and were not welcomed as part of being the white anglosaxon majority, when majority of mexican americans came to the United States they were treated as secondclass citizens and were never afforded the same kind of White Privilege european immigrants had. That from the beginning of how they were received in the United States automatically put them in a category far below those from white european backgrounds and even though latinos can self identify racially as white or any racial category they want, latinos are considered ethnic in the United States, the perception of the public because of historical circumstances has never viewed them as white but also as nonwhite status. It is a proxy measure for minority, racial or ethnic minority and in your survey data do you break out africanamericans view immigrants and with their feelings on the subject as well . That is a great question because this book focuses on the attitude of white americans but also in other research i have done i have looked at that question. Looking at how Immigration Attitudes vary by racial groups, you find for a certain period up until the 1980s there was some tension in the way black attitudes were thought about immigration mostly as part of immigrants as a source of competition but that view has evolved and changed over the last 30 years so that blacks are much more like latinos and other immigrant groups in having a less restrictive and more inclusive policy position towards immigration. Can you repeat the percentage of foreignborn immigrants . 12 . That is overall in the country. If you look at the latino population, 40 are in the latino population are foreignborn. What else . The federal unemployment data came out yesterday showing 18 to 34 age group black, 17 unemployment, latino around 12, white around 7. Do you think the backlash has much to do with current unemployment among young adults . The data doesnt allow us for our analysis to breakdown immigrants by their age group so i cant speak to that question directly, but i imagine there are other research that shed light on that. You touched on the similarities or dissimilarities between current immigration issue and immigration issue, in the 1800s, much more depth on that and quite frankly if one looks back at the history of iris