May 16, 2024 • 35 mins
Host Anuj Gupta, President and CEO of the Welcoming Center interviews Zeke Hernandez, author of The Truth About Immigration - Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers
This book is all about how newcomers benefit you, your community, and your country. Destined to become the go-to book on one of the most important issues of our time, this book turns fear into hope by proving a simple truth: immigrants are essential for economically prosperous and socially vibrant nations.
https://zekehernandez.net/
https://welcomingcenter.org/ - Fostering a Thriving Community Through Immigrant Inclusion.
This book is all about how newcomers benefit you, your community, and your country. Destined to become the go-to book on one of the most important issues of our time, this book turns fear into hope by proving a simple truth: immigrants are essential for economically prosperous and socially vibrant nations.
https://zekehernandez.net/
https://welcomingcenter.org/ - Fostering a Thriving Community Through Immigrant Inclusion.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
This is Welcoming Works with me Anushgupta, President and CEO of the Welcoming Center,
join us as we spotlight the phenomenaleconomic and social impact immigrants are making
right here in Philadelphia. In eachsegment, we will dive into stories of
community, culture, transformation, andresilience. These stories are a celebration of
immigrants who are shaping not only brightfutures for themselves and their families, but
(00:30):
a brighter future for their communities andfor Philadelphia. Today's guest is Professor z
Carnandez, the Garchik Family Presidential AssociateProfessor at the Wards School of Business at
the University of Pennsylvania. Doctor Hernandez, welcome, thanks ANDUSA, thanks for
joining us this morning. Of course, So you have a book coming out
in short order on June fourth,to be published by Saint Martin's Press called
(00:54):
The Truth about Immigration, Why SuccessfulSocieties Welcome Newcomers. Little bit about the
book. The book is meant tobe really the go to reference on all
the questions anyone has always had.But to frame it a little bit,
you know, we really think thatwe have two sides of a debate about
immigration in this country and in theworld. But actually we don't. And
(01:18):
here's what I mean. One sideof the debate is what I call the
villain argument, and this is familiarto anyone who's following politics. Right,
the immigrants steal our jobs, undermineour safety, I wrote, our cultural
values. But the other side iswhat we learned from M. Lazar as
this poem, right, the poorhuddled masses, the statue of liberty,
and the idea there is that immigrantsare these what I call these victims who
(01:38):
need our help and compassion, evenif it costs us a lot. And
these seem to be counter arguments toeach other, but they're actually not.
They're actually perfectly consistent with each other. It just comes down to whether one
side wants to welcome them or not. And that's, you know, not
a very powerful way to think aboutit. But also even more importantly,
both arguments are false in terms ofwhat the evidence tells us. So if
(02:00):
you actually dig into the hardcore empiricalevidence, the reality is that immigrants are
net positive contributors to everything that makesus prosperous, to our economy and to
our society. And so what Igo through in the book is, you
know, the first half covers like, what's the evidence on how immigrants affect
you and me economically? And wego into things like, immigrants bring more
(02:23):
investment, they create new jobs,they introduce innovations through technology and products,
they increase tax revenue, they bringnew ideas that make our economy more vibrant
and diversified. And then on thesocial side, studies show that immigrants are
quite successful at adopting the cultural valuesthat we hold dear. But not only
that, they expand and enrich ourculture so that our culture is more vibrant
(02:49):
and more alive and more interesting.Immigrants increase our safety, both in our
communities and at the national security level. So I mean, whatever your wish
list is of what you want agood society or a good community to be,
immigrants contribute positively. And that's adifferent narrative. That's neither villain nor
victim. That is the truth,which is a positive framing of what immigrants
do for you and me. That'skind of the book. In a nutshell.
(03:12):
You're a professor, you do academicresearch, and you teach in an
academic institution. Who is this bookfor. I think it's for everyone who
wants to know the truth. Right, we know that about seventy percent of
Americans believe immigrants are good, right, But that seems to not jive with
the headlines and the social media posts, and so I think there's a huge
(03:35):
dissonance between what we read and hearand what our experience on the ground really
is. And so I think foranyone who wants to bridge those two things
and understand what's really going on.So it's not a book for academic specialists.
It's not an academic book, it'snot an academic press. It's for
a general audience, and I thinkit speaks to the two thirds or more
of the population that actually are curiousabout the subject, but perhaps don't have
(04:00):
all the evidence at their hands.I think there's a minority that is rabid
and will never change their mind,and I hope they read the book,
But I think the vast majority ofthe people will find value in it.
The political moment in which the bookwill be published is inescapable, and it's
an issue that could very well determinethe next occupant of the White House.
(04:23):
And we're not here to get intoa political discussion. But did you anticipate
that you would release, that youwould publish the book at such a critical
time for this issue, and nowthat it is coming in this coming out
in this context, how do youhope that it affects this election cycle?
We as in my publisher and Idefinitely knew that the book would come out
(04:46):
around this time, and we didintentionally decide to release it around now because
we knew immigration was going to bein the air during political season. We
couldn't have anticipated that. It seemsto be that it's going to be the
issue on which this election is goingto be run. Right. Trump wants
to run on it because he seesthat he sees this as Biden's greatest weakness,
and in some ways he's been successfulin moving Biden to his own rhetorical
(05:10):
side of the story, what Ijust called the villain argument. Right,
they're both talking about immigrants as villains, but in different ways. And so
I'm not naive enough to think thatthis book is going to change the outcome
of the election. But I thinkin this moment it's very important to present
this third narrative that is fact based, that is not what either political candidate
is talking about, or what nopolitical candidate actually ever talks about. And
(05:34):
so I do hope that the averagevoter and citizen will find value and being
able to speak in an informed,factual way about the issues that they're going
to see in the debates. Youtalk about your personal background in the book,
and you are an immigrant. Yourcountry of origin is Uruguay. You
write about how difficult a decision itwas to ultimately come here for school,
(05:57):
uproot your life, et cetera.How did that experiential empathy factor into how
you conducted the research and how youwrote the book. Yeah, that's a
good question. It's always a littleharder to reflect on your own personal experience
with total objectivity. Then we don'thave time here to get into all the
details of my story, but thegist of it is that I struggled a
lot with the decision to come tothe US. I had an opportunity to
(06:18):
come for college, but somehow Ihad imbibed a lot of the misconceptions that
everyone has about immigrants. For example, I worried that I was by coming
here that I might take something fromAmericans. I also worried that I would
do damage to my home country byleaving, And so I thought, am
I making a selfish decision here?Now that experience didn't impact my research per
(06:42):
se researches research, And actually Iwasn't even interested in studying immigration. I
wanted to study economic growth, andthen I backed into immigration. But that
experience did impact the way I've writtenthe book in the sense that, look,
I had to go through several yearsof research to discover the facts and
the truth and what the reality is, and to realize that many of the
misconceptions I myself had were not correct. In fact, the opposite was true.
(07:05):
So if someone like me, who'shad all the time and the luxury
to study this topic, came withall these misconceptions, it's understandable that an
average person would as well. Andso I've written the book with a lot
of compassion in the sense that Itell a lot of my story and my
own journey of discovering things, andI tell the stories of other people I've
come across in the journey. Andso this is not a book that's just
(07:28):
a bunch of facts and figures,facts and figures written for an academic,
like I said, It's a bookthat is deeply narrative. It has my
story, it has the story ofa lot of other people, and the
facts and figures are woven into thosestories. Yeah, I think my experience
led me to realize that taking someonelike me twenty years ago and just throwing
a bunch of facts and figures isn'tenough. You have to walk through the
(07:49):
emotional and personal arc of what itmeans to change your mind about a topic.
Why do you think you had thosepreconceived notions about what immigration in America
means? I honestly don't have agood answer to that. I think it's
just misinformation on this topic is sopervasive, right, and somehow it feeds
into this false intuition that if Ilet someone else come, there's less for
(08:13):
me. That almost seems like this, I don't know this thing that we
have from kindergarten playground onward. Soit takes changing the zero sum mindset.
But I don't really have a goodanswer. I think part of the answer,
and this is something I cover alot in the book, is that
there is a very well organized,well funded, and motivated campaign to spread
(08:33):
misinformation about immigration and immigrants in thiscountry and in almost every other country as
well. That movement is more successfulthan it should be. You note that
in the introduction you often find throughspeaking engagements that audiences just don't know a
lot about this issue, and actuallymost Americans seem to start with a favorable
(08:56):
disposition towards immigrants. They just don'tknow much about it. So how do
you hope that the book can fillthat knowledge gap and potentially turn the tide
on how people feel about this issue. Yeah, so there's some really interesting
evidence showing that actually, if peopleare exposed and this is experimental evidence and
(09:18):
experiments, when people are exposed tocorrect factual information about immigration or immigrants,
they do change their minds on issues. Now, the information has to be
presented in a certain way, ina way that's palatable, and that is
presented with some compassion for people's preconceivednotions. That leads me to believe that
a book like this can make adifference. Now, this is a little
(09:39):
bit self serving, but if yougo to my website, So I have
a website, Z Carnandez dot net. Okay, z Carnandez dot net.
One of the first things you'll seethere is a big red button where you
can take an immigration quiz. It'sa thirteen question quiz and I have administered
that quiz to a ton of peopleover the years. From all walks of
life, left, right, educated, not so educated. Overwhelmingly, most
(10:01):
people get all the questions wrong.In fact, on the website, just
from the people who have taken onthe website, the average score is below
forty percent. So it just tellsus that people are really quite misinformed about
this topic, and it's not amatter of education or political affiliation. I
think that the book in some wayseeing that over the years as I made
these presentations led me to realize,I should probably write this book, or
(10:22):
I want to write this book tosee if it makes a difference, because
the other experience I had in presentingto these audiences is not only was it
that the feedback was, oh,this was interesting, but almost like this
overwhelming sense of relief. I can'ttell you how many times people have come
after a presentation and said, oh, my goodness, like I've been wanting
(10:43):
to know the answers to these thingsfor so long and I didn't know where
to find them. That was asignal that I wanted to replicate the opportunity
of doing these presentations in the formof a book so it could reach more
people. So I believe, basedon the evidence in my experience that that
people really can learn about this.It just takes a little bit of time.
(11:05):
If you could waive a magic wandand ask policy makers federal, state,
or local to make two or threeimmediate policy changes, pursue into your
research and your writing. What wouldthose be? So I would say,
first, we have to take responsibilityfor immigration away from the Department of Homeland
Security in this country. Think ofwhat that implies, just that that immigration
(11:28):
is something that's a security issue,something that your government needs to protect you
from. Right now, once youunderstand the facts and the evidence which the
book goes over, you know thatimmigration is overwhelmingly good. So that means
that we need to administer it atthe government level under an agency that isn't
about fear, bet an agency that'sabout prosperity. So that's a first right
just framing it as something that weshouldn't fear. In fact, the opposite
(11:52):
we should embrace. Second, thereis this huge discrepancy between the federal and
the local level in that cities andstates they bear the short term costs of
immigrant arrivors in the first few months, perhaps the first year or so,
but there are these huge long termbenefits that we experience at all level,
city, state, and federal.The issue is that local governments are burying
(12:13):
all the costs in the long run. This is what we hear, like
the mayors of Denver and New Yorkor Chicago complain about right now. And
they do have a point that thefederal government is not helping or that the
costs are not evenly distributed. Sowe have to address that imbalance between local
short term costs and kind of nationallong term benefits. And then the third
we need to pass the famous comprehensiveimmigration reform in Congress. But just for
(12:39):
context, the last time we didthat was nineteen ninety. The economy was
less than half the size it isnow. So we're operating an economy that's
overdouble the size on a system thatjust doesn't make sense for our time.
And I think a key element ofthat reform needs to be that we have
to get rid of quotas. Theidea that we can set a quota in
nineteen ninety that will be accurate andrelevant thirty years later. It makes no
(13:03):
sense right Nobody can predict the futurein that way, so we need a
system that isn't based on quotas.Those would be my three main things.
Yeah, I'm with doctor z Carnandez, the Garchik Family, Presidential Associate Professor
at the Wharton School the University ofPennsylvania and the author of the forthcoming book
The Truth About Immigration, Why SuccessfulSocieties Welcome Newcomers, to be published by
(13:24):
Saint Martin's Press on June fourth,Azeke in twenty twenty six, we have
the world's largest sporting event coming toPhiladelphia, the World Cup, and of
course we're going to root for theUS and we want the US to succeed.
Although you may still have a biastowards the Uruguayan national team, I
understand all, I confess I do. The US men's team has always struggled
(13:48):
to compete in the World Cup,or at least so we thought. And
amongst the findings that you document inyour book, to me, one of
the most startling was the story ofthe US men's national soccer team in the
early versions of the World Cup,going back to the nineteen thirties. Talk
(14:09):
about what happened with that team andwhy they actually were successful. Yeah,
okay, I'm glad you asked.That was one of my favorite stories to
tell, and I'll hope to keepit short enough. Yeah. So,
I think the false narrative about USmen's soccer, it's a little different for
women's, is that the US wasalways atrocious, right, This wasn't a
sport that Americans were interested in.And then all of a sudden, the
(14:31):
US qualifies for the nineteen ninety WorldCup, and from nineteen ninety to the
present, the US has been prettyconstant presence in the World Cup and has
done okay, right, not contendersto win it, but done okay.
But actually, the real narrative isthat the US men making it back onto
the world stage in the World Cupis a comeback story because in the very
(14:52):
first night World Cup in nineteen thirty, which was hosted by coincidentally my home
country Uruguay, the US finished inthird place and they did quite well.
Right, It's not it wasn't afluke, right, It's not that they
really kind of struggled to get tothird place. They did very very well.
And then the US also participated inthe World Cups up until nineteen fifty
and nineteen fifty they actually upset Englandin a game that is sort of legendary
(15:16):
still today in history. So theUS wasn't historically atrocious. Then between nineteen
fifty and nineteen ninety they were atrocious, and they disappear from the world stage
of US men's soccer, And youmight think, well, what what explains
that kind of They were pretty good, then they disappeared and were terrible,
and then they came back. Andit turns out that it's a story of
immigration. Right. If you lookat the rosters of the players on the
(15:37):
nineteen thirty World Cup team, almostall of them four fits eighty percent were
either immigrants or the children of immigrantsfrom the countries that had sent immigrants in
the previous twenty to thirty years,so England, Scotland, Wales, you
know, Germany. If you lookat the nineteen fifty team, they were
the immigrants or the children of immigrantsfrom the new wave of immigration, so
(16:00):
you had you know, Italians,Portuguese. Right. And why did the
US all of a sudden like startreally being terrible at soccer after nineteen fifty,
Because about twenty five years earlier,in nineteen twenty four, the US
shut its doors to immigration and newsoccer talent stopped coming. And why was
there a renaissance in soccer talent innineteen ninety, because about twenty five years
(16:22):
earlier, in nineteen sixty five,the US opened its doors again to immigration.
So the point is, like,if you look at the fortunes of
US men's soccer, it has alot to do with when we allowed and
when we restricted immigration. And thewhole point of that story is you may
not care at all about soccer,but it's the same story for areas of
our economy and talent that matter alot more than soccer. Right. Our
(16:45):
dependence on immigrants for everything from AItechnology to our biotechnology revolution, to all
the tech products that you use,from Zoom to Google to anything you can
think of, immigrants have a disproportionit like massive influence in all these fields,
and so the US has always benefitedfrom letting the world's best and brightest
(17:06):
in different areas in right. Sothat's that's the story. Another one of
the really I think startling findings inyour book is this link you trace between
investment dollars and capital flow from countriesof origin to communities where there is now
a sort of concentrated and growing immigrantcommunity with links back to that country of
(17:30):
origin, and the one historical precedentyou used to highlight that which was fascinating
to me was the location of JapaneseAmericans who were interned at camps during World
War Two. After the war finished, they didn't necessarily move back to their
communities of origin. Many of themstayed close to where those camps were located.
(17:52):
Tell me if I'm wrong, buta lot of those camps were located
in the middle of nowhere, andsomehow you actually documented a higher concentration of
investment and capital from Japanese firms tothose communities. Yeah, that's right.
So you're referring to a study byLouren Cohen who's a professor at Harvard and
a few co authors whose names Iforget and apologies to them. So,
(18:17):
the Japanese internment camps had to bein sites with certain characteristics at the federal
the War Relocation Committee determined, Andso you had a bunch of Japanese who
were mostly living in California who endup being sent to places like Rower,
Arkansas, or Granada, Colorado,or Topaz Utah far inland. So even
to the day, communities that hadJapanese internment camps have like three times more
(18:41):
than expected, like numbers of peopleof Japanese ancestry. And what the study
shows is is exactly what you saidthat to this day, those places receive
a disproportionate share of Japanese investment.And what you're referring to is what I
often called one of the great untoldstore worries about immigration, which is,
(19:02):
let me back up for a second. If I ask you, what what
do you want the most economically foryour neighborhood in your community, I think
most people would say, well,I want good jobs, right, because
from good jobs comes everything else.Well where do jobs come from? They
come from investment, right. Ifno one's investing in your community, there
will be no businesses or organizations thatcreate those jobs that then allow you to
(19:22):
work and pay for your kids' LittleLeague games or whatever. And so a
lot of people link immigration to jobs, usually negatively. They say, oh,
immigrants are stealing jobs, which isnot true. But nobody links immigration
to investment. And what studies likethe Japanese Internment camp studies show, and
other studies that I've done, notjust in the US but in many countries,
(19:42):
is that where immigrants settle, investmentfollows, and investment follows in two
ways. Either companies from their homecountries, invest like the Japanese firms investing
in the places where former Japanese attorneyslive, or because immigrants are eighty percent
more likely the natives to start businesses, immigrants themselves will put their capital into
(20:03):
new businesses, and those investments thencreate jobs. And those jobs aren't just
for immigrants or their children. Thosejobs are for non immigrants overwhelmingly, right.
I Mean, when Honda invests somewhere, they're not investing just to employ
Japanese Americans. They're investing to employAmericans. Period. That is one of
the stories that I comes directly frommy research, but which I've realized in
(20:26):
speaking to audience, is that mostpeople just do not talk about, right.
And so you know, one morereason that you want more immigration is
just because it seeds investment that createsthe jobs that you want in your community.
You also document within not just withincommunities, but within employers, employers
that have some concentration of immigrants aspart of their workforce, that they actually
(20:53):
have a sort of a higher innovationquotient. Maybe you measure that through patent
activity or just productivity or outputs orsales, yeah, or new products.
Why is that that's Again, anotherthing that is not understood, or not
at least understood in the magnitude thatit should be, is that immigrants are
(21:15):
Look if you don't like the eyword, right, because the iword is so
loaded with meaning. So let's notuse the eyeword for a second. Just
people of different backgrounds that get hiredin an organization or that arrive in a
community, They're going to bring newideas. They've had different experiences, they
have different connections back to the homeland. They got their education in a place
where maybe the educational system was different, so they might think of a problem
(21:37):
different They might solve a problem youhave in a different way than you would.
Okay, if we take a stepback and think, well, what
is innovation, Whether it's a technicalinnovation, an organizational innovation, a product
innovation, an innovation, and howto solve a social problem, a school
problem. It's not just a matterof genius. We often have kind of
the Steve Jobs model of innovation wherethere's like some genius, but actually research
(22:00):
shows that innovation is just a processof recombination. That is, innovation is
the territory of people who can combinetwo bits of ideas or knowledge or thinking
in a way that hasn't been combinedbefore. Right. And so again going
back to Steve Jobs, I'm surehe was a very smart guy. But
Steve Jobs also managed to recombine thingslike technology and design in ways that others
(22:23):
hadn't before. And so immigrants justhappen to be people that because of their
experience, because they grew up inplace A and now they live in place
B, they can bring something different, Okay, And so that's why we
see referring back to the studies youtalked about, companies that have more foreign
born workers are more innovative, right, And we can measure that in lots
(22:47):
of ways. Patenting is one process, innovations, product innovations. I mean,
however you slice it, the immigrantsare good for innovation. It's also
true at the community level. It'salso true at the state level, at
the national level. But here's thekicker that I think is really encouraging.
It's not that immigrants are better thannatives. That's not the point. In
fact, the data shows that whennatives interact with immigrants, they are also
(23:10):
more creative. So people with differentbackgrounds make you and me more creative,
and so inventors that work alongside foreignborn inventors patent more and come up with
patents that are better and more creative, and so it's really a win win.
It's just a matter of mixing peoplewith different backgrounds. Again, because
innovation is just about recombination. Youdon't even have to use the I word
(23:32):
to explain how that happens. IfI were concerned about this issue, and
I were sitting here having a discussionwith you, I might say, doctor
Hernandez, I have no qualms aboutimmigrants who come the right way. You
came the right way, you camethrough a student visa. What I'm concerned
(23:53):
about is not legal immigrants. I'mconcerned about folks that are illegal, crossing
the border or coming here through someunauthorized means. We don't know who they
are. Are they a public safetythreat to this country? Are they taking
our jobs? What does your researchtell us about undocumented immigrants in this country?
(24:14):
Look, first of all, toanyone who's listening who has that question,
I get it, and it's actuallya great question to ask. It's
a fair question, it's a goodquestion. I would say that most of
the people who ask that question sometimesdon't want to listen to the answer,
So I hope that whoever's listening willlisten to the answer. And by the
way, when I was an immigranthere in terms of like I came the
(24:36):
right way, I came through it. I was very proud of that.
And I really I myself look downupon undocumented immigrants and I tried to distinguish
myself from them. I thought,well, I'm not like them, right,
I came the right way, soI had the same view. And
to be clear, I don't thinkundocumented or illegal immigration is a good thing.
It's a terrible thing. It's abad thing. Right, So everything
I'm about to say doesn't mean thatI think people should be crossing the border
(25:00):
illegally. But I think let's splitthis into two answers. First, is
do undocumented immigrants increase crime or createthe harm that you just talked about?
And then second, and this isreally important, why do we have so
many undocumented immigrants? Because that's whatpeople really need to understand as well.
So let's start with the first.So, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a
(25:21):
significantly lower rate than natives and eventhan legal immigrants. They have the lowest
crime rate in the United States andthat's like really well estaff of all the
immigration issues, that's the one onwhich there's like pretty much no ambiguity.
We are very confident about this.So, if anything, ondocumented immigrants reduce
crime in your community, right,the opposite of what most people think.
(25:42):
There are studies that look at theeffects on the jobs and wages of natives.
Undocumented immigrants don't have any negative effectson the employment of natives, and
they tend not to have negative effectson wages. There are some studies that
show that natives might suffer wage lossesfor about a year or two, but
(26:04):
then they adjust very quickly, usuallybecause natives move into sectors of the economy
where they're not competing directly with undocumentedimmigrants. So the effects are i would
say small to nonexistent and more likelynon existent based on the evidence. So
the point is like, there's notmuch to worry about in terms of them
doing damage. But on documented immigrantsbring all the same benefits we've been talking
(26:29):
about in terms of new product ideas. It turns out that they actually start
businesses. It turns out that theypay taxes at very high rates of very
reliable taxpayers because they want to,so that they can be able to apply
for residents one day, so there'sno harm. And there's many benefits that
come from immigrants economically, because theeconomy doesn't care if you have a good
idea, The economy doesn't care aboutwhat your documented status is. So the
(26:52):
question is why do we have somany undocumented immigrants in this country? Right?
And just to give a number onthat, there's an estimated twelve million,
probably more now in the last fewyears there has been a bit of
an increase in that. So let'ssay twelve maybe up to thirteen or fourteen
million, we don't know, butit's a big number, right, It's
nearly a quarter of all immigrants inthe US now. Most of the time,
(27:15):
when I talk to people about this, they make what I call the
bad apples argument. Right, there'sa bunch of bad actors who are crossing
the border, and they're bad actorswho commit crime and do all these damaging
things. But look, when youhave a system that allows twelve million permanent
undocumented immigrants, right who have beenhere for over a decade on average,
and in case, in some casesover twenty years, that tells you that
(27:37):
the system that we have to bringin apples into this country is messed up,
right, You know, there aren'ttwelve million bad apples. We have
a terrible system to bring in apples. And that's because, as I mentioned
an answer to an earlier question,we haven't updated our immigration system since nineteen
ninety and really the system we havenow dates back to nineteen sixty five.
(27:59):
The analogy using the book is ofa highway. Imagine that we built highways
during the Johnson administration, and wehad speed limits that were, you know,
according to what car the capacity ofcars in the Johnson administration in the
nineteen sixties, and now it's allthese years later, where cars are very
different, where the economies more thanquadruple the size, et cetera, et
(28:21):
cetera, and we're still operating onthe same old highways with the same low
speed limit, and Congress can't getits act together. And so the mismatch
between the number of immigrants our systemallows and the number of immigrants our economy
needs is just giant. Give youone example, seven hundred thousand working age
people die in America each year.That's working age people in prime working age.
This is not retirees or children,this is people, right, Our
(28:45):
legal system doesn't allow us to replaceeven that number of people. We give
visas to about a million people,but about half of those are people who
were already here anyway, which meansthat the most optimistic estimate is that we
led in about five hundred thousand newworkers a year, and seven hundred thousand
workers are dying each year, andthe mismatch is even larger than just that.
And so when you have that,you just have this very strong incentive
(29:08):
for businesses to hire undocumented people,and undocumented people, for a variety of
reasons, also have an incentive tocome. So we just need to rebalance
the supply and the demand. Anotherway to say that is that most of
the undocumented problem is really our owncreation. It's just because the system doesn't
allow enough people, and so youget kind of this black market approach for
(29:30):
businesses to get the workers they need. Is that good? Of course?
Not right. I'm the first onewho wants to end the undocumented problem.
But you're not going to do itjust by closing the border and hoping no
bad apples get in, because it'sthe system for letting apples in. Let's
close by localizing this. Yeah,the city of Philadelphia, which for centuries
(29:52):
was a city that was built,in which wealth was generated, in which
it became for a while the industrialcapital of the United States, much through
immigrant talent and labor for a periodof time, mostly due to the restrictions
we set in place in this nationin the nineteen twenties and thirties onwards.
Until nineteen sixty five, the doorcloses and as a result, Philadelphia essentially
(30:19):
disappears as an immigrant destination. Bythe time you get to the turn of
this century, the foreign born populationin Philadelphia is less than six percent.
Now, we have seen a renaissanceof sorts. Over the last fifteen years.
We have re emerged as an immigrantdestination. In fact, most of
the city's population resurgence is through immigration. We've seen a forty percent increase in
(30:42):
the foreign born population from two thousandand five to the present. This substantial
that growth is expected to continue.So, whereas in your prior answer to
policy recommendations, you mostly focused onfederal action, what would you say to
Philadelphia's new mayor, or our businessleadership or nonprofits that are occupy operating in
(31:08):
this space, what recommendations would yougive. I'll give you an answer.
From the perspective of economics, wethink of economic growth too much, especially
kind of at the local level,right, city and state, as this
very transactional thing. Right, Likewe offer tax breaks in exchange for investment.
It's like we have to spend taxmoney to create prosperity. Right.
(31:29):
Economic prosperity is just is really aside effect of human prosperity. That's how
I put it. You create aplace where people are comfortable living, and
people will do the rest. Right. They'll invest, they'll innovate, they'll
send their kids to school, they'llspend. So I would say, instead
of obsessing about the outcome of economicgrowth, the question I would say is
how can we make this place reallywelcoming right for everybody? And you know
(31:52):
one of them is housing needs tobe affordable, right, and so you
know, make sure that we canbuild enough housing and build enough infrastructure for
people to want to move in andbe able to afford it. I would
say, creating a place that isopen to people from different backgrounds, right.
And that's not a mushy like,oh, diversity is our strength kind
of statement. It's like a hardnose, like like I said, with
(32:15):
innovation, a variety of people willbring a variety of ideas which will make
us more innovative. And so Ithink it's it's just a matter really of
focusing on the inputs of what makespeople comfortable living here, what makes them
want to come, and then letthem do the rest right, as opposed
to and that's as opposed to settingtargets like you know, we want four
(32:35):
biotech startups in Philly, Right,that doesn't work. I lived in Saint
Louis. They tried to do that. It doesn't work. Rather, I
would set targets in terms of wewant we want to encourage this number of
new people to come. Right,these surges that the political upheaval that often
pushes people into our country, Ithink Philadelphia should be very proactive about saying,
fine, we want those people,will do things to receive them,
(32:55):
just like we did with Ukrainians whenRussia and Vadier Right. I think those
are the opportunities. So focus onthe inputs of bringing in people and letting
them live, and then they'll dothe rest. Are you hopeful that we
can come to a more sensible placeon this issue? I am, actually
I am, and I'm hopeful basedon the evidence not just based on like,
oh, you know, this iswishful thinking. I mean, it
(33:17):
does seem like wishful thinking in ourcurrent political environment. But actually, if
you look at the data, overseventy percent or more of Americans think immigration
is good, right. That seemsdisconnected from what you read in the headlines.
It's certainly disconnected from the way politicianstalk about it. And that's just
because, like the political game istotally separate. It's a different game that's
(33:39):
not about reality or anything. It'sjust about getting re elected or not being
primaried. But actually on the ground, when you talk to people, when
I talk to people, not justwhen I do the research, but when
I talk to like small and mediumbusiness owners who face the reality of making
a likelihood the average person who youknow who works or lives next to a
(33:59):
four and born person, their interactionswith newcomers are overwhelmingly positive. That's the
reality. And so in fact,we have evidence that the more exposure natives
have to immigrants, the more favorablethey are to them, the more welcoming
they are towards them. And soI think as America since nineteen sixty five,
in Philadelphia, since two thousand,has received more foreigners. That means
(34:21):
that the exposure of the average personin Philadelphia and America to immigrants has increased,
which we know from evidence makes usmore positively inclined. So I think
that all this anger and hot airthat we're seeing at the federal level and
mostly in the in federal elections,that's kind of separate from the reality that's
going to determine what happens. Ido worry about our system not being reformed,
(34:43):
but history in the US has provedthat despite a dysfunctional system, immigrants
still do what they do right,and so that's why I'm optimistic despite real
challenges. Doctor Rnandez has been apleasure having you on this segment of Welcoming
Works. Doctor Rnandez's book Truth aboutImmigration, Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers forthcoming
(35:05):
on June fourth through Saint Martin's Pressor you can check it out on doctor
Rnandz's website, which is Zeke Hernandezdot net. Very good, Thank you,
thanks for having me. It's apleasure.
This is Welcoming Works with me Anushgupta, President and CEO of the Welcoming Center,
join us as we spotlight the phenomenaleconomic and social impact immigrants are making
right here in Philadelphia. In eachsegment, we will dive into stories of
community, culture, transformation, andresilience. These stories are a celebration of
immigrants who are shaping not only brightfutures for themselves and their families, but
(00:30):
a brighter future for their communities andfor Philadelphia. Today's guest is Professor z
Carnandez, the Garchik Family Presidential AssociateProfessor at the Wards School of Business at
the University of Pennsylvania. Doctor Hernandez, welcome, thanks ANDUSA, thanks for
joining us this morning. Of course, So you have a book coming out
in short order on June fourth,to be published by Saint Martin's Press called
(00:54):
The Truth about Immigration, Why SuccessfulSocieties Welcome Newcomers. Little bit about the
book. The book is meant tobe really the go to reference on all
the questions anyone has always had.But to frame it a little bit,
you know, we really think thatwe have two sides of a debate about
immigration in this country and in theworld. But actually we don't. And
(01:18):
here's what I mean. One sideof the debate is what I call the
villain argument, and this is familiarto anyone who's following politics. Right,
the immigrants steal our jobs, undermineour safety, I wrote, our cultural
values. But the other side iswhat we learned from M. Lazar as
this poem, right, the poorhuddled masses, the statue of liberty,
and the idea there is that immigrantsare these what I call these victims who
(01:38):
need our help and compassion, evenif it costs us a lot. And
these seem to be counter arguments toeach other, but they're actually not.
They're actually perfectly consistent with each other. It just comes down to whether one
side wants to welcome them or not. And that's, you know, not
a very powerful way to think aboutit. But also even more importantly,
both arguments are false in terms ofwhat the evidence tells us. So if
(02:00):
you actually dig into the hardcore empiricalevidence, the reality is that immigrants are
net positive contributors to everything that makesus prosperous, to our economy and to
our society. And so what Igo through in the book is, you
know, the first half covers like, what's the evidence on how immigrants affect
you and me economically? And wego into things like, immigrants bring more
(02:23):
investment, they create new jobs,they introduce innovations through technology and products,
they increase tax revenue, they bringnew ideas that make our economy more vibrant
and diversified. And then on thesocial side, studies show that immigrants are
quite successful at adopting the cultural valuesthat we hold dear. But not only
that, they expand and enrich ourculture so that our culture is more vibrant
(02:49):
and more alive and more interesting.Immigrants increase our safety, both in our
communities and at the national security level. So I mean, whatever your wish
list is of what you want agood society or a good community to be,
immigrants contribute positively. And that's adifferent narrative. That's neither villain nor
victim. That is the truth,which is a positive framing of what immigrants
do for you and me. That'skind of the book. In a nutshell.
(03:12):
You're a professor, you do academicresearch, and you teach in an
academic institution. Who is this bookfor. I think it's for everyone who
wants to know the truth. Right, we know that about seventy percent of
Americans believe immigrants are good, right, But that seems to not jive with
the headlines and the social media posts, and so I think there's a huge
(03:35):
dissonance between what we read and hearand what our experience on the ground really
is. And so I think foranyone who wants to bridge those two things
and understand what's really going on.So it's not a book for academic specialists.
It's not an academic book, it'snot an academic press. It's for
a general audience, and I thinkit speaks to the two thirds or more
of the population that actually are curiousabout the subject, but perhaps don't have
(04:00):
all the evidence at their hands.I think there's a minority that is rabid
and will never change their mind,and I hope they read the book,
But I think the vast majority ofthe people will find value in it.
The political moment in which the bookwill be published is inescapable, and it's
an issue that could very well determinethe next occupant of the White House.
(04:23):
And we're not here to get intoa political discussion. But did you anticipate
that you would release, that youwould publish the book at such a critical
time for this issue, and nowthat it is coming in this coming out
in this context, how do youhope that it affects this election cycle?
We as in my publisher and Idefinitely knew that the book would come out
(04:46):
around this time, and we didintentionally decide to release it around now because
we knew immigration was going to bein the air during political season. We
couldn't have anticipated that. It seemsto be that it's going to be the
issue on which this election is goingto be run. Right. Trump wants
to run on it because he seesthat he sees this as Biden's greatest weakness,
and in some ways he's been successfulin moving Biden to his own rhetorical
(05:10):
side of the story, what Ijust called the villain argument. Right,
they're both talking about immigrants as villains, but in different ways. And so
I'm not naive enough to think thatthis book is going to change the outcome
of the election. But I thinkin this moment it's very important to present
this third narrative that is fact based, that is not what either political candidate
is talking about, or what nopolitical candidate actually ever talks about. And
(05:34):
so I do hope that the averagevoter and citizen will find value and being
able to speak in an informed,factual way about the issues that they're going
to see in the debates. Youtalk about your personal background in the book,
and you are an immigrant. Yourcountry of origin is Uruguay. You
write about how difficult a decision itwas to ultimately come here for school,
(05:57):
uproot your life, et cetera.How did that experiential empathy factor into how
you conducted the research and how youwrote the book. Yeah, that's a
good question. It's always a littleharder to reflect on your own personal experience
with total objectivity. Then we don'thave time here to get into all the
details of my story, but thegist of it is that I struggled a
lot with the decision to come tothe US. I had an opportunity to
(06:18):
come for college, but somehow Ihad imbibed a lot of the misconceptions that
everyone has about immigrants. For example, I worried that I was by coming
here that I might take something fromAmericans. I also worried that I would
do damage to my home country byleaving, And so I thought, am
I making a selfish decision here?Now that experience didn't impact my research per
(06:42):
se researches research, And actually Iwasn't even interested in studying immigration. I
wanted to study economic growth, andthen I backed into immigration. But that
experience did impact the way I've writtenthe book in the sense that, look,
I had to go through several yearsof research to discover the facts and
the truth and what the reality is, and to realize that many of the
misconceptions I myself had were not correct. In fact, the opposite was true.
(07:05):
So if someone like me, who'shad all the time and the luxury
to study this topic, came withall these misconceptions, it's understandable that an
average person would as well. Andso I've written the book with a lot
of compassion in the sense that Itell a lot of my story and my
own journey of discovering things, andI tell the stories of other people I've
come across in the journey. Andso this is not a book that's just
(07:28):
a bunch of facts and figures,facts and figures written for an academic,
like I said, It's a bookthat is deeply narrative. It has my
story, it has the story ofa lot of other people, and the
facts and figures are woven into thosestories. Yeah, I think my experience
led me to realize that taking someonelike me twenty years ago and just throwing
a bunch of facts and figures isn'tenough. You have to walk through the
(07:49):
emotional and personal arc of what itmeans to change your mind about a topic.
Why do you think you had thosepreconceived notions about what immigration in America
means? I honestly don't have agood answer to that. I think it's
just misinformation on this topic is sopervasive, right, and somehow it feeds
into this false intuition that if Ilet someone else come, there's less for
(08:13):
me. That almost seems like this, I don't know this thing that we
have from kindergarten playground onward. Soit takes changing the zero sum mindset.
But I don't really have a goodanswer. I think part of the answer,
and this is something I cover alot in the book, is that
there is a very well organized,well funded, and motivated campaign to spread
(08:33):
misinformation about immigration and immigrants in thiscountry and in almost every other country as
well. That movement is more successfulthan it should be. You note that
in the introduction you often find throughspeaking engagements that audiences just don't know a
lot about this issue, and actuallymost Americans seem to start with a favorable
(08:56):
disposition towards immigrants. They just don'tknow much about it. So how do
you hope that the book can fillthat knowledge gap and potentially turn the tide
on how people feel about this issue. Yeah, so there's some really interesting
evidence showing that actually, if peopleare exposed and this is experimental evidence and
(09:18):
experiments, when people are exposed tocorrect factual information about immigration or immigrants,
they do change their minds on issues. Now, the information has to be
presented in a certain way, ina way that's palatable, and that is
presented with some compassion for people's preconceivednotions. That leads me to believe that
a book like this can make adifference. Now, this is a little
(09:39):
bit self serving, but if yougo to my website, So I have
a website, Z Carnandez dot net. Okay, z Carnandez dot net.
One of the first things you'll seethere is a big red button where you
can take an immigration quiz. It'sa thirteen question quiz and I have administered
that quiz to a ton of peopleover the years. From all walks of
life, left, right, educated, not so educated. Overwhelmingly, most
(10:01):
people get all the questions wrong.In fact, on the website, just
from the people who have taken onthe website, the average score is below
forty percent. So it just tellsus that people are really quite misinformed about
this topic, and it's not amatter of education or political affiliation. I
think that the book in some wayseeing that over the years as I made
these presentations led me to realize,I should probably write this book, or
(10:22):
I want to write this book tosee if it makes a difference, because
the other experience I had in presentingto these audiences is not only was it
that the feedback was, oh,this was interesting, but almost like this
overwhelming sense of relief. I can'ttell you how many times people have come
after a presentation and said, oh, my goodness, like I've been wanting
(10:43):
to know the answers to these thingsfor so long and I didn't know where
to find them. That was asignal that I wanted to replicate the opportunity
of doing these presentations in the formof a book so it could reach more
people. So I believe, basedon the evidence in my experience that that
people really can learn about this.It just takes a little bit of time.
(11:05):
If you could waive a magic wandand ask policy makers federal, state,
or local to make two or threeimmediate policy changes, pursue into your
research and your writing. What wouldthose be? So I would say,
first, we have to take responsibilityfor immigration away from the Department of Homeland
Security in this country. Think ofwhat that implies, just that that immigration
(11:28):
is something that's a security issue,something that your government needs to protect you
from. Right now, once youunderstand the facts and the evidence which the
book goes over, you know thatimmigration is overwhelmingly good. So that means
that we need to administer it atthe government level under an agency that isn't
about fear, bet an agency that'sabout prosperity. So that's a first right
just framing it as something that weshouldn't fear. In fact, the opposite
(11:52):
we should embrace. Second, thereis this huge discrepancy between the federal and
the local level in that cities andstates they bear the short term costs of
immigrant arrivors in the first few months, perhaps the first year or so,
but there are these huge long termbenefits that we experience at all level,
city, state, and federal.The issue is that local governments are burying
(12:13):
all the costs in the long run. This is what we hear, like
the mayors of Denver and New Yorkor Chicago complain about right now. And
they do have a point that thefederal government is not helping or that the
costs are not evenly distributed. Sowe have to address that imbalance between local
short term costs and kind of nationallong term benefits. And then the third
we need to pass the famous comprehensiveimmigration reform in Congress. But just for
(12:39):
context, the last time we didthat was nineteen ninety. The economy was
less than half the size it isnow. So we're operating an economy that's
overdouble the size on a system thatjust doesn't make sense for our time.
And I think a key element ofthat reform needs to be that we have
to get rid of quotas. Theidea that we can set a quota in
nineteen ninety that will be accurate andrelevant thirty years later. It makes no
(13:03):
sense right Nobody can predict the futurein that way, so we need a
system that isn't based on quotas.Those would be my three main things.
Yeah, I'm with doctor z Carnandez, the Garchik Family, Presidential Associate Professor
at the Wharton School the University ofPennsylvania and the author of the forthcoming book
The Truth About Immigration, Why SuccessfulSocieties Welcome Newcomers, to be published by
(13:24):
Saint Martin's Press on June fourth,Azeke in twenty twenty six, we have
the world's largest sporting event coming toPhiladelphia, the World Cup, and of
course we're going to root for theUS and we want the US to succeed.
Although you may still have a biastowards the Uruguayan national team, I
understand all, I confess I do. The US men's team has always struggled
(13:48):
to compete in the World Cup,or at least so we thought. And
amongst the findings that you document inyour book, to me, one of
the most startling was the story ofthe US men's national soccer team in the
early versions of the World Cup,going back to the nineteen thirties. Talk
(14:09):
about what happened with that team andwhy they actually were successful. Yeah,
okay, I'm glad you asked.That was one of my favorite stories to
tell, and I'll hope to keepit short enough. Yeah. So,
I think the false narrative about USmen's soccer, it's a little different for
women's, is that the US wasalways atrocious, right, This wasn't a
sport that Americans were interested in.And then all of a sudden, the
(14:31):
US qualifies for the nineteen ninety WorldCup, and from nineteen ninety to the
present, the US has been prettyconstant presence in the World Cup and has
done okay, right, not contendersto win it, but done okay.
But actually, the real narrative isthat the US men making it back onto
the world stage in the World Cupis a comeback story because in the very
(14:52):
first night World Cup in nineteen thirty, which was hosted by coincidentally my home
country Uruguay, the US finished inthird place and they did quite well.
Right, It's not it wasn't afluke, right, It's not that they
really kind of struggled to get tothird place. They did very very well.
And then the US also participated inthe World Cups up until nineteen fifty
and nineteen fifty they actually upset Englandin a game that is sort of legendary
(15:16):
still today in history. So theUS wasn't historically atrocious. Then between nineteen
fifty and nineteen ninety they were atrocious, and they disappear from the world stage
of US men's soccer, And youmight think, well, what what explains
that kind of They were pretty good, then they disappeared and were terrible,
and then they came back. Andit turns out that it's a story of
immigration. Right. If you lookat the rosters of the players on the
(15:37):
nineteen thirty World Cup team, almostall of them four fits eighty percent were
either immigrants or the children of immigrantsfrom the countries that had sent immigrants in
the previous twenty to thirty years,so England, Scotland, Wales, you
know, Germany. If you lookat the nineteen fifty team, they were
the immigrants or the children of immigrantsfrom the new wave of immigration, so
(16:00):
you had you know, Italians,Portuguese. Right. And why did the
US all of a sudden like startreally being terrible at soccer after nineteen fifty,
Because about twenty five years earlier,in nineteen twenty four, the US
shut its doors to immigration and newsoccer talent stopped coming. And why was
there a renaissance in soccer talent innineteen ninety, because about twenty five years
(16:22):
earlier, in nineteen sixty five,the US opened its doors again to immigration.
So the point is, like,if you look at the fortunes of
US men's soccer, it has alot to do with when we allowed and
when we restricted immigration. And thewhole point of that story is you may
not care at all about soccer,but it's the same story for areas of
our economy and talent that matter alot more than soccer. Right. Our
(16:45):
dependence on immigrants for everything from AItechnology to our biotechnology revolution, to all
the tech products that you use,from Zoom to Google to anything you can
think of, immigrants have a disproportionit like massive influence in all these fields,
and so the US has always benefitedfrom letting the world's best and brightest
(17:06):
in different areas in right. Sothat's that's the story. Another one of
the really I think startling findings inyour book is this link you trace between
investment dollars and capital flow from countriesof origin to communities where there is now
a sort of concentrated and growing immigrantcommunity with links back to that country of
(17:30):
origin, and the one historical precedentyou used to highlight that which was fascinating
to me was the location of JapaneseAmericans who were interned at camps during World
War Two. After the war finished, they didn't necessarily move back to their
communities of origin. Many of themstayed close to where those camps were located.
(17:52):
Tell me if I'm wrong, buta lot of those camps were located
in the middle of nowhere, andsomehow you actually documented a higher concentration of
investment and capital from Japanese firms tothose communities. Yeah, that's right.
So you're referring to a study byLouren Cohen who's a professor at Harvard and
a few co authors whose names Iforget and apologies to them. So,
(18:17):
the Japanese internment camps had to bein sites with certain characteristics at the federal
the War Relocation Committee determined, Andso you had a bunch of Japanese who
were mostly living in California who endup being sent to places like Rower,
Arkansas, or Granada, Colorado,or Topaz Utah far inland. So even
to the day, communities that hadJapanese internment camps have like three times more
(18:41):
than expected, like numbers of peopleof Japanese ancestry. And what the study
shows is is exactly what you saidthat to this day, those places receive
a disproportionate share of Japanese investment.And what you're referring to is what I
often called one of the great untoldstore worries about immigration, which is,
(19:02):
let me back up for a second. If I ask you, what what
do you want the most economically foryour neighborhood in your community, I think
most people would say, well,I want good jobs, right, because
from good jobs comes everything else.Well where do jobs come from? They
come from investment, right. Ifno one's investing in your community, there
will be no businesses or organizations thatcreate those jobs that then allow you to
(19:22):
work and pay for your kids' LittleLeague games or whatever. And so a
lot of people link immigration to jobs, usually negatively. They say, oh,
immigrants are stealing jobs, which isnot true. But nobody links immigration
to investment. And what studies likethe Japanese Internment camp studies show, and
other studies that I've done, notjust in the US but in many countries,
(19:42):
is that where immigrants settle, investmentfollows, and investment follows in two
ways. Either companies from their homecountries, invest like the Japanese firms investing
in the places where former Japanese attorneyslive, or because immigrants are eighty percent
more likely the natives to start businesses, immigrants themselves will put their capital into
(20:03):
new businesses, and those investments thencreate jobs. And those jobs aren't just
for immigrants or their children. Thosejobs are for non immigrants overwhelmingly, right.
I Mean, when Honda invests somewhere, they're not investing just to employ
Japanese Americans. They're investing to employAmericans. Period. That is one of
the stories that I comes directly frommy research, but which I've realized in
(20:26):
speaking to audience, is that mostpeople just do not talk about, right.
And so you know, one morereason that you want more immigration is
just because it seeds investment that createsthe jobs that you want in your community.
You also document within not just withincommunities, but within employers, employers
that have some concentration of immigrants aspart of their workforce, that they actually
(20:53):
have a sort of a higher innovationquotient. Maybe you measure that through patent
activity or just productivity or outputs orsales, yeah, or new products.
Why is that that's Again, anotherthing that is not understood, or not
at least understood in the magnitude thatit should be, is that immigrants are
(21:15):
Look if you don't like the eyword, right, because the iword is so
loaded with meaning. So let's notuse the eyeword for a second. Just
people of different backgrounds that get hiredin an organization or that arrive in a
community, They're going to bring newideas. They've had different experiences, they
have different connections back to the homeland. They got their education in a place
where maybe the educational system was different, so they might think of a problem
(21:37):
different They might solve a problem youhave in a different way than you would.
Okay, if we take a stepback and think, well, what
is innovation, Whether it's a technicalinnovation, an organizational innovation, a product
innovation, an innovation, and howto solve a social problem, a school
problem. It's not just a matterof genius. We often have kind of
the Steve Jobs model of innovation wherethere's like some genius, but actually research
(22:00):
shows that innovation is just a processof recombination. That is, innovation is
the territory of people who can combinetwo bits of ideas or knowledge or thinking
in a way that hasn't been combinedbefore. Right. And so again going
back to Steve Jobs, I'm surehe was a very smart guy. But
Steve Jobs also managed to recombine thingslike technology and design in ways that others
(22:23):
hadn't before. And so immigrants justhappen to be people that because of their
experience, because they grew up inplace A and now they live in place
B, they can bring something different, Okay, And so that's why we
see referring back to the studies youtalked about, companies that have more foreign
born workers are more innovative, right, And we can measure that in lots
(22:47):
of ways. Patenting is one process, innovations, product innovations. I mean,
however you slice it, the immigrantsare good for innovation. It's also
true at the community level. It'salso true at the state level, at
the national level. But here's thekicker that I think is really encouraging.
It's not that immigrants are better thannatives. That's not the point. In
fact, the data shows that whennatives interact with immigrants, they are also
(23:10):
more creative. So people with differentbackgrounds make you and me more creative,
and so inventors that work alongside foreignborn inventors patent more and come up with
patents that are better and more creative, and so it's really a win win.
It's just a matter of mixing peoplewith different backgrounds. Again, because
innovation is just about recombination. Youdon't even have to use the I word
(23:32):
to explain how that happens. IfI were concerned about this issue, and
I were sitting here having a discussionwith you, I might say, doctor
Hernandez, I have no qualms aboutimmigrants who come the right way. You
came the right way, you camethrough a student visa. What I'm concerned
(23:53):
about is not legal immigrants. I'mconcerned about folks that are illegal, crossing
the border or coming here through someunauthorized means. We don't know who they
are. Are they a public safetythreat to this country? Are they taking
our jobs? What does your researchtell us about undocumented immigrants in this country?
(24:14):
Look, first of all, toanyone who's listening who has that question,
I get it, and it's actuallya great question to ask. It's
a fair question, it's a goodquestion. I would say that most of
the people who ask that question sometimesdon't want to listen to the answer,
So I hope that whoever's listening willlisten to the answer. And by the
way, when I was an immigranthere in terms of like I came the
(24:36):
right way, I came through it. I was very proud of that.
And I really I myself look downupon undocumented immigrants and I tried to distinguish
myself from them. I thought,well, I'm not like them, right,
I came the right way, soI had the same view. And
to be clear, I don't thinkundocumented or illegal immigration is a good thing.
It's a terrible thing. It's abad thing. Right, So everything
I'm about to say doesn't mean thatI think people should be crossing the border
(25:00):
illegally. But I think let's splitthis into two answers. First, is
do undocumented immigrants increase crime or createthe harm that you just talked about?
And then second, and this isreally important, why do we have so
many undocumented immigrants? Because that's whatpeople really need to understand as well.
So let's start with the first.So, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a
(25:21):
significantly lower rate than natives and eventhan legal immigrants. They have the lowest
crime rate in the United States andthat's like really well estaff of all the
immigration issues, that's the one onwhich there's like pretty much no ambiguity.
We are very confident about this.So, if anything, ondocumented immigrants reduce
crime in your community, right,the opposite of what most people think.
(25:42):
There are studies that look at theeffects on the jobs and wages of natives.
Undocumented immigrants don't have any negative effectson the employment of natives, and
they tend not to have negative effectson wages. There are some studies that
show that natives might suffer wage lossesfor about a year or two, but
(26:04):
then they adjust very quickly, usuallybecause natives move into sectors of the economy
where they're not competing directly with undocumentedimmigrants. So the effects are i would
say small to nonexistent and more likelynon existent based on the evidence. So
the point is like, there's notmuch to worry about in terms of them
doing damage. But on documented immigrantsbring all the same benefits we've been talking
(26:29):
about in terms of new product ideas. It turns out that they actually start
businesses. It turns out that theypay taxes at very high rates of very
reliable taxpayers because they want to,so that they can be able to apply
for residents one day, so there'sno harm. And there's many benefits that
come from immigrants economically, because theeconomy doesn't care if you have a good
idea, The economy doesn't care aboutwhat your documented status is. So the
(26:52):
question is why do we have somany undocumented immigrants in this country? Right?
And just to give a number onthat, there's an estimated twelve million,
probably more now in the last fewyears there has been a bit of
an increase in that. So let'ssay twelve maybe up to thirteen or fourteen
million, we don't know, butit's a big number, right, It's
nearly a quarter of all immigrants inthe US now. Most of the time,
(27:15):
when I talk to people about this, they make what I call the
bad apples argument. Right, there'sa bunch of bad actors who are crossing
the border, and they're bad actorswho commit crime and do all these damaging
things. But look, when youhave a system that allows twelve million permanent
undocumented immigrants, right who have beenhere for over a decade on average,
and in case, in some casesover twenty years, that tells you that
(27:37):
the system that we have to bringin apples into this country is messed up,
right, You know, there aren'ttwelve million bad apples. We have
a terrible system to bring in apples. And that's because, as I mentioned
an answer to an earlier question,we haven't updated our immigration system since nineteen
ninety and really the system we havenow dates back to nineteen sixty five.
(27:59):
The analogy using the book is ofa highway. Imagine that we built highways
during the Johnson administration, and wehad speed limits that were, you know,
according to what car the capacity ofcars in the Johnson administration in the
nineteen sixties, and now it's allthese years later, where cars are very
different, where the economies more thanquadruple the size, et cetera, et
(28:21):
cetera, and we're still operating onthe same old highways with the same low
speed limit, and Congress can't getits act together. And so the mismatch
between the number of immigrants our systemallows and the number of immigrants our economy
needs is just giant. Give youone example, seven hundred thousand working age
people die in America each year.That's working age people in prime working age.
This is not retirees or children,this is people, right, Our
(28:45):
legal system doesn't allow us to replaceeven that number of people. We give
visas to about a million people,but about half of those are people who
were already here anyway, which meansthat the most optimistic estimate is that we
led in about five hundred thousand newworkers a year, and seven hundred thousand
workers are dying each year, andthe mismatch is even larger than just that.
And so when you have that,you just have this very strong incentive
(29:08):
for businesses to hire undocumented people,and undocumented people, for a variety of
reasons, also have an incentive tocome. So we just need to rebalance
the supply and the demand. Anotherway to say that is that most of
the undocumented problem is really our owncreation. It's just because the system doesn't
allow enough people, and so youget kind of this black market approach for
(29:30):
businesses to get the workers they need. Is that good? Of course?
Not right. I'm the first onewho wants to end the undocumented problem.
But you're not going to do itjust by closing the border and hoping no
bad apples get in, because it'sthe system for letting apples in. Let's
close by localizing this. Yeah,the city of Philadelphia, which for centuries
(29:52):
was a city that was built,in which wealth was generated, in which
it became for a while the industrialcapital of the United States, much through
immigrant talent and labor for a periodof time, mostly due to the restrictions
we set in place in this nationin the nineteen twenties and thirties onwards.
Until nineteen sixty five, the doorcloses and as a result, Philadelphia essentially
(30:19):
disappears as an immigrant destination. Bythe time you get to the turn of
this century, the foreign born populationin Philadelphia is less than six percent.
Now, we have seen a renaissanceof sorts. Over the last fifteen years.
We have re emerged as an immigrantdestination. In fact, most of
the city's population resurgence is through immigration. We've seen a forty percent increase in
(30:42):
the foreign born population from two thousandand five to the present. This substantial
that growth is expected to continue.So, whereas in your prior answer to
policy recommendations, you mostly focused onfederal action, what would you say to
Philadelphia's new mayor, or our businessleadership or nonprofits that are occupy operating in
(31:08):
this space, what recommendations would yougive. I'll give you an answer.
From the perspective of economics, wethink of economic growth too much, especially
kind of at the local level,right, city and state, as this
very transactional thing. Right, Likewe offer tax breaks in exchange for investment.
It's like we have to spend taxmoney to create prosperity. Right.
(31:29):
Economic prosperity is just is really aside effect of human prosperity. That's how
I put it. You create aplace where people are comfortable living, and
people will do the rest. Right. They'll invest, they'll innovate, they'll
send their kids to school, they'llspend. So I would say, instead
of obsessing about the outcome of economicgrowth, the question I would say is
how can we make this place reallywelcoming right for everybody? And you know
(31:52):
one of them is housing needs tobe affordable, right, and so you
know, make sure that we canbuild enough housing and build enough infrastructure for
people to want to move in andbe able to afford it. I would
say, creating a place that isopen to people from different backgrounds, right.
And that's not a mushy like,oh, diversity is our strength kind
of statement. It's like a hardnose, like like I said, with
(32:15):
innovation, a variety of people willbring a variety of ideas which will make
us more innovative. And so Ithink it's it's just a matter really of
focusing on the inputs of what makespeople comfortable living here, what makes them
want to come, and then letthem do the rest right, as opposed
to and that's as opposed to settingtargets like you know, we want four
(32:35):
biotech startups in Philly, Right,that doesn't work. I lived in Saint
Louis. They tried to do that. It doesn't work. Rather, I
would set targets in terms of wewant we want to encourage this number of
new people to come. Right,these surges that the political upheaval that often
pushes people into our country, Ithink Philadelphia should be very proactive about saying,
fine, we want those people,will do things to receive them,
(32:55):
just like we did with Ukrainians whenRussia and Vadier Right. I think those
are the opportunities. So focus onthe inputs of bringing in people and letting
them live, and then they'll dothe rest. Are you hopeful that we
can come to a more sensible placeon this issue? I am, actually
I am, and I'm hopeful basedon the evidence not just based on like,
oh, you know, this iswishful thinking. I mean, it
(33:17):
does seem like wishful thinking in ourcurrent political environment. But actually, if
you look at the data, overseventy percent or more of Americans think immigration
is good, right. That seemsdisconnected from what you read in the headlines.
It's certainly disconnected from the way politicianstalk about it. And that's just
because, like the political game istotally separate. It's a different game that's
(33:39):
not about reality or anything. It'sjust about getting re elected or not being
primaried. But actually on the ground, when you talk to people, when
I talk to people, not justwhen I do the research, but when
I talk to like small and mediumbusiness owners who face the reality of making
a likelihood the average person who youknow who works or lives next to a
(33:59):
four and born person, their interactionswith newcomers are overwhelmingly positive. That's the
reality. And so in fact,we have evidence that the more exposure natives
have to immigrants, the more favorablethey are to them, the more welcoming
they are towards them. And soI think as America since nineteen sixty five,
in Philadelphia, since two thousand,has received more foreigners. That means
(34:21):
that the exposure of the average personin Philadelphia and America to immigrants has increased,
which we know from evidence makes usmore positively inclined. So I think
that all this anger and hot airthat we're seeing at the federal level and
mostly in the in federal elections,that's kind of separate from the reality that's
going to determine what happens. Ido worry about our system not being reformed,
(34:43):
but history in the US has provedthat despite a dysfunctional system, immigrants
still do what they do right,and so that's why I'm optimistic despite real
challenges. Doctor Rnandez has been apleasure having you on this segment of Welcoming
Works. Doctor Rnandez's book Truth aboutImmigration, Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers forthcoming
(35:05):
on June fourth through Saint Martin's Pressor you can check it out on doctor
Rnandz's website, which is Zeke Hernandezdot net. Very good, Thank you,
thanks for having me. It's apleasure.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!