Incompetence release them early without any kind of records. There was a big for of a better word freak out in the american media. These guys are deftly coming here and coming to the United States. Theyre going to wreak havoc and as a result Border Patrol and these people were eventually apprehended or they faded away and Nothing Happened but the point is because American Immigration enforcement because our immigration laws are so focused on keeping people out for economic reasons or for any other types of reasons a small amount of what they are pulled to do focus on legitimate threats. Instead they are more concerned with asking how will an additional worker affect the wages for american tomato pickers . Theyre more concerned with how one additional worker will affect the labor Market Conditions or computer programmers in silicon valley. They are more concerned with where a highskilled immigrants will take a Conference Call with her is at his home or whether that home is listed as a place of residence or as a place of work than they are about these legitimate threats that are out there. We are really concerned about this. If we think that we live in an age that is so dangerous internationally that immigration needs to be restricted and regulated okay if you believe thats true than you should argue for a total refocusing immigration away from keeping out willing workers and separating them and focus entirely on the small but Real National security threats that exist. Throughout history these threats have also been used to our disadvantage. Think about the numerous hoops and hurdles American Immigration enforcement but in the 1930s and early 1940s on scientist trying to flee europe and come to the United States to work and eventually were employed to work in a Manhattan Project to help win the war. There is enormous bureaucratic fear and keeping these people out because of National Security. A lot of these people had ties ties to common is our alleged ties to communist. Because of the fear of National Security one of my favorite examples is there was a Chinese Rocket scientist. He died in 2009. He was involved with Rocket Research in United States in the 50s. Because of the National Security law that said that communist could not be employed or emigrates United States he was investigated by the fbi and they said there was enough circumstantial evidence that he had attended a communist rally 20 years before the end he was kicked out of United States and deported to communist china where he was the founder of International Rocket and missile program. The entire Rocket Program in china is based on the internetting expertise of this immigrant to the United States who wanted to stay here and live and work but was forced back to china as a result of that. I am a libertarian and i dont leave china is an accidental threat to the United States anything like that but if you are worried about this about National Security issues coming from other countries the last thing you want to do is to send talented foreigners who have come here to learn these issues back to their home countries. Thats pretty much the last thing you want to do. Now i think switching gears to culture and how really americans have taken a look at immigrants and treated them to the much the same throughout history. We have always been skeptical of them and compare them negatively to previous immigrants. Its a quote i Thomas Sowell and a recent article written on june 4 titled abstract immigrants where he writes the immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here 100 years ago. I think he massively exaggerates the differences between immigrants today and back then. We heard a lot about these differences but what is also different or americans today. Its true multiculturalism has impacted American Society to an extent and i think thats a bad ideology that we are also in a lot of ways more welcoming. Americans today may say nasty things about immigrants today but lets not forget the largest mass lynching in american historys was in the 1890s in new orleans of italian immigrants by a mob of white americans that thought they had committed a crime and had gotten away with it. In in the 30s ahead matzo protestant americans going out and burning down churches catholic churches occupy by the irish burning down and destroying confidence raping the nuns inside and horrible things like this. The rhetoric today about immigration of americans who are opposed is nasty and it is gross but we dont have this level of cultural aversion violence to the extent that people are going out and doing this. Americans are behaving much better in the face of immigration than they did back in the day. And i think that comes across as well. These worries about immigrants being different or totally exaggerated. The catholic example is a great one. Immigrants today are majority catholic just like they werent 100 years ago. They come from Different Countries in the world in different parts of the world. What is most remarkable about assimilation especially for mexicanamericans and the descendents of mexicanamericans is that so many of them came in illegally. They came to this country illegally and they lived for years oftentimes in the black market. The extent to which they and their children have assimilated truly in a lot of ways outpaces the tying immigrants who came legally 100 years ago who were able to live entirely within the legal market. What is truly remarkable and i think if immigration was allowed to be dashed to the extent that all had come legally they would see a better pace of assimilation. Looking at it that way in realizing immigrants to come today are more unamerican when they calm and they become americans faster despite having to live in the black market i think is a testament not just to the entrepreneurial and energetic spirit of immigrants today and how they want to become american but also a testament to how much American Culture has influenced so many people throughout the world and how we we are still a beacon for millions of people who want to come here and want to become americans. I think this book really goes into fantastic detail about that process about the cultural process by which people become americans. It differentiated from a lot of other books out there that sociologists write about assimilation. It really describe the process. It creates a model for how it happens and it was the first time id read that Third Generation. Your parents are born here and you look longingly back on that ethnic or religious identifier where your parents came from or your grandparegrandpare nts came from and that is a feature of success. That is a market success of becoming an american because because as merrick is we dont have an ethnic or racial identifier. The Largest Ethnic Group in the United States is german. Thats going to change in the near future. That is the Largest Group. We dont have any blood borders culture conception of being american. Its a value conception, its a civic notion of being american and that is something that is virtually unique throughout the world and unique throughout history and what this book does is describe that in some of the best detail i have ever read anywhere in the literature and both sociology and economic academics and even in popular books made for a popular audience. For that notion i think it made me a steady immigration policy and sometimes i become skeptical of the way my government does things and ive become skeptical of the United States and its immigration policy but this really filled me with more enthusiasm and more hope for the future of this country and the ability to assimilate immigrants and to be a beacon than virtually any book ive read in my years of working on this topic so i highly recommend it to all of you. I couldnt recommend it more. Its a beautiful book and thank you very much for coming today. [applause] thank you alex. We have time for questions and if you have a question please raise your hand and wait for the microphone. Identify yourself and your affiliation. So we will take the first question up here in the front, please. Wait for the microphone please. Hi. My name is stephen. I have no affiliation. I was kind of interested in this notion of low unskilled workers versus highskilled workers as whether we want immigrants are highskilled or lowskilled. It always seemed to me that human beings are a resource and therefore if lots of lowskilled employees is a resource because it doesnt mean that we dont need the highskilled but this idea that there is only a set number of jobs for lowskilled look at all the people that came to new york city that were lowskilled at the turnofthecentury area jobs were created. In other words i think there is a misconception that you look at an economy and you say well we only have this amount of need right now for lowskilled but i think the answer is if you bring more resources that is more lowskilled workers, businesses will take advantage of that lowskilled. We will produce goods that will take advantage of these lowskilled workers. Even if that production doesnt constitute this it will come to exist because the incentive. What i am saying to you my question is isnt that another big misconception that you guys seemed to overlook and you always hear so many people say we only want highskilled labor with immigration. Thank you very much. I couldnt agree with you more. I look at it in a different way. One way to look at it is just look at it domestic league. Much of this discussion would be better understood by people if they thought these issues in the domestic context. Since the Second World War the u. S. Has added about 100 Million People to the workforce if you count baby boomers in general and women in particular. If the argument is made against immigrants were true on the economic level that those 100 Million People would have destroyed the u. S. Economy it would have generated so much unemployment and that would be the number one issue in the United States on a permanent basis and that is not the case. In the 60 years there has never been longterm unemployment of any kind. There has been unemployment of course in times of recession but that have different causes. Look at arizona for instance which is such a sensitive place for this debate. Just before the bursting of the bubble i looked at unemployment rates in arizona. Among the lowest in the country, 4 and is sometimes less than 4 and get 10 of the workforce was and ice and continues to be immigrant. So clearly its not generating unemployment. It is generating growth because arizona is a wealthy state and it is helping make as i said the pie larger. That includes both lowskilled and highskilled immigrants. Yet at the same time we had an constant inflow of immigrant. It wouldnt have been possible if immigrants were hurting that productive process. If i could yeah, if i could add one small thing to do that. I have been doing a series of debates for the last couple of times this week. I have another one on sunday. The issue is always brought up, and the analogy i like to use is if we have 100 highskilled people in a room. 100 College Grads and bring in 50 more. The economy gets bigger production increases. The rejoinder critics say you lower the average education level in the room by doing that. That really shows, i think, the danger of knowing a little bit of math and knowing not very much economics. An average of the terrible way to describe that. Its a example of the danny devito fallacy. The average height in the room will i did crease. Decrease. Nobody is actually any shorter. Thats something that is pervasive. Talking about Public Policy and the impact of immigration on the economy by using broad averages like this, really is probably one of the worst ways to do it and betray a total of lack of understanding how economics works. Question right there. My name is steven. A wonderful, wholly convincing presentation. One aspect im wondering about the effect on the nation that immigrants leave from. Are those nations any worse off . For example, it was said that when the 1848 revolution failed failed in germany. A lot of german liberals here and germany became more autocratic. Today as much as we complaib in the building about economic regulation. A lot of immigrants see the united as a more fertile place for applying entrepreneurial skills. Are countries that immigrants leave from worse off, say, in term of entrepreneurial skills . Thats a great question. Well, what if we look at forget about nationstates and borders for a moment. What are we talking about . We are talking about how people are able to create the most value. In other words, they choose their location according where they can create the most value and exchange the friewft our labor according to what we need and what we can offer. If you look at that way youll realize people moving in or out is not going have a longterm effect of a negative kind in any way. Europe was exporting people, again, until the 1980. The country were becoming more and more prosperous. They are a mess today for different reason. We had the same in latin america. People my grated to vens with a lay from countries such as peru on a consistent basis for half a century. Its a wealthier country than venezuela. Look at it this way as well. Chinese immigration in the United States has played a key role in the growing Economic Prosperity of china, they have not only of course been able to export stuff and import stuff to them. They invested in china response i think that borders and barriers are really art initial term of the impact on the economy. We all benefit from the constant circulation as people. The same is happening in europe. Some of the eastern or Central European countries have been in the last few years. It became legal to do so. And yet they have been becoming more and more prosperous. Poland is more prosperous. It export the an incredible amount of people to spain. I have some small things to add. Hes 100 right. About the german 1848ers. They left behind complained about the liberals leaving. Americans who experienced and met them complained about the autocratic germans who are bringing their socialist notion of collectism. 1848 formed a core of what became the Republican Party in the antislavery wing. Thats a little about dote about the feeling of immigrants destroying the core of america no matter where theyre from. The issue you talk about, you know, does immigration an e leave the sending country worse off . That usually takes the frame of the brain drain. Thats what people call it. They say the best and the brightest and the most energetic leave and what is left behind everybody else suffers. Thats assumes a person in a country is a property of everybody else in that country. Which is a terrible notion that no person who has any concept of individual freedom or liberal in the classic call sense interpretation could actually deal. What we actually see is when the opportunities to e mate, e grate. They go to school more. They acquire more skills in order to do better in the source and in a country where they want to go to. At love them end up staying. We see this in south africa, in nursing scoop. A lot of lot of people go there to try to emigrate to the utah. A lot stay behind. We see it in the philippines. The filipino nursing program. They have some of the highest percentage of nurses of any country in the world because theres a possibility to leave when they have it. As a result the rest of the pill fee knows filipinos gain from that. Youre right its a weird argument used by most i are restrictionist to say immigration is bad for people in poor countries when its not true. I guess i would add, i mean, so it does the opposite. Yes. George washington university. Im one of the academics you speak of. And i, you know, i love the presentation. Thank you. Im a little bit uncomfortable with your romantic vision of assimilation and acceptance. Because we know that some groups are more asimilarble than others. Perhaps you tell us a little bit about how you define assimilation; right. Because, you know, how many times have the third or fourth generation immigrant been asked where are you from . All right. What language do you speak. Maybe you can talk about how you think about assimilation. Assimilation is not only based on the desire for individual but also on the desire for the Larger Society to allow that person to assimilate. Well, about the first part is are they asimilar plaiting assimilating, you know, immigrants assimilating today the way they did in the past . And the an is definitely yes. The research is very extensive. I looked in to this in a lot of detail. Theres many ways to measure it. Whether its, you know, the use of english. Or mingling with the native born population. Marriage, whether its entrepreneurship. Thats another way to measure this. The idea that the lot of entrepreneurship that is home grown but these hispanics are bringing in notions, you know, to entrepreneurship. Thats not true. The rate of selfemployment among hispanics almost equal the rate for native born americans. Almost 12 . And the number of companies that are founding every year is just amazing and astounding. What does happen is this, which is something alex touched upon in his comment in the book, which is fascinating. The first generation of