and then stay on in the united states, right? and so this is -- it's how you legally categorize -- and you know, it was pointed out. this is just a choice that the u.s. government is deciding to make because they don't want to have to deal with these people. not a cheerful way to end, but we will talk about post-9/11 and we will have a final section where we think about how history is a part of sort of our present and our future, and maybe we can come up with something more cheerful to think about. all right, thank you, and. weeknights this month we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on

c-span3. tonight a look back to the civil war confederate generals, historian james bud robertson talks about robert e. lee's ties to virginia and the various military campaigns that took place throughout the state. he compares general lee's life after the war to other generals and veterans. the shenandoah battlefield foundation hosted this event. enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. ♪♪ ♪♪ alan kraut, you spent your professional career as a historian studying u.s.

immigration. many americans look to the statue of liberty's famous poem, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free as the embodiment of the way we think about this country and immigration. if you look across the history of this nation, does it track with the reality of how we've thought and treated immigrants? >> the history of immigration of the united states does not track at all with emma lazarus's wonderful quotation. in fact, it has been very much a kind of love/hate relationship. in the 19th century there was a very popular immigrant saying, america beckons but americans repel. in many ways that embodies what our relationship has long been in the united states. emma lazarus wrote that poem in 1883, and one year before she wrote it in 1882, the united states passed the chinese

exclusion law excluding chinese laborers from coming to the united states. we would pass in the years after that increasingly restrictive legislation, and so we want immigrants to come. we beckon them with opportunities, we beckon them to take jobs as skilled, semiskilled, unskilled labor to help build our country, to construct our economy, and yet, after they get here very frequently they are the objects of scorn. they are discriminated against. they suffer some of the worst acts of prejudice imaginable, and so this is a very, very complicated relationship that america has with the foreign born. >> when there are large waves of immigration such as this country has been experiencing over the past 20 years, when there are backlashes in society, what are they caused by? what triggers people? >> the backlashes are caused a

precipitating factor like an economic downturn or the sudden spike in the size of a migration or the identity of who's coming at a particular moment, and so there are lots of different things that can cause an outbreak of the kind of nativism that we've seen quite recently on the american scene. it's hard to identify one single thing, but we certainly know that it operates cyclicly. there are moments when the united states is more welcoming and moments when the united states is not welcoming at all. and so we watch this with great interest and try to identify the moments when these things are happening. >> is the current period of turmoil and debate over immigration different in any important way from the past times this country has gone through? >> i would argue that the

current wave of nativism, of anti-immigrant sentiment, of xenophobia is not different from what we've seen in the past. and while it seems to us to be peppered with acts of violence and verasty, antiimmigrant riots in the period before the civil war, anti-immigrant riots in the 1880s. there have been a lot of moments in american history when the anti-immigrant sentiment has been translated into true ugliness and brought great harm to the foreign born, so i would argue that the current wave as unpleasant and as offputting as it is is not all that unusual in the history of our country. >> what causes congress to ultimately act during these periods? >> congress acts most frequently

when there is enormous pressure from one sector of the population to have revision. for example, the chinese exclusion law of 1882 was passed very largely because of pressure coming from the west coast of the united states. workers who feared chinese competition, anti-chinese racism, all of that pressure kind of built up during the 1880s, in the late 1870s and early '80s, and by 1882, you have the chinese exclusion law. in the case of one of the most restrictive immigration laws that of 1924, what went on was the united states had had its fill of foreign born labor. our industries were being fueled by foreign born labor. we had had a peak period of immigration between 1890 and the

1920s, and at the end of the first world war, there was a red scare. the red scare of 1919, and so be the early 1920s there was a lot of sentiment within congress, bipartisan sentiment to shut the door and to do so with the kind of law that would limit the arrival of those immigrants who were the least popular, and that included southern italians, eastern european jews, russians and so on. and the law was structured to get those groups -- to keep those groups out. >> starting from the 1880s to the present day, can you identify either major party with one stance or the other? >> i think the republicans over the course of time have been the party least sympathetic to immigration. but there were also a significant element within the democratic party that was anti-immigration as well. for example, the labor union

movement in the early 20th century, in order to keep up the wages of american workers is anti-immigrant in sentiment. many southern democrats, though they encounter fewer immigrants than democrats in the north nevertheless, have their prejudices, their racial prejudices and really don't want large numbers of eastern europeans and southern italians coming to the united states either. so both parties have groups within it that are anti-immigration, and they coalesce at certain times and they become part of an anti-immigrant block that's effective enough to pass restrictive legislation. >> so if the first major legislation regarding immigration was in the 1880s, was the country basically open borders before that? how was immigration law handled? >> in the period before the civil war, immigration is a state matter. the federal government has nothing to do with immigration. each state has its own

quarantine laws governing immigrants who might be sick upon arrival, but they also have inspection procedures in place. the busiest port on the east coast is new york, and in 1855 castle garden is opened as the new york state immigration depot, and it's there that new york state immigration officers interrogate newcomers, and it's there that volunteer physicians examine newcomers to see that they're not bringing disease to the united states and that they'll be sufficiently robust to be able to support themselves. so it's strictly a state matter until the law of 1882, and at that point, the treasury department takes over immigration, but does business with the states, in effect contracts with the states to enforce american immigration law and restriction. >> clearly a blanket of

different laws become unworkable? >> exactly. >> so let's get a snapshot of the big waves of immigration before federal laws. first of all, we have to acknowledge quite a large contingent of people who were involuntarily immigrated to this country, the african-americans who were brought in in slavery. so what percentage of the population were they prior to the civil war? >> prior to the civil war, there are four and a half million slaves in the united states. now, by virtue of a compromise at the constitutional convention, the international slave trade was ended in 1808, but there was plenty of smuggling, and plenty of replenishment of the slave population. so 4.5 million slaves alone by the time of the civil war. i have a problem with calling them involuntary migrants. they were slaves, a special and

distinct category, not involuntary migrants. not the same as indentured servants or any other category that we recognize. but the first real mass immigration to the united states in the post-revolutionary period begins very slowly at the end of the 1830s and picks up in the 1840s and 1850s, and that's the great migration of irish and germans and scandinavians coming to the united states. 4.5 million people between 1840 and 1860. >> and what would that be as a percentage of the existing population? >> at the time of the first census in 1790, there were under 4 million people in the united states. >> so it essentially was doubling the population of the united states. >> it was in that direction. >> so when we -- >> it's extraordinary. this is the importance of the context of history. when we talk about the current

time as a period of the greatest integration into the united states, the history doesn't seem to bear that out. >> right. so the history of the united states bears out that this is a country that is constantly hungry for newcomers. why? because our own population simply will not sustain what we need to settle the land and to produce prosperity, and once, of course, we entered the industrial revolution in the post-civil war period, the need for low cost labor is essential to our capitalist direction. and where are we going to get that labor from? well, we're going to get it from abroad, and even prior to the civil war, we begin to see the irish who are very, very often a source of low cost labor. we see the germans who are escaping the revolutions of the 1840s in the german states, who are coming with their skills and

their crafts. we see the scandinavians who are going to be farming the land in the northern part of the american middle west. this is an extraordinary movement of people onto the north american continent, and it's going to have dramatic economic and cultural repercussions. >> at the same time on the west coast, the first wave of chinese immigrants were coming. what brought them? >> absolutely. they were coming very largely from a very poor province called i do sean province. they are coming because of the gold rush. they have heard that gold has been discovered in california. they are coming to make their fortune, and of course most of them don't discover gold, but they do find jobs. they find jobs working on railroads. they find jobs working in mines. they find jobs servicing the working communities that are there so they are cooking, they're doing laundry. but they're also doing mining

and railroad building, and by the time of the chinese exclusion law in 1882, there were 300,000 chinese in the united states. >> mostly in the northern california area? >> well, mostly on the west coast, along the west coast. some of them are going north and end up in wyoming and a variety of different places. >> so before we get into the details of the chinese exclusion act. i want to learn a little bit more about you. how did you end up having this as your academic specialty? >> well, i started out my academic life as a civil war historian. i was trained in the civil war and in the antebellum period, and by the time i left graduate school, i realized that i had an increasing interest in how immigrant voters were casting their ballots with respect to issues like slavery and many

other issues as well. i was trained in voting behavior and came at it from that angle, but increasingly i knew that i really wanted to work in immigration. and that would require, since i was now done with my ph.d. it would require retraining on my own, and so i did a lot of reading and a lot of teaching of a preliminary immigration course and so on, and published my first book in the early 1980s called the huddled masses, the immigrant and american society 1880 to 1921, and that kind of launched me into immigration history. and then later on in my career, i discovered that i was interested in nativism that was particularly medical in content, the accusation that newcomers were bringing disease to the united states, but i had no background in the history of medicine. and so i had to retrain over a

number of years in the history of medicine in order to do a book about the stigmatization of immigrants as disease bringers. >> how many books have you done so far? >> well, if you include the edited and co-authored books, nine. >> all on immigration-related topics? >> except for one, which is devoted to the anti-slavery movement, political anti-slavery, but the rest all deal with immigration one way or another. the silent travelers, germs, genes and the immigrant menace which i published in the mid-'90s squarely addresses the issue of health, disease and immigration. >> some of the interesting things i noted for me on your biography included your long tenure on the statue of liberty advisory board and ultimately chairing it. so what was the mission of that group? >> well, back in the early 1980s, a young representative of the park service visited me in my office. her name was heather hike, and

she had read "huddled masses" as a graduate student at the university of minnesota. she asked me if i'd like to be part of a group of historians and designers and architects who were all gathering in west virginia to talk about at harpers ferry, to talk about the possibility of a museum and the restoration of ellis island. now, i said of course, absolutely. and i was fortunate enough to be part of an advisory committee that was formed, historians who basically were a creature of the statue of liberty ellis island foundation. the organization that raised the money for the restoration of the statue of liberty between '84 and '86, and then the creation of an ellis island museum and the restoration of part of ellis island so it could be a site for

visitors to come and learn about the immigrant experience. and then in 2003 i was appointed chair of that history advisory committee, and i've been serving in that capacity ever since, and our most recent victory is the opening of a new statue of liberty museum on liberty island at the opposite end of the island from the statue of liberty, which tells the story of the statue, its construction, its role as a political and commercial iconographic figure. it's very exciting. >> you've also served as a consultant to contemporary media organizations as they've been telling various stories about american immigration. how do you think the american media does at telling the immigration story? >> i think the media does a good job in telling the immigration story when they take the trouble to talk to people who can put it into a larger context, whether

it's historians or sociologists or cultural anthropologists. the immigration story is a complicated one, and it's deeply entwined with the larger american story. when people ask what i do for a living, i say i write the history of the great republic, but i write part of that history more than any other, and that's the part dealing with the peopling of america. if you want to understand the peopling of america, it has to be contextualicontextualized an, i like to serve the media. i believe of the historians should do the same thing. it's too important a story and too critical to our country to get it wrong. >> well, let's return to our narrative. >> sure. >> and 1882 chinese exclusion act. i want to start with a piece of video we have in our library. we did a series on landmark supreme court cases, and of course this act made its way to

the supreme court. let's show you a bit of an interview we did on the chinese exclusion act. >> they were very, very much the subject of discriminatory activities. i'm kind of reminded of the case of people, which is 1854, very early california supreme court case in which the several chinese witnesses saw murder, they testified honestly what they saw. he was convicted, his clever defense attorney appealed the case to the california supreme court, and he argued there's a law in california that's indians and blacks could not testify against a white man and that there's only three classes of people in the world, whites,

blacks, and mongolian. indians included chinese, and chinese were mongolians, indians were mongolians and the california supreme court bought that argument. and if we let them testify against a white man, why, the next thing you know, they'd be sitting on a jury box. they'd run for the legislature. they'd vote. they might even become judges. what a terrible thing that would be, and a very racist type of decision. and so it set the tone of california history for about the first 100 years. >> and the act actually did go to supreme court in the case of yik woe, how did the supreme court treat this case? >> i think the supreme court treated it badly in the sense that the chinese exclusion law lasted all the way until 1943,

and it is only in 1943 that we finally abandoned our efforts to keep chinese out of the united states and from becoming citizens of the united states. and that was a great injustice, and it speaks to another theme, which is very important for us to explore, and that is, of course, the theme of racism within american immigration policy. there are plenty of reasons why americans reject particular immigrant groups. sometimes it's on the basis of religion, anticatholicism, anti-semitism at different times but always on the basis of color. on the basis of prevailing racism within the american consciousness that governs the way we approach these things. and the first dramatic example of that is, of course, the 1882

chinese exclusion law and the fact that it took from 1882 all the way until 1943 until the chinese were our allies in the second world war for that finally to abate. >> so during this time period you've made reference to the 1882 chinese exclusion act, same year of the first major immigration act, and 1890 benjamin harrison, president as he's almost about to leave office establishes ellis island. so overall, what's happening in the country that necessitated all of these changes? >> you know, immigration is a matter of pushes and pulls. that is those who are going to be on the move are pushed by certain circumstances in their home countries, by poverty, by oppression, by religious discrimination, and pulled by the promise of freedom, pulled

by the promise of economic opportunity, and so on. and if we think of these pushes and pulls, that's what pushed the irish and pushed folks in the german states, and pushed scandinavians out of their countries in the pre-civil war period, and pulled them toward the united states. the promise of opportunity, of greater freedom, and so on. those forces were moving east into southern and eastern europe. the flow of migration to the united states was beginning to change in the 1880s, and while there were still germans coming and still folks from central europe coming, increasingly there were folks coming from southern and eastern europe where we had never gotten a significant migration flow from before. there was a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety about what that would mean. were the states up to processing

all these newcomers? did they have the power and the organizational capacity to handle what was on the horizon and the federal government's answer was no. and so it became a matter of making immigration a federal issue, a matter that would be handled by federal officers at federal immigration depots, and even the medical inspection would be handled by the offices of the u.s. marine hospital service, a service that could trace its roots back to 1798 and a bill signed by john adams, but they would be uniformed physicians of what would later be called the u.s. public health service. and so this entire mechanism, this federal mechanism was created to deal with the issue of immigration. so how did americans deal with immigration in the late 19th

century? with fear and anxiety, and at the same time expectation. the expectation was that the newcomers would provide labor as america industrialized. the fear and anxiety was, you know, who are these people. where are they coming from? how will they affect the texture of american culture in society? what are we going to do with them all? where are they going to settle? where are they going to be? what's the implication? so this is a very dramatic and dynamic period in the peopling of america, this period between the late 1880s and the 1920s when restriktive legislation passed. >> about how many people came into the united states during that period? >> 23.5 million. >> 23.5 million, begin as the population? >> significant. >> many were fleeing religious persecution, where does the concept of refugees or asylum

from persecution start to level up into american immigration law? >> the word refugee is not used with any precision during this period. people -- there's a great confusion over who's an immigrant, and who's a refugee, and we don't get any clarity to the term refugee until well into the 20th century. and so, yes, jews, especially after the poe grums of the early 20th century are fleeing persecution in russia. they are for all intents and purposes refugees. but there's no definition of that, so they are part of the larger immigration experience. and so you have all kinds of migration going on during this period. you have a seasonal labor migration of southern italians. they come in march or april. they prefer outdoor work.

they build the skyscrapers of manhattan and the federal triangle area of washington, d.c. their stone cutters are experts. they're in great demand, and they go back during the winter months, and then in the spring they come again. and so it's this back and forth. the federal immigration officers refer to them as birds of passage, but there were true labor migration coming at different times during the year to take part in those jobs which they liked best. they liked it better than indoor work. the eastern european jews, the second largest group, second to the italians during this period have no intention of going back because they've come in part, not just for economic opportunity, but in flight from persecution. they're not going back to the czar. they're not going back to that world, and so for them, it's a permanent one-way migration, at

least that's how they look at it. and so -- and you have other groups here, too. you have poles and slavs and greeks and so many different groups coming for a variety of reasons that it is a big job for the federal government to process all these newcomers and to inspect them and do all of the things that are necessary to make the country safe as the federal government understands it at that time. >> in 1917, the federal government impose add reading test for immigrants over the age of 16. what was that intended to do? >> there was an inclination on the part of some in congress to try and improve the quality of immigration and to exclude those groups who were notoriously in a view of congress illiterate,

undereducated and so on. in a first thrust in terms of real restrictionism, there's an effort to pass a literacy test. they try it in 1896. it fails. they try it in 1913, it fails. they tried in 1915, it fails. they tried in 1917, twice woodrow wilson vetoed the literacy test, and when it was finally passed it was passed over a presidential veto. and then there was a tremendous amount of negotiation that went on before it was actually instituted. what constituted a language in which you could be literate. was yiddish a language? well, it had a written form. it was a peculiar kind of merger of other languages, but the lobbying for yiddish, just to use that as an example, was such that it made the literacy test passable by many of those who were coming. moreover, if a woman was married to a man who was literate, she

needn't be. that cut down on the number of people who could be excluded. so the literacy test was an exclusionary implement as a restrictive element of failure, tremendous failure. >> so after this big wave, 23 million people coming into the country in 1920s, two immigration acts passed, emergency quota act in 1921 and a national origin quota system in 1924. what wer the kinds of quotas and what were the quotas based on? >> the 1921 emergency national origins quota act was repassed in '22 and '23. it went this way. every country was entitled to bring into the united states 30% of those already here according

to the 1910 census. now, the problem with that is that by 1910, a lot of the southern italians and eastern european jews who many americans wanted to exclude were already here. so in 1924 in the johnson reed immigration act, the most restrictive piece of legislation up until that point in american history, they used the 1890 census as a base and i think i misspoke before, i said 30%. i meant 3%. in 1924 it went down to 2% of those who were here in 1890. so calculate how many eastern european jews were here in 1890, how many southern italians were here in 1890, take 2% of that and that's the annual quota. it took between 1924 and 1929 to

argue about this and figure out every country's quota. >> were all the numbers coming from ellis island? is that where the statistics were being kept? >> no, the statistics were being kept at every american immigration port and then compiled. >> so i want to move from the european migration and actually the asian migration to talk about the southern border for a bit. it's interesting when you look at the 1930s and we were talking about this before we began, there was a deportation of as many as 400,000 mexicans and mexican americans. then in the 1940s we began the bra sarah program. and you represented earlier something with called operation wet back, which was a terrible name. i want to show a video that is a from a sort of documentary produced at the period that

talks about the program, and help us understand the american ying and yang on the mexican migration issue. let's watch. >> here is stoop labor in the literally meaning of the term. the term is also applied to many of the toughest and least desirable farm jobs. for example, no stooping here, yet because citrus trees are thorny, more difficult to pick than other fruits, most farm workers avoid this kind of job. all such farm jobs, which are tough, dirty, or unpleasant are generally referred to as stoop labor. understandably then, this is the only area in which the american farm labor supply falls short and is supplemented by mexican citizens, sometimes called nationals or mexican nationals, but the term most commonly used is braceros, in spanish this means a man who works with his arms and hands. it so happens that they form a

tiny fraction of the total labor force used on our farms. yet, some americans feel even this tiny fraction should not be used. a typical dialogue pinpoints the major issues. >> well, with americans on relief rolls, why bring in foreigners to work on our farms. makes no sense. >> makes sense to the fafarmers though, they work for lower pay. >> doesn't the farmer realize he's cutting down american labor, cutting down our living standard. why doesn't somebody do something about it. >> mexican labor in the united states has a long and rich history. first of all, we have to understand that the mexicans didn't migrate to the united states at first. they were engulfed in the 1840s after the mexican war and the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo, which was 1848. that's when those mexicans were living in the southwest become part of the united states of

america, and their children become citizens of the united states of america. there was in the first- the most restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s, no bar on those within the hemisphere, so mexicans are moving back and forth across the borders easily. there's no barrier for them. in -- during the world war ii period, it's clear that with so many americans going off to war, there is a need for extra labor. there's a need for planting, for harvesting, and so there is a program called the bracero program, which as the film said, means working with one's arms, one's body. it goes between 1942 and 1964. in general, there were about

200,000 workers per year who are moving back and forth during the entire period, approximately 4.8 million. they perform critical functions in the american economy in terms of our agricultural cycle. they have other jobs as well. the reaction to the braceros is not wonderful on the part of many americans who really resent them because they seem to be taking jobs away from native born americans, though they're really not, during this period, and for all kinds of racial reasons that have nothing whatever to do with the economy but have a lot to do with attitudes, american anglo attitudes towards the mexicans. ví their purpose, many in the united states want them to leave, and what we see happening is the

deportation of mexicans, and it actually begins after the second world war and picks up during the 1950s, and by the 1960s we're getting them out of the united states. many americans will remember a song produced by woody guthrie and sung very beautifully by joan baez called "deportee." it was about a terrible plane crash that occurred in 1948 in which a number of mexicans being deported were killed. there were 38 -- 32 people on the flight, 28 of them were mexicans, and what impressed woody guthrie was the fact that the newspapers only reported the names of the white pilots and so on who were on the plane, but everybody else was referred to as a deportee and not named in the reports.

in some ways it dramatized what was going on. we had taken this labor. we were using this labor, and now we wanted to get rid of this labor. by the middle of the 1950s during the eisenhower administration, there was an operation called most unfortunately operation wet back, which was designed to dump even more mexicans out of the united states and across the border. in all there were over a million who were actually deported during operation wet back. but this is the kind of love/hate relationship with labor from abroad that america had had for a long, long time, and here it was with respect to our southern neighbor. we wanted them when we wanted them because we needed their labor, and when we didn't need their labor anymore, we wanted them to go home, and by 1964 the

formal agreement between the two governments is ended, and that's the end of the bracero program, but it's not the end"0qo migration of labor back and forth across the border by any means. the mexican labor is simply too important to american growers. in addition to that, it helps the american growers to keep the price of their produce low. they are working these mexican laborers for way below what you would have to pay american workers to do the same job. >> that was 1964. our next piece of video is 1965. this is actually at ellis island statue of liberty, lyndon johnson signing a major immigration bill. let's watch. >> those who can contribute most to this country, to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit will be the first that are admitted to this land. the fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well

wonder that it has not always been applied. yet, the fact is that far over four decades the immigration policy of the united states has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system. under that system the ability of new immigrants to come to america depended upon the country of their birth. only three countries were allowed to supply 70% of all the immigrants. families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place. men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern europe or from one of the developing continents.

this system violated the basic principle of american democracy, the principal that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. >> i think we have a chart that i want to add to the discussion here that's done by the pew organization that looks at american population post this 1965 legislation, and as we're getting this ready to put up overall, yeah, you can see what happened here from 1965 when the act passed all the way to the projected population in 2065 and the foreign born population would grow from 9.6 back then to 45 million in 2015 and ultimately to 78 million, so the three major aspects of this legislation as president johnson was talking about, families could be kept together.

skills-based system, and repealing that quota that you talked about. which had the most impact on these numbers changing? >> certainly family reunification has a tremendous impact as it's described in the legislation, but also the skills-based as well. the idea was to get rid of a system that had become very, very ethnocentric and ugly, and that was the national origins quota system. the idea for reforming american immigration policy came out of the kennedy administration, and john kennedy wrote a book about immigration and was pushing very hard for it. it's doubtful that kennedy would have been able to get it through congress, but lyndon johnson did get it through congress, and at the same time in the same time period that he was getting three pieces of civil rights legislation through, he was also getting through this very, very

important act of 1965 called the hart seller act after hart of michigan and seller of brooklyn, new york, and this act got rid of the national origins quota system and substituted hemispheric quotas, 120,000 for the western hemisphere, 170,000 for the eastern hemisphere. and it changed the immigration flow to the united states very significantly. instead of the flow coming primarily from europe, it really opened the door to many more people coming out of asia and ultimately africa and other parts of the world. it also imposed a quota on the western hemisphere, and that meant the movement of latin americans, especially mexicans that had once been unencumbered now was subject to a quota system, too.

by the early 1970s, the world is a very different place in terms of migration. there is great economic hardship and political turmoil in latin america. the end of the vietnam war brings southeast asians in greater numbers to the united states including ethnic chinese that had been in vietnam and cambodia and laos who also want to come to the united states, and it is a moment in which our current dilemma over undocumented or unauthorized immigration is really born big time. there had always been undocumented immigration to the united states. ever since there was documented admission, but now it was growing in numbers because there were so many from central america and so many from mexico

who wanted to come into the united states. and moreover, there were folks in the united states who were only too anxious to hire them for their low wages and so on. and so the entire immigration scene, if you will, the policy scene, changes after 1965. in one part of the speech, lyndon johnson says this legislation won't change very much, but he couldn't have been wronger. in fact, it changed everything, and it opened the door for folks who had been unable to get to the united states before, and it changed the flow of immigration to the united states and created the current problem that we talk about a great deal, and that is how do we treat and how should we envelope all of those who are unauthorized who are in our midst. >> so the policy debate really in the '80s forward focuses on

undocumented or illegal immigrants as a policy issue? >> it is certainly one of the major, major issues of confrontation and engagement in the policy world, no question about it. >> well, let's move to 1986 when ronald reagan and the congress tried to create legislation that would address some of the issues surrounding that. this was the so-called simpson missouli bill, alan simpson of wyoming, and misoli, congresswoman from kentucky. so let's watch. >> this bill, the immigration reform and control act of 1986 that i'll sign in a few minutes is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952. it's the product of one of the longest and most difficult legislative undertakes in the last three congresses, further, it's an excellent example of a truly successful bipartisan effort. the administration of the allies of immigration reform on both sides of the capitol and both sides of the aisle worked

together to accomplish these critically important reforms to control illegal immigration. in 1981, this administration asked the congress to pass a comprehensive legislative package including employer sanctions, other measures to increase enforcement of the immigration laws, and legalization. the act provides these three essential components. distance is not discouraged illegal immigration to the united states from all around the globe. the problem of illegal immigration should not therefore, be seen as a problem between the united states and its neighbors. our objective is only to establish a reasonable, fair, orderly and secure system of immigration into this country and not to discriminate in any way against particular nations or people. >> we hear a lot of criticism of that legislation with the word amnesty tagged to it, saying that, in fact, it encouraged additional waves of migration from the southern hemisphere and

mexico after this. what's the reality? >> the reality is that there were so many millions, i mean, estimates varied between 8.5 or 9 million, 11 some who had lived here for a very long time. who raised their children here. who were citizens by birthright of the united states. ronald reagan did something very pragmatic, that is, he issued an amnesty to some of those folks in order to quiet the problem before the rest of the legislation addressed the problem. and the legislation tried to shift the onus from those who were trying to cross our borders, to those who were feasting on their labor and exploiting them terribly. from the migrants to those who hired and knowingly hired

unauthorized immigrants in the united states. and there were raids and there were efforts to do this in a systematic kind of way. it never succeeded in the way that those who crafted the legislation in part, because it became very unpopular from a political perspective to prosecute small business owners. or big business owners. and so the governments did not zealously pursue those who were hiring undocumented immigrants. and the emphasis continued to be on trying to police the borders and send people back when you intercepted them on one border or another, the coast guard operating off the coast of cuba, intercepting haitian immigrants at different times, searching for people who had overstayed their student visas or work

visas. in short. the legislation did not do the job that it had been intended to do in an effective way. and that's one of the reasons why we continue to debate immigration policy. and continue to feel very, very badly about the problem we which is good people who want opportunity for their children, safety for themselves and their children who cross our borders, but in doing so, do break all laws. how shall we treat that? we're a nation of laws. on the one hand, our inclination is to enforce the laws. on the other hand, there's a humanitarian perspective that can't be denied or ignored. how shall we treat this? we continue to debate it. we desperately need a solution. one of the things i do in washington besides teach at a university is i'm a nonmigrant

fellow at the newt. one thing that they do and other think tanks are engaged in this as well is to debate what a good immigration policy would be. what would that look like? well, one possibility is it would involve advanced planning. what are the country's economic needs going forward? could we create a five-year plan? a ten-year plan for who we would like to invite into our country? what kind of skills would they have? how would the concerns about the skills of incoming immigrants mesh with our desire to be humanitarian and the desires of those who are already here. the family reunification element of previous legislation. a tremendous number of questions, very hard questions for our country to answer. and clearly were immeshed in a ferocious debate, which because of the contemporary spirit of nativism and xenophobia has

become very embittered and very angry. americans are furious about this issue. and in many of the polls that have been taken when americans are asked what's the most important issue for you in the next election, a remarkable number are saying immigration. >> what's the reality in the 40 years since ronald reagan signed that legislation, how many illegal, undocumented, whatever the proper term is, have come from the southern borders into the united states by estimates? >> well, because we can't count them, we don't know with any great precision how many people are in the united states in an undocumented or unauthorized fashion at any given moment. we know that during the period of the recession, after 19 -- after 20 -- >> 2008? >> 2008, the number went down. we believe it went from approximately 11 million down to below 9 million. and then it bounced back up

again as the economy has improved. i mean, one of the things about migration is it's not a casual decision. it's a very serious decision, that people are making to put their lives at risk. to try and go to another country. and break that country's laws, by entering that country. and during a period when the united states is in the economic doldrums, if you will, you're less willing to take that risk. than in the periods where jobs are plentiful, where you can get a job in construction. you can get a job working on people's lawns. you can get a more skilled position, depending on your own education and skill set. so it's not surprising in the least, to see the economy has recovered the number of undocumented has increased. in addition to that, we're now living in a world with a lot of political chaos in various parts

of the world. wherever we're talking about the refugees who are coming out of the middle east. or we're talking about people coming -- fleeing gang violence in guatemala, honduras and el salvador, people are on the move. >> and increased terrorism in the united states since 9/11? >> right, immigration and refugee policy are national security issues. this is not the first time in american history it's been regarded as a national security issue. it was regarded as that in the '30s and the '40s. many times. but it is now certainly, since 9/11, migration is a national security issue. and that can't be ignored either. >> very quick, last, just to get it on the record, a snapshot of the current debate we're having in this country, this is nancy pelosi, speaker of the house and president donald trump. >> every president in recent memory, democratic or republican, has understood the

value of immigration to our nation. in his last speech as president of the united states, president ronald reagan said i have an important message to communicate to the community i love. he went on to say, thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, where nations forever young, forever bursting with new ideas and always on cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. this quality is vital to our future as a nation. president reagan went on to say, if we ever close the door to new americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost. >> our country's doing great. unemployment is very low. we just came out with 224,000 new jobs. the numbers are unbelievable. and that's bringing people up like they've never come up. border patrol and i.c.e. have done a great job.

now, people are being removed from the country. we're removing them. we're starting with the ms 13, we've taken out thousands of ms 13 gang. but we've never had an onslaught, and the reason they come up -- they come because the country's doing well, they want jobs. >> much the discussion that we've been hearing in this country during the '90s and 2000s, all of the immigration laws were incremental. all of the politicians you see here say we need an overhaul, fundamental revamping of immigration in this country. what will it take at holistic looking at of the immigration policy and what we want it to be as a nation? >> the single most important factor would be a return to a kind of cooperative bipartisanship. to agree that immigration is an important part of our country.

has been, is, will be in the future. and that it behooves everyone involved to put aside the pettiness and the anger that's underpinning the current debate. and to try and actconstructive ly in creating a new policy. there will be a sudden moment, a precipitating factor, a moment of illumination from on high, i doubt that very much. but several times, during recent decades whether it's the mccain/kennedy discussions. or discussions by other politicians who are willing to cross party lines, there have been constructive debates about what a rational immigration policy would be. i would like to see, many of us would like to see, a return to that kind of across-the-aisle bipartisan discussion. in order to create a rational

immigration policy, whether it takes the form of an immigration commission, with representatives of labor, manufacturing, different ethnic communities. creating five or ten-year migration plans. there are lots of different proposals out there. but the one thing that's absolutely crucial is that we not continue with the current chaos of american policy. and so, i wait for that moment. i anxiously await for that moment, as many others do as well, when there will be a moment of illumination and politicians or both sides of the aisle will step forward and say this is too serious a problem not to solve with a policy discussion. >> alan kraut of american university, historian of the university, thank you for the conversation. >> thank you. ♪♪ ♪♪