Transcripts For CSPAN3 Leah Boustan Streets Of Gold 20221008

Via twitter with hashtag ask air on liam rants very readable books about the history of migration to the United States in particular the late 19th century relies on large amounts of original research involving large data sets of millions of american. It revised our understanding of historical waves of immigration. It draws important parallels between those earlier experiences and the contemporary immigrant experience. The book also summarizes our understanding of various economic and cultural aspects of migration to the United States. It should serve as an important reminder to many u. S. Policymakers and, voters, that some of the assumptions about immigration theyve worked from in recent are simply quite incorrect is of particular importance, given the scope and scale of of bad Decision Making we have seen in this area in recent years, those decisions include most visible, most visibly, perhaps the imposition of the muslim ban, family separation during the Trump Administration. But they extend as well to decades of not passing legislation legalizing the dreamers in, their families and to the current administrations inability to get the immigration to operate according to anything, anything resembling reasonable standards. Now, the proceedings wont fall. This follows today. First, they present the book. Shes professor of economics at princeton university, which also serves as the of the industrial relations section. Her previous book, competition in the Promised Land black migrants in northern cities and markets, examined the effect the great black migration from rural south during and after world war two. Shes codirector of the development of the American Economy program at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as coeditor at the American Economic journal applied economics. After that, well hear from our three discussants to whom im sure leah will want to respond. Well first hear from michael clemens, who director of migration, displacement, humanitarian, as well as a senior fellow at the center for Global Development in a display of technological might. Michael will be joining us live from turkey through that screen. Hopefully thatll all work out well on the technological front. Then michael will be followed by another expert on the economics of migration. Ana maria. Marta maria is professor of economics at school of foreign service, department of economics at georgetown. And then well also hear from a colleague, james, that the cookies. Who would like for me to tell you subscribe to his substack faster. Please. After that well chat a bit more amongst ourselves. Our through each other. Well take questions, the audience and start thinking about questions. And then we planned on how we plan on ending the conversation around 130, if not a little earlier with that leia welcome. Please take it away and please take my place here. Thank you so much, stan, for organizing this panel. And thanks to the aei more broadly for being a strong supporter of this research along the way and to michael, who is feeding in from turkey and to the rest of you who are here today. Let me start with why we wrote this book, we thought immigration is a defining element of American Society in the American Economy. But our National Conversation immigration has been driven largely by myths rather than by facts and by data. And what we aimed to do is to rebuild our understanding of immigration to the us from the ground up, uncovering patterns that emerged from data on millions of immigrants lives, both in the past and today we believe that this evidence sorely needed in our current environment, where theres a partizan divide on immigration that is wider now than ever before. And so immigration policy has really been stuck in a holding pattern. We primarily executive orders with democratic president s passing new rules to protect one group and republican president s passing rules to clamp down on the different. But all the harder questions have been left aside. Should we expand the slots for legal . What should we do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants . It seems like the prospect bipartisan reform is dim, and that is the political reality. And that encouraged us to turn to the data and to the facts to see can we change the National Conversation if we focus on the evidence. So what did we do then in . Our research we started by digging through websites like ancestry com that allow the public to search for their relatives. I dont know if anyone here in the room has an ancestry account and think of us like curious grandchildren going look for our own grandfathers. But doing this millions of times over and then we automated searches to allow us to follow millions of immigrant families through their time in the United States when they first arrive to ten, 20, 30 years later. And then to follow children as our children enter, the labor market. And all told, were able to compile whats really the first big data on immigrant pathways in us history . Our data includes everyone includes bankers, it includes boys. Its like searching the phonebook to include the whole population rather than focusing on the ceos, the criminals who might make it to the front page. And the data gives clues about how immigrants live their lives when did they leave school . Where did they live . Who did they marry . Who are their neighbors . What did they name their children . What was their occupation, their earnings . And then where did their children move and how well do their children fare when they grew up . So with this new data, we reassess some of the common myths that we hold about immigration and contribute a new understanding. I to just outline four of these myths for you today and there are more in the book. They probably sound familiar to you and some of them are right and. Some of them are very wrong. The first myth is that we are the midst of an unprecedented flood of immigration. Maybe today of you saw it coming through your social media feed of a caravan thats forming on the southern border. So this kind of flood i have in mind at last there were 45 Million People in the United States who are in another country. And thats a lot. So many believe that immigrants make up larger share of the country than ever before. But thats wrong. Immigrants, 14 of the country now and they were 14 of the country for years during the ellis island generation. Of course, the context of immigration is very different now in that in the past, immigrants overwhelmingly hailed from europe. Now they come from all over the world. Whats more, there were a few restrictions on entry the past as, long as you were of european origin. And so most immigrants lived at the time in the United States legally, whereas demand for immigration outside the supply of visas. And so one in four immigrants are living in country without papers. So these are dramatic changes in immigration policy, and i think that may have contributed to the myth that immigrants in the past integrated more quickly. So let me turn to that now. Thats the second myth, the idea that the ellis island generation rose quickly and that immigrants today not as successful. I think that this myth is borne of nostalgia. The idea that a century ago you could arrive penniless and a few years you could quickly ascend from rags to riches. This myth is wrong in two different ways. First of all, many european immigrants not come in rags, a good number of them arrived with job skills and with resources already in hand. Think about immigrants coming from germany, from from scotland, from countries that were already ahead of the us in Economic Development at the time. Secondly, immigrants who did start out with low jobs were not able to catch up very quickly. Most of them continue lag behind us. Foreign workers even at the end of their working lives. In fact, the story of immigrant progress today is remarkable. Similar just as in the past, immigrants often double their income or more by moving to the us from their home country. But once here in the first generation, newcomers do move up the ranks slowly but at the same pace as immigrants did in the ellis island generation. So this brings us to our third myth and that immigrant families and their children get stuck today in a permanent underclass. And the idea is that, sure, immigrants might be up at the same pace today, but immigrants are coming from very poor countries nowadays. And maybe it will take generations for those families to succeed. But what we find and this is really the piece of the data that shocked us the most is background is still not in the us. The dream that propels immigrants to come to america is the possibility offering a Better Future for their children and. Indeed, we find that today the children of immigrants are able to surpass their parents, move up the economic ladder at the same pace as in the past. Children of immigrants that grow up close to the bottom of the Income Distribution. So think about the 25th percentile, for example are more likely to reach the middle class than of similar us households. And pattern holds just as much today as in the past. And from nearly every sending. So think about it. Children of immigrants from mexico, from the Dominican Republic are just as likely to move out from their parents circumstances as children of poor swedes or 100 years ago. Not only does this upward mobility define the horizons of peoples lives, but it also has implications for the economy as a whole. Some voters worry that immigrants will drain public, but this concern not take into account the success of the Second Generation. A 16 National Academy of sciences report, which was 500 or 600 pages, so maybe very few people actually read it, makes exactly this point. That first generation immigrants do use public resources, particularly in the cost of educating their children. But the report concludes, and i quote that as adults the children of immigrants, the Second Generation are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the us population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native born population. So let me turn to the fourth myth then, which is all of this resounding success that ive been talking about would come at the expense of the us born. Certainly supporters of border restriction that immigrants will steal jobs and reduce the wages of us born workers. And this argument is very easy, understand, and it sounds reasonable. If there were a fixed number of jobs, then the more immigrants that come and who are holding jobs, the fewer jobs would be available for the us born. But the number of jobs is not fixed. Our economy is not zero sum by contribute to innovation and starting new businesses. Immigrants often create Employment Opportunities for others. Furthermore immigrants are not only workers, they are also. So when they arrive need housing. Someone has to build house. They need their kids to be in school. Someone has to become a teacher to educate kids as consumers. Immigrants help put americans work. Of course. There are some winners and some losers from. Immigration. Some workers who do the same jobs as recent arrivals will stand to lose from immigration. And who are these people . Most of them are recent immigrants themselves. Immigrants tend to concentrate on tasks that dont require Language Skills like landscaping, construction. While the us born are more likely to hold jobs that require interacting with the public. Whats more, immigrants often fill positions that us born workers would not take at wages that consumers would be willing to pay, such as picking crops, taking care of the elderly. And in this, immigrants create markets for certain products that otherwise simply would not exist. So how do we know of this . All these statements that im making confidence about immigration in the workforce. Economists have studied this topic for and in order to learn about effects, ideally, you compare two parallel americas, one with a high level of immigration, one with a low level of immigration. But of course, it goes without saying that cannot rerun history twice. But here is where the past can very useful and. And ron and i economic historians have contributed to at a few key moments in us history. We conducted very similar exposure through the normal political process. And so we can go back and what happened to us workers when the border closed in the 1920s. What happened . It reopened in 1965. And so through these episodes throughout history, we can learn about the effects of on u. S. Foreign workers. So where can we go from here . What do these findings mean about the concrete policy proposals are on the table. The findings being that today are moving up quickly, like the ellis island generation. But upward mobility takes more than one generation. The idea that the children of immigrants achieved success and not at the expense of the us born. What can we do with this . Well, one thing is clear to us. Our immigration system does not need to immigrants based on their wealth or their level of education. We do not need to move to a canadian style point. Rather, if were willing to plan with the future in mind and take long view, we can continue to immigrants from poor countries who can do many of jobs that we need in agriculture, in services, with confidence that the American Economy allow their children to rise. Its happened before and we are seeing it in the data happening now. Is it possible in our current polarized environment to make changes that we need to immigration system . It may seem wildly optimistic to imagine that todays politics can create anything looks like consensus, but we are heartened by the fact that when we released earlier versions, these studies that are now and told and knitted in the book, our message reached a wider spectrum of americans i ever believed will be possible here. Here i am, aei and i from many conservatives saying america works. Anyone can make it here. Thats message of your research. But i also from many progressives who saw in our research a hopeful message a diverse set of immigrant groups can contribute to our society. So from the response im getting, i get a feeling that there is a will there. What does the data say, though despite the loud and increasingly emboldened antiimmigrant voices these days, we can see in the data that americans are more proimmigration than ever. Even if sentiment split by party. The most recent gallup polls suggest that 75 of americans say that immigration is good for the country and work that we did. Analyzing congressional record allows us to go back to the 1880 and all the way forward to today and weve classified speeches about immigration as pro neutral or anti. And speeches about immigration. Today are more positive than ever before in the halls of congress. So a brave politician, a real leader can make a difference here. And we take heart that there are cases in u. S. History where has happened and politicians have shifted the conversation on immigration. In fact, such a shift took place in a single generation right after world war two, with efforts by president and then president s kennedy and johnson to redefine america as a nation of immigrants. I take that sentiment for granted that phrase a nation of immigrants. It was an idea that was fostered here washington and then spread to the public and led to the border being reopened in 1965. So we believe that a politician who takes message seriously will succeed. A politician who is strong and emphasizing america as a nation of immigrants rather than defensive about a supposed perpetual at the border. And the message that immigrants contribute our economy through science, innovation and Vital Services that the children of immigrants. Nearly every poor country can move up to the middle class. That immigrants are just as keen to become americans now as they were in the past, and that america is a country that embraces diversity and lets in new ideas a positive, optimistic message about immigration is popular and might even be political winner if it is embraced proudly. We that we can reclaim the legacy of american streets. Gold. All right. Can you hear me . Okay . Excellent. So now were going to do an experiment where i will ask who is behind that screen . There he is to for it. Welcome, michael. The wait for few seconds, jim. You can have your your seat if youd like. And maria . Yeah. Sorry. Its a complicated up here with all the chairs in the video screen. So, michael, welcome. Thank you for joining us. I was hoping you could share your thoughts on that book and, that topic. So thank you so much. Can you hear me okay . Yeah. Its incredibly generous of all of you to. Allow me to do this from turkey. Theres a theres something about being in izmir, which has been on the 50 yard line of a lot of of immigration crises recently. Thats somehow vaguely appropriate, but basically, its just your generosity. And i greatly appreciate it. I just want to say a few words in a few minutes. So this book is is the standard reference. Basically, it should take its place along alongside a nation, by design, by aristide goldberg or impossible subjects, by may and guy in it should be on every College Reading list about u. S. Immigration. It should be on the on Us Immigration bookshelf. Every thoughtful citizen basically and ron are the best there is on this. So dont look any further than this book. Just read it. A perfect Public Affairs book. Its so its comparable comprehensible to anyone and. Its entertaining to anyone. Its a page, id even say. Its kind of like a tesla in that regard. You know, any teenager can drive a tesla, but also like a tesla, it has the latest research and technology under the hood making. It great but invisible to everybody except except to experts, to someone like me who reads the literature for every morning. Its all in there and and the right things are in there. So what does this book do . Fundamentally, as lisa just said, the is is missed myths versus youve heard the myths. Now were to come lately. I just said like curious grandchildren searching their family online and dispel your myths with better data and the myths are well the three that that that all focus on i mentioned four but the three all focused on are about mobility assimilate and competition. Basically there is a there is a long term view in in in informed circles that about each of these immigration used to be good to back when there was land of plenty and it was more ethnically homogeneous. And my great grandparents it the right way legally and many other things that are commonly said. I and and that theres something in the long term perspective theres something desperately wrong with recent immigration that 100 years ago there was more mobility there was more assimilation and there was less competition with natives. So the core message of this book is, no, were offering you a different long term view that when you take a careful look at the facts with the latest data, as lisa mentioned, the first big data said on immigration in the us ever. I, i those facts look very different and. The core message of the book is quote, the immigrants today are the americans of tomorrow. Immigration is good for america. So im so so praise is incredibly easy to do with a fantastic book. This these facts are correct fresh. Theyre highly relevant. Theyre from the best people using the best data. The writing is highly accessible, rigorous. Its a very sufficed ticketed presentation. So i was really struck by how when it came time to discuss why i specific immigrant groups among within this general conclusion that immigrants today for example are assimilating and highly there there is quite a lot of heterogeneity with for example west indians doing a relatively better is doing relatively better and when it came time to discuss why that might be they didnt speculate themselves as to to ivory tower ists they, they brought immigrant voices directly into the book. They did their own survey to gather stories and let some west indians and chinese you why they think thats true which i thought was a very substantively and for for communication reasons a very excellent strategy so the book is not specific about policy has it has a couple of policy dont force assimilation and dont try to micromanage too much of immigrants on education. But the real policy message i would just distill it as a policy to politicians and, to the voters that could make a coalition with them. Its that youve seen people making a little career on negative attacks against immigrants but you can also make a career on positive messages. They even refer to a, quote, silent majority unquote in the us willing to support such politicians. So the best thing about the book that i really to highlight is something that they dont make explicit. They take this very humble stance, you know, weird like grandchildren searching their grandparents and oh, isnt it cool . We were on this rap show that was our 15 minutes of fame. But in fact, you get something from this book that that you because, leah and ron are economists that you wouldnt get from very sophisticated, smart, very highly informed people studying. The subject from a from a historical from sociological, from other perspectives and. And its that this this book is doing much more just documenting facts for to face facts that they dug up with with sophisticated technical work. Its really one of them that i think is real contribution that you that you get from economists on this is that again and again some of the unexpected things they find arise from the basic fact that people are strategic and they exchange and invest. They responds to what others do. In other words, i in a in a simple world of all else, equal theres a downward sloping demand curve for when theres more labor. The prices going to go down what they emphasize again and again is that in a in a market where everybody is responding strategically to everybody else because of incentives thats not true that in that model of all else equal is useful understanding. For example why gas prices are higher now than three months ago. They are useful for and were never intended for. And Alfred Marshall i explicitly said that they werent useful for understanding the Long Term Development of market processes. So why do sons and parents, sons of parents from Central America move up faster than natives . Because those parents tend to to to choose to live based on potential for their children, to a degree more than than natives. That is, they respond to that particular incentive more why do refugees integrate so quickly . For example learning . Learning english typically faster than non refugee immigrants . Because of incentives, because theyre more likely to settle, they have less to to to go home to and a stronger incentive to invest in integration. Why didnt the wages of workers cleveland go up when cleveland of southern and Eastern European workers was drastically restricted in 1921 and 24 . But cincinnatis supply of german and irish was much less restricted because of incentives because firms had a strong incentive to do other stuff than bid up wages. They had incentives switch to other labor suppliers, mechanize to produce less labor intensive products and many other things that they in fact did. Instead of bidding up wages. Why is the rate of criminal activity among unauthorized immigrants so low . Because of the potential double of jail and potential deportation that other people making those trade offs dont face and they really they really go deep on perverse of policy, which is something where economists also have a lot to say, lot of value to add to these kind of discussions. They talk about how trying to force integration of germans in, for example, ohio by banning german Primary Schools actually caused them to integrate less linguistically. And this was one of the delights this book of that that i had that that those of you who are americans might which is that you might learn something directly about own family from this my grandfather there was a Primary School student in dayton, ohio, who was subject to those. And ive noted for a long time that my my german speaking family didnt integrate over four generations. And through my grandfather still had a german language birth certificate, the german Language Church and many other things. And that now i that that was not just that was not just a natural process that was actually encouraged by policy policy. So so so before shutting up i just want to mention. Three of ill call them mild critiques that i had all of these were are completely understandable theyre just trade offs that that these authors made a difficult subject that that one could question but but are very legitimate choices. So one of them is that they take the very reasonable strategy of just sides stepping some research debates and approaching the public and politicians directly and saying, look, youre interested this subject here is the evidence that we found on that subject, they dont get bogged down of fighting about debates in the literature. And like paul graham about startups in Silicon Valley not winning by competing, but by, i think thats a very effective strategy for a large potential audience out there. It is. It has a drawback is that when people hear about kinds of research, they might think, well, you know. Thats not really addressed in this book. Its kind of he she said i dont really know and one example of that is that there is a the book doesnt talk too much about about wage assimilation recently. It talks about cultural assimilation but less about wage assimilation. And theres quite lot of Research Suggesting that that wage assimilation front between immigrants and natives has been slowing down in recent decades, you know, my strategy and Something Like that be to say that a is a that is an ill posed question given that as leah mentioned, a quarter of the immigrants population is legally banned even trying to acquire citizenship, which is is seen in qua non a full it should not surprise anybody looking at the census data that both authorized and authorized that that people banned from integrating are not able to integrate. Theres some circular causation going on there. But as i said there is a drawback to taking pages upon pages to counter arguments and other data. And theres there are real advantages just making your case directly i a second mild drawback is that really you know myth busting is is is very effective. It starts where people are theyve heard the myths they believe a lot of them. But it also lets the myth set the agenda and that can that can lead to some strange discussions. One example about that was in the in the section of the on competition they talk about how and which the case that in many cases immigrants and natives are not competing with each other but complementing each other in the labor market. Then they say, you know, there are a few cases in which there could be zero sum. For example, theres some work suggesting soviet mathematicians crowded, u. S. Mathematicians out of the market. You know, i labor economists have have defined the Research Agenda of this field in a very narrow way for a long and thats a very obvious case, id say. Look, as son of a of a of a mathematics professor, i can say definitively that the academic mathematics does not exist to create jobs for u. S. Mathematicians it exists in order to find truth and beauty. And if russian mathematicians are better at it than no americans should be doing it. And i thought that that reflected that that particular paragraph reflected and allowing labor economists to just set a very narrow agenda about the Relevant Research questions that was a little uncomfortable. And the third and last one i want to mention is that really this book chooses to and again, this is a this a very legitimate and understandable decision. This book just chooses to sidestep questions of race. And to me its sad, a little uncomfortable in that in telling story of of of immigration policy in the us without highlighting the role of race as a little bit like hamlet without the prince of denmark. But you know that the books conclusion that the immigrants of today are the americans of tomorrow is not seen as a feature but as a bug by by some by some people in now as a century ago. So you know when talking about asian exclusion the the book says the country chose its fork in the road. The door swung shut to asian immigration for nearly a century. In a purely descriptive sense of no, not not a normative word about whether that was good or bad. Are the the chapter. Thats the brief history of u. S. Immigration policy doesnt really talk about the role of race all it doesnt mention that the 1924 immigration closure was not just full asian exclusion, it was total african exclusion in that the quotas for immigration from that time to 1965 were based on. The representation of people ethnically in the population earlier and people of african origin were and very deliberately left out of that of that to calculation entire life when when the book talks about the 45th president of the United States sitting the white house and at questioning why we should welcome anybody from quote, countries like haiti and nigeria unquote, theres no any discussion of what haiti and nigeria might have in common is left implicit and i i really understand that this choice are the goal. This book is to reach a very wide audience. It is that it should do that and and and preceding the road of talking about some of the origins of these policies and some of the origins of these notions is likely to derail that enterprise. But it also has a drawback, which that people who are not of european origin might at some moments of the book and in some pages experience a little pause of not recognizing themselves in the pages, all of which is is just done to say that. So these these choices are are choices that must be made any expert when distilling. A billion facts into into three or four lessons their choices that are made well and expertly and nothing going to supersede this book for a very long time. So please please, please read it and learn from it as i did. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, michael. Before we go to, the end, you want to respond to this comment . Im michael. Thank you so much for joining from i mean, its really meaningful to that. You took the time to do that and you read and distilled the book so beautifully. I do i do want mention that in terms of the recent evidence wage assimilation the jury is very much out michael is pointing to the fact that was a paper by burrus a few years ago suggesting that wages has been slowing down since then. Theres been a few studies looking the administrative records. You can actually follow people over time rather than cohorts and they are putting a question mark on that finding. So we do have buried in a footnote. I agree were really trying to keep things moving in the body of the book, but we do have a footnote about this sort of back and forth in the literature and hopefully within few years that question will be settled on the question of race definitely when. Talk about the history of u. S. Immigration. We dont much time on the eugenics and some of the genesis of the exclusions, both for africans, asians, and also southern and Eastern Europeans. Its touched on, but its not the emphasis. There is a discussion on race when it comes to current immigration and the success of the Second Generation. Thats a really interesting where theres one group of children of immigrants who are not moving up as quickly as the us born and that are and those are sons so particularly boys of caribbean parents so haiti, Trinidad And Tobago and jamaica. But its not a simple race story because the daughters of those same families are doing well and sons of families from the Dominican Republic, many of whom are black and from nigeria again, black country, are doing well. So is a complicated interaction between, race and gender. It seems to be particularly early, also a caribbean story. So its just race, but its also region and we have some thoughts this in the book but that the mechanisms and the underlying are far from settled. But we do think that race probably plays a role in that pattern and potentially racialized because in our if you are in prison, you receive a zero income. So youre in dataset, but you have a zero income and it was not possible for us to strip those people out because data comes from underlying tax, from the opportunity, insights lab at harvard. So we have in aggregate form and were not able to really do the detailed work we would want to do to analyze how much of this is simply a question of racialized policing and incarceration. But if you were to take that population out, maybe the boys from caribbean families would also be doing very well. So we do try to tackle that issue. Its a tough issue, but we stay from some of the questions about American History that i think have been very fraught recently. But thank you so much, michael it just means so much to me that you took the time to read so carefully and to join us from halfway around the world. Thank you, my honor. Thank you. I have a question that i think fit in nicely with this. Before we go to the and youre in the underclass myth. Bet you you guys talk a lot about convergence and about sort of conditional or performance of Second Generation immigrants conditional on the percentage in the percentile Income Distribution. I think a lot of concern erin, about the underclass in that its not really about conditional convergence right, about the unconditional level at which immigrant groups arrive as well and not so much about, you know, seven periods from now you will have converge completely that. Were particularly concerned about the next 50 years, which is not a crazy perspective, i think, for these kind of Public Policy views. And there i do think there are differences with a century. Is that is that a correct reading . I do see that the major difference between past and present the initial income level of the parents in the past the average immigrant actually earned more no less than us born worker. But thats because theres some where the immigrants were earning a lot more germany, england, etc. And some they were earning less. But on average the us born and immigrants were neck and neck 100 years ago. Today, immigrants are coming from much poorer countries relative to us than they used to. So in the past immigrants were coming from, lets say, the top 30 countries in the world. Of course, gdp per capita information a hundred years ago is not great, but roughly the top 30 countries today, nine out of ten of our ascending countries, countries we were sorry, nine out of the ten top sending countries. Okay, the countries that send the most immigrants to the us are ranked between 90th in 150th in the world, out of around 200 countries. So were pulling from very poor countries today the we relative to how we used. And so its not surprising that are earning a lot less than us born now thats for the parents when the parents first arrive and stan is asking about just unconditioned on average given kids are being raised in these poorer households, how are the Second Generation doing and the answer that for many countries actually the children achieve parity with the born without controlling for the family background that they come from without controlling for the fact that the parents are earning. 50 log points less the children are catching up. You want to many you want to translate 50 log points for the for the people out there. Roughly think about it as a 50 less but it could be its its larger than 50 loss. Yeah so its substantial really less so were talking about some household thats making 2020 5000 versus a household thats making 60, 70, 70,000. And yet kids are catching up from many sending countries there. A few countries where thats not true. Its not true from haiti and jamaica as we already talked about, even even conditionally, its not true for mexico and. Mexico is a large part of the story. However, its not the case that the kids are at the same point of lagging behind. Theyve made up a lot of ground. Its just that they havent completely caught up to parity. So when were talking about these unconditional comparisons, its really its a hard comparison to make because were asking a kid who was being raised at a household making 25,000 to catch up to someone who where they were being raised in a household making 60 or 70,000. Thats a lot ground to cover. And for many sending countries, kids are doing it. And so that is in a way even more spectacular. But because there are a few countries where thats not true i think that that raises. So we thought would be useful to say okay lets compare apples to apples as much as possible lets find a household where the parents are us born. But theyre also at the lower of the Income Distribution. And there you can see that even for kids from mexico, etc. , the kids are doing better. So if you take two similar household ids, the kids are surpassing the children of the us born. If you allow all the difference us to play out. Theres still many sending countries where the kids are reaching parity, which is really a tremendous achievement thats something you and i. Shall we go to your comments. I dont. Thank you very much for inviting me to. Discuss this amazing book and this is a great book that i encourage you to read. And it is a very important book, but for of you who are interested in the policy of migration and for academics and an academic, myself and i, this book to be a treasure trove of ideas for new papers, for research. And im very excited to talk with leon brown about these ideas. Now, let me give you the broad picture about the book. What ron and leah, do is to go back to. Some believes, about migrants now versus 100 years ago. And believes that had become part of the narrative about migration in the United States. So theyre very important believes because they affect how americans think about migration and they find is that these beliefs a lot of times are not sure there are myths so what i really like is that they go systems basically through a lot of the statements in the migration literature youre checking in the data whether theyre true or not. And i would say that nobody no study nor even a stories nobody escapes. Theyre careful, i. E. Every time. Tell us about somebody. They also go back to the data. They identify the individuals record doing the census and they check whether this story was true. So i myself got very curious about it and i open an ancestry. Com account. I found myself im italian, i found myself. I didnt find as much information. I think as for american family, but i could find some information. It would be nice if ancestry included more information for other countries, but so what did i like . A lot . The book, what i liked is this book, of course, and this is a point to which is clear. We differentiate between myth and reality. But what is more important to me is the fact that we should do so. All for those myths that are meant for good. So there are some statements in the book that probably came out to create a good narrative about the immigrant experience in the United States. But the issue with doing that is that these statements which are not true can backfire, and they are, because these are statement that then, you know, when you look at the immigrant experience now and you that first generation migrants dont move up the economic ladder so fast that if you think that in the past the immigrants were moving up very then you draw some conclusions which are wrong. So again again and again the import tends to go back to data more data and more data to get at the truth and especially for a topic migration which is so controversial now i wanted make some more targeted remarks and and also for those of you who are more interested in the research and academic aspects of the book and im going to divide my remarks between regarding the first generation in remarks regarding the Second Generation. So first of all, for the first generation and here im thinking about as well, im a first generation migrant. And the way it economists think about the assimilation is by comparing how much of first generation migrant makes at arrival, compare the to a native worker with similar socioeconomic and thats fine understand why that is then it is to keep constant but the outside conditions, the labor Market Conditions and to focus on individual level drivers. But from the point of view of the migrant, what really matters is another gap. Its the gap between how much the migrant was making back at and how much it can make potentially in the us as proxy by how much natives who are similar to or her are making. So what im saying is that theres a much bigger gap, but that first generation migrants are covering and that when they make the first move and mentioned that a few times thats they make the biggest chunk and you know that initial big jump might the greatest fraction of the gap and so you know from the point of view of a first generation migrant then maybe a lot accomplished and they may feel that they dont need to cover they by not length, but also because the final length may require were facing tradeoffs which are very. So let me give you an example. I am used to leaving in very dense areas. And so i want to in a city and even if you offer me 1,000,000,000, i live in a small town. So there are some tradeoffs that im based preferences, first generation migrants and address in a different from native workers and. The main plight that they dont cover last part of this gap and in that the point that i wanted to make is about how the literature and and the you in the book may your assimilation and usually economies measure assimilation based nominal wages. But what im thinking is that and really what would be also nice to do is to measure assimilation in terms real wages. So again, let me you an example and i have a daughter and in the back of my mind that if things dont go as planned, i always think that she might go university in italy because its much cheaper. So what does that mean . It means that as a first generation migrant, i have access to goods and Services Back and equally that Second Generation migrants and americans dont have access to because. They dont speak italian enough. And so what that means is that in real terms, my nominal wage is higher for Second Generation migrants. Im natives and thats so even if we see the nominal wages of first generation migrants are not as high as americans with similar skills. It might be that in real terms we are not very far and next. So im going to focus on the Second Generation and here i think the book really does a wonderful job of making us understand how important this second the Second Generation is in thinking migration in the United States it is the generation where success of immigrants takes place in the united and it is therefore the generation that defines how americans think about migration. And this is very important because i will tell you, in other countries like European Countries, things are quite different. And and friend mentioned that. So there are studies for germany, france and the uk which show that Second Generation migrants move up the economic ladder. As far as the Second Generation migrants in the United States and that in term not has a big impact on how people view migration in europe compared to the United States. They view it in more negative way and they are not thinking about first generation. Once they are thinking about Second Generation migrants, thats the difference between the United States. Europe really is. And related to this then i found interesting the fact that in the United States Second Generation migrants move up the economic ladder faster than Second Generation migrants do in europe. But for the general the opposite americans in general have no social mobility than and so i wonder whether there is a link between these two findings and one possibility is that when we measure assimilation of migrants we always do it well. But to natives. And so to the extent that in the United States natives are moving up fast or theyre moving up slower than europe, then it is easier for immigrant Second Generation migrants to catch up in the united relative to europe and next them, i want to talk about reasons discussed in book for why. Second duration migrants move the economic ladder so fast. There are two main reasons. The first one is that their parents might have been undervalued in labor market. So, for example you hear i have an accent. So first generation migrants have an accent and so then analyze them in the labor market, especially for low skilled workers. And so some first generation migrants might come to the United States and they not may not make as much money and a. S americans who are skilled as them but can speak english much better. And so they that but lower in Income Distribution of the United States and so then the Second Generation migrants more easily can move up the economic ladder compared to that and theyre valued born in india. What i found interesting that for example you do find that italians Second Generation italians in the past moved up by really fast. They are at the top, the picture. And you know, italians are not good with languages. They had this very big accent like me. And so there might be a reason it would be interesting to analyze the linguistic differe. Francis across origin countries to see whether there is any relationship and then the second reason why Second Generation migrants do assimilate so fast is geography. So here the point is that first generation migrants choose locations that are good for the economic assimilation of Second Generation migrants and at the and i believe this and is also supporting evidence from for example the paper by a court that quebec in calais in so migrants have higher mobility than American Workers they react faster to liberate them in shocks they are much better able to identify locations in the United States they do well and move there and by my is why a disability of first generation migrants to identify places helps their kids, but not the first generation migrants themselves. And what possible reality is that they at first generation migrants made themselves create the conditions such that help that the economic assimilation of their. And here im thinking about your for example work on preferences for Food Distribution and the Public Sector public expenditure. Sure so to the extent in the very long run immigration increases income and so through the fiscal effects there might be a bigger public expenditures by the government because revenues go up but then schools will improve and so that may make it easier Second Generation migrants for their kids to move up the economic ladder and to conclude the and i think and this is again a more technical point but it is important also for its policy implication when we think about the impact of immigration in all the literature, what we do is economist is to divide the population between immigrants who are the first generation and everybody and the everybody else includes americans and Second Generation migrants. So we include the Second Generation migrants among, americans. And so in a way we are potentially finding estimates which are biased be what we should be doing and im convinced of that more and more is that we should consider three separate categories. We should compare first to second to natives also because it might be that what we are picking up when we look at the impact of first generation migrants is the impact of Second Generation ones and so i have that the increase in paper of mine which is related to the National Academy of science report that you mentioned. So in this paper with a couple of quarters mean a census and both are spineless. We find that from a fiscal point of view, Second Generation migrants have a much more positive impact. First generation ones on provision of public goods and at the local level in the United States, at the county level. So does make a difference to break up the population across immigrants generations versus natives. Thank you very much. Encourage everybody to read the book and as an academic especially students, especially scholars, but also everybody interested in the policy dimension of migration. Thank you so much. And you want to respond to thank you so there was so much in what you said. Let me just address a few of your points. So the first thing you said is that the largest gap that immigrants is actually from leaving the home country and moving to the us. Thats where their incomes doubled in the past and actually than double today. And this is something that as an economist me that theres no government that cares about this game the home country of the immigrants home country dont care they think maybe were losing a workforce. Theres brain drain but they dont care about the immigrants themselves gaining. And actually as americans we dont really about that either. So voters here care about the about convergence more so than the gains to the migrants themselves. So as an economist and as someone who cares about the welfare of individuals, care about that deeply, but with a book thats intending to speak to the National Conversation about immigration policy, we touch on this and allude to but really make a choice not to emphasize too broadly. The second thing i want to mention is the point about europe versus the us. Actually, if i had one thing that i could go back and do more of in streets of gold, i want i would do more to compare the european case because it is fascinating how in the latest evidence and the jury is still out and i think their recent work on this topic in a variety of European Countries. But as andrea said in england and in germany and in france, Second Generation immigrants are not moving up as quickly as in the United States. And what from what we see provisionally as in canada or in australia. So there is a difference between. These settler economies that have long history of being immigrant, receiving and European Countries that for a century were immigrants sending countries only recently have they been immigrant receiving countries. And some people say its just selection. Well the immigrants coming to europe are from africa, from the middle east. And were getting a different of immigrants. And i think thats probably not the story because we see really across the board from some poor countries that Second Generation immigrants are doing well in the us. So i that theres Something Special about the United States that has been at assimilating integrating immigrants for over a century and we dont want to lose that thats something thats thats been a legacy to us and we dont want to let that go. And we can see europe as a counterpoint so i would like to learn more about what exactly goes into that special sauce. But i i know that its something thats very special and we shouldnt let go. And then some of your points of all interrelate to the idea of location even the point about versus real income does relate to location as well. Because a large part of what differentiates between wage like what youre taking home in your paycheck versus real wage is like your your real standard living is the cost of housing and so it has a lot to do with and so one thing that is true but i we didnt really mention enough in the book is that location does help the first generation as well remember i said immigrants 100 years ago actually earn the same amount average as the us born in response to michael thats . True, but if compare People Living in the same state or People Living in the city, immigrants actually earn lot less than the us born on average. So what does that mean . It means that one of the ways that immigrants able to earn as much as the us born in the past is that they moved to cities, didnt move to rural areas. They to the north, they did not move the poorer us south and moved to states that had high incomes for everyone. So even the first generation location does matter and we just really didnt emphasize that enough. I appreciate that. And then this is a bit of a Research Point, but i do want to say thank you so for mentioning this idea of thinking more carefully in economics about how we treat the Second Generation. You know, i cant tell you how many studies with how many different outcomes said the effect of immigrants on wages or fiscal or School Performance or whatever it is and wherever youre going to find first generation immigrants, youre going to find Second Generation generation too, because its going to be the kids, those families, and maybe we do have some biases that are coming in there that, you know, i hadnt really about until you brought that point. And its an important point. Excellent. Thank you. Before we go to jim had a couple of questions that related to some of the things i have brought up. So when you talk about the first generation of their real wages something first generation immigrants have that other groups do not is the option to to return. I know you youve done work on that historically and norwegian immigrants and how that leads successful ones among them were more likely to return to to norway. Do we still see that now . I think its an important policy question because obviously theres always a debate over, you know, which immigrants are likely to become, quote unquote, public charges, or do we still see that negative selection and who returns . Who doesnt . Do people less because the because theres been so much more its gotten so much more difficult enter in the first place what whats the story there so in the overall number theres always been 25 to 30 of immigrants who return that was true a hundred years ago and its true now. It may be coming slightly less true with the border tightening up. Youre right. But in the most recent numbers, thats what, you werent allowed fly anywhere for like two years or so, right well, i mean, in the very, very recent term, yes. Maybe even just in the past ten years, its its fallen a bit. But in broad, its always been around a quarter of. Immigrants who go home. And again, this is a group thats just sort of lost from our public discussion because american policymakers, we dont really care the return migrants. And it turns out that state, like stanstead is saying, hundred years ago it was immigrants who were not doing very well, who. But that doesnt mean they were didnt have the potential to do well. It turns out that these immigrants who came to the us with a purpose in mind, they wanted to work as quickly. They could not necessarily invest in learn english, but work save up money and go home and. When these immigrants went home, they actually remarkably well. So they from the poorest of the poor, they they did not earn a lot compared to the us for when they were here in the us, but when they went home they were more to own land than other people who had never come to the us. They were more likely to be successful. And so they used the us as a strategy to do well in life. And thats actually a group that again, an economist as someone who cares about individuals, thats a value that the United States then shares with the rest of the world. And theres actually, particularly in scandinavia in in the baltic states, a number of heads of state who had spent time in the us and then eventually like moved up and became president s or heads of parliament and they shared some of these democratic ideas that they learned about in the us and at the time there was not even a universal franchise and they able to spread ideas of democracy home as well. And weve just we lose that component of some of the value of immigration because not relevant to us as american policy but spending time in the us in the short term and then going home be another way that people can a life and thats thats an important and missed out on that when we think only about people who stay here. And then the second point that vocation i know theres also theres a discussion in the book about labor Market Competition. How do you think of Housing Market competition . Because obviously there much more so than 100 years ago. Right. Housing supply has gotten way less elastic. And so that i think a is a concern to people. People. Wow. How do you think about that i think its, really a sad state of affairs that. We have to talk about housing competition in that way. Theres no reason why cant have more construction and more building build the housing that we need for immigrants in some of these really productive cities where immigrants want to be and where many American Workers want to be. So its artificial scarcity. And thats a whole other issue that we could get into on a whole other panel. But unfortunately, whenever we look at any issues in the it often comes back to housing and that creates a sense of competition with immigrants. I think that creates a lot of the concerns that people and so one way indirect way to possibly lessen concerns about immigration and lessen concerns about what is this going to do to make real wage is to think about more construction. Yeah so now lets turn to our final panelists. He will regale us from tales of when arrived in lowell, massachusetts and spends his saturdays at the Greek American political club. Youve got the cookies. Take it away now actually happened i appreciate your great mythology around me. I love the book and heres how much i love the book. Even though i got a wonderful free copy, went out and with my own money, i went and bought the kindle version so i would have access to it anywhere day night and if i needed to access high level immigration Economic Research, it was there for me. So i. So that is eye to eye. I also have it on kindle which i paid for myself. Its a great book and i think i think in a finer world and in a more just beautiful world, this book would be the end of the argument, right . I think it makes powerful, compelling case on issues of whether its fiscal burden or or mobility about, the benefits of immigration to the immigrants themselves, as you rightly know. And and to the United States and on a variety of levels. But my my concern is that where the debate is today, while this is a necessary airy book, it is not a ultimately is not a sufficient book for the debate. And as i was, i was a little spoiler. Some people dont read books when. I go on these panels, i read this book and took actual handwritten very detailed, detailed about different things. I found found interesting, but occasionally other things popped in my head. For instance, when you were writing about the innovation effects of immigrants, i thought about famous steve bannon, quote, that he was concerned there were too many asian ceos at a tech companies. And i and i was reading the book, i thought about especially given the fantastic economic evidence presented here i thought about a i went to between i think it was somebody from the cato and then someone from an antiimmigration group. And they were doing a debate and person from cato, the not presenting nearly as powerful. The argument is leaders in this book are so present are pretty powerful argument charts and data about about the benefits of immigration. Trying to dispel some myths that that they werent moving up the ladder that theyre all going to become public charges that kind of thing. And im like, wow i hate to be the person arguing the other side, the case. And then the other person came up and said, if this person and i can imagine someone saying this to you in a debate if this person had their way, look, there are i dont know the numbers. Theres a billion people who said they would love to be americans. But if this person had their they would let all billion into the United States and moment 30 seconds and that persons response to be he had won that big he had won that crowd because thats what they were fearing. That meant that they would let this country be overwhelmed by that billion. And a billion may not look like the people that crowd. And thats was over. And then the other thing this just happened, stan, thank you for mentioning the i find substack newsletter by i recently something about about and how and you know and the their impact on states and how well theyve done and what they contribute growth innovation and that i got a i got direct message from a conservative of a journalist who had a hearing your growth so i gave a lot you know Economic Growth your growth arguments are mostly then quite honestly i didnt care about that what you care about with though it was kind of a mishmash talking about like immigrants breakdown trust in, society, and therefore we have less coherent government policies. I know theres been some research looking at diversity and its support for the welfare state. In my heart i dont think this person cares about the welfare state or more expansive welfare state for all these, not for everybody. But he was merely sidestepping these kinds of arguments and i think the book is powerful enough that its going to be very, very to go up there and make the case that immigrants are bad for native americans. Immigrants are bad for for innovation that theyre all that they arent going to move up the ladder. I think its going to be. But this book, i think, will really helps making the case that those myths are untrue. But i in this climate that theyre just going to quickly move beyond that to all this other stuff saying, well, that may true but theyre bad for america these other ways they make us less cohesive. We dont trust each other and obviously i think theres Something Else going on there that has very little to do really with about trust and cohesion. And i think michael was referring it as part of his critique. So i so, i think i think to the argument i think that that the economic argument to be made, i think and michael and maria, you know, summed it up far better than i could i think. Absolutely fantastic. Again my concern is its not enough. And i have i have family. I might be concerned also that it might not be well, let me start by mentioning one thing, which is that i knew i was coming to an economics oriented crowd, so i decided to over chapter six. And chapter six is all about the cultural assimilation, because its true when we go on airplanes and we tell people what were working on, go to a dinner party, people say we eat, you, define assimilation as catching up in terms of wages. Thats not what i think of. I of like are these people really becoming you know, did they have thanksgiving dinner . Do they dress like us . They sound like us. And we well, lets take a look as much as we can in, the data. And its true that its hard to find measures this that you can compare past to present because thats a piece of it that we really wanted to tackle, which is the idea. And i even this on Rush Limbaugh that italian immigrants wanted to become Americans First that they jettison their old italian identity that they wanted their kids to learn english and that they wanted to embrace america. And these days, immigrants today are different. So we wanted to compare to the past. And we tried to come up with this many measures as we could. Our immigrants living immigrant neighborhoods, enclaves, or are they moving out into integrated neighborhoods, or are they learning english . Do they only marry other people from their ethnic group or country of origin . Or do they marry someone whos us or someone from another country and . Then the one that we think is the most fun is what are the names that immigrants choose for their kids as they spend more time in the country . Which is a really interesting barometer. Its like a temperature that you can on an immigrant a few times in their. So you have two or three kids, one when you first arrive, and then one of you years later, have you switched towards a more american sounding name and we found really surprised us because i think of all of the myths we really had bought into this one. We thought, okay, european immigrants in the past, theyre from europe, theyre not different. And immigrants today are from over the world. And today we have this like multiculturalism vibe that, you know, you can keep your own identity. But what we found is that immigrants actually shift away from ethnic names at the same pace. Now they did in the past. They marry of the group. They move out of neighborhoods at the same pace as the past. I think we just forget, you know, we have a lot of nostalgia about someone is an immigrant from three or four generations ago in my i think of my grandfather as immigrant but hes really not hes the child immigrants. And it was really my great grandfather who i never met and who really never learned english and who never moved occupationally and who basically it didnt really work. He had his wife work is running the front of the store and he was like studying talent all day and i never met him. So i dont think i dont know him. I dont think about him and i think about my own grandfather, of course, who like went to american schools, went to city college, became a doctor, like, okay, yeah. He assimilated but we forget that it was slower in the past than we imagine. And so if you actually use the data, you can move beyond these anecdotes and. Okay . Thats not going to convince people who want to find a reason to to keep immigrants out because you can bring as many data points and pieces of evidence as you want. If someone has a very strongly belief that immigrants are not going to become americans, theres not much you can do to convince. So i promise you, i will never go on, tucker carlson, because i dont think that theres going to be, you know, a day, an actual debate or an exchange of ideas there. But for anyone who is open minded and to look at the evidence, i think there is something in the book about these cultural questions. Chapter six, chapter. And the other thing is on the 1 billion number, you know, matter the has a book out and matt and i are going to have a conversation at princeton in september and his book is called 1 billion america and theres nothing streets of gold thats saying that we should go to 1 billion and theres nothing streets of gold that even says we should increase number more than we have now even though there is some good work by washington think tank saying maybe we should increase our quota for illegal immigration by lets say 100 or 150,000 extra people a year, but 100,000 people and a billion people is a couple orders of magnitude and just because the current level of immigration that we have is good and is successful does not mean that increasing that tenfold or more going to be good or successful. Its just i think that we need to really protect against going and there had been an idea floated in the Trump Administration the reins act in 2017 saying we should cut the number of legal slots by 40 and we should allocate on a point basis and that i think would be going backwards. And so at moment to sort of preserving what we have is where i think, you know, where we come down and then marginal increases as needed because we need in certain sectors and not to be worried about letting in workers who are low skilled because we think that thats going to be a forever condition. I just have one quick but yeah so if were going to keep the lets say the current levels and there is a 14 , 14 of our population if lets say, know we think thats a good number or we just given maybe a slow changing political atmosphere, we really cannot change that. I think some people might be surprised that you would say, okay, if we can only have percent, why not select four like the smartest, most talented 14 we could get . Why still have this kind of mix. I think theres a lot of jobs that are low skilled jobs people want and need. And lets start first with agriculture. The that there we already tried and michael is actually the expert on this you know we tried to shut down temporary agricultural work in 1965 with the ending of the program with the idea of well okay americans can do those jobs but no american wanted to those jobs at that pay and if you went up to higher pay it wasnt necessarily profitable to planting or maybe it was to plant, but only a certain set of crops. And so michaels work, the research program, shows that there was a shift into mechanization rather into us workers. And what ended up happening, i remember this quite well, being a kid in the late seventies, early eighties, is that there was a very limited set of vegetable available in the supermarket. You could only get vegetables that would be easily harvested by machine. So you had iceberg lettuce, you had a lot of frozen vegetables. You know, it was like peas and and now theres a whole of fresh fruits and vegetables and a lot of that comes from the fact that we have low skilled immigrant entry. So think that theres a market for those and products. So the scenario i just outlined would give us the great avocado crisis of like exactly 26 or something and. I would i would add a second arguing. Its not that easy for the federal government to determine who the best immigrants are. So if you look at the rate at which you which you mentioned, for example, that you can really tell that it was drafted by lawyers, because the easiest way to get a lot of points is to be a lawyer, it did really select on that which is is remarkable we dont have a ton of time left i want to go around the room for four questions and let go of a please hold wait for you wait for mike and then please give us your thank you very much. So i found the book marvelous. Im going to use many times. I thought it was fantastic. But one of the things about it in the end you talk about a grand bargain. So in this grand bargain, it could be very broad. One of your prior book, by the way talked about how blacks were disadvantaged by immigration and gained when immigration was stopped and they lost one immigrants came up from the south and i presume which is still same today. So in your grand bargain, would you have any provisions to offset the damage to africanamericans from migration and. Well, thats for a start. Try that one. Well, i think the main part of the grand bargain is legalizing immigrants who are already here thats what has been at issue for at least since 2013. There was a feeling we were holding out hope that the senate and the house pass pathway to citizenship in exchange for more intensive efforts on the border. And that did not pass in 2013. And thats the last that weve heard of an attempt comprehensive Immigration Reform and thats the grand bargain that were talking about is what to do about immigrants who are already here okay. I think there really is no for americans who going to be displaced by the migrants, especially blacks. Well, i think when were talking about immigrants who are already here, theres not a lot of strong evidence youre talking about future immigration, right. Keeping immigration at the current level. And there isnt really a lot of strong evidence that immigrants who are coming the us today are displacing workers. U. S. In your book you said in your book you saw my previous no i spoke to this book. You say this book that migrants come here they move to cities before and thats partly because theyve different economic incentives they start on a fresh table here and americans, on the other hand, have sunk costs, so to speak in their communities and so in immigration system, like with the opiates directly encourages a subsidizes workers more than American Workers. Now thats a what are going to address that fundamental feature of immigration policy in a grand bargain. Well i dont think theres strong evidence that immigrants are taking jobs or lowering wages. Us Foreign Workers even skilled u. S. Born workers, some whom are black but us Foreign Workers and immigrants do different jobs, even if were talking about people that we think of as High School Dropouts because lets not make this a debate. Its not absurd. Im the guy who was talking to lets lets not make this debate. Let me let me. Let me add one one comment to it. Lets say i dont think the way we usually run things is that if there is a Public Policy change or some development in the economy that the federal government goes out and hands out to to everyone who may may not have lost out there, thats thats i dont think thats how Democratic Capitalism typically works. But understand the the impulse its obviously how how other countries have organized especially until 1989 the u. S. Something and also what leah was talking about and visualizing migrants is going to reduce labor Market Competition for black workers because its going to make it so that theyre not working under minimum. They employers need to abide by regulations in the labor market. And so its going to make it easier for black workers to improve their economic outcomes. So thats that goes against your starting. And thank you for a wonderful presentation the i wanted to ask you being a migrant myself when you were talking about natives it similar to your idea. I know maria. When are we so my kid is not a native with my grandson being made and in that sense is this evolving time . Well technically the data if your us born us born and so you are a native and so your would be and your grandkids would be and i think that the point that maria was making was more of a Research Point about how it might be useful break out that group of the born because they tend to come in location with immigrant. They sort of colocate. But yes, as technically if youre born in the United States, youre an american now. Any other questions . Lets go there. And then im just going to ask a general question. You mentioned gender is a variable once. Is there any circumstances in which gender is irrelevant variable . That is a great and there is a reason why i havent talked about it much, and that is because when we talked about constructing data for the past and going to ancestry dot com and following people over time, how do we follow people . We use their names, we use the name, their last name and other features about them to try to find them multiple, including finding them when they grow. If they were living at home as a child of immigrants. The problem is in the past and today, but especially in the past, women changed their name at marriage. And so we lose to this data. There are some graduate students at princeton who are working on better ways so that we will be able to to the daughters of immigrants the past but at the moment theyre not in book and so because theyre not we do most of our comparisons between immigrant sons in the past and sons today. So dont have much to say about women at the one thing we do have to say is because of course, were curious. We include some information about daughters today and came up with some really intriguing patterns but we just felt quite constrained by our frame of trying to compare past and present. So its a wonderful question. And hopefully, you know, i can come back in a couple of years and tell you about how immigrant daughters, past and present. Stay if theres time. Id love to come in but only at this time. And ill wait. Yes, lets lets take one last question and then you can i thank you. My question is about correlation and causation and it gets to a myth. Oh, what if immigration isnt really the significant variable . Because the myth that immigrants are go getters in some kind of a poorly defined way, if there were some of measuring the go getter ness coefficient of a parent and then the success of the child maybe immigrant status of the first generation is somehow a a placeholder for something thats harder to measures. So when we first learned that the Second Generation, the kids of immigrants were doing so well, we thought it has to be that immigrant parents value, that they are more risk taking, that theyre more go getters. And its not to say that thats all wrong. We found that theres a special feature about immigrants that matters the most in explaining why their kids are doing so well, which is that immigrants are footloose. Immigrants have already revealed to us the fact that theyve left home, that there to break family ties in order, to chase economic opportunity. I in awe of my coauthor, whose english is not his first language, and he wrote this book with, me, and he lives his life primarily in english in anna maria and my former student at ucla is who are immigrants and who are living in a Different Society i could not do it and so its footloose nature of out of immigrants that generates our success in the us. What do i mean . If we look at an immigrant family and a us born Family Living in the same county, actually the the the kids of the immigrant family are doing no better. So why is it that immigrant immigrants and their kids are doing so well . Because theyre picking the places in the us that provide the most upward mobility and theyre able to do that because theyre not tied to family theyve come to the us already and broken family. So this gave me a whole new way of thinking about whats special about immigrants. Not to say that theyre not go getters or theyre not education oriented, but theyre especially what is unique about immigrants is that theyve moved and moving is a very special thing about a person and so there is elements to immigrants psychology and immigrant selection that might be playing part of a role and we ourselves found that geography was just so powerful that we up stopping there. All right. Lets go to michael for some comments. Yes. Thank you so much. Can you hear me okay . Yeah. Yes. I just want to say a word about africanamericans and women. The idea that immigrants hurt africanamericans is is older than some of the myths that led in her book. I an explicit justification for chinese exclusion in the 1880s in congress was that would help africanamericans during reconstruction. Frederick douglass was one of the people who were vociferous. Li argued that that was ludicrous. David reed, who coauthored johnson reed act of 1924, explicitly stated that it would help african and even justified african exclusion as something that would help africanamericans, which is also doesnt pass the laugh test. And theres been recent research in that regard, claiming to show a relationship immigration, low skill immigration and our incarceration of black americans that a pair of researchers at uc berkeley showed was due confounding from omitting the crack epidemic of the 1980s. So there really is a very, very weak base for this and especially the historical period that lee is talking about. You know, if one were to look at the situation, africanamericans in the jim crow south of the 19 tens and 1920s and 1930s, and come to the conclusion that the Thing Holding africanamericans back was all the european immigrants, that i just i wouldnt know what to say about that. Other than that, that would not be i would not be a serious analysis of what was going on in america at that time and what profoundly and and lastingly harming African Americans economic prospects. Its a its a its a canard that is often trotted out Stephen Miller likes to refer to this sort of a common supposedly sense fact but its really not something is that is well supported by Research Literature about about women and this is well ill close you know, theres a part in book where it notes, you know, there is in talking about one of its clearest policy recommendations, which is not to place too much stress on high degrees of selectivity, on education. The book reads, quote there is Strong Demand for services that less education, less educated americans provide. Today in construction. The restaurant industry, child and health care, agricultural etc. What i wished for more of was the next sentence of why is there so much demand for those services . Because those services are essential to Economic Growth and dynamism. Silicon valley does not just run on programmers. Silicon valley valley on child care and vegetable pickers and warehouses and security and so many other jobs that dont require even a High School Degree in many cases. And one of the most fascinating papers, this whole literature that i know of, is by Patricia Cortez of boston university. And josette asada, who demonstrated that low skill immigration has caused our greater Labor Force Participation by high skill women in the United States. Why . Because they make affordable elder care and child care more accessible. Thats of the ways that indirectly immigration spurs dynamism, innovation, specialization, and the long term growth of the economy. That is just that is just a terribly captured by simple supply and demand models that are that that stay in many of our heads from economics 1 to 1 and and this incredibly sufficed dictated book invites us to two to go beyond. Thank you, michael. I think unless any you have any closing comments or attack on each other attacks on each other. I think were were done here. Thank you all for coming. You so much. The book is all rise libertarian way with judge jim gray. The author judge james gray. Judge how did you get the title of judge . Well, actually, i was in i was a military criminal defense attorney in the