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