>> now, from the libertarian cato institute in washington, d.c., albert vargas discusses his book, "global crossings." .. immigration has become a burning public policy issue in washington. for the first time in decades, the united states is considering a major reform in the way it deals with immigrants.

the ensuing debate and the possibility of reform are welcomed, but the fact is politicians are arriving very late to this issue. that's because in this country, there has long been a wide gap between restrictive laws and the reality of immigration. it is a capital reflux the economic and social fact that there are millions of americans and millions of immigrants from mexico, central america and elsewhere who wish to work together in this country and engage in peaceful voluntary exchange, but are not legally allowed to do so. and that inconsistency has produced a lot of the problems associated with legal immigration. many serious problems, and some an agent. the prospects of reform has also stimulated the debate about the economic and cultural issues surrounding immigration, its

impact, and it's a debate that cuts across party lines, and is one that has generated a lot of passion. how would a possible legalization of millions of unauthorized immigrants, and the creation of a guest worker program affect wages and jobs? what does the evidence say about the extent to which immigrants are assimilating into american culture in recent decades? our immigrants in that train or are they net contributors to the welfare state? and to demand they come here to work, or to get state benefits? for that matter, the political impact of immigration is something that has been debated, what should we expect from an increased legal immigration in that regard versus the status quo. these are legitimate questions that go to the heart of one's worldviews, such issues as any quality and fairness, the proper

role of the states in regulating business and labor, cultural or national identity issues, and fiscal policy, just to name a few issues. so it's no wonder that this sudden interest on the part of leading republicans and democrats to address this issue has caused heated exchanges, exaggerated claims, and some amount of nastiness. that's why i'm pleased today to be able to host a forum for a book that takes a balanced look at a wide range of issues that are being discussed today. the book, "global crossings: immigration, civilization, and america" by alvaro vargas llosa comes at a perfect moment, and it puts immigration in historical context, showing how so much of the debate today is not actually new in american politics, and that we can be guided by a lot of american

experience, a long american express. but better to let the author talk to us about that. my good friend, alvaro vargas llosa, is the a senior fellow at the center for global prosperity at the independent institute, who publishes, who has published this book. he has been a nationally syndicated columnist for the "washington post" writers group. he has been the author of numerous books, including "liberty for latin america" and the guide to perfect latin american idiot, which was a bestseller in the spanish edition in latin america. he is ubiquitous in his columns that appear throughout latin america every week, and has contributed to the leading newspapers in the united states. he has been a board member of "the miami herald" publishing company, and an op-ed page

editor and columnist for "the miami herald." i could go on and on, but i would say one more thing. he has also been one of the great champions of liberty in latin america, very present in all of the most important debates on the right side of issues, i believe. and with this book i could say in the americas. please help me welcome alvaro vargas llosa. [applause] >> thank you very much, thank you, for that wonderful and generous presentation, and thank you to decatur institute for hosting this meeting and to alex for being so kind in helping put it together. so i've been asked why did i write this book, why was i interested in this topic and, well, there are some reasons.

perhaps one of them has to do with my i guess identity problem. i've been called a spaniard in peru. i've been called -- a pejorative term for south american. i've been called a pakistani in london where a space for welcome and now -- in other words, spaniard. so i don't really know where i belong and who i am, but i guess it's probably a good enough reason to explore this important issue today. so let me tell you a little bit about what i do in this book. what i do is i take on all the different myths that i've seen over the years that are really driving this discussion and to this debate, including the current discussion in the senate, and soon in the house as

well, about immigration reform. i won't cover all of that but i will share with you a few and give you my perspective on them, and i hope that this will help at least clarify some of this misinformation that's out there that's really quite striking. one first myth, and all of what i'm going to say i've heard many people say, people of all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of places. i didn't make any of this up. one argument basically says, we are getting the wrong kinds of immigrants today. we used to get the right kind of immigrants. i am not anti-immigration. i am just again, against this current type of anarcho we're getting today. and the answer to that is, the united states always got the wrong kind of immigrants. that's always been the case. i mean, the variety of

immigrants sources, types of immigration that this country has received in the last two centuries, two and half centuries is simply astounding. of course, between 1830-1880, yes, it was mostly northern europeans. but between 1880-1920, it was all about southern europeans and eastern europeans and central europeans who had nothing to do with northern europeans. they had different cultures. they where the mexicans of yesteryear. and, of course, after that you had come even before that you have people from asia. you have the chinese during the cold rush -- the gold rush. he by the japanese at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. and yes, you have hispanics a bit further on and you had indians after 1965 because of the change in the law, trigger sort of an unintended consequence. so there's always been the wrong kind of immigrant in the united states. it's simply not true.

another important myth says that the u.s. is getting a disproportionate number of immigrants. this morning, just this morning on a radio show i heard the host city this, we are getting more than any other country in the world. they are all wanted to come here. they don't want to go to other countries. again, this is very silly. about 3% of the world population is made up of first generation immigrants. and illegal immigrants constitute about one-sixth of immigrants that travel one place to another every year. so a total number of, the total number of immigrants every year is about 215. the total number of illegal immigrants is about 30 million. the u.s. gets in terms of such illegal immigrants, one-sixth of 1% of its population. so clearly, much smaller proportion than many other

countries are getting. so again, it's not true that the u.s. is getting a disproportionate number of immigrants. this is a worldwide phenomenon, and other countries are relatively speaking getting even more immigrants than the united states, illegal immigrants than the united states, undocumented immigrants and the united states. another myth says that the only motive behind immigration is poverty. why should we in the united states solve world poverty? we've got enough for of our own as it is, let us take care of our own. let's not solve world poverty. and that's not true. that's not the only motive behind migration. in fact, the poorest of the poor almost never migrate from one country to the other. they migrate within the borders of their own countries. europe, let's take you out. until the 1980s, the early 1980s, europe was a source of migration, of outmigration i mean. people leaving europe, and that

was a wealthy and prosperous continent before they got into this mess, which is a different story. germany, the richest among the rich in europe was exported about half a million people every year until the 1980s. so clearly the motivation behind that was not poverty. south korea as a source of significant number of immigrants, or immigrants who come to the united states. that's a rich country. bangladeshi women who are very poor, the poorest among the poor migrate very little, even in asia, which is th is a continent has the greatest number of migrants every year. so i could go on and on and on. what are the motives? a very, yes, of course economic conditions are part of the story. but you have everything, including distressed conditions at home, political, not message of economically, family ties, all sorts of different reasons

for migrating. and historical ties have a lot to do with it as well. the u.s. has historically been entangled around the world, in conflicts, in all sorts of exchanges, sometimes friendly, sometimes not so friendly and that has created conditions for permanent migration. there's been a significant filipino migration to the united states as we all know. that has to do with involvement in the war at the end of the 19th century, and also with the encouragement that the united states gave the filipinos to come to the united states historically, including a special program set up after the second world war for filipino nurses. all those were signals the u.s. saying it's okay to come. we have a struggle guys. we recognize we are bound together, so come to the united states. mexican migration, the origin a mexican migration to the united states is not poor mexicans wanting a better life in the

united states. it was u.s. business interests needing to replace eastern european's. first japanese workers and then eastern european workers in the early 20th century. so they went to mexico and asked for mexianxican worker star united states to work, particularly in railroad instruction. so all these historical ties have a lot to do with it as well. another important myth is the fact that there's never been any hostility to immigration in the united states. we've always been a country of immigrants. we've always welcomed immigrants. we have always valued people coming from overseas to contribute to the society. and again, that's not true. there's always been hostility towards immigration. of course, it hasn't always taken place exactly in the same

way. it's not always been as intense, that historically, it's always been the case that there was significant hostility to immigrants. if you look at what happened in the gold rush, chinese where the object of delegation at the time. they were frowned upon by all those who are taking nativeborn americans, who were taking part in the gold rush. the japanese come at the end of the 19th century and early 12th century, with the object of tremendous, tremendous legal restrictions but they weren't allowed to even own property so they have defined all sorts of ways to get around the law. in the middle of the 19th century, the whole nativist movement was really born. there was the famous know nothing party, were very much hostile towards immigration, and they had an impact on the

government, ma and generally on the outlook of society towards immigration. so it's always been the case, and that's why we've seen throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century an evolving situation from the point of view of how the law address immigration. and it's always been, i guess, an evolution towards more, or a change towards more and more restrictions that reflected the mindset, a mindset that was relatively hostile. not everybody of course partook in this. not everybody was reflected in these attitudes. there's always been a force of pro-immigration current of opinion in the united states, but what are kind of get at is this is not something necessarily new or very different. one thing that i think we need to understand, and this is also part of the myth, is that

whenever there is a big disconnect between the law and reality, you're going to get a black market. it happens with good, it happens with services, it happens with things but it also happens with people. you constantly hear this argument, and, of course, i can see where they're coming from and i can sympathize with the sentiment behind it, but we cannot as a country that is governed by the rule of except people who violate the law. i mean, we are just not the type of country. this is not something that is morally or legally acceptable. and yes, i mean, on paper of course. it's an excellent powerful argument. who can argue with that? however the problem is when the law is something that realistic, when the law does not take reality into account, then you create conditions for systematic violation of the law on a grand scale. and when that happens usually something is wrong with the law. not necessarily with the nature

of the people who are violating that law. it's simply the way it works. it works with all sorts of other contacts, social contacts that stem from, of course, the criminalization of things that should not be held as been criminal by the law. so the same thing happens with immigrants, which is why when people say, there's a disproportionate number of people who are -- if you make the condition of being an immigrant a criminal one, clearly you have a lot of criminals in the country. but if you adjust for age, there are no more criminals or immigrants, who are nativeborn. it's about the same rate. there are all sorts of studies, but yes, you have a significant number of people in jail, sometimes on the way to deportation, particularly in the last few years.

who could have been i guess considered criminal simply because it was criminal to be an immigrant. so it's important to get this myth out of the way, if we're going to find a legal way to deal with what is a social problem. surely having almost 12 many people operating in the shadows outside of the law is a social problem. we just need to make sure that that is not addressed, you know, from a starting point of believing these people are somehow, you know, biologically criminal. these people are simply the result of a disconnect between the law and reality. another important myth is, has to do with culture. i've heard this time and time again. i'm sure many of you have heard this. these people are culturally different. unlike the previous waves of immigrants who were culturally

in tune with our values, these people are different. and yet if you look at this in so many different ways, you find exactly the same pattern. immigrants today are culturally in tune with us-born people, with u.s. society, almost anywhere you look at it. if you look at religion, for instance, in the last 20 years -- let's talk about hispanics for a moment. of course, the most numerous immigrants in that period of time. 70% of them are catholic. about 23% are protestant. of the ones who call themselves catholic, one-fifth of them call themselves born-again. which is by doing something that you never hear in latin america. latin american catholics never describe themselves as born-again. so what i'm sensing is that people want to fit in so much that you're describing themselves as protestants still

in the united states. so this is clearly an effort to tell the united states, we are like you. we believe just like you. we praise and pray just like you. we are like you, culturally. if you look at the family values, which is something i don't think conservatives who are critical of immigration clergy understand, you will find that there's probably more inclination towards family that is today among immigrants than among any other part of society. for instance, half of all illegal households are made up of couples with children. and only 13% of illegal households are headed by a single parent, against one-third in the case of nativeborn americans. so again, if we stand for family values come if we really mean it

when we say we want a society based on family values, then surely there's a source of great comfort and support for your ideas and views among immigrants. they are not a medical to family values. they are all about family values. they say that they're having too many children. it's not fashionable any more. i don't know how you make that argument compatible with the argument that the welfare stages are going to be a problem with more immigration, but then you prove to them that that's no longer the case. the birthrate is going down and down and down among immigrants, just as it is going down and down and down across latin america. it's still a little bit higher among hispanic women in the united states, but only 60%. almost just have a child more than nativeborn women, and the train is going -- the trend is going down. i can foresee a time when no be

the same rate. in latin america there's a new discussion. until a few years ago there was a high birth rate. today, it's going down, i mean, in an incredible way. and so those societies are beginning to face some of the issues that developed countries have been facing in terms of the rate of, of course, contributors to the system of transfers the beneficiaries from that system. so they are facing the same issues. so no matter how you look at it, they are culturally compatible. you look at all those neighborhoods that they have helped regenerate. i mentioned a few in the book, in south florida, in new york, you, the process is called gentrification. communities, i mean, a complete disaster. they have become very nice communities, thanks to the effort, hispanics in general, but also, hispanics particularly

but in general immigrants have put into this. again, that's a cultural sign of perfect compatibility with the host nation. i will grant you this though. it is true that multiculturalism has distorted things a bit, and i think we would not be fair if we didn't recognize that. in the early part of the 20th century, there was something that used to be called americanization. friedrich hayek, for instance, one of our heroes of course praised americanization very much. he attributed true america's vision, the verge of having inculcated values and ideas relating to the free society. and yes, i think there was something to be said for americanization. there were some aspects that were kind of chauvinistic and there was i guess abuse is that

were sometimes committed, but by large i think it was a healthy thing. it was not so much government policy. it was just a general cultural attitude across society that somehow created incentives for people who came into learning english quickly, to become family with the values of you society with freedom and all these things. and that was a positive thing. that began to change in the 1960s. of course, where this whole -- is wholly carried on a boy called multiculturalism today emerged. i'm not going to go into a lot of details. there's a whole chapter in the book, its effects and discussion but quickly i will say, that, essentially what happened was in the air of decolonization after the second world war, we begin to look at values in a different way through relativism. we begin to see values as exchangeable. all values were equal, always

looking at society and institutions were pretty much equal. that gave rise, of course, to a whole new way of analyzing and studying societies from the past. and then from that we went on to think of minorities as these collectivist entities that were somehow in the of special protection, special rights, to correct an imbalance that was historical in nature, that was the legacy of past abuses. and this in turn translated, of course, into all sorts of ideas social engineering based on ethnicity. and we saw things like gerrymandering on ethnic lines, you know, equal employment opportunity and positive discrimination, all sorts of things that are gradually i think went beyond what was really compatible with a truly

free society governed by the principle of equality before the law. that was bound to generate a backlash at some point. and, of course, it did. but my argument is this. the people who are to blame for multiculturalism are not immigrants. they are u.s. academics mostly. and it was mostly something that emerged out of academia, not just in the united states to be fair, but also in europe. so yes, there's been a distortion and just, there are things that i myself as an immigrant to not feel at all come to do with. but if are going to fight a multiculturalism, the way to do is not to fight it immigration. it's to fight the ideology behind multiculturalism. so from the ago, and this is one way to prove that it's not immigrants who are to blame for this, to the issue of assimilation which again is laden with this myth. i'm causally told they don't

assimilate anymore. i drove past such community and they're all speaking spanish and reading spanish newspapers. so it didn't used to be that way. of course, it always was that way. german communities in the midwest, what do they do? they printed german papers, they spoke german among themselves. that's what italian said, first generation italians. that's what agents do. they still do that in california. people want to feel they belong to something, they want to protect themselves for a little while, but that doesn't stop or interrupt the process of assimilation. the process is to what used to be. it's a three generation process. the first generation make some progress. and second generation is bilingual but they speak english better than whatever other lakers were talking about. by the third generation they don't even speak their mother tongue so to speak anymore at all. i've seen this among hispanics and it's a fascinating process. that was always the case. that's exactly the way it worked with italians and the polls and the germans.

it's ours been that kind of dynamic. again, just as in the past the second generation does better than the first generation, and by the third generation of assimilation a game is complete. if you look at marriage, marriage beyond the community, which is one way to look at this, we see the same pattern today as we saw in the past. i compared second generation italians in early as part of the twin century with second generation hispanics and particularly mexicans today. the rate of out marriage among second generation italians with 17%. today is a little higher than that. almost 20%. i the third generation, out marriage is very strong. so again, very, very similar patterns of assimilating. of course, since you have sort of a constant or permanent inflow of first generation hispanics, it's only natural that you're going to see, you know, some pockets of i guess spanish-speaking communities

almost on a constant basis, but that's not because they are not assimilating. it's simply because the info keeps reoccurring. so there's nothing to fear. they are assimilating. and i think that is something that we need to embrace. so let's just go into -- the economy. again, another important source of myth. i'm always hearing this, people, we would like to have high skilled immigrants but these low skilled immigrants, why do we need this low skilled immigrants? because the modern economy needs low skilled immigrants. ..

>> do they hurt the economy? they do exactly the opposite. immigrant help in large help make the pie bigger. i went to one of the most prominent academic critics of immigration, and even he recognizes illegal immigrants contribute $22 billion to the economy every year. we updated that data. i think, i mean, it's a conservative statistic. i think it's more than that, but accept that for a moment. we just updated his calculation, and that would be about $36 billion today, and if you make that legal, it probably will be increased by, you know, two and a half, three times, talking about a hundred billion dollars

a year over a decade, a trillion dollars. that's the contribution to the economy by immigrants. how does the process work? well, they are producers. they are consumers. when they come in at the low end of the scale, they help others move up the scale. yes, they have a very tiny, temporary effect on wages at the lower end. our calculation about 1.5%, others vary a bit, but it's a very, very small impact offset by those moving up the scale with higher wages and offset immigrants help labor-intensive industries be more productive and help keep prices down. as consumers, everybody in society's benefiting from that. the effect is, of course, a very potent one, positively potent. not to speak of high skilled immigration, i don't have much

time, but high school immigration, how can that not be a huge contribution to the economy? one-third of dock tarates in engineering involve immigrants, one-fourth of the nobel peace prize winners in the u.s. have been immigrants. immigrants made silicon valley miracle between 1995 and 2005. imgrants founded many companies. they created half a million jobs. it was always absurd, you know, the rules, prevailing rules, i hope they change now, were such that the quota for h1bvs, high skilledded visas, were exhausted on day one. as soon as they were open for application, they were taken up. the ceiling was 65,000 until a few years ago. there was a greater demand. that was economic suicide on the part of the united states. let me finish by touching very,

very quickly on the issue of cost versus benefit. that's another huge myth, the idea they -- immigrants cost a lot more than they contribute fiscally, i mean. that is simply not true. there's so many great studies, one conducted a couple decades ago by the national research counsel. they calculated, not only the fiscal impact of legalizing immigrants and now they calculated what would happen in 50 years because, of course, they are young so we can expect they work 50 years in legal conditions and calculate the net present value of the 50 years in terms of what they put into the system and take out of the system, and they come up with, and that included, of course, children who are in school today, public school, but will come out and work for the next 50 years. you have to bring all that into the equation, and their calculation was a net cost, just a one-off cost, a present day

value of $5,000, which is nothing if you weigh that against the contribution i just talked about to the economy. other studies go even beyond that, and they say even the net contribution without taking into account the contribution to the economy, just the fiscal impact, is going to be positive in terms of more -- generating revenue for the government than taking art, and alex wrote about this forcefully. my message is this. we are in an age of globalization. we have won the intellectual case for free trade. we can't say at this point we have ideal free trade conditions across the word, but we won the pace for free trade, and nobody speaks girns free trade on an intellectual level saying i'm against free trade, but for free trade, but -- and then they talk about the level playing field and that, but intellectually we won the case for free trade. we are far from winning the case

for free immigration. i think it's simply not reasonable to expect that a world that's moving gradually towards free trade continues to contemplate immigration in the way it is, but trade and goods is equivalent of 45% of world gdp. about 20% of world savings are invested outside the country where they originate, yet only # 3% is first generation immigrant. that balance has to be corrected. dynamics push the world in that direction. accept and embrace and channel that energy and force through legal channels or try to put barriers against it, and you will be overwhelmed either because the negative effect of being able and managing to control this will be huge or because you will not be able to control them, and by the time you accept and realize you would have spent a lot of money, and with all the side effects that come with it in trying to stand the flow. immigration is not a danger to

the united states, which values the economy, to the standing in the world. it is exactly the opposite. it is, i think, one of the best ways to keep the united states a free country, to keep it a prosperous country, and to keep it as a model for the rest of the world. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, and the next speaker is an immigration policy analyst at the center for global liberty and prosperity here at the cato institute. before working here, he was at the competitive prize institute on immigration issues. he has degrees in economics and economic history from george mason university and london school of economics. he has been an exemplary policy analyst at the cato institute and has been quite involved and very influential in the current debate on immigration.

please help me welcome alex. [applause] >> well, thank you, ian, for that introduction, and thank you, alvaro for coming today to talk about your book. why free trade is accepted intellectually by so many people around the world today opposed to 50, 60 years ago because of the hard work of classical liberals armed the world and united states and central and south america and everywhere around the world. that hard work, i think, paid off. we are able to do so much at the cato institute in part because people like myself are able to stand on the shoulders of intellect of alvaro and others who forcefully argued for this point for generations. thank you very much for that. now, i want to go into some other details about the fantastic book, "global

crossings," details we were unable to touch on in limited time we have. one of the issues people raise when it comes to immigration is they think, well, national security. it's a different environment with global terrorism, al-qaeda, issues like these, and because of this, we're not open to immigration in the past because of the issues. like the other points made in the book, that's no different from what it was a hundred years ago. very few people remember there was an intense terrorist campaign in the united states in the early 20th century, carried out mainly by italian anarchists and communists who blew up a hundred bombs in the united states targeting people like the attorney general of the united states, a. mitchell palmer, and numerous other officials across the country at the time. people had reactions at that point. they said, we can't have this type of thing. this is a new experience, this

international terrorism. it was at a time when communists were marching across the world and having success in euro, eastern europe, chaos in the soviet union, and they were seen as an an extension of that, and they wanted to close the borders to block it out. that's no different than today with islamic terrorism and other issues like that when we look at the middle east, but what's more astonishing is hue a loot of our immigration policy makes it easier for national security threats to persist, easier for these problems to grow, and in a lot of cases, increase the ability of these national security threats to the opponents of liberty across the world to more exploit their advantages by taking advantage of american immigration law. one modern example of this is in 2010, there were a dozen

somalians arrested, alleged to be part of the militia, arrested in mexico, and the mexico authorities in their infinite competence released them early without any records, and there was a big, for lack of a better word, freakout in the american media about this saying the guys are coming here, coming to the united states, will reek havoc, and as a result, border control was beefed up, and the people were apprehended or nothing happened, but the point is that because american immigration enforcement, because our immigration laws are so focused on keeping people out for economic reasons or any type of reason, a small amount of what they do is focus on threats like these. they are more concerned with asking what -- how will an additional worker affect wages for american tomato pickers. they are more concerned how another worker will affect the labor market conditions for

computer programmers in silicon valley. they are more concerned with where a high skilled immigrant takes a conference call, whether it's at his home and rather if it's listed as a place of residence or a place of work rather than the legitimate threats out there. if we are really concerned about this, we think we live in an age so dangerous internationally that immigration needs to be restricted and regulated, okay, you believe it is true, argue for a total refocusing of immigration away from keeping out willing workers and separating them from willing employers and focus entirely on the small, but real threats that exist. throughout history, threats have been used to our disadvantage of national security. think about the troops and hurdles american immigration enforcement put in the 1930s and early 1940s on scientists trying

to flee europe and come to the united states to work, that eventually were employed to work in the manhattan project and other government research projects to win the war. there's enormous bureaucratic fear to keep people out because of national security problems. they had ties to communism or alleged tie, and they were kept out because of the fear of national security reasons for that. one of my favorite examples is there was a chinese rocket scientists who died in 2009. now, he was involved with rocket research in the united states in the 50s. now, because of a national security law that said that communists could not be employed or immigrate to the united states, he was investigatedded by the fbi saying there was enough circumstantial evidence that he attended a communism rally 20 years before that he was kicked out of the united states and deported to communist china, founder of their international rocket and missile program. the entire rocket program was based off the engineering expertise that this immigrant,

through the united states, who wanted to stay here and live and work, was forced back to china as a result of that. now, you know, i'm a libertarian. i don't believe china prose is a threat to the united states or anything like that, but if you're worried about this, about national security issues coming to countries like this, the last thing to do is send talented foreigners who have come here to learn the issues back to the home countries. that's pretty much the last thing you want to do. now, i think switching gears to culture and how really americans have taken a look at immigrants, treated them the same throughout history, how they have come, skeptical, compared negatively to previous ways of imgrants. there's a quote by thomas soul written on june 4th called "abstract immigrants" saying, "the immigrants of today are different in many ways from those who arrived here a hundred

years ago." now, i think he massively exaggerates the differences of immigrants today versus back then. we heard of the differences, but what are different are americans today, and it'st multiculturism impacted american society to an extent, and it's a bad ideology, but we're, in a lot of ways, more welcoming. americans say nasty things about immigrants today, but let's not forget the largest mass lynching in american history was in the 18 # 90s in new orleans of italian immigrants by a mob of white americans who thought they committed a crime and got a way with it. that was the largest mass lynching. in the 1830s, there were mobs of protestant americans burning down catholic churching occupied by the irish, burning down, destroying convents, raping nuns inside, horrible things like this. the rhetoric today about

immigration from americans opposed is nasty and gross, but we don't have this level of, you know, cultural aversion, violence to the extent people do this. americans are behaving better in the face, i think, of immigration than they did back in the day, and that comes across as well, but, you know, these worries about imgrants being different are exaggerated, and the catholic example is a great one. immigrants today are majority catholic like a hundred years ago. they come from different countries in the world and different parts of the world. what's most remarkable about the pace of assimilation, especially for mexican-americans and for the descendents of mexican-americans is so many came illegally. they came to the country illegally, and they lived for years often times in the black markets, but the extent to which they and their children assimilated truly out paces italian immigrants who came

legally a hundred years ago, lived entirely within a above board in the legal market. what's remarkable, and i think if immigration was allowed to the extent all mexican immigrants who came here today came legally, there would be better pace of assimilation. looking at it that way and realizing immigrants coming today are more more than when they come and become americans faster, despite having to live in the back market, i think is a testament not just to the entrepreneurial and energy spirit of immigrants today wanting to be american, but also a testament to how much american culture influenced so many people throughout the world and how we are still a beacon for millions of people who want to come here and want to become americans. i think this book really goes into some fantastic detail about that process, the cultural process by which people become americans and differentiate it from other books out there in the sociology profession that

write about assimilation, it describes the process well. it creates ad model -- a model for how this happens. first time i read that third generation americans, you know, your grandmothers were immigrants, your parents were born here, third generation, you look longingly back on that ethnic religious identifier of where your parents came from or your grandparents came from, and that is a feature of success, a mark of success of becoming an american because as americans, we don't have an ethnic or racial identifier. the largest ethnic group in the united states by last name is german. that's going to change in the near future because of waves of imgrants from central and south america, but that's the largest group. we don't have a blood bordered culture conception of being american. it's a values conception of being american. it's a civic notion of being american. that's something that is virtually unique throughout the world and throughout history, and what this book does is it

describes that in some of the best detail that i've ever read anywhere in the literature and both sociology and academics and economics and pop pow loor books made for an audience, and in that notion, i study immigration policy, and sometimes i'm skeptical of the way the government does things, i'm skeptical of the united states in its immigration policy, but this really filled me with more enthusiasm and more hope for the future of this country and ability to assimilate immigrants and ability to be a beacon than virtually any book i've read in my years of working on this topic. i recommend it to all of you. i couldn't recommend it more. it's a beautiful book. thank you very much for coming today. [applause] >> thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you, alex. we have time for questions. if you have a question, please, raise your hand, wait for the microphone, and identify yourself and your affiliation.

we'll take the first question up here in front, please. right there. wait for the microphone, please. >> hi, i'm steven hank, and -- >> speak up. >> i'm steven hank, and i have no affiliation. i was kind of interested in this notion of low, unskilled workers versus high skilled workers as whether we want immigrants who are high skilled or low skilled. it always seemed to me that human beings are a resource and, therefore, if lots of low skilled employees is a resource. it doesn't mean that we don't need high skilled, but this idea that there's only a set number of jobs for low skills. look at all the people that came into new york city that were low

skilled at the turn of the century. jobs were created. in other words, i think there's a misconception to look in the economy and say, well, we only have this amount of need right now for low skilled, but i think the answer is if you bring for resources, that is, more low skilled workers, businesses take advantage of that low skill. we will produce goods that will be -- that take advantage of the low skilled workers, even if that production does not currently exist, it will come to exist because of the incentive. what i'm saying to you is my question is, suspect that another big misconception that you guys seem to overlook, and that you all hear so many people saying we want -- we only want high skill labor immigration. >> okay, okay. >> thank you. >> thank you very much.

>> i couldn't agree with you more. i look at it in different ways. one way to look at it is just look at it domestically because much of this discussion would be better understood, i think, by people if they thought of the issues in the domestic context. since the second world war, the u.s. has added about a hundred million people to the work force counting baby boomers in general and women in particular. if the argument's made against imgrants were true on an economic level, those hundred million people would have destroyed the u.s. economy, would have made everybody poorer, would have generated so much unemployment that that would be, you know, the number one issue in the united states on a permanent basis, and that's not the case. there's never been, you know, in the 60 years, there's never been long term unemployment of any kind. there's been up employment, of course, in times of recession, but that was with different causes. look at arizona, for instance,

which is such a sensitive place for this debate. just before the bursting of the bubble, i look at unemployment rates in arizona, among the lowest in the country, 4%, sometimes even less than 4%, 3 #-point-something percent, and yet 10% of the work force was soon and continues to be immigrant. clearly, it is not generating unemployment. it is generating growth because arizona is a wealthy state, and it is helping make, as i said, the pie larger. that includes both low skilled and high skilled immigrants. the idea of separating high skill from low skill i don't like, but we are forced to do so because of the terms of the debate, are such, and because it's been framed in that way, so we need to kind of take them a part and explain to people what low skill workers do to the economy, what high school workers do, but, ultimately,

it's about production. stock of capital in the u.s. goes up at a rate of 2-3% in the last few decades, and that's why, of course, the economy is more productive, and we have been aim to generate a rise all together, and yet, at the same time, we had a constant inflow of immigrants. that would not have been possible if they were hurting the productive process. >> if i could add a small thing to that. i've been doing a series of debates over the last couple times this week with another one on sunday, and this issue is ought brought up, and the analogy i like to use is, well, if we have a hundred high skill people in a room, let's say, a hundred college graduates, bringing in 50 more less than a high school graduates into that room, the economy gets bigger production increases. the critics say, oh, but you lower the average education level in the room by doing that. that really shows, i think, the

danger of knowing a little bit of math and knowing not very much economics. an average of the terrible way to describe that. that's app example that danny devita fallacy. just because he walks into a room, yes, the average height dingses, but nobody is actually any shorter. [laughter] that is pervasive. talking about public policy and impact of immigration on the economy using broad averages like this really is probably one of the worst ways to do it and betrays a total lack of understanding of how economics works. >> i'm steve, that was a wholly convincing presentation. one concern is the effects on the nations that immigrants leave from, are those nations any worse off? for example, it was said that

when the 1848 revolution failed in germany, liberals became here and germany became more art karattic, and today, as much as we complain in the building about regulations, immigrants see the united states as a more fertile place for applying intern nearly skill -- entrepreneurial skills. are countries that immigrants leave from worse off, say in terms of entrepreneurial skills? >> that's a great question. well, if we look at -- forget about nations and borders for a moment. we're talking about how people are able to create the most value. in other words, they choose their location according to web. they create the most value, and we all exchange the fruits of our labor according to what we need and what we can offer.

if you look at it that way, people moving in and out will not have a long term effect of a negative kind in any way. europe was exporting people, again, until 1980s as i said, and those countries were becoming more and more prosperous. they were in a mess today, completely different reasons. we've had the same in latin america. people migrated to venezuela from countries like peru. peru, on a consistent basis for half a century, peru, today, much wealthier country than venezuela. look at it this way as well. chinese immigration in the united states has played a key role in the economic growing, economic prosperity, garage economic prosperity of china. they not only, of course, been able to export stuff to them and import stuff to them, but they have also invested in china. i think that borders and barriers are really artificial in terms of the impact on the

economy. we all benefit from the constant circulation of people. the same happened in europe. some of the central european countries export people to the western part of the europe in the last few years because it was legal to do so, and yet they become more and more prosperous. poland is much more pros pows than 15 # years ago exporting people to western europe including spain and others not doing so well anymore. >> i just have very small things to add to that because he's 100% right. i mean, about the german 1848ers, german liberals left behind in germany complained about them leaving, those who experienced and met them complained about the autocratic germans bringing socialism notions of collectivism and destroying american individuality in the process. it's funny the 1848ers formed the core of the republican party and anti-slavery wing of the republican party, but there's a

limit antedote about the feeling of immigrants destroying the core of america no matter where they are from. the issue that you talk about, you know, does immigration, with an "e" leave the sending country worse off? that takes the frame of the brain drain. that's what they call it. the best and brightest and most energetic leave and what's left behind suffers. that assumes a person in a country is a property of everybody else in that country, which is a terrible notion that no person who has any concept of individual freedoms or, you know, liberal in the classical sense interpretation could view. it's absurd. what we actually see is when the opportunities to immigrate, to leave occur, people increase their education, they go to school more, they acquire more skills in order to do better in the country where they want to go to, but a lot stay. you see this in, like, south africa, in nursing schools,

people go there to try to immigrate to the u.s. or u.k., but a lot stay behind in south africa. we see it in the philippines and what it was mentioned the filipino nursing program. they have the highest percentage of the nurses in the population of any country in the world because there's a possibility to leave when they have that, and as a result, the rest of the filipinos who remain behind gain from that. you're absolutely right, this is a reared argument used by mostly restrictionists to say immigration is bad for people in poor country when it's really just not true. >> i guess i would add, i guess multiculturism turns them into soasm in the united states, but it's the opposite. >> yes, right up front. >> >> [inaudible] i like the presentation, so thank you.

i'm uncomfortable with the romantic vision of acceptance those and assimilation. some groups are more asimilarble than others. tell us how you define "assimilation"; right? how many times have the third and fourth generation immigrant been asked, where are you from, what language do you speak? maybe you can speak about how you think about assimilation. assimilation is based not just on the desire, but individuals to assimilate and desire of the larger society to allow that person to assimilate. >> the first part is are they assimilating, you know, imgrants, hispanics assimilating today the way they did in the past? the answer is definitely yes. the research is very extensive. i looked into this in a lot of detail, and there's many ways to measure it, whether it's the use of english, whether it's mingling with the native born population, marriage, whether

it's entrepreneurship, that's another way to measure this. the idea is that there's a lot of entrepreneurship that's home grown, but these hispanics are bringing in notions for entrepreneurship, and the rate of self-employment among hispanics almost equals the rate for native born americans, almost 12%, and the number of companies that are founding every year is just amazing and astounding. what does happen? there's comments in the book that's fascinating, and, well, the first generation, of course, is first generation. they are just trying to find their way around, trying to fit in, and at the same time, they have attachments back home. incidentally, look at the people, ask me all the time, mexicans are so tied to the home country, didn't used to be the case. read letters italians sent home, full of italian passion, expressing, you know, profound

nostalgia back home and wanting to go back and sending money back home as well, so that is only natural. the second generation moves in the opposite direction. they are so conscious of this, of being seen by u.s. society as not really fitting in, as being somehow different, that they escape from the roots, and they reject the roots to the extent. i mean, i wouldn't -- that's not fair, you know for everybody, but, certainly, there's a big percentage of that, and yet by the third generation, they feel is secure they go back to those roots, but in a different way, in a purely sentimentsal way. they begin to embrace national holidays because they know they are so secure and accepted by u.s. society, that there's no risk in that. that's really how cinco de mayo was born. it was not a big deal in mexico. it's a big deal here, and

because it is here, mexicans said, this is uncomfortable. mexican immigrants are more patriotic than we are. we have to assume it's a national holiday as well. now in mexico, they celebrate it. that was the result not of first generation immigrants, certainly nos of second generation immigrants, but third generation immigrants feeling so accepted by u.s. society, they thought it was time to celebrate that. who celebrates, cinco de mayo, it's not just mexican. americans celebrate. as al exsaid, this country is really not based on the nation state here based on blood, but credo. it's not a nation state. it's a nation of nations. it's a state based on credo. i think that reality speaks to that. >> and i think the cinco de mayo is great. there's no more american holiday than celebrating the defeat of a french army.

[laughter] that's what it is. to go into it more, there's a chapter about this phenomena in here, it's about the immigrants moving towards the mainstream society, and that moves towards them. what i learned is that in this book is everything i like to do on sunday comes from the germans. i mean, i -- i like to go bowling. i like to go to the shooting range. that is something that germans did on sunday that was really un-american in the 1870s, and people were afraid of it because the old american version of sunday, you stay at home, you know, go to church, sit at home, read the bible, and you basically don't do anything fun. the germans were, like, no, we're not going to do that. what do we do on sunday? have picnics, go out, have a good time, and that's example of american society changing and assimilating partly to the immigrants to the culture. it's clear the immigrants, you know, do the changing.

>> a question in the back, and then in the front. right there, please. >> hi, i'm emily collins from the atlas network, and my question for you is it seems like there are a couple institutional things in the government that may need to change in relation to immigration such as the minimum wage or welfare because a lot of immigrants come and work under the minimum wage, and then, also, illegal immigrants may take welfare or if they are legal, they take more welfare, and people argue that would also be a social drain on society. i was wondering if you would speak on whether or not that's been discussed in the house and in the senate or your opinions on that. >> sure. the congressional budget office

has a report calculating what the impact in fiscal terms would be in legalizing 12 million people for the the next decade and beyond, and they did two different calculations. one, you know -- i don't want to get too technical, there's dynamic scoring calculating what the effects of the economy will be and calculate what the fiscal impact of that will be. the other way is calculate impacts assuming there's no huge change on the economy, whichever way you look at it, the impact is beneficial, and what they do is simply calculate what impact it's going to be on the deficit, and it's going to be a very positivism pact in terms of reducing the deficit, but as i said, there's many studies that are very respectable that indicated that the contribution is positive. just thinking of one at this point. i mentioned the national research counsel. there's another one significant at the time.

jeffrey pascoe did a study of what happened between the 1970s and the 1990s? that's two-decade period. he came up with a figure that, i think so is significant. the net contribution was $25 billion. again, when you look at it, always think that the effect of immigration on the economy goes beyond what they, themselves, produce and consume and what they, themselves pay, and what they, themselves, take out of the system. the impact of the whole of u.s. society, they make all society productive, the economy more productive, so, ultimately, it's impossible to calculate exactly what the impact will be, but we know it's positive because the economy becomes more productsive and you produce more goods and services, i mean, by definition, you will bring more revenue to the government. ultimately, if that were not the case, though, well, that's a great argument to get rid of the welfare state.

i mean, immigrants are not to blame for the fact government spending went up by 50 in the last century. in the last world war, they were not entitled to relief e programs, in the 1990s, reform impacted immigrants as well, and now they can use the system only in a very limited way. >> very few things more dangerous about the welfare state than that it changing the perception of people being, you know, as sets and good for society to liabilities, to viewing people entirely as costs, and to look at this, you know, one government agency into look at that and think, well, people who take from there are in that cost or teacial. we did research here, hiredded out a couple professors, recently at george washington to do a study about how much welfare poor immigrants use compared to poor native born americans. that's the comparison there. do an apples to apples

comparison. poor people to poor people. poor americans use medicate at the same rate as poor immigrants, take the same amount of benefits, the program would be 42% smaller. there's a huge savings. for some reason, people, looking at an immigrant taking a dollar of welfare, the damage is magnified beyond all comprehension compared to an american citizen taking the same amount. now, you know, i favor getting rid of the welfare state for everybody. if we can't do that, let's build a wall around it at least and try to improve that perception of removing the perception that immigrants are takers when, in fact, they make and contribute far more to society than the amount they take in welfare. >> okay. a question in the front row. >> thank you. i'm an economist, thank you very much for the presentation,

especially the presentation of the myths, and i couldn't agree more. my question is in spice of the overwhelming economic and cultural evidence on the benefits of immigration of the long period in ifer where across the world, how is it that the antiimmigration arguments find such a fertile soil in certain groups in this country, and in relation to that, if you look at the experience of other countries, which i'm sure you've done in the book, but can we draw any lessons from the way the other countries like europe, canada either have dealt with the myth in order to have an immigration policy that makes sense, and there's one myth where i couldn't agree with you. you says there's a myth the immigrants have a lot of children. i think that's a myth that cannot be refuted because they do have a lot more children, but that's one of the benefits, economic benefits, that immigrants bring, a younger population, and for a generation or so, they have more children

and bring in further influx of younger people into the nation and into the economy, and that's a plus. >> great point you make. the first answer, i think, it has to do with fear. any community that is faced with an influx of new newcomers wille afraid, and it will rationalize that fear with arguments of the kind we tend to hear because you proved to them that those arguments are not true. you proved to them they are a myth. you throw them all these, you know, statistics and historical experience, and yet, that fear remains. that has to do with fear. that's how stereotypes were born. you know, at the time of irish immigration, the idea was that all irishmen were drunkers. one or two were, but, clearly, that was a stereotype. all italians were mobsters, one or two on the wrong side of the law, but not all were mobsters. not all catholics were

oppressive. now they are embraced because they are about religion and family values, but few centuries cage, catholics were hated by people over here because they saw them as european repressers. today, we have the stereotype, hispanics are different, worse r, and now we embrace indians because of the contribution to the silicon valley, but decades ago, indians were, i mean, the object of stereotypes here. again, i think it's has to do with fear. about, children, it's down. there's no question. it's higher than the native rates, and in europe, there's two children, and here it's 60% higher than the native ratings, but the tendency is coming down, and that's the case in lain tin america, and another point connected to this is the average age is 27, age for americans is

4 # 2. if the welfare state is what we care about, that's a plus because that's more years of contribution to the system. in temples of take -- terms of taking money out of the transfer system k -- system, only 1.2% were 65 for the u.s. population. if the arguments are real, then, you know, the fears should be dispelled by the evidence, but there's fear at the heart of this, and it's very, very difficult to dispel. >> about why the rest of the civilization society doesn't take up these well-known arguments and facts in economics, i mean, i wish immigration was the only instance of that. yierm there's so many economic notions that have been known for quite a long time not taken up in the mainstream society. intellectually, i think we won the debate about free trade. when you ask the common person, you know, do you think that we

should be able to import goods and services from china without any kind of government barriers? they say, no, that takes american jobs. i think this notion goes beyond this, to the conception that there's a high, and i think people have an engrained notion that there's a fixed pie of wealth, jobs, fixed pie of x, y, and z, and having more people come into the country decreases the amount available to us. i think that's a wrong-headed notion, something we've been fighting against, and in every sphere of public policy for a long period of time when it has to do with economics, and we have a lot of work to do with immigration especially, but on numerous other issues. >> we have time for one more question. >> i'm mike max, and i'm a retired foreign service officer with the agency for international development, and i was previously the officer in

charge of central america desk, and we looked at issues in central america, and basically, i looked in your book, andives going through the ideas that most of the poor people do migration within their countries or within the region, maybe central america, but then i read in the prologue, you know, there's kidnappings in a certain period of time was mostly poor central americans and mexicans as an effect of the drug war going on. this is a key issue because we've got a disease in central america right now for coffee plants called coffee rust that impacts 3 million workers in central america that work in that sector, and they are talking about 40-50% loss of the sector, and then loss of their employment. if they can move north, i think they may, i'm not sure this is on anybody's radar screen, but if you're right that they won't

move north, they basically change locations of central america, that has impacts. i want your perspective on what could happen. this happenedded with hurricane mitch and different types of migration from central america before, but this is pending and coming up. >> well, i mean, it's not inconceivable that a small percentage of them try to move north and eventually come to the united states, but the experiences indicate they will mostly migrate within the area. that's what's happened normally in central america, happened even in mexico. migration inside mexico, not talked about all that much, i know the experience of my home country, peru, very well. it's a country that in the last 50 # years has seen close sal amounts of migration interimly. so much so that everything's been impactedded, the economy, the institutions.

the story incidentally is no different than the united states'. domestic immigration is four times larger than national immigration for the united states. it's just a pattern that seems to be repeating itself everywhere, so i don't know exactly what will happen with the peep, but if we go by historical precedence, it's very likely that that will not have a huge impact in terms of international migration. it, of course, will have an impact domestically in terms of the economy. that will take us into the whole issue of the central american economy, institutions, the drug war, and all of that, but it's a different issue. >> yeah? >> the pugh hispanic center did research and looked at from 2000-2010 the increase in origin of different countries of migrants. central america was 16.5%. it was off the charts compared

to any other origin. the next was 9% for south americans. mexican country of origin and people not born here but coming from mexico was a 2% increase. something's happening. even -- you've mapped it out here, it's incredibly difficult to come, that people are still coming, and from central america, they are really coming, so -- >> yeah, but i mean, it's because central america's not doing well, and mexico has been doing better in the last few years which is why i have predicted that a few years from now, the debate in the u.s. will be where the hell will we get immigrants from? mexicans will not want to come anymore. mexico grows at 4% a year, the new president wants to engage in reform, and if he does, that goes up to 6%, enough to absorb all the new work force, the young people, and so mexicans become less and less, probably will be replaced by central americans for a while until central america picks up the reforms they need to do, and

perhaps until we are done with the drug war that devastated the whole area, by the way, in which case we need to go and find them, i don't know, in iceland, i don't know where. it's going to be an issue. it'll be -- believe me, it's going to be an issue. is this recorded somewhere? twenty years from now, mexicans will not want to come to the u.s. anymore. >> it's interesting, since 2008, lawful lawful imgrants, asians outnumber hispanics. we use the word "hispanic" broadly. i'm an american so i use central and south americans, asians out number offed them in term -- out numbered them, and the gap is wider every year. asia is the nur source going forward to the immigrants to the united states, the new historical dynamic. i predict, my kids, when adults, they look back and say, alex, why were so many people upset about mexican immigrants? this is absurd.

the indians or, you know, these southeast asians, they are different. you know, they are taking our jobs this time. that's what i'm going to hear, i think, in the future, and not just from my own kids if i did a poor job educates them -- [laughter] but others in society. >> i'm like you. >> that's a fascinating and encouraging discussion, and i hope the friends on capitol hill paid attention to the points today and read the book op sale here, and it's at discount for those of ewe interested. thank you, all, for coming, and please join me in thanks our great speakers today. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv on location atbook expo america in new york city,

held every year, a publishers' yearly conference held in new york city, and we're doing previews of books that are coming out this coming fall. joining us now is george gibson, a publisher of blooms berry publishing. mr. gibson, tell us about bloomsberry. >> that's the u.s. arm of a company located in england, bloomsbury publishing, best known for publishing "harry potter," originating all the harry potter books. it was started in 1998, grown steadily since then, that's, what, 15 years. we are general interest publisher here, mid size general interest publisher, fiction, nonfiction variety of different kinds of books. >> what are the challenges facing a mid sized publisher these days? >> oh, i mean, being between small and large. if you're small, you can be reactive and personal, and if you large, you are the vows resources. we tried to combine resources

with personal touch and publish books in a personal way as we can involving authors and their entourages and making it as personal as we can so they get the best publishing experience. >> how important are book tours to authors and selling books? >> they can be very important. they are more challenges to put on now than they used to be in part because so many authors are out on tour, and because of that, you know, there's some bookstores that do 700 events a year, so that's two or three a day, and you're not getting all that big of an audience at every event. we tend now to send authors to institutions and organizations rather than bookstores because they have subscription lists, guaranteed audiences, and sometimes they pull in a bookstore to sell books at the event. we just find those are more successful events. we still do a lot of stores, but we broaden out. there's a number of places we aim at. >> well, for another year, a lot

of the chatter here at bea is about e-books. >> yes. >> how does that affect you? what are your thoughts? >> we publish an e-book of every book we publish at the same time as the print book. e-books are incredsbly important to us. that said, it's been really interesting to watch over the last year that e-books leveled off. they were in a steep incline in 2011. 2012, they leveled off, and they stay sorted leveled off, giving everyone who loves the printed word, the printed book, hope it's not disappearing, and independent bookstores are doing really well in the country right now. i mean, they are having a bit of a renaissance and resurgence, which is very gratifying to hear, and i think we are finding out that readers -- that the printed book has more staying power than we all thought it did, and there's something intrinsically valuable about the physical object of the book, not just the physicality of it, but that people actually connect to it in a different way than they do to something online.

there's the tangibility of the book that's special and can't be duplicated online. >> well, we wanted to talk about upcoming titles, and there's stuff here. >> ebony and ivy is a controversial book, written by a very well-known african-american academic, ray wilder, now at mit, was at dartmoth when he wrote the book, but it's a controversial story about how every major american university of the ivy league variety was in some ways build on the back of slavery. slaves were involved, and the slave economy was involved in the creation of and formation of almost every major academic institution in the country, so you can tell how that is going to be controversial, and we're publishing it in the fall to coincide with back-to-school and back to college, and i think this is going to get a lot of attention just for the controversy that is inevidentbly will generate. >> it's not a story told before. >> it's not been.

it's not been, and i think that's why it'll be surprising to a lot of people. >> [inaudible] >> this is the digital editor, if you will, of "the economist," and he knows more about more things than i've met in my life. this is the history of social media. you think that began when the internet developed, but, no, it goes back 2,000 year, and there's a direct connection between what social media was like under -- in the roman and greek times and what it's like today, how it's very similar to the environments, and they were interrupted for 150 years by big media, you know, newspapers, radio, and television that controlled what was fed to the public, but with the internet, we now have gone back to a much more open world at which had existed for thousands of years prior to the rise of the big media. >> john? >> john is one of the great

historians the colonial era and founding period, if you will, written biographies of george washington and others. this is a joint biography of jefferson and hamilton. they are two polar opposites among the founding fathers, and there, what they represent, jefferson's and hamilton's federalists, those themes still exist today. they come up in the politics all the time, and so if you want to understand politics today, you know, back to understanding the difference between jefferson and hamilton, the first time they were in a joint biography. a fascinateing story. >> do founding fathers books do well almost automatically, is that fair? >> not automatically. depends who writes them. some are well-known for doing that, and he's one of them. there's always an audience for a book on a founding father, always. >> finally, we want to talk about larry's new book. >> as you know, the direct of the the center for politics at

university of vir, fascinating by kennedy as a teenager, fell in love with politics in the kennedy administration, and this will be -- the kenty half century, will be the most comprehensive book to come out this fall about the legacy of john f. kennedy. that encompasses his campaign for the presidency, his brief term in office, his assassination, but, particularly, it focuses on the pact on every president since. every one of the nine presidents since is directly linked to jfk in fascinating ways. in fact, he makes the case that reagan used the kennedy name, reputation in more ways than any other president since. you think that would be bill clinton or barack obama, but, actually, reagan did. every president has made use of the kennedy name and kennedy legacy in one way or another. larry undertook the biggest poll undertaken about a public figure in america.

that will be part of the book. he's got new information about the assassination that no one saw before, that he finally dragged out of bureaus in washington that have not released it before. we'll embark on that until the book is published, but that's a fascinating book amongst the many, many books that come out on jfk this fall on the 50th anniversary of the assassination. >> now, mr. gibson, this comes out in the fall of 2013, what's the process for a book like this? when did you start working with larry on this book? >> we acquired the book two and a half years ago. >> 20 # 11? >> 2011, and larry's been pretty much working on in -- >> 2010. >> yeah, that's right, 2010. he's been working on it steadily ever since, a lot to do with the university, and that turned into a long book and project. the manuscript just went into production monday. we're late with it. we'll catch up in the production process, and so we should have been in production two months

ago ideally, but we'll make up the time. >> when you say "production" now, it's the end of may, -- may 20 sp, the book comes out in november 2013. what do you mean by "production"? >> to copier, then gets printed, and the beginning process, the beginning of the process is the copy edit so it's accurate and not only in punctuation and style, but copy editors check facts and there's fact checking going on. >> george gibson, publisher of bloomsbury, and this is booktv on c-span2 # on location, book expo america. >> up next on booktv, "after words" with emily pierce, senator editor of "roll call," and this week her book, "women in the club: gender and policymaking in the senate," and in it, the georgetown university government professor explores

the impact of gender difference in the senate of bills past and government divide. the program is about an hour. >> host: well, i think one of the things i took away from this book, which was very wonderful, by the way, and you don't say this explicitly, but i feel the thing i took away the most is that women in the senate use gender when that behooves them and shy from them when it does not. is that the point you wanted to take from the book? ..