Kraut, you have spent your professional career as an historian studying u. S. Immigration. Many americans look to the statue of libertys famous poem by emma lazarus that says give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free as the embodiment of the way we think about this country and immigration. As you look at history, does it track with the reality of how we have treated immigrants . Dr. Kraut the history of immigration in the u. S. Doesnt track at all with emma lazaruss wonderful quotation. It has been a lovehate relationship. In the 19th century, there was a popular immigrant saying, america beckons but americans repel. That is more accurate as to how our relationship with immigration has been in the United States. One of the great ironies is that emma lazarus wrote the poem in 1883, and one year before, in 1882, the u. S. Passed the chinese exclusion law, excluding chinese laborers from coming to the United States. We would pass in the years after that increasingly restrictive legislation. So we want immigrants to come. We beckon them with opportunity. We beckon them to take jobs as skilled, semiskilled, unskilled labor to build our country, construct our economy, but after they get here, frequently they are the objects of scorn. They are discriminated against. They suffer some of the worst acts of prejudice imaginable. This is a very complicated relationship that america has with the foreignborn. Susan when there are large waves of immigration, such as this country has been experiencing over the past 20 years, when there are backlashes in society, what are they caused by . What triggers people . Dr. Kraut the backlashes are caused by a precipitating factor like an economic downturn, or a spike in the size of the migration, or the identity of who is coming at a particular moment. There are lots of Different Things that can cause an outbreak of the kind of nativism that we have seen quite recently. It is hard to identify one single thing, but we know that it operates cyclically. There are moments when the United States is more welcoming and moments when the United States is not welcoming at all. We watch this with great interest and try to identify the moments when these things are happening. Susan is the current period of turmoil and debate over immigration different in any important way from past times this country has gone through . Dr. Kraut i would argue the current ways of nativism, of antiimmigrant sentiment, of xenophobia is not different in what we have seen in the past. While it seems to us to be peppered with acts of violence and ferocity, there have been other acts of violence, antiimmigrant riots before the civil war, antiimmigrant riots in the 1880s. There have been lots of moments in American History when the antiimmigrant sentiment has been translated into true ugliness. It has brought great harm to the foreignborn. I would argue the current wave, as unpleasant and offputting as it is, is not all that unusual in the history of our country. Susan what causes congress to ultimately act during these periods . Dr. Kraut Congress Acts most frequently when there is enormous pressure from one sector of the population to have revision. For example, the chinese exclusion law of 1882 was passed very largely because of pressure coming from the west coast of workers who feared chinese competition, antichinese racism, all of that pressure kind of built up during the 1880s, the late 1870s and early 1880s and by 1882 you have the chinese exclusion law. In the case of one of the most restrictive Immigration Laws, the 1924 law, what went on was, the United States had had its fill of foreignborn labor. Our industries were fueled by foreignborn labor. We had had a peak period of immigration, and at the end of the first world war, there was the red scare of 1919. By the early 1920s, there was lots of bipartisan sentiment within congress to shut the door and to do so with the kind of law that would limit the arrival of those immigrants who were the least popular. That included southern italians, Eastern European jews, russians and so on. The law was structured to get, to keep those groups out. Susan starting in the 1880s to the present day, can you identify either major party with one stance or the other . Dr. Kraut i think the republicans over the course of time have been the party least sympathetic to immigration. But there were also a significant element within the Democratic Party that was antiimmigration, as well. For example, the early 20th century. In order to keep up wages of American Workers, they were antiimmigrant in sentiment. Many southern democrats had prejudices, racial prejudices and dont want large numbers of southern italians and Eastern Europeans coming to the United States. Both parties have groups within it that are antiimmigration, and they become part of an antiimmigrant bloc that is effective enough to pass restrictive legislation. Susan if the first major legislation was in the 1880s, was the country before that . How was Immigration Law handled . Dr. Kraut in the period before the civil war, immigration is a state matter. The federal government has nothing to do with immigration. Each state has its own quarantine laws governing immigrants who might be sick upon arrival. They also have inspection procedures in place. The busiest port on the east coast is new york. In 1855, Castle Garden is opened as the new york state immigration depot. It is there that new york state immigration officers interrogate newcomers, and it is there that volunteer physicians examine newcomers to see that they are not bringing disease to the United States and they will be sufficiently robust to support themselves. It is strictly a state matter until the law of 1882. At that point, the Treasury Department takes over immigration, but does business with the states, in effect contracts with the states to enforce american Immigration Law and restrictions. Susan clearly a blanket of different laws became unworkable. Dr. Kraut exactly. Susan lets get a snapshot of waves of immigration before federal laws. First of all we have to , acknowledge quite a large contingent of involuntary immigrants, africanamericans who were brought in through slavery. What percentage of the population were they prior to the civil war . Dr. Kraut prior to the civil war, there are 4. 5 million slaves in the United States. By virtue of a compromise of the constitutional convention, the International Slave trade was ended in 1808, but there was plenty of smuggling. There was plenty of replenishment of the slave population. 4. 5 million slaves by the time of the civil war. I have a problem with calling them involuntary migrants. They were slaves, a distinct category, not involuntary migrants, not the same as indentured servants or any other category we recognize. The first real Mass Immigration to the United States in the post revolutionary period begins slowly at the end of the 1830s, and picks up in the 1840s and 1850s. That is the great migration of irish, germans, scandinavians coming to the United States. 4. 5 Million People between 1840 and 1860. Susan what would that be as a percentage of the existing population . Dr. Kraut by the time of the first census in 1790, there were under 4 Million People in the United States. Susan so essentially it doubled the population. Dr. Kraut it was in that direction. It is extraordinary. Susan when we talk about the current time as the greatest immigration into the United States, history doesnt seem to bear that out. Dr. Kraut the history of the United States bears out that this is a country that is constantly hungry for newcomers. Why . Because our own population simply will not sustain what we need to settle the land, and to produce prosperity, and once we enter the Industrial Revolution in the postcivil war period, the need for lowcost labor is essential to our capitalist direction. Where are we going to get that labor from . We will get it from abroad. Even prior to the civil war, we begin to see the irish, who are very often a source of lowcost labor, we see the germans, who are escaping the aborted revolutions of the 1840s and the german states, coming with their skills and crafts. We see the scandinavians, who are going to be farming the land in the northern part of the american middle west. This is an Extraordinary Movement of people onto the north american continent, and its going to have dramatic economic and cultural repercussions. Susan at the same time on the west coast, the first wave of chinese immigrants were coming. What brought them . Dr. Kraut they are coming from a very poor province and they are coming because of the gold rush. They heard gold has been discovered in california. They are coming to make their fortune. Of course, most of them dont discover gold, but they do find jobs working on railroads, working in the mines, servicing the working communities. They are cooks, doing laundry. They are also doing mining and railroad building. By the time of the chinese exclusion law in 1882, there were 300,000 chinese in the United States. Susan mostly in Northern California . Dr. Kraut mostly along the west coast. Some of them are going north and end up in wyoming and a variety of different places. Susan before we get into the details of the chinese exclusion, i want to learn a little more about you. How did you end up having this as your academic specialty . Dr. Kraut i started out my academic life as a civil war historian. I was trained in the civil war and the antebellum period. By the time i left graduate school, i realized that i had an increasing interest in how immigrant voters were casting their ballots with respect to issues like slavery and many other issues, as well. I was trained in voting behavior and came at it from that angle. Increasingly, i knew that i really wanted to work in immigration. And that would require, since i was done with my phd, it would require retraining on my own. I did a lot of reading and a lot of teaching of a preliminary immigration course and so on, and i published my first book in the early 1980s called the huddled masses the immigrant in American Society 18801921. And that launched me into immigration history. Later in my career, i discovered i was interested in nativism that was particularly medical in content, the accusation that newcomers were bringing disease to the United States. But i had no background in the history of medicine. I had to retrain over a number of years in the history of medicine in order to do a book about the stigmatization of immigrants as disease bringers. Susan how many books have you done so far . Dr. Kraut if you included edited and coauthored books, nine. Susan all and immigrationrelated topics . All on immigrationrelated topics . Dr. Kraut except for one, which is devoted to the antislavery movement. The rest all deal with immigration. Silent travelers germs, genes, and the immigrant menace, which i published in the mid1990s, squarely addresses the issue of health, disease, and immigration. Susan some of the things i note on your biography include your long tenure on the statue of liberty Advisory Board and ultimately chairing it. What was the mission of that group . Dr. Kraut back in the early 1980s, a young representative of the Parks Service visited me in my office. Her name was heather. She had read my book as a graduate student at the university of minnesota and asked me if i would like to be part of a group of historians and designers and architects who were gathering in West Virginia to talk aboutry the possibility of a museum and the restoration of ellis island. Now, i said of course. Absolutely. I was fortunate enough to be part of an Advisory Committee that was formed, historians, who basically were a creature of the statue of libertyellis island foundation, the organization to the organization that raised money for the restoration of the statue of liberty between 1984 and 1986, then the creation of the Ellis Island Museum and the restoration of part of ellis island so it could be a place for visitors to learn about the immigrant experience. In 2003, i was appointed chair of that history Advisory Committee and i have served in that capacity ever since. Our most recent victory is the opening of a new statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island at the opposite end of the island from the statue of liberty, which tells the story of the statue, its construction, its role as a political and commercial iconographic figure. We think it is very exciting. Susan you served as a consultant to a lot of contemporary media organizations, telling stories about American Immigration. How do you think the American Media does telling the immigration story . Dr. Kraut i think the media does a good job in telling the immigration story when they take the trouble to talk to people who can put it into a larger context. Whether it is historians, sociologists, cultural anthropologists. The immigration story is complicated. It is deeply entwined with the larger american story. When people ask what i do for a living, i say i write the history of a Great Republic but i write part of that history more than any other, and that is the part dealing with the peopling of america. If you want to understand that, it has to be contextualized. For me, i like to serve the media. I believe historians should do the same. It is important, this story, and to critical to our country to get it wrong. Susan lets return to our narrative and the 1882 chinese exclusion act. I want to start with a piece of video from our library. This act made its way to the Supreme Court. Lets show you a bit of an interview we did on the chinese exclusion act. [video clip] they were very, very much the subject of discriminatory activities. I am reminded of the case of the people vs. Hall in 1854, a very early California Supreme Court case in which several chinese witnesses saw a murder. They testified honestly what they saw. The man was convicted, and his clever defense attorney appealed the case to the California Supreme Court and argued there is a law in california that says indians and blacks cant testify against a white man, and there are only three classes of people in the world, whites, blacks and mongolians. Indians included chinese, and chinese were mongolian, indians were mongolians and the California Supreme Court lost bought that argument. If we let them testify against a white man, the next thing you know, they will be sitting on a jury box, they would run for the legislature, they would vote and they might even become judges. What a terrible thing that would be. Very racist type of decision. So it set the tone of california history for about the first 100 years. Susan the act did go to the Supreme Court. How did the Supreme Court treat this case . Dr. Kraut i think the Supreme Court treated it badly. In the sense that the chinese exclusion law lasted all the way until 1943, and it is only in 1943 that we finally abandon our efforts to keep chinese out of the United States and from becoming citizens of the United States. That was a great injustice. It speaks to another theme, which is important for us to explore, and that is the theme of racism within American Immigration policy. There are plenty of reasons why americans reject particular immigrant groups. Sometimes, it is on the basis of religion. Antisemitism, anticatholicism. Always on the basis of color. On the basis of prevailing racism within the american consciousness that governs the way we approach these things. The first dramatic example of that is of course the 1882 chinese exclusion law. The fact that it took from 1882 all the way until 1943, until the chinese were our allies in the Second World War, for that to finally abate. Susan so during this time. Period, you made reference to the 1882 chinese exclusion act, the same year immigration, the first major immigration act. In 1890, president harrison establishes ellis island. Overall, what is happening in the country that necessitated these changes . Dr. Kraut immigration is a matter of pushes and pulls. That is, those who are going to be on the move are pushed by certain circumstances in their home countries, by poverty, by oppression, by religious this religious discrimination. And pulled by the promise of freedom, by the promise of Economic Opportunity and so on. If we think of these pushes and pulls, that is what pushed the irish and pushed folks from the german states and scandinavians out of their countries in the civil war period, and pulled them to