Transcripts For CSPAN3 Immigration 20240703 : vimarsana.com

Welcome to American Historical Association congressional briefing on immigration along the southwestern and and southern border of United States. These often get conflated as we just talking about in ways that are not necessarily productive, even though weve done it ourselves. Im jim glassman, the executive director of the american historical. Because this program been on covid induced hiatus for three years, id like to quickly provide at least a little of context for what well be doing this morning, as many of you know, are obsessed with context, which is why were here. The hhs congressional briefings date back to 2005, provide staff, journalists and others in the policy community with the historical background necessary to understand the context of current legislative concerns. The program rests on the premise that has a history and that anyone involved in influencing policies, decisions of any kind, whether in corporate world, government nonprofit world, influencing and decisions of any kind ought to understand how past events and policies have shaped the current landscape. It is impossible example to thoughtfully consider immigration policy without knowing that the doors were closed to most of the world for nearly a half century and then opened very particular ways that changed over time. Our second premise is that it is possible to provide that Historical Context in a manner that is nonpartisan. A word that one does not hear very often in this part of washington, d. C. It is possible to provide that historical in a manner that is nonpartisan and unencumbered with a particular legislative agenda. And we ask all of our speakers to adhere to that standard. Their nature is grateful. The Mellon Foundation for providing the resources that make this work possible. My age colleagues alex levy and rachel wheatley, who are rachels here . Alex is there. Raise your hands, please. Actually do the work that were so grateful to mellon for providing us the resources. Our next briefing will be on friday, september 29th, at 9 a. M. In rayburn 2044. We have not yet decided on a topic, and we will have additional session sessions during the fall. So please, at any time when you get an inspiring portion, please email us. You could just email me. Grossman jay at historians talk or can go to our website and find other email or you can grab alex or rachel in the back of the room. I it doesnt matter which one of us you find, but if you are about any topic that is in essence sitting in front of the congress over the next 3 to 6 months, let know and we will try to figure out whether we can organize this kind of conversation around it. We have 11,000 members and we usually can find somebody who knows a lot about just about anything. And setting a standard. Okay. Todays will be moderated by my friend and colleague dane kennedy, who oversaw this program for 5 to 6 years before the covid hiatus. Dana is an emeritus professor at George Washington university and has authored and edited more than ten books. Most recently, the imperial history wars, debating british empire. Dave to not know anything about but actually can provide International Context in many ways for what our panel will be talking about today. So, hey, thanks. Thank you all coming. Its its a pleasure to to see this crowd here and a pleasure for me to be moderating this briefing. The purpose of of the is to place what is clearly the contentious issue of immigration, the southwest border of the United States in Historical Context. And today we have with us three of the leading authorities on the subject. And let me briefly introduce, each of them in turn, in the order which theyll speak, and then we will get started. So our main eye is the the long family of asianamerican studies and professor of history at columbia university. Shes the author of the Award Winning books impossible subjects the origins of border enforcement quotas and illegal immigration in the 20th century and the chinese question the gold rushes in Global Politics on chinese exclusion policies in the u. S. And, the british empire. Shes written on immigration history and contemporary issues for the New York Times, the washington post, the atlantic, and other publications. Giraldo, cordova is the wender, louis teaching and Research Professor of history at northwestern university, a contributing writer for the new yorker. Hes the author of the hispanic republican the shaping of an american political identity from nixon to trump and standing on common ground, the making of a borderland. Hes currently writing a book about Latino History over the past 500 years. Nara is professor of latin American History at barnard college, director of the center for mexico, Central America at columbia university. Shes the author of two Award Winning books, children of fate childhood class in the state and chile and paternity elusive quest for the father. Mladic has worked as a translator and legal assistant for migrant mothers and children in the u. S. His larger immigrant immigration detention that is located in delhi texas. And she also coded sex and oral history that explores the life histories. Central American Parents who were separated from their children at the usmexico border each other. I of our panelists will speak for about ten, maybe 15 minutes with a q a to follow every chair has a index card, as youre listening to the presentations. Feel free to jot down any question that you might have. We will collect those at the end and read them to the panelists. So lets get started. Okay. Thank you for here this morning. Thanks to the. To jim grossman, dane kennedy and alex and rachel for organizing. Okay. So what is a border . The border is both an abstraction and a reality. Sovereign borders are drawn by nations to separate nation states. But no border is in permeable and permeable or. Impregnable borders, not only separate nations, but they also bring and people together through commerce, culture and communities. And professor godiva is going to talk more about that later. What i want to talk about is the problem of the border with regard to immigration, unauthorized illegal immigration is not an aberration, but it is the inevitable result of any policy of restriction. So you can think about this, say, in terms of prohibition, right when the united passed a constitutional amendment, the sale of liquor. Right. That did not stop people from producing or consuming alcohol. You could think about it in terms of drugs. There is a whole list of drugs that are prohibited. Right. That doesnt stop. And in fact, it actually generated a whole industry right. In the illegal socalled illegal drug trade. And so both of these things, prohibition, drug policy, you know have been were and were very and led to various measures. Right. I right now we have states that are decriminalize, possession of marijuana, etc. So these things are not written in stone. So not only do restrictions generate unlawful activity for people to get around those restrictions, but also how those restrictions are constructed and modified are the products politics right. Debate, discourse and government processes in terms of migration and historically all efforts to limit immigration have resulted in two streams of migration one that is lawful and one that is unlawful. Right. I think of migration in as almost a kind of human condition, right . Where people are because nobody has control where theyre born. Right we are all where we are as because of an accident of we dont choose where were born and we the world is unequal place. And so people not all people, but many people want to leave and find a better somewhere else. And thats been true throughout history, if theres any constant to migration, is that people will move or want to move. And so attempt to restrict their movement results in both a lawful stream and an unlawful. So we can look at American History and see how that has operated right before world war one. There are virtually no restrictions on immigration from europe, but there was a policy of chinese exclusion, which is the first law that named a group on grounds to be excluded. That enacted in the late 19th century chinese exclusion, did not succeed in keeping all Chinese People out of the United States. In fact, it generated at a whole practice the paper sons where people claim to be the son of a citizen and therefore eligible to enter country. And that spawned an entire bureaucracy of, interrogation, extreme vetting, detentions, etc. Much of what you see in the immigration system today in terms of apprehending, detecting, detaining immigrants be traced to the chinese exclusion. The 1924 quota act and National Origins quota act, which was the first time that the United States imposed numerical limits on immigration and plus a National Origins quota which gave, you know, the big quotas to britain and germany and tiny little quotas to places like italy or hungary that led to the formation of the border patrol. And it led to it. It made undocumented into a mass phenomenon. Right. That law was overturned in 1965. By the 1965 immigration and nationality act, which repealed the National Quotas but kept the numerical ceiling. And it kept it at a very low level, and it made it global. So under the 1924 act, there were no restrictions on immigration from mexico or canada and the western hemisphere. Exemptions from quota restrictions were changed in 1965 so that the national so the country quotas were global. So in a sense it was restrictive in 65 than it had been previously previously. To give you a sense of this before the 65 act, there were approximately 250,000 people who came from mexico with lawful status a year. In 1976. That number went down to 20,000. So it didnt stop. Growers from recruiting mexican farm workers, but it resulted in them coming without documents. And that turns out to be in some ways ironic because it enabled growers to pay them even less because they had no Legal Protections protections. By 1986, there had been a created a Huge Population of undocumented people in this country, most of them from mexico. And so 1986, congress passed, the burka law, immigration and control act, which legalized nearly 3 Million People who were under living in the country in for greater border enforcement and sanctions against employers who hire undocumented people. I just want to say parenthetically, we also tend to think of Border Control as only to our land borders and especially the southern border. But 50 of the unauthorized population in this country are people whove overstayed their visas. Okay. Okay. So i just want to talk a little bit about where are understanding and what some the implications are of our policies of restriction of in our history. So before world war one, notwithstanding chinese exclusion immigrate was regulated informally not by laws policies but more informally by the needs of the labor market, by needs. People had to want to unify with their families and to receive protection from persecution beginning in 1924. Those drivers, if you will of migration became subordinate to a policy of numerical restrictions. Right. So before world war one, immigration, the United States was about a million a year, a million a year. Thats kind of late. It is now more or less, but our population. So much bigger. So is much. In 1915, right as a proportion of the population. In 1924, that number went down to 150,000 legal slots. So it went down by 85 . This idea that we have to limit the total number and then we have to distribute that number in ways that are devised as either more just unjust, depending on your perspective has been the key thing that drives our immigration policy we have to have a limit on the number of people and all considerations are subordinate to that. I would say its a tyranny of a numerical regime because its a its a number that that number has not in 100 years. In effect, it has not changed. Right. As a proportion of population, it is the same. So if you think about it why do we have. Why do we why are we so wedded to that same number right . Thats not even open for discussion. We have other kinds of discussions. Should we legalize people . Which people should be given priority, etc. Those are not inconsequential questions, but the number has barely changed. It went up once in 1990 when business demanded more migration for labor market needs, and then it went back down again. So right now so in 1920, 1965, the country quota was 20,000 per country per year. And that was thought to be a policy of equality because every country had the same number, 20,000. So mexico had 20,000 and new zealand had 20,000, and india had 20,000 and belgium had 20,000. Right. But thats thats a kind of equality. Thats right. But in the real world, does really produce equality. That number has now risen to 26,500. So thats where we are. Thats a very, very number. So the united does welcome immigrants. I as a general policy, there are more immigrants. America is more of a receiving nation than many other nations in the world. That should be said, but its very its actually very stingy in my. So historically, weve provided legalization to correct the problem of unauthorized migration. Right. Is unauthorized migration is. Weve also kind of figured out ways to address problem. Right. Right. We have 11 Million People without documents in this country. Nobody in their right mind thinks you can actually deport 11 Million People. Right. Its logistically impossible. Let alone the impact on the economy or communities. But always, historically, weve always figured out a way to do something to legalize the undocumented in the thirties and forties. 1930s and forties, there were individual adjustments for european without papers. Of all the chinese who had come as paper sons. There was a program called the Chinese Confession Program in the fifties and sixties that legalize some. 30,000 chinese from 1952 through the seventies. There was a general policy of suspension, of deportation if you lived in this country for seven years, and especially if you had a spouse or minor children who were citizens, you could get a suspension, deportation. You were kind of in limbo, but you would not be deported. And then in 1986, as mentioned, there was a mass regularization of the undocumented. Some nearly 3 million. And but has always been tied to enforcement aimed at stopping future unauthorized entry. Right. So the logic has always been, okay, we have this problem all people are here without papers. Lets give them status. But were to stop anybody else from coming and were going to the slate clean and nobody else will ever come in. Well, cycle continues because as history has shown, its not possible to keep every Single Person out short of really draconian measures that. I think no democratic nation tolerate. So the cycle continues. Its i think it behooves us to think about how we come up with the numbers, the stealing. Right. And what are the what are the reasons why people come here. And if we could address some of those questions in terms of the labor market, in terms of family unification, in terms people seeking asylum and not not have that cut off by an arbitrary number, we might start to have a different kind conversation. So thank you. Thank you, may. And id like to also just echo amirs thanks for the hra for organizing this. Thanks to the hra for organizing this and thanks to all of you for coming. I am to share some perspective about, based on my research about the southwestern border. Ill probably talk from a pretty kind of high level perspective, dave, and then get into some nitty gritty. Ill share some details now, but kind of get into nitty gritty once we get the q a and i think that the first thing i wanted to say is about something that professor grossman said, i can still call you, professor grossman, right . Yeah, of course i can. Yeah, hes the executive director of the hra. Thats why im saying that. But the point made about how these two subjects often get together, even though they are in some ways different and so the first thing ill say is, i think my perspective would be that conversations whether related to social history or policy or, whatever, about immigration and, the border should in many ways be decouple and we should separate those things because i mean, very simply because there are many things that happen along the u. S. Border, mexico border, immigration and immigration in many places besides the border. I mean, im sure youre all probably cities across america. And you hear about ice raids in particular communities. You hear the internal policing of migration through like border checkpoints that are many miles removed from the and you may familiar with kind of customs and ports of entry and airports by water. And so the border and immigration are, of course, related i mean, if you dont live along the border, you probably have every reason to believe that immigration and, the border are the same thing because. Thats all you hear. But im here to tell that theyre very Different Things in many ways. So and i think in a lot of ways, all of the ive spent my career so far doing writing alternative perspectives of the border that try to show all of the other things that happen along the border besides immigration. And thats what ill talk a little bit about. I want to talk in particular about the economy, education and the environment, indigenous communities and art and architecture in particular, and just as examples of ways that you can understand the history of, the border differently. So first, with the economy i mean, customs houses built along the usmexico border well before fences. So there are postcards you can find from the arizona sonora. Ill probably refer a lot to the arizona sonora border because im from tucson and its the area i know best, though i think a lot of what i about the arizona sonora border can be applied to other border areas as well. So you can see postcards that were popular the late 19th and early 20th century of border well, they werent really even checkpoints, they were just customs houses to kind of manage the trade between the United States and mexico. In the late 19th century. And you see people just milling about freely back and forth across the line and. In fact, the in the United States and met at the border in the 1880s. We hear a lot about the transition to mental railroads here and all of that. But mexico was also building going north to the border. The United States was building offshoots of the Southern Pacific Railroad that met the Mexican Railroad at the border. And that was all about the unloading and loading of of goods. This is in the late 19th century. But even later, you know. Shoppers if thats a really important thing in the usmexico border region both for going both directions. So stores today, like walmart in border cities on the u. S. Side, theyre often the most busiest walmarts in the whole country because of foot traffic that comes across from day shoppers who come over, buy groceries, go to mart, any number of things and then return to mexico at. The end of the day, maybe youre familiar with maquiladoras and crossborder factories that are all about the, you know, importation of goods to mexico that then come back as finished products to the United States and elsewhere. I think thats another real example of kind of economic interdependence in the sixties and seventies. A lot ports of entry expanded a lot. I mean, they were one lane highways that are now in some cases like five, six, seven, eight lane highways and all of that kind of underscores the fact that mexico today is the second biggest trading partner of the United States behind china. When it comes to the economy. I just to really enforce the idea that, you know, the u. S. , mexico border is a vital point of commerce for both the United States and mexico when it comes to education hundreds of students every day wake up in the morning in mexico and, come to school in the United States. There are also plenty of Research Collaborations between. Universities in mexico and universities in the United States. When i was researching my first book, i always love the example of the university of arizona having a racetrack, a management program, so that a lot of wealthy santorums could send their children to the university of arizona to learn how to manage racetracks. And they would go back and do that. Mexico. But there are plenty of examples as well. I mean, researchers in that part of the world in particular, they study things arid land management. What to do with water scarcity on both sides of the border. Maybe ill talk about. Well, yeah, ill talk the environment next. Since i was just talking about arid management, i mean, the u. S. , mexico governments have to come together to, you know, cooperate to manage all issues related, the environment of the borderlands theres a has been for more than 100 years, something called the International Boundary and water commission, kind of like manages and governs the flow of water between the United States and and mexican farmers in northern mexico rely on the flow of water from rivers that start in the United States to water their lands. And so i think that, you know, when were talking summer about, you know, new kind of Colorado River compact and battles between arizona and california about whos going to be the winner or loser of a lot of water. We kind of totally ignore the fact that by government agreements, i mean mexico is supposed to get some of that water to for farmers. Know grow their crops other things i mean the diseases the outbreak of disease the United States and mexico have had to come together to cooperate to solve outbreaks when they arise. So in the 1940s, there was a kind of there was a foot mouth disease outbreak. More recently, you might remember, i think it was called h1n1, swine flu in maybe 2008 or 2009. I in chicago, one chicago Neighborhood Park was one of the First Community in the United States to have h1n1 and rogers park is a largely mexican immigrant community. And it was being called the mexican flu because some of the cases were in mexico. So, you know, the diseases you probably heard this idea that, you know, disease is flora and fauna, they dont care where the border is. They kind of go back forth freely as they always have. I think in indigenous communities, another kind of important. Important way of understanding the border differently apart from in totally apart from conversations about undocking matter of immigration here because when the usmexico border was drawn the mid19th century, i mean the u. S. And mexican surveyors who had gone to, you know, survey the boundary to draw the border after the u. S. Mexico war, they walked right across indigenous land and, you know, the coordinates that they mapped out for the usmexico border had very little regard for what whose land they were going through. So, again, arizona, the place i know the best, the there just went right through the tunnel or what they used to be called. The papago indians in the mid19th eighties. They changed their name to the tohono indians and they their community was divided. And so still today, i mean, the border on Tohono Oodham land looks very different than the border. Just, you know, 50, 60 miles to the east in nogales, because whereas in nogales, you see this, you know, steel border walls, what you see on the tunnel bottomland are kind of cattle guards with theyre just kind of like concrete and cement pillars go 20 or 30 feet below the ground and theyre designed to prevent, you know, this this is the rationale. The department of Homeland Security give. Theyre designed to prevent, like cartel trucks from crashing into the gates going across because theyre pretty substantial concrete steel pillars. But theyre designed also to allow the pretty unencumbered Movement Even today of Tohono Oodham, who cross that they can walk freely across the border to visit family members on the other side and observe religious ceremonies on the other side. And also, interestingly at a time in in mexico, there are no schools on their land and theres not a post office, their land. So they actually walk across the border to get their mail at the post office on the town autumn reservation to send their kids to school. So a school bus kind of drives to the border every morning and picks up a group of mexican children, take them to school on the arizona side of the border over the communities because of the drawing of the border, have grown apart. So at the time of the drawing of the border, there were there were roughly equal numbers of tall on living on the arizona side and the sonoran side. But then over the years now, i think the last census showed like like 10,000 or 20,000. Tohono oodham i realize theres a big difference between 10,000 or 20,000. Im trying to make a point, but there were many thousands of tons of them living in arizona and only 50 living in mexico. Theres been a kind of unit directional flow of Tohono Oodham toward arizona and, you know, theyve grown apart culturally because of the drawing of the border, the town autumn in arizona learn english the tunnel in mexico, learn spanish. So theyre literally sometimes not all cases, mutually unintelligible to one another. And at the same time, theyre kind of losing their mind, native language on autumn, although there are plenty of efforts to revive the language there, as there are in many other places. And so i think you know, these sorts of indigenous borders present a very picture than the one that we see in the news. I also like to think about art and architecture a lot i know that its it feels pretty far removed from policy conversations about the border and. I wouldnt expect that you would look at border themed art and think that would directly influence policy. But what i like about border art and architecture is that it just it kind of like helps us think about the border in different ways. And to imagine the border in different ways. And to be honest, when our policy discussions about the border have been stuck for 30 or 40 years, why not to art and architecture for like new about how to see the border theres one piece that i like a lot by a woman named Teresa Fernandez where she painted the border wall just that stretch of the border that goes into the Pacific Ocean just of tijuana. She painted it the color of the sky in clouds, so that if you stand at a remove from it, it actually looks like the border has disappeared and that was created. Theres also a chilean artist, alfredo air, who did a oh, yeah, right about chile. Thats right. I forgot about. So, you know he its called las nobis the clouds and he was sitting on the i think the the us side of the border and released thousands of balloons. I think it was supposed to be the same number of balloons as the number of migrants who had died in the desert over. You know, a certain period of time. And the balloons, of course, just were released and floated wherever they wanted to float, you know, whether it was across the usmexico border or remaining in the u. S. So that helps you think about the border creatively. Theyre these a group called the border workshop titled the artist, so founded by a guy named Guillermo Gomez pena thats been really involved in kind of border Performance Art and mixing a lot of imagery and symbols from the United States and mexico across. I mean, mesoamerica in imagery with imagery from the border in the late 20th century. So i think these are all very creative ways of understanding the border. In fact, in 26, the New York Times commissioned like an architects contest. It wasnt going to happen, but it was to invite architects to make for how to totally redesign on the border wall and they got a lot of really proposals one was to i dont know if it was kind of silly or not it was to have the whole border be almost like a fedex facility where trucks would drive up to the border and, you know, so it was really to highlight the commerce that happens there. And then another was like beams of light that you could kind of see from outer space just kind of beams of light where you could see the shape of usmexico border. But they were just beautiful columns of light, some redesigned a border wall that was made of a material that when it when the temperatures got hot enough, the material would look like it would disappear and become a kind of illusion. What do they call that . Like a mirage . Thats what i mean. So that was another creative reimagination of the border. So ive talked a little bit about the economy, education, the environment and just indigenous communities, art and architecture as ways of understand ending what happens, the border and how people think about the border in ways that are very different. What we might hear on the news here in congress when talking about policy solutions and i just want to say quickly before, i close that i dont mean to be starry eyed this and say that we really need to be we dont need to talk about undocumented immigration or border enforcement. We should really be thinking more about art and architecture or because i think as professor and i and professor maulana will talk about, you know, there are real problems that we need to solve. Theres exploitation and theres abuse and. Yes, theres crime and Drug Trafficking as there is in any american or mexican city. But i think that by so, i think about it in the ways that ive suggested about the environment, education, whatever that kind thinking has its limits. There are real policy solutions that solution policy challenges that need to be solved. But i guess what i am to suggest is that we should have of these perspectives in mind at same time, you know, it we dont its not a tradeoff you know, you dont. And i would think that if you developed this complicated understanding of the border, that also to do with commerce, education, the environment, borders, i would hope that that would then inform your thinking about the policy debates that relate to education i mean, i think a lot also about the city i live in chicago. You know, if you dont live in chicago, you probably just think its like a just a den of vice and violence where murders happening all the time. But, you know then you also have grandpa, the millennium park, the Art Institute, universities, river tours, these things. And like, yes, i understand that visit chicago dot org or whatever the website that theyre going to show you the been theyre going to show you the Art Institute that is a of chicago as is crime and Police Violence all of that stuff but its all chicago you know and in the same way that the border is on the border and so i would just hope that these other perspectives would inform somehow the way that we think about the border and immigration. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So thank you all. Can you hear me . Hopefully. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Organizers for bringing us together to thank you fellow panelists there. A handout going around and hope most of you have a copy or. You can look over the shoulder of the person sitting next to you. Im going to refer to it very briefly, my fellow panelists have given us fantastic contexts. I think, and i have to say we complement each other beautifully. If im not if im being honest. Yes. Our hours of discussion. Im going to talk about the border a different sense. Im going to talk about it in the very narrow way that we actually hear about talked about in the us press day in and day out. The border understood as unauthorized Border Crossers, the volume of Border Crossing, whos coming . What happens to them when they cross, etc. , etc. Because in recent years, of course, we that the border right. Which is a shorthand for frankly narrow set of themes to your point that the border periodically takes over the headlines surge crisis, spike and then all of a sudden disappears only to reappear again weeks, months later. And if you feel that it is difficult to sort of wrap brain around like what actually is happening. You are not alone. It is extraordinarily difficult to figure out what is going on from month, month, even week to week, right. And so i think its helpful pull back to view of Border Crossing this this narrow focus in a broader lens in a longer term Historical Perspective that helps us to contextualize whats going on in the present and a present that seems to be constantly in flux. So to do that, i want to start off with that handout that you hopefully have there a graph. I think that does suggest that it pulls back and when with, you know an image in a thousand gets us to a thousand words that image pulls back and puts the last several years of Border Crossing in long term context. So if you at that handout, you will see a graph with navy blue titled u. S. Border apprehensions, 1947 to 2021. So graph shows us 75 years of from cbp, customs and border regarding people. The numbers of people who have crossed the usmexico border right. So here we can see the last decade or so of in relation to a much longer history, i want to set aside in my comments the uptick in 2021 and youll see this is sort of uptick in the most recent bar. Im a historian. Why would want to talk about 2021 now im happy to do so in q a. But its a i think another question that we could come back to. I want to focus on the period immediately before that sort leading up the ten years or so, leading up to the pandemic, where i think we see some shifts and it remains to be seen whether those shifts are permanent or temporary i think theres reason to believe some of many of them are temporary. So i want to focus on that period before the border dominated, you know, the political life over the last decade or so. But i think the overall story in these years, at least from Historical Perspective, as you can see, this graph is not one of mass Border Crossing at all, which is what the headlines lead you to believe. In fact, the volume of Border Crossing is smaller by orders of magnitude from an earlier period. Again, im not going to go im just going to sort of gloss that very quickly and have a look at the graph yourself, because i think that the visuals are very interesting in this regard. So with this graph in mind, i want to argue the following that the story of the border in the last ten years is not a story of how many. The story of the border in the last ten years is a story who who is crossing and who crossing has changed quite dramatically in years. And i think that gets lost in a lot of the media coverage. So first, when i say who we could, we could by who i could refer to nationality, right . Who is crossing in terms of nationality . Well, its the us, mexico, so maybe we would presume that its mexicans who are primarily crossing historically, if thats what you said in your head, i bet its mexicans historically you would be correct. However, you are no longer correct. The last decade has seen a dramatic shift in which the numbers of mexicans crossing has decreased quite radically. Can give you statistics and at same time we have witnessed an increase in the proportion of new new groups, new nationalities namely Central Americans, and specifically Central Americans from the socalled northern of Central America, the countries of guatemala and salvador and honduras. Right. So were seeing fewer and all of a sudden more Central Americans from these three nations. A second change in the demographic profile of Border Crossers concerns age and gender. Historically, it was adult men, primarily young males, labor migrants who crossed to seek work. That is sort of the paradigmatic tech migrant of who crosses the border. But in recent years seen increasing numbers of families defined by the cbp as a parent traveling with one or more sons or as well as unaccompanied. Right. Many of these families and unaccompanied minors are asking for asylum right. There is also a gender element to this shift that i think actually we have not heard that much about in the press, which is that i dont know what that means. A fire alarm here is calling for housing. Okay. All right. Well we are already in session. So so theres also a gender element to the shift that i dont think has been discussed. And that that there are that women and girls account for a larger share of crossers today than historically. So to summarize the story of the last ten years is not necessarily a story of an unprocessed and a surge in the numbers of Border Crossers. Its really a story about the shift from adult male mexican labor migrants to Central American families and children seeking asylum on the handout second graph you see a graph with those pretty blue waves that shows this uptick in. Families and unaccompanied minors. In the fiscal year 2021, to give you just one statistic, more than half of the people encountered at the border are were unaccompanied children or people traveling in families. So these are the families that we have heard so much about in the news in recent years political attention to these groups began, i think, in 2014 with the socalled surge. The media first sort of noticed this phenomenon at the border of families and children coming. And its really a recurring refrain ever since. Right every few months we hear about these families. So i want to pause for a moment and say this shift, obviously begs the question, the obvious question why . Why are there now Central Americans coming . Why are there Central American children . Why help the numbers of women and girls increased . This is something we could discuss in the q a if. We have time. But very briefly, people these are people who are displaced by a variety of, life threatening circumstances, gang violence, gender based violence, impunity, political persecution and poverty, hunger Climate Change. Climate change is major issue in parts of Central America. In short, a complex array of Political Economic factors that are completely that we like to think that we can separate out and that actually thats not the way reality works. So we have this very complex answer for the why. But rather than dwelling on the why, i want to go back to the implications. This shift for border, right . What are the implications of this shifting profile of migrating peoples . There are logistical implications. For example, customs and Border Protection is simply not equipped to deal with Child Migrants who have particular needs right and vulnerabilities. There are legal implications for a variety of reasons. Im not a lawyer, but suffice it to say, Central American children are harder to deport legally than Central American adults, and Central American children are harder to deport than mexican children as well mexican, sorry as well. Migrant children enjoy certain Legal Protections. Migrant adults do not enjoy. You cannot indefinite detain a child in immigration detention. You can do that to an adult. So if you consider expulsion and deportation again as one of the key tools in your toolkit for border enforcement and this new population represents a real challenge because certain dimensions of their profile make it difficult to use that tool. It were but i want to suggest that children represent an important change for another reason children and families that has not to do with or law, but rather with politics. The media focus on families and children at the border is not just about the actual number of families and children at the border. Its also a function of what historians called the sentimentalized zation of childhood, this powerful Cultural Association that we have linking children on the one hand with vulnerability, innocence, with the need for protection, and on the other suffering. Children have a power right, a symbolic discursive power that suffering adults have. They galvanize proimmigrant narratives. Kids in cages, family separation. Right. And they also play into the conservative narrative of a border out of control, a narrative that tends to dwell on irresponsible parents who, you know, inflict on their children by bringing them on this dangerous, in short, nothing imbues a political claim with more power than asserting that children are, the victims or the beneficiaries of that claim or policy. Whats more, i would argue that this sentimentalized ocean of childhood is really a double edged sword because ideas about the innocence vulnerability of children have historically been used often their parents poor parents sorry and parents of subordinate racial groups have often been understood as somehow detrimental to the wellbeing of their own children. And we can this in dynamic its see this dynamic in myriad Historical Contexts including the history of custody, the history of Family Violence and today in the history of immigration, in characterizations of migrant parents as traffickers, we can see childrens innocence and vulnerability is, in a sense, weaponized ized, for lack of a better term, against their parents. I want to further suggest that this focus on Child Migrants in part reflects our expectation of who a normal migrant is. The paradigmatic migrant in our heads, i would argue, is male and is an adult. And so when we see women and children on the move, this strikes us as exceptional, unprecedented, not and it lends itself to framing of crisis but once again widening our historical lens gives us a different perspective, i think, on these dynamics. And if we widen lens, we can encounter again a numerous historical examples of families and children borders in ways that make the present look less exceptional. For example, we dont even need to go very far back or very far geographically to see this in the 1980s, Central America was wracked by civil wars, characterized death squads, massive, sometimes genocidal violence and by a major regional refugee crisis. By the end of the eighties, 3 million Central Americans had fled their countries of origin and taken up refuge of them families in mexico and the United States as far flung as canada. In other Central American countries, and even those wars ended the migratory continued as people societies that had been devastated economically and politically by these conflicts. Whats more at in the kind of postwar period coming out of the postwar period, we witnessed new forms of migration and actually specific forms of migration specifically involving children. And here i refer to transnational adoption. We dont often think of transnational adoption as a form of international migration, but it is one that specifically obviously applies to children and transnational adoption has been yet another kind of historical precedent for children moving across borders, specifically from Central America. In the 2000, guatemala was major exporter of children. Fact one in every 100 children born guatemala was sent adoption abroad. Huge number of kids so in short, my story is that families and children crossing the border today are not unprecedented. They are new generation of displaced people. Not only that, but share certain similarities with previous migrants. Then as now, for example, many of the people seeking safety and opportunity crossing the border are from mayan communities that true in the eighties, its true of adoptive children, and its true today. So in short, the families today that we at the border are part of these longer running historical patterns. So want to conclude by, just talking very briefly about last ive been sort of talking about the prepandemic, about the postpandemic. Very briefly, im not going to go into explaining that spike, although we can do that, im sure in the q a, i want instead focus on the profile people coming and i want to highlight very briefly and in conclusion, one continuity and one change in. The profile of Border Crossers in the postpandemic. Last year or two. First, the change. Up until now, ive been talking mexicans and Central Americans from these three Central American nations. As primary Border Crossers. But recently there has been dramatic diversification in the nationalities of people crossing border. Now, the folks crossing the border are not just mexicans, Central Americans from, salvador, guatemala, honduras. Theyre from a lot of other places venezuela, brazil, ecuador, nicaragua, haiti, cuba and even further afield cameroon, afghanistan, etc. In fact in 2022, the share of other national cities, meaning people who arent mexican or central or Central American from the northern triangle, the share of other nationalities went from 4 to 43 of people crossing the border. So we have this dramatic diversification of nationality. I also want to flag a continuity, and that is the number of families and children crossing the border there have been fluctuations. Again, lets not get caught up in the weekly and monthly and whatever semiannually bars of the graph lets focus on the big picture the number of families and children remains high as they have for the last decade. And so i want to conclude by suggesting that perhaps rather than regarding asylum seeking families as exceptional as evidence of crisis, we reframe things, reframe our thinking to consider them to be a new normal. And what kinds of policies might that invite, if consider this to be rather than a crisis a new normal . So i want to stop there and thank you all. Well well, i want to thank all three of you for really diverse and. Also nicely meshed presentations. Now see opportunity for everyone to to have their questions and i mentioned at the beginning we do have these index cards if you have a question that youve written out rachel over here well take it if youre writing out now, just let me know. And we we will get you going. So i will. Thats place. Let me start the questioning myself. I there are so many issues that id love to address. First of all, i, im curious, particularly by the final comment and our made about how this has become an increasingly diversified community of of migrant. So mainly increasingly women and of course but from many Different Countries and. That raises the larger question. I think to what degree is the southern border as a site of of migration, of movement characteristic, of a larger phenomena thats taking place elsewhere across the United States are even more broadly. I know youre all american historians, but im sure you read more generally about immigration history. And im wondering if any or all of you would like to comment on the way in which can enlarge the frame of what has in this presentation been focused mainly on the southwestern border . Im happy to respond to that at all. So i think that i think expand our geographic frame and seeing southwest border of the United States in a broader regional hemispheric frame is absolutely critical because the way the conversation typically happens in the u. S. , in the u. S. Media, in policy circles seems to imply that this is a specific problem to the border and to the United States, this is a regional issue. Forced migration is a regional issue. Every country, almost every country, the hemisphere today is either a receiving country, a sending country, or increasingly both. And so its a regional issue and clearly also a global one. And i think that theres a real danger that in focusing on the usmexico specifically, we really provincial lies a conversation that needs to be much more broadly. The venezuelans today to the u. S. , you know, very recent, very arrived, have been going for years to colombia and ecuador and and europe. Right. So if we if we focus too narrowly on this single geographic space, we lose that regional context that i think is really critical. Ill just add, i mean, i didnt know that such a large proportion of people coming over now are from places other than mexico and Central America. I think what happens globally is that people who are who need to move mean they feel their lives are in danger. They need to move. They will find the path to get to where they to go. So to get from afghanis down to mexico, i would guess from china to mexico is very difficult and people find a way to do it at great risk to themselves and to their families. And so i think what you have is in a way product of i mean, this is a trope in Immigration Studies a very broken system. But what is broken about it . What is broken about it is first that we have this numerical limit that it does not budge right. I mean, so thats the sacrosanct. Second, we have asylum policy that is completely outdated, right . Our policy in both in a national law and u. S. Law is cold war policy is based on certain kinds of political persecute russians. Right. It doesnt account for people displaced by civil wars. It doesnt account for people displaced by Climate Change. It even account for young people who are fleeing gang in Central America. I mean, there have been immigration or asylum who have said being a young person is not a protected class. Right. I mean, is how they deny asylum to of all these kids who are fleeing gangs. So the entire asylum system is based on an antiquated understanding of what human are thats very, very narrow. And third, we do have i just want to say, notwithstanding these challenges in the big structures of the law, they the government actually has many to alleviate some of the the problems. You know, theres temporary protected status. There is Work Authorizations are things that can be done legally to admit people and to give them modicum of safety and a basis to kind rebuild their lives as. We address these bigger problems. So i just ill just add one quick thing. Well, first, ill say i much prefer going to the theater and having like the dimming lights to let us that we have to go somewhere to the like fire alarm, which makes me anxious, but more seriously, i say this not as like an expert on any of these subjects, but just as an american of news mostly about the united, but also sometimes other parts of the world. You know, when i when i read news about, you know migrants dying in a boat off the coast, greece or, you know, on the inter interface border between spain and north africa, or news about israel and palestine or an american soldier in korea who defects north korea, those all those stories become opportunities for me i think to learn more and, think about whats different those places and the United States. I mean, as a historian of usmexico border reading those sorts stories feels familiar to me. But then i want to learn more about the Historical Context to learn about, like the moment that the history that produced those moments and how they relate to things happening here in the United States. I think that learning about the rest of the world can also teach you something about the united. We have so many terrific questions. Im going to push this a little longer than than we might otherwise. And a few more. We have to. On the issue of Climate Change, ill just read one of them about the same how do you believe that Climate Change will play a role in Border Migration in the future for the southern and the northern borders. Well, its already a big i mean, there are huge related issues in Central America and other parts of the world. But we have our own climate issues here in the United States. You know we are all living through the hottest summer on record. We have whole states that are drowning. So its a huge problem for the planet. Right. And migration is one way that many people seek to alleviate their. But it also, i dont know, be jumping from the pot into the fire, you know, i would just add that ive had the opportunity interview with a colleague fannie garcia families that were separated at the usmexico border, families from central primarily guatemala about. Their experiences and where they come from and why they why came. And i think that this is another issue that is really missing from our public, which is why people come people do not magically show up at the border one day because they just woke up and like it. There are these really critical reasons why People Choose to home. And its very clear from the interviews that we have conducted with these families that Climate Change, a major driver, those families that you saw separated at the border in 2018, many them are fleeing Climate Change. And sometimes they use that language to talk about it. There is a you know, a socalled dry corridor that runs through much of the Central American isthmus, particularly in guatemala, and affects already extremely vulnerable communities. And, you know, if you cant harvest your crops, you will go hungry. And that clearly what is driving many people to leave. And yet we have the that professor mentioned which is that theres sort of disconnect between that reality of people fleeing for their lives because of change and an asylum system that doesnt recognize. Right. Climate change as you know, within this this rubric of asylum. So theres a real disconnect, i think, between the empirical challenge is on the ground today that caused people to leave and the legal structure we to to their arrival. Okay. Just to throw a couple a couple more things onto the table for consideration. I mean, i think the the how Climate Change is a driver of migration, certainly important, but also, you know, trying to be as. Im not not saying these things to be controversial, but in latin america, you also have the construction of pipelines, the deforested of the rainforest that apart from how you think like economic, the relation between the Economic Development and Climate Change through like the continued use of fossil fuels or deforestation theres also just the displacement of that happens when you use that land to mine Natural Resources of one sort or another. So thats, thats one thing about latin america. But then also, you know, i think that theres also so there are those are kind of structure issues. But then theres also just like heat mitigation and issues that im thinking a lot and preventing deaths. So there have been groups in arizona for a long time, no more deaths that has simply just tried to place water at different points along the border and to have volunteers take migrants with with real needs to the hospital. And sometimes those acts have been criminalized, too. And then also im studying now like the heat in phenix and there are im studying in particular like mobile and manufactured homes because 5 of all residents in phenix live in mobile or manufactured homes. But they account mobile and manufactured parks account for like 40 of heat related and many of parks are inhabited by theyre like or 80 latino mobile home parks. And in those cases, its about like weatherization of the homes, like they dont its one thing i find astounding is that i shouldnt be astounded, but like historically red lines and neighborhoods in phenix are also just the neighborhoods that are hotter. And phenix, because of the lack of trees and parks and things that and green space. So when you think about like Climate Change in a particular city, its like like almost microclimate throughout the city that are different. And i responding to the crisis that people in these particular places face is important because it suggests that theres not just like a blanket solution. You cant just like deal with the heat and. Phenix you have to kind of find a particular solutions in the communities that need them the most okay, another question can you talk about how docker into the history and challenges of dealing with children on the border super. Interesting question. Thats a great question i think that with docker we see actually a really similar dynamic the kind of weaponization of childhood innocence that i mentioned in relation to migrants and i think doca activists themselves have identified this this tendency to you know, at one point in time the kind of strategy of dock activist was to talk about the most accomplished most valedictorian e right young people these wonderful young people who through no fault of their own, they were innocent. They were two years old when they were brought across the border. And so they wound up in the u. S. And they should be given status because theyre innocent and they are accomplished, etc. But of course, embedded in that narrative is a narrative that also criminalizes their parents. Right. And activists have been really smart thinking about the politics of those arguments. And and over the years really shifted their focus away, realizing that they werent going to get their regularization by criminalizing their parents. That that wasnt that that you know, sort of politically, politically, strategically didnt make sense. But i do think the doca, you know, you can see these very same you know sentimentalized of childhood dynamics at play in that discourse even though you know obviously its very different in other ways. If you want to Say Something about okay okay, i think ill make this the last question and then part, ill answer it myself because the question is, do you get the facts about immigrants immigration out to the American Public . I mean, one of the ways is what trying to do right here, sponsored by the American Historical Association and with this briefing. But im to turn the question to our panelists. Ask them to on what what they are currently doing or what they think needs to be done to sort of complicate our simplistic views, i should say, in this context. Another question asked about why migration on the border is racialized as an influx of latin latino peoples, despite the fact that people from europe and asia are also crossing the southern border. So thats of the sort of sub dimensions i suppose, of this question. How do you refer the issue and . How do you get that reframing up to a larger audience . I think all of us, right, abeds, you know, we write, you know, we have our Academic Research and we write scholarly books and articles, but we also contribute to newspapers and periodicals and i think the contribution i feel we can make is to give a Historical Context. So when theres a current policy being discussed, the congress or, you know, from the white house or wherever, we are able to give some background it like, no, its not a crisis right or this is how weve solved problem of undocumented migrants in the past right. I mean, just one thing i have advocated for in in some of the things ive written about, we used to have a statute of limitations on an presence. We have statutes of limitations in this country on everything civil and criminal except for murder, treason, kidnaping and crossing the border without a visa. Okay. So we used to have a statute of limitations on unauthorized presence, and that disappeared for the most part, in 1924, when the number that ceiling was so. So i think what we can contribute is historical background, context and also to say, well, you know, some the policies that are under discussion now are crazy. Weve done them before and theyve worked before. And i think thats thats something that i hope we can we can contribute, but this is a tricky, tricky question. And, i mean, i think you guys are in ways that you might not even know, like part of a piece of, the puzzle, because, you know, you things here are elsewhere. You might in turn brief the people you work with about the issue. They might in turn take it back to their communities and convince their communities that this is an important issue. Think about and not just in the ways that they often hear about it, which has to do with like the opioid crisis, the drugs pouring across the border, the, you know. Threat to american jobs, those sorts things. And so so i think that like, it would be important if all communities across the United States felt some kind of investment and debates about immigration and the border. And the other thing ill say and i want to i want to try to say this in the least partizan way possible, but i think that one party today has dictated the terms of the debate. I think this is my opinion and another party has struggled to figure how to respond to the fact that that other party has dictated terms of the debate and i dont think a mystery what im talking about, but i would have this conversation with them, too. Its not with everyone. I would have this conversation with everyone, but i think that there are real debates among democrats about how to respond to the fact that the other party has dictated terms of the debate. So i oftentimes the response has been based on like moral grounds and having to do with like human rights and things like that. Ive talked to Immigration Attorneys who think thats the not the right way to talk about. They think that we need to economic arguments about the the contribution that immigrants make to our communities. I mean, i know that i have a position on that, but i that there are debates that and so its its its tricky. Theres i mean, your question was simply, how do you the information out to the Community Communities and thats important but its also about like what what the information is that you want to get out to the communities. And i would add one additional point and that is the way i see as a conduit for bringing voices into the conversation specifically in the oral history project that i mentioned, the kind of idea behind this project is to sit with migrant families and hear their story. However, they tell that story, and then record that story and hope that that story, you know, winds up in policy briefs and op ed, etc. So, you know, figuring out how we can move that into the public conversation. And its a story that i think, you know, it expands the terms of debate in the context of this project. We have interviewed not just who weve heard about in the media right. Separate formerly separated parents, but also children, for example. So were interviewing children and we want to hear from not just about the trauma of the moment when they were separated from their children at the border. But who they are as people, why they chose to leave, what what their you know, what was it about lives in guatemala or, wherever that, you know, compelled to leave and make this journey. And i think understanding that and finally understanding like who people these folks are as people as human beings, they are not just migrants. They are migrating people are, you know, taxi drivers and evangelical christians and neighbors cars and teachers and parents in addition to being migrants. Right. So being, you know, sort painting people in their full humanity rather than just as migrants is one of the purposes of the project and again, serving as a conduit move those stories and narratives into the public space is i think way that that try get the facts to the public challenging as we know is in this day and age. Okay well unfortunately we do have to bring this to a close but for those you who didnt get your questions answered, sure, the panels would be happy to speak to individually after we close the session. I also want to encourage all of you to go to the table outside the doors afterwards, pick up handouts pens, stickers. Also, please up for the mailing list. So you get notification about our future briefings. So let us thank the panelists. Im michelle laughlin. Im the assistant director of the Immigration History Research Center at the university of minnesota twin cities. Its a real pleasure to be part of this panel today. Back in 1994, i was a fresh new policy analyst and researcher and immigrant advocate working in chicago and some of the