>> follow the transition of government on c-span as president-elect donald trump selects his cabinet and the republics and democrats prepare for the next congress we will take you to key events as they happen without interruption. watch live on c-span. watch on-demand net c-span.org or listen on our free c-span radio at. >> you are watching the tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv, television for serious readers. >> this weekend on the tv:

[inaudible conversations]

>> good evening, everyone. good evening and welcome to the lower east side museum. i am the vice president for programs and education here at the museum. how many of you have visited in the past? okay. and how many of you have gone to our establishment on the block? and how many have been to the exhibits here in this building? okay, no, you haven't is it hasn't opened yet. upstairs we will open-- we have done-- okay, great. wonderful. excellent. i like to do that because i think sometimes people feel like they visited the museum and they

came in 1992, and they don't need to come again, so we are so glad when you come back again and you see the programs we are doing here, the public programs we are doing at night, but also what we are really really excited about is the new exhibit that will open this summer. july 4, 2017. that's why you see the scaffolding they are. of the word for the building is being transformed into an apartment in which over the years we had a family, the epstein family who survived the concentration camp and came here and started a new life on the lower east side. refugees will tell their stories. a puerto rican migrant family that came here in the mid- 1950s and moved in the 1960s. they will tell their story and no long family, a tiny family that came to the lower east side in 1965 and moved in to this

building in 1968, so these are stories we can weave together and use the same techniques we have used at 97 orchard street, which is to use the stories of real people, elevate the stories of ordinary people to inspire connections past and present. what we do with museum is not just talk about the history of immigration and migration, but also talk about connections to today and in a few hours of some of you might head home to the third act of a debate where probably not much of substance will come up and so we are excited to welcome you here tonight to have a really substantial conversation about immigration, past and present with two of our most favorite scholars and people who have worked with us behind the scenes with her educators and on our exhibits, so-- i know some of you are family members of the speakers here, parents, sister, welcome.

we are also a museum about family and so we would like to invite you into the family. so, come back, come to our exhibits and more programs and welcome tonight to this program. one last thing i was going to say is that i don't know if you know this, but in 1885, a german immigrant came, this neighborhood two blocks from here and i think he had a barber store. he was a barber's name was frederick tromp, so all these immigration stories will come together tonight in some way. so, i'm going to do a quick introduction and i'm also going to ask you-- if you have a phone you might 20 turn off the volume. okay, i didn't. and i also want to think on edison for helping to sponsor

the tenement talks. so tyler is a professor of history. his first book, nativism and slavery. his second book, five points when the new york city broke up 2001, and is probably one of the top read books here. mary kay and rachel are here to attest to that and he served as a consultant to martin course khazei four games of new york. although, i'm told martin did not listen to all of the suggestions. [laughter] >> his ancestors came to new york from southwest germany, poland, ukraine and russia. and joining him after he gives a bit of a presentation he will be interviewed and have a conversation.

's book was a finalist for the 2005 pulitzer prize. work has been published in the new yorker, new york time magazine, national geographic, harper's magazine, time and newsweek and has been featured on npr fresh air and all things considered. associate professor of journalism at new york university and currently working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary new york, so in that comes out tyler will come and interview him here. he was born in calcutta and raised in bombay and new york and one thing to do to-- tonight after you watch the debate if you want to be teared up, google his article called the melting pot about one building in queens that tells the story of the different people sharing an apartment building and it's a story that has provided a lot of inspiration for us here, so without further do please join

me in welcoming tyler. [applause]. >> thank you, annie for that kind welcome and thank you for coming. i was asked to give a 10 to 15 minute overview of the "city of dreams" and that's a daunting task if you've seen the book. it's a big book and tells a lot of stories, but i will do my best to summarize and 10 to 15 minutes. one thing i'm always asked is why i wrote the book, so i thought i would maybe mention that that. in part, i was inspired because as i work on my second book, five-point i came across some it's great material that i couldn't use because the stories, the events, the facts did not take place in that four

block area, so as i cumulated all of these great stories i thought i really need something, some other way in which to convey them. the other main thing that inspired me was i wanted a narrative challenge. i love writing and it put a lot of work into my writing and i sweated over, sometimes, every word. said-- but, i had written kind of your typical historical book and i wanted a challenge and i thought writing the history of new york immigrants from early 17th century to the present would be such a challenge and it was. the final reason i wanted to write "city of dreams" is that it's such a great story. i found it just writing it made me happy telling the story.

sometimes the stories are terrible. sometimes their uplifting, but they always teach us something and so i just felt like it was a story i had to tell. even though the book is long, it's a 22 chapters and tells the story of a lot of immigrant groups that have come to new york and focuses on the biggest immigrant groups for each century in the city's history, so in the 17th century the focus is on the dutch and then the english and then the 18th century the english and irish in the 19th century the irish and german and eastern european jews and italians in the 20th century jews they italians, puerto ricans, dominicans, chinese, west indians and so forth. even though you might think how could you bring those, all those diverse stories together into one narrative, the book-- the

book is held together by several themes. the bell, i try to do it in a very subtle way. i didn't want the reader to be hit over the head with here's what you should think now. i tried to make it settle in i hope i succeeded in that. but, there are a couple of themes. this is an image that was probably taken not far from here of a garment worker. probably on italian garment worker. so, one thing-- the theme of the book is this immigrant experience has not varied much over new york city's history. one thing i found is that the dutch really weren't that different at their core than the english and english warrant that different than the scots, as scots from the irish, the scots from the germans, the germans from the italians etc. all the way up to today where the biggest immigrant group in terms of proportion is south asia.

the story is almost always the same. a hard journey to america, struggle to adjust, little assimilation, better lives for themselves and their children. we tend to think of the experience of our own ethnic group is unique and in some sense every ethnic group experience is unique, but in most senses, the ones that matter the immigration experience is the same peer generation after generation, century after century. another theme of the book is the anti- immigrant sentiment is as a consistent theme as immigration. here's an image from right around 1900 that image conveys some of the same ideas that you might hear in the press today. throughout american history, americans have worried about

immigrants, feared immigrants, sometimes even hated immigrants. the touch-- dutch were very anti- english. they thought the english would ruin america, the place they had created. the english were very anti- irish. by the mid-19th century new yorkers were very anti- catholic later on those of same immigrants not only the ones who had been anti- catholic, but the ones that had been discriminated against for their catholicism become anti-semites and so on and so forth up to anti- muslim sentiment today. peoples anti- immigrant sentiment runs the gamut of emotion. at some periods in new york history immigrants were condemned for being too conservative. at other times they were condemned for being too radical. sometimes people complained that immigrants take our jobs.

other times, many times throughout the history new yorkers have complained that immigrants were part of a secret army to destroy america. that is something we have heard throughout america's history and throughout new york's history. the other theme of the book, the final thing is that immigrants today really aren't any different in an important sense than previous generations of immigrants. we tend to think today's immigrants aren't like my grandparents, but in almost every sense in every way immigrants are just like our immigrant grandparents or great-grandparents were even great great grandparents. of the differences we perceive that these are relatively insignificant differences that may matter a lie because about a thick eye or more often than not

the result of our mythologizing the past experience of our own immigrants. so, as long as there are people somewhere in the world seeking a better life for themselves and their children, looking to move to a place where hard work, bold ideas and much readership are rewarded, new york city will continue to be the city of dreams. thank you. [applause]. >> thank you. it's a privilege to be here with you. as someone who has been working far too long on a book about immigrants in new york today i am amazed by your achievements.

how long did it take you to write this book? >> well, if i have to admit it, 15 years. the writing itself, maybe four years. there's a lot of research that went into it. made a lot of feeling that i can start writing until i know more. there is so much to learn and so much to read, so 15 years and four years of writing. >> thank you. that makes me feel so much better. i'm only on year nine of my book what made you-- you were referred to it a bit in your talk and what-- you chose a lot of immigrant memoirs and close person account and then the characters in the book, but as a historian how do you choose one

approach over another? >> well, what i wanted to do more than anything else was to write a really good story, something people would want to read and something they would into the able to put down even though it's a very big book. i feel like it's always to let a historical actors tell their own stories in the memoirs are great stories. you can't always trust memoirs. of the memory is faulty and people embellish, so that makes things complicated, but you learn to use your judgment you hoping he hope to things right and so that was my main concern was to keep readers-- to find the story gripping and i hope i succeeded. >> the story of felix and you

have a section about that 1863 riots which was mainly that right-- irish writing against the blacks in the republican party and there were over 100 deaths. there is a famous sentence by felix brenneman was an irish immigrant scene, we don't want to fight, fight, fight and we think we are too superior of a race for that. the irish immigrants who not so long ago their own people had been discriminated against and now, we-- they are leading the fight against someone else. with that sentence it may have been left out of history books, but in his own career, felix brennan ends career-- can you expand on that?

>> felix-- that sentence is quoted in dozens of history books as the pygmy of the causes of the new york city riots. irish immigrants who don't want to be made equal of african-americans and believe that the war and emancipation are going to do that. so, he cited over and over again as example of this racism and certainly you cannot deny that that sentence is full of racism, which what happens to him that is fascinating, the-- he writes that in 1862. a few months later lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation, which makes it legal for ex- slaves and free blacks to fight in the union army and they joined by the tens of thousands and yet to the army

has trouble-- the army decides only whites can be officers of their units, but they have trouble finding whites willing to serve as officers for the black soldiers. strangely what i discovered is one of the soldiers who volunteered to lead one of the regiments is felix brenneman, which is struck me as very strange and he does this first in hilton head, south carolina, and then in savanna georgia in 1864, 1865 and 1866 and what i thought was even more interesting is that after the war he moves to washington, goes to law school at george washington, where i teach and then after the work he gets a job as a us attorney in of all places, jackson, mississippi. in jackson, mississippi, his job is primarily to prosecute

bootleggers and clansmen and so here you have felix brenneman who up until 1862 clearly was not the kind of person who seem to have much sympathy for african-americans now becoming a prosecutor of those who persecuted them. i thought that was a great story >> the book is filled with great stories. also, made me realize that a personal hero of mine, walt whitman, had his troubles. there are some of my students in the room and one of the things i like to do is on the first day of class i like to take them on the staten island ferry and read the great whitman. so, here was this great celebrator of diversity, humanity of all things new york,

but in 1842, the same walt whitman, notoriously anti- catholic and anti- irish and there's much discretion-- discussion about election violence. you put this passage on page 192 of the book. on election day in new york, each faction attempted to prevent supporters of the other from casting their ballot. the fight was bloody and horrible and extreme. men were so beaten about the head, that they could not be recognized as human beings. detachment of policemen led by the mayor himself-- [inaudible] >> their goal, noted walt

whitman reputedly was to-- [inaudible] >> if it had been their head that had been stashed in such a window-- [inaudible] >> you make this connection with election violence in the past and the fact that even a person as humaneness with men was compelled to issue this against immigrants. >> it's hard to appreciate today both how protestant americans felt their nation was and how much they helped protestantism

the fine america and how much they sought catholicism as a threat and so because americans thought that promises them is what defined america what made america great, gave us our freedoms, they ascribed in american democracy and said look at the world. the only place that has a sense of democracy is protestant nation's. look at the places that have the most scientific ingenuity and their protestant countries countries. obviously, they are reading history oddly, but nonetheless, that's what they believed and so they saw a catholic immigrants a threat to that and in this case what whitman is especially upset about is something that we can all imagine we get upset about which is the public school and there was a big fight during this time, catholic immigrants coming to new york and sending their kids to public schools were shocked to find the

curriculum of the school was overtly protestant, that children were required to send protestant hands, read from the king james bottle-- bible and parents of catholic children objected to that and instead of saying i see your point, maybe we should allow catholic children to read from the catholic version of the bible and so forth, american protestants said no, we must keep the schools protestant because that's what makes america great and if we take that out of the school our children and our nation will suffer and people felt strongly about that and that was what inspired whitman's response. >> in the book religious tolerance and one of the most famous cases is where peter

tried to ban quakers from moving in flushing. along with the conflict we have had a tradition of tolerance and welcoming diversity, but in the book i learned. >> peter also was not a very tolerant person and for him even

for protestantism, the duction like we are out of, so lutherans were a big enemy of peter. you wanted to ban lutherans from new hampshire man and not company that ran the colony had to write and say you really have to let the lutherans come in. you are not being fair and we need as many people to move here as possible and we can't keep banning people, so he allows the lutherans to stay, but all these restrictions. quakers were seen as even more of a threat because their form a protestantism was quite radical without having a minister be the head, that seems so anti- monarchist that it would lead to anarchy, so these residents of queens, a flushing write this protest to say this really is not right you are banning the

quakers. it's generally cited as the first example of a demand for religious tolerance in what becomes the united states. as you know, part of the story people don't tend to know is that he says i disagree and he goes to the people and says you either repent or you are banned to. most of the people end up recanting and disavowing rather than find themselves exiled from the colony as well. even in this example where people are wanting religious tolerance, not much is coming forth. >> today, the foreign-born population of new york city and we tend to think this has historic hype on immigration.

what i understand two out of three new yorkers are immigrants or their children, but in 1855, when it was 51% foreign-born and by 1920, it was 41%. then, it dipped in 1970 to a mere 18% and now it's come up to 37%. the larger part of your book is a band flow. can you talk about the loss or moments that explain the shifts and did you get a sense of how decisions are made in washington about which groups to let in when? >> that they collocated question

first, let me talk about your point about the ad and flow into get the sense of while new york may seem very immigrant today how really in comparison to the past it's not. the best example is 1865, where 51% of the city's residents are immigrants, but what's more interesting is the fact that in those days new yorkers generally had bigger families, lots of kids. really, most of the nativeborn new yorkers were children and in 18557 out of 10 adults living in new york were foreign-born. ..

. the first time that impact become significant to the chinese exclusion act in 1882 although the chinese are a small immigrant group nationwide especially small in new york. laws only have a significant impact on checking the flow of

immigrants in the 1920s went as far as one time in american history where large numbers of members of both major political parties agree immigration should be restricted and that is a result of world war i where there are millions of refugees, millions of refugees in europe who want to come to the united states and americans don't want them to come and this fear combined with the fear the roaring 20s economy would be squelched by large numbers of immigrants conditioning americans to cut off the flow of immigration so you get these laws that are also very racist in their underpinnings that say if you are from england you can

come to the united states in unlimited numbers but if you are from italy or russia, the number is cut from where we are before until after by well over 90% and by 1924 x 98% so the immigration from italy, from greece, russia, poland is cut to almost nothing and that is why you have a figure in 1970 with an immigrant population of new york getting so low. in 1965 congress changes those laws and goes back to a system where no one country gets privilege over another in sending immigrants. the final thing in terms of the flow, today is there are some unintended consequences from the 1965 law which put in place certain limits but there are exceptions to those limits for family members of immigrants already in the united states and

lawmakers don't anticipate how many family members of asian immigrants or latino immigrants are going to want to come to the united states and that is one of the reasons immigration grows so much more rapidly after 1970 then lawmakers expect. >> my uncle came to detroit in the early 1970s and by the early 1980s we had 50 members of my family over here. and irish people came. >> important thing to note about the diversity is you could only

qualify for the diversity lottery if you come from a country with very few immigrants in the united states now. people from the major and even middling countries that are represented among america's population are not eligible to the the diversity lottery but that is the reason you are getting larger numbers of immigrants from africa than we had before in some parts of south america that we had before and some parts of central asia than we had before. only those places qualify for the diversity lottery. >> off of the way that people made their way, including irish and the conditions they ship passages. >> sure. if ever you think you had a bad

experience you should think about what irish and german immigrants and even the english and dutch before the mental immigrants coming to the united states before the advent of steamships. the irish situation was by far the worst because they were so poor and the shipping companies were so venal that they squeezed many more immigrants into the ships than they should have. your typical steerage compartment would not be much bigger than this room. maybe this is too wide actually. and you could have in a room like this -- what do we have here? 75, 100 people? you would have had 200 people and in some just 400 people in

this space, just 500 people. you had bunks and they would be triple bunks they would go from floor to ceiling and in addition you would sleep two or three per bunk. one of the worst parts with you didn't necessarily get to share the bunk with someone you knew. if you were a single woman and there was a family of three, there was space for one more person in the bunk, you had to squeeze with -- the american civil war they decided to segregate the sexes, segregate single women from all the men. not only the single men, they segregate single women from single men but married men are just as bad, they just end up

all of the women have to be separate from all the men. that only happens by the 1870s. these bunks, one of the big problems of being on these ships was life were a big problem. not the benign head lace we have today which are embarrassing but don't cause problem but these were body lice. body lice would make you sick. the lice would defecate on you and the lice species would get under your skin and have bacteria and you got ship fever, you got a high fever, you vomited, it was a terrible thing. imagine you are not on the top bunk and the people have ship fever above you, where is that vomit going? right on to you.

you don't have a steel bunk, you are talking burlap or wood slats so the vomit is coming right down on you and it is terrible and that is one of the many diseases you could catch on a ship. at the height of the irish potato famine it was common for a couple dozen people to be dead by the time bishop stopped in new york and a couple dozen more to die after landing because they got infected but not yet very sick when the ship would land and if you were unlucky enough, a lot of irish immigrants went to canada first because it was cheaper to go to canada. some of them, hundreds of people died so it was an awful experience. >> i will never complain about spraying lice again. you know what happened when they

get here, ellis island really blue my mind. nobody's name got changed at ellis island. every immigrant movie we have ever seen the immigration guy, a long german name and give them a new american name, this did not happen. >> this is one of those many immigration myths and one of the most prevalent ones. ellis island. the people had no authority to give you a name. when you left ellis island you didn't leave with any piece of paper at all. you were just past and in you went. there was nothing that says here is your new name. what you have to realize is each immigrant or entire immigrant family was processed in one name.

by law, each inspector had to ask 30 questions. they had to ask all of them so there was no time to give you a new name. what historians theorize is a lot of immigrants changed their name to see more american. we often laugh at how un-american the names they chose are as in the case of my family. one theory is a lot of immigrants changed their name to seem more american were embarrassed about that fact and said it was that guy on ellis island who made me do it when in fact the immigrants themselves chose how their names would be spelled. >> the names from time to time changed but also the narrative they carried with them.

denoted american jewish historian, to get into this country, the european -- other documents full of examinations for people. the light of other occupations and controls of embarkation, and the military description. and had to be offered --

>> the tradition -- the opening of ellis island, they discount the vote and look in your mouth and make sure you weren't sick. especially with the opening of ellis island in 1892, you have this culture that you might call it. the funny thing is people lied about things they didn't need to lie about and you find that all the time. people adding years to their age which wasn't necessary, they claim different jobs which was totally irrelevant. the people at ellis island assume whatever you think your job was that you were lying. so all they looked for was that you were healthy. they assumed as long as you can wheel the shovel or pick, you could make it in america and you would be admitted.

it would be turned away. the other part i want to mention, we tend to think of illegal immigration is a recent phenomenon but as i talk about in the book, illegal immigration goes back 100 years or more in american history. as soon as those restrictive laws were put in place in the 1920s immigrant start speaking in the united states and italian immigrants were the main illegal immigrants of the early 20th century, not only forgotten story. pretty much the same store you can read about illegal immigrants, in italy or russia they sneak in on boats, they sneak in in the compartments, over the order, all the things

illegal immigrants do today but they were from greece or russia or italy, we have totally forgotten that story. a huge part of immigration, the story for a lot of people, all those years ago. >> changing constantly and on purpose and not at all and at heart. on the surface it will be totally different to come from nations unlike the previous wave of immigrants. they appear to make no efforts to know english, they live cut off from mainstream american society. unlike previous generations in their homelands.

even worse, a well-known new yorker in 2015, quote, they are bringing drugs, crime, rapists. >> you want me to answer? >> i can guess. >> that is donald trump in 2016. i think trump is perpetuating a lot of myths about contemporary immigration but what you can say is following a long tradition in which americans said those things about immigrants for 400 years. in that sense trump is part of the american mainstream. >> i went to high school with guys like donald trump. was put in a catholic school and

moved. ad to run like hell from the italians and irish and germans. people called me an alien. it was a risky place. working-class white enclave that was encroached upon by minorities. the same foundation by sheer numbers but trump grew up in jamaica where he grew up. now it is not. he tapped into something. we don't like him.

30% of the country, his message, by reading this book, long tradition not just immigration, already strong, earlier donald trump, pre-donald trump -- >> there are too many name is but -- >> congressman martin dies in texas, proposed a lot of things, and wanted to cut off all

immigration. it is in the early 1920s. second thing he wanted to do is support the immigrants who hadn't become american citizens yet. should give all the immigrants one year. if they are not an american citizen within one year they are kicked out of the country. what he was implying his immigrants could not get nationalized, before you can become naturalized, a lot of immigrants, that wasn't even an option. congress seriously debated the proposals, they end up not getting an immigration restriction but that is one example. the know nothing party which is

the anti-immigrant, anti-irish, in context, some people today, for all their faults never wanted to restrict immigration, never called for any restrictions on people coming to the united states. they did and to restrict, lessen the political influence of immigrants. what they wanted was a 21 year wait before immigrants take votes. all of american history, someone born in the united states has to wait 21 years before they can vote. why shouldn't an immigrant way 21 years to learn what it means to be an american? that never gets enacted either. more than 100 people to congress, they were a very significant -- not a majority of the population but a significant minority.

that is a constant in american history, the land of immigrants, a large number of today's immigrants, if we can't have immigrants we shouldn't have any more. and in the nation. >> i don't think any group in the country today is as demonized as muslims. you are right, in 2015, 56%, the values for north americans. very large majority of them and a little longer. every argument as to why muslims

-- pluralism and democracy. they follow the victims of foreign religious leaders and segregate them personally from american society and have incompatible principles that make america great was once made irish catholics. hillary clinton should read all this stuff. something about muslim immigration to the country. >> i haven't heard hillary clinton say that but president obama a couple months ago said exactly that in a speech i didn't think was covered, in

terms of muslim immigrants, experience with muslim immigrants, we actually had believe it or not syrian immigrants have a long history, in the beginning of the 20th century down to the lower west side of manhattan. and the world trade center was along washington street in particular. this is a large, vibrant committee. what was called syria encompassed what we call lebanon today. it was a little more heterogeneous than you might imagine and it was a mixed religious community, both christians and muslims but it was a large and well-known part of the city, one of the more exotic neighborhoods with

whenever people would write profiles of ethnic new york, this was part of the description. it kind of disappears for reasons nobody is exactly sure about after world war i. there is not much more immigration from there and it appears syrian immigrants moved to other parts of the united states, this was a particular place where a lot of syrian immigrants moved and it fades from the city's memory. >> the largest group of immigrants, the fastest growing would be mexicans. >> it depends how you define fastest growing. mexicans according to the most recent census figures mexican immigration is leveled off.

in terms of percentages, the fastest growing immigrant population in new york would be south asian muslims, pakistan, bangladesh, places like that. in terms of sheer numbers the fastest growing probably chinese immigrants and very soon chinese immigrants will outnumber dominican immigrants in new york. >> many people think of the extension of new jersey, a huge number of immigrants, proportionate growing immigrants. >> in terms of proportion staten island's immigrant population is growing faster than any other place yet staten island has by far the lowest proportion of immigrants in its population. citywide 37% foreign-born, staten island is 25%

foreign-born. it is growing proportionately the fastest. >> you say in your introduction, very little has changed. the kind of people who come here, as they are accepted into the nation's economic and political life, those who come after them. the ways in which they come here, i am wondering, in one way things have changed, they are not able to go back to their homeland regularly. they might go back two or three times in their life or not at all but people who come here

now, with cheap international airfares, a long trip home, when my family came over, we went back and two times we go back two or three times a year. does it maintain more practical -- to refresh their cultural ties to the homeland. and less upper demand that we belong to an american entity? >> yes and no. it is important more immigrants than we realize have done the back and forth trip before today's immigrants. italian immigrants, many italian immigrants would work 9 months

and go to italy for three once and do that year after year after year so they too were refreshing there for an identity. italians are the most famous example of this but not the only example. jet plane, we get there in ten hours or whatever, but 100 years ago making it across the atlantic in a steamship seemed fantastical, seemed to bring their place of birth amazingly close so i think i certainly understand what you are saying but immigrants in the past also had lots of other ways to stay in touch. today it might be texting, someone who doesn't know texting

the telegraph is instantaneous and amazing. so the immigrant newspaper is another thing that you could live in new york for decades and never pick up an english language newspaper and -- and it was as if, in athens, wherever you might be from, you find that news every day. i don't think the difference is as great as you might think. certainly from the immigrant state of mind was remarkably similar, they saw themselves as very much in touch with their homeland connected with it and very aloof from america which seemed so foreign to them

outside their immigrant enclaves. >> the family immigrated and came to disney world, i am reminded of a book in the 50s, looking for the world beyond. all about the importance of food to the jewish community, offering a similar enclave to the irish. and the holidays to new york. >> ancestors came from germany,

poland, ukraine, belarus, the earliest of my immigrant ancestors came to the united states, in new york city. and the next wave in my family came from poland, and in the 1870s, they don't come to the united states until the early 20th century and they are the ones who in particular lived exclusively in this neighborhood as garment workers, my

great-grandfather was oppressor -- a presser in various garments in various places until he saved up enough money, the rest of the family, my great-grandmother and grandfather and his four or five sisters and they come over in the early 1920s that as soon as they get their, he moves the family and then constantly looking to save money and then move even farther from east new york and what might be the new lock area but when they finally do better they circle back and head towards flatbush and that is where they end up although i think the binders -- my tyler anbinder grandfather probably met my tyler anbinder grandmother in east new york because i was able to trace the

census where they live in the city directory and see they were only a block and a half away and that is when they met. >> a young jewish friend on this side of the neighborhood. heard about this. i spent half my life trying to get out of this. we have 15 or 20 minutes for questions. here it comes. >> i wonder, do you think that we americans have learned

anything? if we have what has been the process and what is blocking us? >> great question. i think what you see over the 400 years i cover in the book is americans are slowly but surely becoming more tolerant. it is in fits and starts, doesn't always progress in a straight line but i think americans are overall becoming more tolerant and the proportion of the population that looks at immigrants and thinks immigrants are positive for american society is probably at an all-time high. when you look at unhappiness with immigration today a huge part of it is illegal immigration. it may seem surprising given the political climate but when you

look at the polling numbers, questions about immigration, a huge majority of americans have no problem with immigrants, legal immigrants. it is illegal immigrants that are the biggest problem and that is a huge change because for most of american history any kind of immigrant was seen as a threat. even though it may be hard to see given the political campaign today, i would say on the other hand think about how the campaign is going and think about how the republican nominee has not been bringing up immigration and that is because he has learned it is not a winning issue. he can't get a majority of voters using immigration as something to attract voters. there is a sizable minority, but not as big as he once thought.

there have been lots of presidential candidates who tried to use opposition to immigration to win the presidency. pat buchanan was one. the governor of california. what is his name from 20 years ago? pete wilson. they have made that the centerpiece of the campaign and always failed. my guess is it is going to fail again. another question? wait for the microphone. >> i have a question about climbing immigrants -- i understand earlier on american history, mostly people from agrarian countries coming here.

now we have well schooled skillful people who are immigrating to america. the process of climbing the social ladder in america for the immigrants look like now? >> i think, you are absolutely right. the main reason that has changed is the immigration laws that have been enacted since 1965 have favored, given the second biggest preference to people with job skills that are in short supply and that could be engineers like in your family, nurses that we have in new york and lots of filipino nurses, and lots of skilled immigrants. they are not the majority.

so what is still the majority of people coming with relatively few job skills, the story is very much the same in which immigrants tend not to move very far up the ladder themselves with the exception being if they are entrepreneurs and if you look at their occupations they don't move up very much but in terms of financial status they typically improve their lives a lot, this large minority of immigrants led into the country because their it specialists or doctors and so forth and for them there isn't so much moving on the occupational ladder as it is adjusting to becoming socially acceptable.

becoming mainstream becomes a big concern and something those immigrants were right about, their frustration, when example i mentioned, this doctor from india who complains people meet him, are you a taxidriver and it makes him so mad because that is the stereotype. set to me -- to many immigrants, they get concerns, how do you override those prejudices rather than move up the economic ladder? >> to become the brightest -- >> the comment was she imagined it would be similar with immigrants who become writers and i imagine you are exactly right. >> following up on the point just made about jobs and moving

up the ladder particularly in new york, immigrant groups come and take the jobs of police officers, firemen and i noted in the last few years a tremendous amount of south asians, traffic officers, police officers follow the pattern. i wonder if that is continuing or something i happened to notice anecdotally or is it for real? >> certainly in new york the police department and city government in general is making a big effort to have their public face, match the faces of new yorkers especially with police where you need trust, having more police who represent ethnic diversity of new york was

important. the difference would be the irish managed to dominate the police force when they come to new york in a way you don't see anymore and that i find interesting, irish americans are a very large presence in the new york police force, even though irish immigrants are not a large presence. in some ways it changed but in some ways not as much as you might expect. >> i followed the police academy, a class of 900 recruits spoke 47 different languages. the graduation ceremony in madison square garden, people at the top were being celebrated. valedictorian -- the number 2

person in the class was a short bangladeshi man named mohammed islam. he salutes the nypd marching band composed of irish bagpipers steps forward to serenade him. >> that is a great story. who has the microphone? >> i find it interesting how you bring up the shift of how the immigrant population shift who gets the brunt of prejudices. and child of immigrants. and a huge skirmish, and

sentiment and things that many of us, and community newspapers, very upset that people within our community are so anti-muslim and what you are expressing is complete hypocrisy considering people who came before us have to deal with the chinese exclusion based on your experience, what can be done to heal this rift in the community that have to deal with it. >> a story that is replayed in american history over and over again, a group that is discriminated against turns right around and becomes the chief discriminator against the next group of immigrants coming was indebted to the irish, the irish stated to the italians, italians did to the puerto ricans, right on to the present.

there seems to be when you ask why, that is the same, your rationale, the same that occurs to me, how could you do that? immigrants, one of the ways immigrants assimilate is to take on this notion they are what they defined america and this new group doesn't and they quickly forget the way in which they have been portrayed. you could argue if i was a psychologist maybe i could make a good argument for this, they could argue part of the process of becoming american and what makes you feel american is to express that prejudice, that use your, quote, american friends to do it and you are going to do it too. that is something that is not surprising. >> two points to carry on with the gentleman said before, i

have friends in the age and community serving the nypd, they did tell me something interesting, when they were recruited, they did feel there was a sense that there was an extra effort to recruit in the minority community. it will reflect the changing face and when i look at the nypd and fdny they are not just serving the houses in chinatown, they are throughout the five boroughs which i think is great and to carry on what you are saying, we have an older generation, to be honest, that is ashamed of the younger generation, working the civil liberties union to help promote the tolerance for the muslim

community. >> that is fascinating. >> thank you. >> i have a question about ellis island. when people look as though they are too week, there was a hospital there but where they kept their until their health improved or where they set back? who paid for that? if they got off this horrible ship and were really sick they were put on another horrible ship and probably died on the way back. >> that is a good point. the way it worked with if you had a curable disease you were put in the hospital at ellis island and allowed to try to recover. if you did you were let back into the country. that happened to my grandfather and my great aunt who after suffering through world war i and the famine in ukraine, by the time they get here they are really sick. they are in the hospital at ellis island for six weeks until

they are finally let into the country. if you have something curable, you are allowed to recover. if you have something incurable like one of the things that got you excluded was a disease called trachoma, and i infection. that was before antibiotics, was not curable. if you had that you were sent back. the tragedy of that was a lot of people didn't even know they had it. it was often asymptomatic. you could get to the united states and never know you are sick until you got there and returned around. but the one starting in 1909, there was the head of ellis island, william williams, he believed too many what he called riffraff immigrants were being allowed into the united states so he, on his own, changed the

interpretation of the laws and made them stricter. one thing he did was people, he instructed the inspectors, people who were not sick but looked like they were congenitally weak, this was used mostly against eastern european jews, this person is never going to be able to wield a pickax. that became a new way by which you could band people. you couldn't go to the hospital and get better from that. what does happen is the jewish immigrant aid organization, became very fierce defenders of people who were singled out for that so a lot of them who were initially told they have to go home are eventually let in because of the efforts of these attorneys. a question in the back, i feel bad for the back. i don't see any hands. that is the quiet section.

is your hand up way in the back? >> can you talk a little bit about housing policy and how it relates to the immigrant experience, the past and now? >> sure. for much of new york history there are no housing codes. the main thing that dictated the shape and size of new york houses was the shape of the lot which was typically 25' x 100' which creates a very narrow type of building and the height of the buildings was dictated mostly by how much the walls could hold before the building

would collapse and that is if you look at the buildings around here it is rare they are 6 stories because that seem to be as much as people imagined you could build them before they might topple over onto the building next to them. starting in the late 19th century housing codes developed and start to put in restrictions. in some ways, reformers believe that through legislation they can make immigrants lives better. and so laws are put in place that for instance will limit the number of people who can occupy a single apartment but those laws are typically flouted. that photograph of immigrant life in new york around 1890, when you go on inspection tours with the health police and find these overcrowded buildings. and new york landowners have

always been very creative in how to get around the good intentions of reformers was at one point a law is put in place, every room has to have a window, and if you go -- tenements have to have windows and the owners knock holes in the wall and build windows to the outside and that in fresh air and they put the window between one room and another room in the apartment and they satisfy the law. the landlords also wield a lot of political clout and that law initially didn't allow for that. this is the tenement act of 1901 and new york landowners pushed back. in 1902-1903 get the law changed to make it less restrictive and more friendly to landlords. books always talk about the passages law and really the ways in which the law was scaled back because of the pressure from new

york city's politically powerful landlords. there has always been the intention to make housing policy make immigrants lives better. not just landlords, the immigrants themselves fighting against these things too. immigrants want to have as many borders as possible to bring in more money and make their economic lives better. there is no one group you can say is solely responsible for some of the failures of housing policy to improve immigrants lives. >> i wanted to take the opportunity to jump in and say if you want to see an apartment with one of those windows we have got a view. thank you both for this wonderful, textured, layered, wonderful conversation. [applause]

>> this is what we do here every day. i know several people in the audience are educators who will take this wonderful information and bring it back to our tourism, respond to your questions as well a. to end on a positive note i wanted to -- 30 seconds, the first woman voter at 37 orchard street, a woman named sarah who was in immigrant who came from romania, we know about her, the first woman voter and able to locate her children who talked about her life and her daughter, jacqueline richter, how growing up in the 1920s, and went to each other's houses for food and

nice relationship. we want to judge people by themselves and not what they are. there is good and bad in every race, creed or color. we stay away from troublemakers and make friends with the nice people. these nice words can bully us also against this tradition of the times in which there is anti-immigrant sentiment and new york being a place where people from these different places of come together and developed a kind of commonplace cosmopolitanism, and we as attentive and that is tenement museum aspire to talk about as well having this conversation helps us. you can buy this book. talking about immigrants who change their name, thank you for sharing that because we have 220,000 visitors every year and

approximately 25% of them bring up that their names were changed at ellis island and this helps in their crusade to rid people of that notion but you can purchase this book 15% off and have it signed, but bear with us. what you need to do, we are not a fancy museum or fancy place, we will be moving the autographed table, is going to function in the back so if you stay in your seats to keep us safer while we move that back, you will be able to go but we hope you can stay, purchasable, have a conversation and thank you again for this wonderful conversation and your questions. [applause]

>> i thought i looked it up >> this is booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here is a prime time lineup starting at 7:00 pm, the history of treason in america. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv.

>> your book is called obama's legacy, what he accomplished as president. what would you say is the most significant a compliment of the obama administration? >> right out of the gate he saved our economy. look what he was handed in 2009. we were in bad shape and he went to work and we are doing better. >> what would you say he is most criticized for? >> he is -- what hurts the most is he was not able to make a dent in terms of guns and proliferation of guns in our nation. >> any policies or accomplishments that will have a significant historical significance that didn't get a lot of attention? >> the whole issue of clean air, clean water, people were not paying attention. things were done with 189 other

countries. >> s 2016 comes to a close many publications are offering their picks for the best books of the year. here are the titles foreign affairs have selected.

>> that initial camp was three towns, each one about 30,000 people and they were arranged in a kind of hemisphere, a dusty outpost in northern kenya 17 miles from the border. fast-forward to 25 years later, there are now five towns, each one between 70 and 100,000 people and three generations of people from those initial populations who came. there is a character in the book -- i keep saying that -- a person who is in the book, his father came and his mother came in 1991. he was a very young boy. he has now had children. some of them will be having children and there are friends of his who have grandchildren.

they went on to a third generation of people who never left. those people are coexisting with more recent populations who came in 2011 and everybody is existing in this makeshift metropolis. and of course we have all seen the images of grids of tents laid out, crazy aerial photos that suggest the scale of the place. ..