Transcripts For CSPAN2 City Of Dreams 20161211

What does the president of a college do . Well, Everything Else is a problem. [laughter] you pay for getting to do those things by dealing with proob. We had our monday morning meeting, i work with fabulous people, they are awesome. Very good at their jobs, very fine huipings, every monday morning for an hour or two, we sit in my office and goo everything wrong and theres always a long list and and we try to keep the college straight and running right. Theres always the risk, its a big business, theres always the kids showed up early in the term. Its early when we are doing this. They are all really happy right now. By the end of the turn they will look like vampires, because theyve been up too late and the stress is getting to them and they have the dark circles under the young bright eyes and you to cope with all of that and you have to watch the budget and the revenue side is important and i have a fair amount to do that but a lot of people do and so, yeah, im running big business and i couldnt do it for ten minutes without the people who help me. Do you ever wish you had taken the Heritage Foundation job that you were offered in. Im not saying that i was offered that job but i like this job a lot. I like that a lot. They are doing very well. Whatever happened about that, the right choice was made by everyone concerned and mr. Deman who run it is place is fun to watch and help and things that i can never do and, yeah, im very fond of this. One thing is first of all, if your viewers want to be a College President , you probably can be. There are thousands of them. Theyre always looking. I urge you not to do it unless you really love young people because they are the reward and their potential, right, one of the things i teach them is that actual is superior to potential. God, for example, in christianity and in judaism is no potency at all. Hes entirely actuality. Why . Because if he were potency that would mean he could change and get better and that would be imperfection. So its true that Abraham Lincoln in his prime is a superior human being to nearly anybody and too himself when he was young. But against that, the massive delight of growth and that is pleasing, courses through the being of every being that undergoes it and then ive been here a long time now so some of my students are grownups now and some of them are in very awesome places and many, many of them are very awesome people and theyre beginning to tell me what to do now all of the time. [laughter] and finally, larry, if you were to write an instant ebook on the state of the conservative movement, what would you write . Well, holds great promise. Its divided. The way to cure the division is for it to focus much more on the things that it is to conserve and in america that wuib the thing of the greatest Free Republic in Human History and its appeal to the laws of nature and of natures god and appeal to the selfevident truth of human equality. Professor at hillsdale. Salvation of free government. This is book tv on cspan2. Post a comment on our facebook page. Facebook. Com booktv. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everybody, good evening and welcome to the Lower East Side museum, my name is annie, im a Vice President for programs and education here at the museum. How many of you have visited in the past . Okay. How many of you have gone to 97 who orchard . Upstairs we will be eeping an exhibit. Weve done talks in here so maybe that was, okay, great, youre wonder. Excellent. People they fell like they came in 1992. What we are really excited about is an exhibit thats going to open, the third floor of this building is now being transformed into an apartment in which over the years we had a family who survived the concentration camps and came here and started the new life in Lower East Side, refugees will be telling their stories, a puerto rican migrant family that came here in the mid1950s and moved to this family, sas family and the wong family that came to the Lower East Side in 1965 and moved in the building in 1968. Many way ways to use the story to real people and elevate the stories in order to inspire connections past and present. So that what we do at the tenement is not only talk about the history of immigration and migration but connections to today. In a few hours some of you may head home to watch the third act of a of a debate where probably not much of substance will come up and so we are excited to be able to welcome you here tonight to have a really substantial conversation about immigration, past and present with two of our most Favorite School arson and people who have worked with us behind the scenes with educators and on our exhibits. I know some are you friends, sister, welcome here. We are also a museum about family and so we like to invite you into this broader family. Come back, come back to more exhibits, come back too more programs and welcome tonight to this program on city of dreams, one last thing i was going to say is that i dont know if you know this, but in 1885 a german immigrant got off the boat and he came, this neighborhood two blocks from here and had, i think, a barber store, he was a barber and his name was fredrik trump. All of the immigration stories are going to come together in some way. Im going to do a quick introduction and im also going to ask you and do it myself, have a phone, you might want to turn off the volume. Okay, i did it and and i also want to thank edison for helping sponsor the free tenement talks. Tyler, first book nativism and slavery, organization of american historians, his second book when the new york city book of 2001 the probably among educators top read books here. And he served as a consultant to martin for gaines of new york although i am told martin didnt listen to all of the suggestive, which is another [laughter] his ancestors came to new york from southwest germany, poland, ukraine and russia. Hes going to give a little bit of presentation and is going to be interviewing him and having a conversation. And author of awardwinning maximum city bombai lost and found. Finalist for 2005 pulitzer prize. New york times magazine, national geographic, harpers magazine, time and newsweek and has been featured on npr fresh air in all things is considered. Associate professor of journalism at new york university. Hes currently working on a Nonfiction Group of immigrants and contemporary new york. When that comes out tyler will vom and interhim here. He was raised in bombai new york. One thing to do after you watch the debate, if you want to be teared up, google his article melting his pot about one building in queens that tells the story about all the different people that are sharing an apartment building. Thank you, i was asked to give a ten to 15minute interview. Thats a daunting task. I will do my best to summarize it in ten to 15 minutes. In part i was inspired because as i worked on my second book, i abecame across such good material that i couldnt use because the stories, events couldnt take place in the 6 by 4 area that was 5 points and as i assummulated the stories, i really need something, some other way in which to convey them. The re main thing that inspired me was i wanted a narrative challenge. I sweat a word sometimes way too long. I wanted a challenge. The final reason why i wanted to write city of dreams is such a great story. Writing it made me happy telling the story with which, you know, sometimes the stories are terrible, sometimes theyre uplifting but they always teach us something and so i just felt like it was a story that i had too tell. Tells the stories of a lot of immigrants groups that came to the united new york, the focus are on the dutch and english and in 18th century english and irish and 19th century Eastern European and italians, 20th century, italians, Puerto Ricans, chinese and so forth. The book is held together by several themes though i try to do it in a subtle way. I didnt want the reader to be hit over the head with here is what you should be thinking now. I tried to make it subtle and i hope i succeeded in that. There are a couple of themes. This is an image that was probably taken not very far from here of a garment worker, probably an italian garment worker. One theme is that the immigrant experience has not varied much over new york citys history. One thing i found that the dutch werent that different at their core than the english and the english werent that different than the scott, the scotts from the irish, the germans from the italians, et cetera, all the way up to today where the biggest growing immigrant group in terms of proportion is south asians. The story is almost always the same. A hard journey to america, struggle to adjust, very little assimilation, better lives for themselves and their children. We tend to think of the experience of our own ethnic group as unique and, of course, in some sense every ethnic group is unique but in most senses the ones that really matter, the immigration experience is the same. Generation after generation, century after century. Another theme of the book is that antiimmigrant sentiment is as consistent a theme in American History as immigration. Here is an image from the right around 1900 that conveys some of the same ideas that you might hear in the press today. Throughout American History americans have worried about immigrants, feared immigrants, sometimes even hated immigrants, the dutch were very antienglish, they thought that the english would ruin america and the place they had created. The english were very antiirish by the mid19th century new yorkers were anticatholic. Later on those same immigrants not only the ones who had been anticatholic but the ones who had been discriminated against with catholicism become antisemite and so on and so forth up to antimuslim sentiment today. And peoples antiimmigrant sentiment runs a gamut of emotions. At other times condemned because they were too radical. Other times, many times throughout new yorks history, new yorkers have complained that immigrants were part of a secret army plotting to destroy america. Thats something that we heard throughout americas history and throughout new yorks history. The other theme of the book is immigrants are not any different than previous generation of immigrants. We think to tend that todays immigrants are not like my grandparents but in almost every sense, in almost every way, immigrants are just like our immigrant grandparents or great grandparents or even great, great grandparents. The difference is that we certify seef either relatively inriskant surface differences that may matter to us a lot because of our ethics identification or more often than not the result of the past experience of our own immigrants. New york will continue to be the worlds city of dreams. Thank you. [applause] as someone who has been working far too long on a book of immigrants today, i mean all of your achievement, how long did it take you to write this book . Well, if i have to admit it, 15 years. The writing itself maybe four years, a lot of Research Went into it. A lot of feeling i cant start writing until i know more and theres so much to learn and so much to read, so, yeah, 15 years and four of writing. Thank you, that makes me feel so much better. [laughter] im only on year nine of my book. But how did you well, what made you take up you referred to it in your talk, and what was the actual purpose of writing it . You chose a lot of immigrant memoirs and dairies and firstperson accounts and realistic characters in the book, so as a historian, how do you chose one approach or the other or another, lets say, just kind of history or history of the politics about immigration . What i wanted tood more than anything else was write stories that people want to read and so i feel like its always best to let historical actors tell their own stories and thus the memoirs are really you cant trust memoirs. People embellish and that makes things complicated. You learn to use your judgment and you hope and you hope to get things right and so that was my main concern, keep readers with finding the story gripping and i hope i succeeded. One of the gripping stories is the story of felix and you have 1853 draft rioting which were mainly irish against blacks and Republican Party and there were over a hundred and fame uis [inaudible] irish immigrant, we dont want to fight, fight and fight by the nigger, we think we are too good a race for that, the irish immigrant which not to long ago the own people had been discriminated against and now leading the fight against someone else. But own career of felixs career took a turn. Talk to us about that. Sure. Felix is quoted in dozens of history books as the epitome of the causes of the new york rise, irish immigrants who dont want to be made the equal of African Americans and see, believe that the war and emancipation are going to do that. And so hes cited as an example of this racism and certainly you cant deny that that sentence is full of racism. Yet what happened to him which hasnt been in any books written before is fascinating, you know, the he writes that in 1962, a few months later lincoln signs the emancipation and they join by the tens of thousands and, yes, the army has a lot of trouble the army decides that only whites can be the officers of their unit but they have trouble finding white serve as officers for black soldiers, strangely what i discovered, one of the soldiers who volunteers to lead one of their one of the regiments is felix, which struck me as very strange and he does this first in South Carolina and then in savannah, georgia in 1864 and 1865 and 1866. After the war he moves to washington, goes to law school at George Washington where i teach and then and then after the war he gets a job as a u. S. Attorney in of all places jackson, mississippi. And in jackson, mississippi he his job is primarily to prosecute bootleggers and klansman and here you have felix who up until 1862 was not the kind of person that would have much sympathy for African Americans. Now becoming a prosecutor of those who persecuted them. So i thought that was a great story. The book is with great stories. The book also made me realize that the personal hero of mine was richmond, had trouble so some of my students in the room and one of the things i like to do on the first day of class, i like to take them to the Staten Island ferry. Here this great celebrator of diversity, of the humanity of new york of all things new york, but in 1842, notoriously anticatholic and antiirish and theres much discretion about election violence, who knows what will happen in the election, you have this passage on page 192 on the book, on election day in the war, election in new york. Each faction attempt today prevent the sporters of the other from casting their ballots. The fight was bloody and horrible in that extreme reported the harold. Men were so beaten about the head that they could not be recognized as human beings. Detachment by police but native invaded the fixed war. [inaudible] they moved uptown to his home. Quote, had it been the hypocrite head that had been smashed, instead of the window we could hardly find it in our soul to be horrible. So you make this connection with election violence in the past and the fact that even a person as humane felt compelled to issue against immigrants. Its hard too appreciate today how both how protestants americans felt their nation was and how much they felt protestant and how much they saw catholicism as a threat and so because americans, so Many Americans thought that prosubstantiatism is what defined america, what made America Great, what gave us our freedoms, they described in american democracy, look at the world, the only place they have any are protestant nations. Obviously they are reading history oddly to come to such conclusions, nonetheless, thats what they believed. And so they thought catholic immigrants as a threat to them. In this particular case what whitman is specially upset about is something that we can all imagine we get upset about is the Public Schools and there was a big fight in this period. Catholic immigrants coming to new york and sending their kids to Public Schools were shocked to find that the curriculum of the schools were oo protestants and required to read King James Bible and participants of catholic children objected to that and instead of saying, i see your point, maybe we should, you know, allow catholic children to read from a catholic version of the bible and so forth, american protestants said, no, we must keep the schools protestants because thats what makes America Great and if we take that out of the schools, our children and our nation will suffer and people felt very strongly about that and thats that was what inspired whitman. The conflict in the book of shining moments and tolerance and speaking up for religious liberty. One of the most famous cases is where peter tried to band from moving and group of local mideastly english people in [inaudible] why along with the conflict has had tradition of tolerance and welcoming adversity. But in the book i was told that most of the people who find them eventually be recant. Yes, so peter also was not a very tolerant person. And for him even varieties that the dutch didnt like were out of line. He wanted to ban lutherans from amsterdam and you really have to let the lutherans come in. We need as many people in here as soon as possible. You cant keep banning people. He allows the lutherans to stay but restrictions on practicing religion and their form of protestantism without having minister be the head, that seemed that would lead to anarchy. Protest and say, you know, this really isnt right what youre doing banning all the groups and in particularly vanishing the quakers and the first example of a demand for religious tolerance in what becomes the United States. And as you know the part of the story people dont tend to know is he gets well, i disagree and he goes to the people who signed it and says, you either recant or youre ban too and so most of the people who signed it end up recanting and disavowing rather than find themselves exiled from the colony as well. Even in the example where people are pleaing for tolerance, not much is coming forward. Today the foreignborn population of new york, historic high point for immigration, 37 of the city are foreign born. Two out of three new yorkers are immigrants or their children. In 1855 when it was foreignborn and then by 1920 it was 41 . In 1970 to mere 18 and now its come up to 37 . So you know much of the team of the latter part of your book, but can you talk about the major laws or movements that explain radical shifts and and did you get a sense from how the christians are made in washington about which group to let in when . Thats a complicated question. First off, let me talk about the point about the flows and in particular too get a sense of how wild new york may seem very immigrant today how really in comparison to the past its not. So the best example is 1855 where 51 of the citys residents are immigrants but whats more interesting about the number is the fact that in those days, new york has generally had bigger family, lots of kids. And if you look at adults, seven out of ten adults living in new york were foreign born. Thats an incredible number compared to today. And so whereas new york today is a third less immigrant than it was in 1855, really if you talk about adults its even far less. In terms of how laws affect the flow of immigration, the interesting thing is for most of new yorks history laws have had nothing to do with the flow of immigration history and economics has had have had much more of an impact. And so people have tended to come to the United States either because they felt great opportunity Economic Opportunity here or there was a lack of that opportunity where they were coming from and so for most American History, laws have had relatively impact on the immigrants coming to the United States. The first time that that impact became significant is draft 1982. Specially small in new york. So laws only start to have a Significant Impact on checking the flow of immigrants in the 1920s when you have probably, probably the one time in American History where where large numbers of members of both Major Political parties agree that immigration should be restricted and thats primarily as a result of world world war i and in the wake of world war i where there are millions of refugees from the familiar situation, millions of refugees in europe who want many of them to come to the United States and americans dont want them to come and this fear that the economy would be you get the laws that are also very, very racist in their underpinning. Laws basically say if youre from england you can come to the United States in unlimited numbers, but if youre from italy or russia, the number is cut from where we are before world war i to after by well over 90 and by 1944, immigration from italy, from greece, russia, from poll poland is cut to something nothing. The population of new york gets so low. Only in 1965 that coong Congress Changes those laws and goes back to a system where no one gets privilege over another in sending immigrants. The final thing in terms of flow, today therein unintended consequences from the 1965 law which puts in place, still limits but exceptions to those limits for family members of immigrants already in the United States and the lawmakers dont anticipate how many family members of asian immigrants or latino immigrants are going to want to come to the United States and so thats one of the reasons why immigration grows so much more rapidly after 1970s than the lawmakers expect. Thats how my family came here. My uncle came here as an engineer to detroit in the early 1970s and by the early 1980s we had some 50 members of my family all over here and the family reference. But now after that, the diversities which was understand put in place they wanted more irish people to come. Thats not quite right. The more important thing about the diversity lottery is you can only qualify for the diversity lottery if you come from a country that has very, very few immigrants in the United States now. So people from the major and even the middling countries that are represented amongst americas population cant arent eligible for the diversity lottery. That is, however, youre getting larger number of immigrants from africa that we had before, from parts of south america than weve had before and from some parts of Central Eastern than we had before. Really only those places qualify for diversity lottery. You brought some really depictions of the way people make their way here particularly the irish fleeing from the potato and conditions to endure in the ships. Can you describe some of those passages . Sure. If ever you think you had a bad travel experience you should just think about what what the irish immigrants and the german immigrants for that matter and even the english and the dutch before them, pretty much all immigrants coming to the United States before the steam ships around the 1860s had to go through. The irish situation was by far the worst because they were so poor and the shipping companies they squeezed many more immigrants in the ships than they should have. The typical steerage compartment wouldnt have been bigger than this room. Maybe this is too wide, actually. About this length but less wide. And you could have, you know, in a room like this, what do we have here, maybe 75100 people, you would have had 200 people and maybe in some ships 400 people in this space. Some ships 500 people and so how did you do that you might wonder . Well, you had bunks and they would be tripled bunks. They would go from floor to ceiling and in addition, you would sleep two or three per bunk. One of the worst parts was, you didnt necessarily get the share the bunk with someone you knew because, you know, to squeeze as many people on, if you were a single woman and there was a family of three and theres one space for one more person in the bunk, you had to squeeze in with that family and after the civil war, the American Civil War that they decided to segregate single woman from all the men. Not only single men. First single women from the single men but it turns out the married men are just as bad of groping the single women. All the women have to be separate from all the men on the ship. But that only happens after the 18 by the 18750s. 1870s, one of the problems from being in the ships was a big problem. Not the kind of benign headlice we have today. Its embarrassing but dont cause you any problems but these are body lice and the body lice, the body lice would make you sick because they would the lice would defecate on you and you would itch and the the high fever and vomited and it was just a terrible thing. Imagine youre not on the top bunk. Where is that vomit going . Its going right onto you. You dont have a field bunk. And it was terrible and thats just one of the many diseases you could catch on a ship and so at the height of the irish potato famon a couple of people to be dead and a couple die more because they got infected. Some of those shifts, ships hundreds of people die. I will never complain flight delay again. [laughter] do do you know what happened when they get here, nobodys names got changed at ellis island but every immigrant movie we have ever seen, the immigration guy couldnt pronounce the long polish and then gave them a new american name. That did not happen. Im afraid that is one of the many immigration myths and probably one of the most prevalent ones that, you know, at ellis island the people who worked there had no authority to give you a name. When you left ellis island you didnt leave with any piece of paper at all. You were just the paper stayed behind you and there was nothing and here is your new name, there was nobody who could say to you here is your new name. What you have to realize is each immigrant or entire immigrant family had to be processed in one minute and by law each inspector had to ask all immigrants 30 yes, sir and questions and they had to ask all of those questions and there was no time to give you a new name. What we historians tend to theorize, a lot of immigrants didded to change their name to seem more american. We often laugh at how unamerican the names they chose are. One theory that a lot of immigrants that changed their names were embarrassed about that fact and so later said, well, it was that guy at ellis island that made me do it when it was in fact, immigrants that did it which chose how their names would be spelled. When they came here, the names sometimes changed but also the narrative that they carried with them. The American Jewish story at nyu, he points out that free to get into the country. They lied about age and occupation. inaudible . People lied to leave europe because they could be liable for military inscription. Theres strategic narrative to be offered when they got off the ships. What was up until the opening of ellis island there was no need to lie because there were no scary questions asked and up until that point you just got off the boat and looked in your mouth to make sure you werent sick and made you get off the boat. You have more culture of lyme and the funny thing is people lied object things that they didnt need to lie about. People added years to their age. They they had different jobs. No matter what you said your job was that you were lying. So all they looked for was that you were healthy because they assumed as long as you could wheel shovels and a pick, you could make it in america. If someone looked so sickly that couldnt do those things that would be turned away. But the other part that i want to mention that maybe youre not referring to is, you know, we tend of think of illegal immigration as this modern resent fen phenomena. Illegal immigration goes back a hundred years and really more in American History and as soon as those laws restricted laws were put in place in the 1920s immigrants start coming to the United States. Jewish immigrants and italian immigrants were Illegal Immigrants of the 20th century and, yes, thats a totally forgotten story and you look at the press of 1920s and pretty much exact the same stories that you can read about Illegal Immigrants from mexico or china are written except that protag anists are from italy or russia. They sneak in on boats. Combaterments, they do what Illegal Immigrants do today but they were from greece or russia or italy and we totally have forgotten the story and thats a huge part of American Immigration history. The story changed constantly on its surfaced yet not at all at its heart. They seemed totally different unlike previous immigrants. Some are unfamiliar to most native new yorkers. They appear to make no effort to learn english. They seem to be cut out mainstream from American Society and unlike previous generations, many believe that immigrants are Economic Vitality even worse, one well known new yorker called theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists [inaudible] why would he say such a thing . You want me to answer . Yeah. [laughter] i can guess. Thats donald trump in 2015, a famous new yorker. Yeah, so i think trump is perpetuating a lot of the myths about contemporary immigration but, you know, what you can say is hes following a long tradition in which americans have said precisely those things about immigrants for 400 years and so in that sense, trump is very much part of the american mainstream. I went to high school with guys like donald trump. I came here in 77 and was put in allboys catholic school. [inaudible] and, you know, i could run like hell from the italians and the irish and the germans who were in school, the teacher would call me and it was a really racist place but it was workingclass enclave that was totally being encroached upon by all the other minorities an now today the same school [inaudible] but trump grew up in a place call jamaica state, all white, and and now its not. So hes tapped into something. We dont like him but and 30 to 40 of the country that really hears him his message and believes hes onto something and by reading this book, you know, i understood that that was long tradition of not just immigration but very strong racist resistance to it. But talk about some of the earlier Donald Trumps who came across, the predonald trump of what we see today . Sure. Well, there are there are too many to name but one example i mention in the book is congressman martin of texas who in the 1920s proposed a lot of things that trump proposed today. One thing dyes wanted to do is cut off he we wanted to cut all immigration. He said theres too many immigrants. We have to have a rest. No more immigrants in the country. He went further. This is in the early 1920s, the second thing is to deport the immigrants who are already here who hadnt become american citizens yet so he said, we should give all the immigrants one year and if theyre not an american citizen within one year, theyre kicked out of the country, which which what he was implying that immigrants had a choice and they could get naturalized in a year if they wanted but you had to be in the United States five years before you could become naturalized, so for a lot of the immigrants that were here that wasnt even an option and Congress Seriously debated the proposals, they end up not getting enacted and instead we have the immigration restriction i talked about, but thats one example. I guess the other example i talk about is the nonothing party, antiirish party from the 1850s, whats interesting about the nothingnothings is in contrast to the nonothing for all their faults never want to restrict immigration. They never called for any restriction on people coming to the United States, they didnt want to restrict the they did want to lesson the political influence but in their case what they wanted was a 21 year wait before immigrants can vote. Today is five years. Say said someone born in the United States have to wait 21 years before they can vote, why shouldnt an immigrant learn what it is to be an american and so that never gets enacted either, but they do elect more than a hundred people in congress so they were a very cig significant, not a majority but a very significnoter. Thats significant minority and a large number of americans thinking well, todays immigrants arent the right people. We dont want these people anymore if we cant have immigrants like my grandparents, we shouldnt have anymore at all. Thats been going on in the United States for as long as we have been a nation. I dont think theres any group in the country today that ive demonized as muslims. Youre right. 56 of americans view the values of islamic incompatible with those of americans. So when trump proposed muslim ban, a very large minority or even a majority of americans who originally went along with this. Yet every argument typically put forward as to why muslims they wont accept religious pluralism. They can never assimilate and incompatible with the principles that make America Great was once made again irish catholics. [laughter] but talk a bit about muslims and immigration to the country and the city. One thing i will point out about that passage is i havent heard Hillary Clinton Say Something like that but president obama a few a couple of months ago said pretty much exactly that in a speech and a speech i didnt think was well enough covered because trump gets, he gets all of the attention, but in terms of muslim immigrants, so new york actually has a much longer experience with muslim immigrants than most people know. We actually have believe it or not a little syria, so syrian immigrants have a long history, a little syria in the beginning of the 20th century and early 1900s, the very Lower West Side of manhattan, kind of on the west side, south of where the World Trade Center was, along washington street in particular. And so this was a fairly large vibrant syrian community. So it was a little more than you think. It had both christians and muslims but it was a large and well known part of the city, exotic neighborhoods and whenever people would write up a profiles of ethnic new york, always little syria was part of the description. And it kind of disappeared for reasons that nobody is exactly sure about after world war i, there isnt much more immigration from there and it appears that the syrian immigrants moved to other parts of the United States, detroit became a particular place where syrian immigrants moved and faced from the citys memory. Today is the Largest Group of immigrants dominicans. The Fastest Growing is the mexicans. Well, it depends how you define Fastest Growing. The mexican, according to census figure the mexican immigration has leveled off. In terms of percentage the fastestgrowing immigrant population in new york with the south asian muslims. So bangladesh, places like that. In terms of sheer number the Fastest Growing is probably still chinese immigrants and very soon chinese immigrants will outnumber dominican news in new york. And Staten Island, actually huge numbers of immigrants, africans, in terms of proportionate fastgrowing immigrant. Correct, in terms of proportion, Staten Island immigrant poopulation is growing faster than any other place yet Staten Island has the by far the lowest proportion of immigrants in its population. The city wide is 37 foreign born. Its the smallest but its growing proportionally the fastest. You said in your introduction that really very little has changed immigration, the kind of people who come here and the experience and they are accepted into the nation economic and political life, they get to [inaudible] and the way in which they come here and the way they assimilate, but in one thing, in one way things have changed. So the people who came here on this ship, they werent able to go back to their homelands regularly. They might go two or three times in their life or some not at all. But the people that come here now with the availability of International Airfares when my family came over, we went back and sometimes we would go back two or three times a year. Does it make it more for todays immigrants to continuously refresh their cultural ties to the homeland and also to forget less of a demand that we belong to an american identity . Their foreign identity as it were. Most famous example of this but theyre not at all the only example. So, you know, we think, oh, well, it is a jet plane. We can get there in, you know, 10 hours, whatever. But, you know, someone 100 years ago, making it across the atlantic in a steamship in six days seemed fantastical also and seemed to bring their place of birth amazingly close. So i think, i certainly understand what youre saying. But immigrants in the past also had lots of other ways to stay in touch. Today, it might be texting, that seems so instantaneous, that has to be new, someone who doesnt know texting the telegraph is instantaneous and amazing. And so the i immigrant newspapes and is one thing. You could live in new york for decades and not pick up a english language newspaper and read the newspaper in your native language. That paper would not have very much new york news t would have all the news from your homeland. It was as if you were from athens or minsk, wherever you would be from because you would find the news every day. So i dont think the difference is as great as you might think. Certainly from the i immigrants state of mind is remarkliably lar. They saw them very much in touch with their homeland and very connected with it, very aloof from america, which was so far outside of their immigrant enclave. Your own family emigrated from europe. Jews from Eastern Europe and came into this neighborhood and moved on to brownsville. I am reminded of a great book, which is about his growing up in brownsvillle and looking for the world beyond. And then you talk about the importance of food to the Jewish Community and the jewish deli as a occupying a similar place as the the pub might to the irish. Tell us hopefully of your own family immigration to new york. So i have ancestors who came from whats now southwest germany and from poland and from, from what is now ukraine, what is now what is now russia. The earliest of my immigrant ancestors came to the United States in 1858, came from germany. They settled in buffalo before they came to new york city. The next kind of wave in my family came from, whats now poland but then was, part of poland that germany had, or prussia to be exact was taken over. They came in the 1870s. And then the an binders dont come to the United States as and lived exclusively in this neighborhood as garment workers. My greatgrandfather who was a presser in various garment work places. Until finally he saved up enough money to bring the rest of the family which was my greatgrandmother and my grandfather and his four or five sisters. And they came over in the early 1920s. And as soon as, pretty much as soon as they get here he moves the family to brooklyn, to brownsvillle, as you said. But then theyre constantly looking i suppose to save money. So in brownsville a little while and move further east to east new york. They move even to what might be the new loch area. When they do better they circle back and head towards flatbush. And that is where they end up my grandfather. See that at one point they lived only a block 1 2 away in my guess maybe somehow when they met. I have a young jewish friend who bought an apartment here on the Lower East Side which is now the hippest neighborhood in the city. And when her jewish grandmother heard this, threw up her hands in horror. I spent half my life trying to get out of that place. [laughter] so. Weve got about 15, 20 minutes for questions. [inaudible]. I wonder do you think we americans have learned anything . If you have, what has been the process and what is blocking us, both . Thats a great question. I think what you see over the 400 years that i cover in the book is that americans are very slowly but surely becoming more tolerant. Its, it is kind of in fits and starts and, doesnt always progress in a Straight Line but, i think americans are overall becoming more tolerant and i think the proportion of the population that would look, that looks at immigrants and, thinks immigrants are a positive for American Society is, is probably at an alltime high. Look at unhappiness with immigration to date, a huge part is illegal immigration. It may seem surprising given the Political Climate today, but when you look at polling numbers, about questions about immigration, most americans, huge majority of immigrants have no problem with legal immigrants. It is Illegal Immigrants that is the biggest problem. And that is a huge change, because for most of American History, any kind of immigrant was seen as a threat. I feel like it may be hard to see, given the Political Campaign today i would say on the other hand, think about how the campaign is going and think how the republican nominee has not been bringing up immigration. I think that is because he has learned it is not such a winning issue. He cant get a majority of voters using immigration as something to attract voters. That is true. There is sizable minority but, but not as big as you once thought. There have been lots of president ial candidates who tried to use opposition to immigration to win the presidency. Pat buchanan was one. The governor of california, what is his name . 20 years ago. Pete wilson, exactly. And he they have made that the centerpiece of their campaigns and they have always failed and so, my guess is its going to fail again [inaudible] wait for the microphone. I have a question about climbing the social ladder among the i am my glance. As i understand earlier in American History, they are mostly people, people from agrarian countries and poor countries who are coming here. Well now, we have schooled and skillful people emigrating to america. How does the process of climbing the social ladder in america part of immigrants look like now . So i think in youre absolutely right. The main thing that changed is due to the immigration laws that have been enacted since 1965, have favored, given the second biggest preference to people with job skills that are in short supply. So that could be engineers, like perhaps in your family in new york a lot of filipino nurses, in the whole country, a lot of filipino nurses. Yes, it is definitely true there are a lot of skilled immigrants. But theyre not the majority. And so, so, for what is still the majority who are people who come with relatively few jobs skills, the story is very much the same in which immigrants tend not to move very far much up the ladder themselves with the exception if they become successful entrepreneurs. If you look at occupations they dont move very much. In terms of financial status they improve their lives a lot. Large minority of immigrants are let into the country because theyre it specialists or doctors and so forth. For them, there isnt so much moving up a, on pagessal ladder as it is perhaps adjusting to becoming socially acceptable. Becoming mainstream is a big concern. Something you see that those immigrant will write b. Their frustration, that i have one, example, i mentioned in the book of this doctor from india who complains that people meet him and they assume, oh, are you a taxi driver . It makes him so mad because that is the stereotype. So, that, to many of those immigrants is the biggest concern. How do you override those prejudices rather than move up in economic ladder. [inaudible]. Yeah. The question, the comment was, she imagined it would be very similar with immigrants who become writers. And i imagine youre exactly right. This is sort of following up on the point the woman just made about the jobs and moving up the ladder. Particular any in new york, do you see that i am any grant groups immigrant groups come and take the jobs of police officers, firemen. I have noted in the last few years, a tremendous amount of, south asians in, traffic officers, police officers, and, i think it follows the pattern. Im just wondering if that is continuing . That is something that i just happen to notice anecdotally or is it for real . Certainly in new york the Police Department and the City Government in general is making a big effort to have their public face in particular groups like the police, match the faces of new yorkers more generally. Especially with police where you need trust, having more police who represent the ethnic diverse of new york is something that has been important. I guess the difference would be, the irish manage to dominate the police force when they came to new york in a way that, you dont see anymore. And that i find kind of interesting. That, irishamericans are still very large presence in the new york police force, even though irish immigrants arent such a large presence. So, yeah, in some ways, definitely it has changed but in some ways not as much as you might expect. Ive actually been following the for my book, so i follow the Police Academy for one class. And, a class of 900 recruits spoke 47 different languages. At the Graduation Ceremony in Madison Square guarden, they had 35,000 cops there and, you know, the, people who were at the top of the class were being celebrated. Valvaledictorian i forget the n. The number two person in the whole class was a short bangladesh man, Mohamed Islam the and he salutes. Nypd is composed of irish bagpipers stepped forward to serenade him. That is the nypd today. That is a great story. Who has the microphone . I find it interesting you bring up how the shift of the immigrant population, how they shift who gets the, who basically gets the brunt of the how do i say, prejudices . As a first generation born chinese immigrant, child of immigrants, i notice within the Chinese Community theres a huge, huge skirmish in that you have a whole community who has a huge dialogue about the antimuslim sentiment and for many of us, were listening to, reading about it in our communitys newspapers and listening to the radios. You have a lot who are very upset that there is people within our community who are so antimuslim and were trying to explain to them what youre express something complete hypocrisy considering the people who came before us, had to deal with the chinese exclusion. Based upon your experience what can be done to heal the rift with the community, that has to deal with it . I mean, what youre describing there is in a story replayed in American History over and over again. The group thats discriminated against turns around and becomes chief discriminator against the next group of immigrants. English did it to the irish. The irish did it to the italians. The italians did it to the Puerto Ricans and right on to the present. There seems to be, you know when you ask why, obviously that is the same, your rationale that is same one occurs to me, the hypocrisy, how could you do that yet immigrants, one of the ways immigrants assimilate take on this notion that they are what they define america and this new group doesnt. And they quickly forget the way in which they have been portrayed, they could argue, if i was a psychologist, i could make a good argument for this, even part of the process of becoming american and part of what makes you feel american is to express that prejudice, that you see, you see your quoteunquote american friends do it. So you will do it too. So that is something that is not surprising. I just want to bring up two points to carry on with what the gentleman said before. Things i have actually have friends of the Asian Community that are now serving in fdny and nypd they told me something very interesting, that when they were being recruited, they did feel there was a sense that there wasnt extra effort to recruit within the minority community. So it will reflect changes faces of new york and things when i look at the nypd and fdny. Theyre not just serving at houses in elizabeth street and on in chinatown. Theyre throughout the five boroughs which i think is great. The thing that, to carry on to what youre saying, the thing is, that we have an older generation that, to be honest, frankly, that is ashamed of the Younger Generation that is working with the asianamericans Civil Liberties union to help promote the tolerance for muslim community. Thats fascinating. Thank you. I had a question about ellis island. You said when people, if they looked as they couldnt use a shovel or too weak, i know there was hospital there. Were they kept there until their health improved or were they sent back . Who paid for that . Presumably, as they got off the horrible sick and really sick and put on another horrible ship they probably died on the way back . That is a good point. The way it worked, if you had a curable disease you were put in the hospital at ellis island and allowed to try to recover. If you did, you would be let into the country. That is what happened actually to my grandfather and my greataunt who apparently after suffering through world war i. There is the famine in ukraine. By the time they get here theyre apparently really sick. So theyre in the hospital at ellis island for six weeks until theyre finally let into the country. If you have something that is curable, youre allowed to the recover. If you you have something thats incurrable, like, one of the things that got you excluded was this disease called tracoma, which was an eye infection, and that at the time was, before antibiotics was not curable. If you had that, you were sent back. And the tragedy of that was, a lot of people didnt even know they had it because it was often asymptomatic. So you could get to the United States and never know youre sick until you got there and were turned around. But the one, starting in 1909 there was a the head of ellis island was william williams. He believed that too many, what he called riffraff immigrants were being allowed into the United States. So he on his own changed the interpretation of the laws and made them more stricter. So one of the things he did was people who he, he instructed inspectors to take people who werent sick but looked like they were congenitally weak, and this was used mostly against Eastern European jews. This person, he is never going to be able to wield a pick axe. So that became a new way by which you could ban people. And you couldnt go to the hospital and get better from that. But what does happen is the jewish immigrant aid organizations become very fierce defenders of people who are singled out for that. So a lot of them who are initially told that they have to go home are eventually let in because of efforts of these attorneys. Should we let a question in the back . I feel bad for the back there. I dont see any hands back there yet either. Maybe that is the quiet section. Is your hand up way in the back . No . All right. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, housing policy and how it relates to the immigrant experience both like in the past and now . Sure. For much of, for much of new yorks history, there is, there are no, there are no housing codes, and you know, with the, the main thing that dictated shape and size of new york houses was shape of the lot which was typically 25 feet by 100 feet which create this is very narrow type of building. And then, the height of the buildings was dictated mostly by how much the walls could hold before the building would collapse. That is why, you look at most of the buildings around here, and rare that theyre higher than six stories. That seemed to be as much as people imagined you could build them before they might topple over on to the building next to them. But, starting the late 19th century, housing codes develop. And start to put in restrictions and, so in some way, and reformers believed that legislation they believe they can make immigrants lives better. Laws are put in place for instance, limit number of people who can occupy a single apartment or certain amount of space. But those laws are typically flouted. Some of jacob reeses best photographs of immigrant life in new york around 1890, he would go on inspection tours with the Health Police and find these overcrowded buildings. And then, new york landowners have always been very creative in how to get around that the good intentions of reformsers. So at one point a law is put in it saying every room has to have a window. And so the thought is, in that way if you have to build tenements have to have windows, the owners will knock holes in the walls and build windows in the outside let in more fresh air. What did build es do . Put window between one room and another room in the apartment. In that way they satisfied law. The landlords wield ad lot of political clout. The law didnt initially allow for that. This is the tenement act of 1901. New york landowners pushed back and in 1902 and 1903 get the law changed and make it less restrictive and more friendly for landlords. They rarely talk about the way the law was scaled back because of pressure from new york citys very politically powerful landlords. So, so there is always been the intention to make housing policy make immigrants lives better and, i should say it is not just landlords. Immigrants themselves are often fighting against these things too. Immigrants want as many boarders as possible to make their lives better there. Is no one group that you can say solely is responsible for the failtures of housing policy to improve immigrants lives. I wanted to take the opportunity to jump in, if you want to see an apartment with one of those windows that is in a partition, we have got a few. Also, first of all, thank you both for this wonderful textured, layered, wonderful conversation. [applause] this is what we do here every day and for, i know that several of the people in the audience are educators who are going to be able to take this wonderful information and bring it back to our tours and respond to your questions as well. So i think to end on kind of a positive note, i wanted to talk, in 30 seconds of the first woman voter at 97 orchard street was a woman named sarah. She was an immigrant. She had come from romania. We know about her because she was the first woman voter and we were able to locate her children who talked about her life and her daughter, Jacqueline Richter related growing up in the 1920s and she and her sister had two best friends, who were sisters, sisters who went to each others houses for food. They had this nice relationship. She remembered her mother saying about the Lower East Side and the tenements, you learned to judge people by themselves and not what they are. That is how we made friends. We werent taught bigotry or anything. There is good and bad in every race, creed and color. You stay away from troublemakers and make nice friends with the nice people. These nice words can buoy us against this tradition of the times which there is antiimmigrant sentiment. There is also this idea of new york being a place where people from all of these different places have come together and developed a kind of a commonplace cosmopolitanism, that we at the daily life at Tenement Museum inspire to talk about and having this conversation helps us tremendously. So thank you all. You can buy this book. Oh, one last thing. There was a joke, talking about immigrants who changed their names. Thank you also for sharing that because we have 220,000 visitors every year and approximately 25 of them will bring that up, that their names were changed at ellis island. This helps us in the crusade to rid people of that notion. But you can purchase this book, 15 percent off here. And have it signed, but, just bear with us. What we need to do because we are a, not a fancy museum or a fancy place but just humble Tenement Museum, well move the autograph table will function in the back. If you stay in your seats to keep us a little safer, two section while we move that back, well then dismiss you. You will be able to go but we hope you can stay, purchase a book, have a conversation and thank you again for this wonderful conversation and your wonderful questions and presence. Thank you so much. [applause] this is booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Here is our prime timeline up. 6 30 p. M. , the book imperfect union. The search for his son in the aftermath of gettysburg. At 7 30 p. M. , psychologist James Mitchell discusses his involvement in the cias enhanced interrogation program. On booktvs afterwards program at 9 00 p. M. Eastern, eugene solstice examines whitecollar crime. At 10 00, fox news anchor megyn kelly recalls her life and career. We wrap up our sunday primetime lineup at 11, former Army Intelligence officer, nina