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Additional taxes, fees, and

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restrictions apply. See Mint

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Mobile for details. Today

1:34

let's start with a quiz. First,

1:37

I want you to think about the

1:39

current global population, everyone who is alive

1:41

today. That's roughly 8 billion people in

1:43

just under 200 countries. Of

1:46

all those people in all those countries, what

1:48

percent do you think live in a country

1:50

other than the country where they were born?

1:53

Yes, this is a question about

1:55

migration and immigration. And I

1:57

know that immigration is a subject that has Many

2:00

people flipping out, but I don't want

2:02

you to flip out. at least not

2:04

yet. You will have opportunities later on.

2:07

So that's the question. What percentage of

2:09

the global population today are migrants? Have

2:12

your answer. Did you

2:14

say thirty? Present? Six? Twenty?

2:17

present? Ten. Here's the actual

2:19

answer. Three Point Six

2:22

percent. That number seems shockingly low

2:24

to you, as it did to

2:26

me when I first saw this

2:28

number. There is a good chance

2:30

that you are an American because

2:32

you a fourteen percent of the

2:35

American population was born elsewhere. Think

2:37

about that. Someone living in the

2:39

Us is nearly four times more

2:41

likely than the global average to

2:43

have left their home country. There

2:45

are a few countries with an

2:48

even higher percentage of immigrants: Canada,

2:50

Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia. But

2:52

in terms of absolute numbers,

2:54

the Us is destination number

2:56

one. By a long, roughly

2:58

fifty million people living in

3:00

the Us were born elsewhere.

3:02

It was John F. Kennedy

3:04

who began calling the U

3:06

S a nation of immigrants.

3:08

But what is actually mean?

3:11

What are the consequences? The

3:13

costs and benefits of being

3:15

the ocean that so many

3:17

rivers compete flow into. To

3:20

answer those questions, let's start with

3:22

one of those immigrants. This is

3:25

Zeke Hernandez. So I'm the son

3:27

of to wonderful parents who grew

3:29

up very poor. My dad was

3:32

born in small town in Uruguay.

3:34

His mother was completely illiterate. When.

3:36

My father was a teenager. His father

3:39

died of lung cancer. My. Mother

3:41

was born in a farming community a

3:43

couple hours away from that town. Also

3:45

very poor, They had sort of lived

3:47

off what they could grow in the

3:49

land. She. Went. To a

3:52

little schoolhouse that educated kids in

3:54

the very basics of reading, writing,

3:56

and arithmetic. And.

3:58

there wasn't much prospect beyond that. That's

4:00

how everyone had grown up for generations.

4:03

What was, I think, unique about her is that

4:05

she really loved books and did well in school,

4:07

and a teacher encouraged her

4:10

to keep going with her education. So

4:13

she went to her parents who said,

4:15

no way, education is for rich people,

4:17

because furthering education for a kid like

4:19

her meant that the family had to

4:21

move to the nearest city. There was

4:24

no secondary school around. Anyway,

4:26

after months of insisting, my grandparents agreed

4:28

to let her go live on her

4:30

own in the nearest town when she

4:32

was 12 years old. So

4:35

she finished high school and became

4:37

an elementary school teacher. My

4:39

parents actually were both elementary

4:41

school teachers. They got paid very little.

4:43

I don't have memories of

4:45

this, but my mother has told me some

4:47

stories of, you know, there not being quite

4:50

enough food all the time when I was

4:52

very young. My father kind of, and he'll

4:54

say this, I'm not saying anything you wouldn't,

4:56

he bumbled his way through life in the

4:58

early years. Our

5:03

family's life changed quite a bit about the

5:05

time that I was born. My

5:07

father got a job working for the

5:10

church that our family went to, the

5:13

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It

5:16

was just an office job. He's keeping financial

5:18

records, and he got

5:20

a few promotions. He started going to night

5:22

school to get a college degree. And

5:25

then when I was four years old, a

5:27

big opportunity arose to go on

5:30

an expatriate assignment to Costa Rica.

5:33

So we spent eight years in

5:35

Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Argentina. Nobody

5:38

makes a lot of money working for a

5:40

church, but the one perk is that as

5:42

an expatriate, the job paid for a private

5:45

school where teaching was done in English.

5:47

And so I speak this

5:49

language because of that opportunity. I

6:00

mean, yeah, it totally changed everything.

6:05

Z. Hernandez is today a professor at

6:07

the Wharton School at the University of

6:10

Pennsylvania. He's also written his

6:12

first book to be published in June.

6:14

It is called The Truth About Immigration.

6:17

It is a book full of research and

6:20

facts. At a moment

6:22

when every conversation about immigration seems

6:24

to coalesce around emotion or politics,

6:27

we thought it might be nice to bring some facts

6:29

to the table. In this

6:31

moment is an odd one. Most Americans

6:33

want immigration reform that would include

6:36

better security and a shot at

6:38

citizenship even for immigrants who came

6:40

here illegally. Many

6:42

politicians, meanwhile, take a less

6:45

nuanced view. They're

6:47

poisoning the blood of our country. That's what

6:49

they've done. We cannot allow

6:51

buses with people needing

6:53

our help to arrive without warning

6:56

at any hour of day and

6:58

night. It seems as

7:00

if our nation of immigrants has come

7:02

to hate immigration. This

7:05

puts us in a precarious position.

7:08

If liberals insist that only

7:10

fascists enforce borders, the journalist

7:12

David Frum writes, then

7:14

voters will hire fascists to do

7:16

the job liberals refuse to do.

7:19

How did we get here? And where's

7:22

this going? Today on

7:24

Freakonomics Radio, the first episode in

7:26

a series we are calling the

7:29

true story of America's supremely messed

7:31

up immigration system. That starts

7:33

now. This

7:50

is Freakonomics Radio, the

7:53

podcast that explores the

7:55

hidden side of everything. With

7:58

your host, Stephen Gebner. In

8:08

the beginning, we met Zee Hernandez, who

8:10

is about to publish an eye-opening book

8:12

about immigration. We will get back to

8:14

Hernandez soon enough, but if you want

8:16

to read a really wild book about

8:19

immigration, you might start with

8:21

the Bible. Almost everything in

8:23

the Hebrew Bible has some touchpoint

8:26

with migration. And that

8:28

is my name is Roger Naum. I'm

8:30

professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University.

8:32

In this series, we want to cover immigration

8:35

from A to Z. We started with the

8:37

Z, Zee Hernandez, so let's

8:39

go back to an A. Genesis

8:42

is actually a migration story about

8:44

one family, Abraham, and

8:46

the first introduction in Genesis 12 is for

8:49

him to go and to leave

8:51

Babylon and travel to the place where the Lord

8:53

will show you. And you get

8:55

from Genesis 12 through 50, all

8:57

these narratives about basically three generations,

8:59

Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, traveling

9:02

into this strange and foreign land.

9:04

Traveling into a strange and foreign

9:07

land would become a quintessential and

9:09

constant mode of Jewish history. Many

9:12

generations after Abraham, several

9:15

thousand Jews were living and worshiping in

9:17

Jerusalem, the Jewish capital. But

9:19

then in 587 BCE,

9:22

in 587, the Babylonians came, they destroyed

9:25

the temple of Jerusalem, they plundered the

9:27

contents, and they took the people and

9:29

forced them, and they forced

9:31

migration back to Babylon. Now,

9:34

when it comes to migration,

9:36

diaspora, economics, etc., how reliable

9:39

would you consider information in

9:41

the Hebrew Bible? Not terribly

9:44

reliable, but sometimes reliable. It's

9:47

mixed. The Bible is so

9:49

ideological, it's so theological, but

9:51

sometimes the non-idological stuff that

9:53

has less chance to be

9:55

redacted and edited, and so

9:57

some of that can be

9:59

reliable. But

10:04

besides the Bible, there are many other

10:06

documents that have survived from this era.

10:08

The ones in Mesopotamia are written

10:10

in Akkadian. In places like Egypt,

10:13

they're written either in Middle Egyptian

10:16

hieroglyphs or on papyri they're

10:18

written in Coptic and Aramaic.

10:20

And how is your Akkadian and

10:22

Coptic and Aramaic in Middle Egyptian?

10:24

My Akkadian has seen it's pretty good for a

10:26

biblical scholar. Akkadian is

10:29

really, really hard. There are hundreds

10:31

and hundreds of signs. They're all multivalent meaning

10:33

every sign means like 20 different things. My

10:36

Aramaic is pretty good as well. Coptic

10:38

is a little bit later so I do

10:40

not know Coptic and I never regrettably studied

10:43

Middle Egyptian. Roger

10:46

Naam told us about some documents

10:48

that he has studied from the

10:50

6th and 5th centuries BCE called

10:53

the Al-Yehudu tablets. Al-Yehudu

10:55

literally means city of

10:57

Judeans. And these are

10:59

a bunch of economic documents about

11:01

life in the city of Judeans.

11:04

These are exiles taken from

11:06

Jerusalem and placed deliberately somewhere

11:08

probably in central Iraq and

11:11

this documents their economic life

11:13

there. Things like promissory notes,

11:16

loans, sales contracts, receipts,

11:19

distributions. You have a few legal texts as well.

11:21

And so it's a really nice archive to try

11:23

to put together what their basic

11:25

economic life was like. And

11:27

what was their economic life like? So

11:30

we know of certain groups

11:32

that surely flourish even within

11:34

one generation. You had

11:36

people that eventually got hereditary land. The

11:39

idea is as soon as they got

11:41

there, they were given some sort of

11:43

responsibility over a land. And after one

11:45

generation, the sons would be able to

11:47

inherit that land and they can make

11:50

more crop way beyond what they owe

11:52

to the crown. And there

11:54

were other ways in which these

11:56

immigrant Judeans assimilated into Babylonian culture.

11:59

And we know that... because of

12:01

religious practices from their names. In

12:03

America, there's not a lot of

12:05

meaning ascribed to names, but in

12:07

the ancient world, these names are

12:09

tremendously important. In the biblical text,

12:11

you get something like Isaiah, which

12:13

means Yah, the divine name, saves,

12:15

or something like that. And so

12:17

we begin to see Babylonian deities

12:20

attached to these Judeans. So

12:22

names that are kind of assimilate, kind

12:24

of like myself. I am Korean American,

12:26

but my name is Roger. It's not

12:29

a very Korean sounding name, but it

12:31

is a strategy of assimilation. So we

12:33

see a lot of these families really

12:36

begin to assimilate into Babylonian culture. This

12:38

is despite the fact that they were

12:40

taken there essentially as slaves, correct? Right.

12:43

And so the biblical text, you know,

12:45

there is a famous Psalm 137, by

12:48

the rivers of Babylon, there we sat

12:50

down and there we wept when we

12:52

remembered Zion. The biblical text tends to

12:55

portray the exile as a horrible, horrible

12:57

event. And it was on many accounts

12:59

religiously losing the temple, losing the

13:01

David dynasty, but the Al-Yehuru tablets,

13:03

this archive kind of points to

13:05

a different picture that there was

13:07

economic flourishing in the migration. But

13:12

as Roger Naam points out, Babylonia wasn't

13:14

the only place where Judeans were

13:16

living in exile. Another group

13:18

lived in Egypt on an island in

13:21

the Nile called Elphantinae. There's

13:23

another fantastic archive called the Elphantinae

13:25

Propriori. They referenced Jerusalem, they have

13:27

the Hebrew word for priest in

13:30

this Aramaic document. They talk about

13:32

the Sabbath, they talk about the

13:34

Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

13:37

And how did these Judeans do

13:39

economically? Did they thrive like

13:41

some of their fellow exiles in

13:43

Babylonia? These archives tend to show

13:46

it was a pretty hard existence for them.

13:48

It was a very multicultural area as

13:50

a military garrison and outpost. We

13:53

know that they had great discord

13:55

with other ethnicities living with them.

13:57

There are fights with the

13:59

Egyptians. There are complaints

14:01

about different religious practices. We

14:03

knew that there was a temple to

14:06

YAH, the divine God of the Israelites,

14:08

right there. And right next to them was

14:11

the temple to NUM, the Egyptian God. And

14:14

at one point, the Egyptians destroyed

14:16

the Judean temple. We

14:18

know that they kept Judean names,

14:20

names like Tedaniya, Hananiya. They kind of

14:23

sound like biblical names, right? We

14:25

also know that they wrote to Jerusalem. And

14:27

Jerusalem, we can assume from the letters, had

14:30

some sort of religious authority over these

14:32

Judeans. And they had

14:34

their own priests to conduct sacrifices. And

14:37

so there's a certain holding on to

14:39

their cultural heritage, even though

14:41

their migration was very possibly much

14:43

earlier than the ones in Babylonia.

14:46

So you've told us two

14:48

immigration stories, two diaspora

14:50

stories with similar populations living

14:53

under different governments in

14:55

different destinations. What

14:57

can we generalize? What's to be

14:59

learned from this experience overall as

15:02

it might relate to modern day

15:04

immigration? Well, in comparing the

15:06

biblical world to modern day immigration,

15:08

I hesitate a little bit because

15:10

it's so anachronistic. At the

15:13

same time, I think there's a certain

15:15

universalism in the human experience. Throughout

15:17

human history, people have migrated. People

15:19

have uprooted and settled for various

15:22

reasons. And in that migration, I

15:24

think there are certain challenges that

15:26

are parallel to the present day

15:28

experience in antiquity. And one is

15:31

there's always a balance

15:33

between assimilation and preservation.

15:36

And that balance often can be

15:38

influenced by your economic success. My

15:41

mom and dad came in the 1960s. And

15:44

that generation of East Asian immigrants,

15:47

our parents were very adamant our

15:50

kids are going to learn English well. They're

15:52

going to take on American names. They're going

15:54

to succeed in school. They're going to go

15:56

to American universities. And they're going to assimilate.

15:58

That is a very good one. deliberate intentional

16:01

strategy with economic repercussions.

16:04

And I think that balance between assimilation

16:06

and preservation back in the

16:09

ancient world and today is closely

16:11

correlated to economic prosperity. So

16:16

Roger Naum's takeaway is that

16:18

economic prosperity goes hand in

16:20

hand with assimilation. You

16:22

can see why that might make sense. If

16:25

an immigrant group doesn't assimilate, at least to

16:27

some degree, they may not be

16:29

able to integrate into the economic life of

16:31

the host country. But

16:33

when Naum described the different experiences

16:36

of the Judeans in Babylonia versus

16:38

the Judeans in Egypt, I

16:40

took away a different moral of the story.

16:43

When it comes to immigration, the

16:45

details matter a lot. The

16:48

status that immigrants are given, both

16:50

legal and social, the

16:53

economic opportunities made available to

16:55

them or withheld from them,

16:58

these can be the difference between

17:00

prosperity and desperation or even

17:03

death. I was born

17:05

in the US. When I

17:07

was a kid, I had no idea how

17:09

fortunate that was. When I

17:11

was in my 20s, I started

17:13

writing a history of my family. This

17:15

is a poor Jewish family. I

17:18

went to Poland to see where my father's

17:20

father lived before he came to the US

17:22

in his 20s. This

17:24

is a small city north of Warsaw called

17:27

Plutusk. I also wanted

17:29

to learn what I could about his

17:31

family that had stayed there, his parents,

17:33

siblings, cousins, whoever. Within

17:36

the first day or two of my visit, here's what

17:38

I learned. It appeared they had

17:40

all been killed by the Nazis in September

17:42

of 1939, right there in the

17:46

place they lived. They were among

17:48

the first Jews murdered during the war. As

17:52

you're standing there taking in this news,

17:54

of course you grieve and maybe you

17:56

rage, but you may also

17:58

think about luck. That's what

18:00

I found myself thinking, how lucky I

18:03

was to be a descendant of the

18:05

Dubner from Pultuszk who left the place

18:07

and made it to America. A

18:10

few other family members did make it out, some to

18:12

Argentina, some to Israel. For

18:15

all of them and for me, immigration

18:17

was a lifesaver, a

18:20

life giver in the US and

18:22

elsewhere. Generations would be born. In

18:25

Poland, you can't even find the

18:27

bones of the dead ones. The

18:30

United States, for most of

18:33

its relatively brief history, has

18:35

been the top destination for

18:37

immigrants because it offers an

18:39

abundance of both social freedom

18:41

and economic opportunity. And

18:44

the benefits go both ways. Immigrants

18:46

are 80% more likely to start a

18:48

business in the US than a person

18:50

born here. Immigration

18:53

economic analysis finds that immigrant STEM workers

18:55

were responsible for between 30

18:57

and 50% of our aggregate

18:59

productivity growth between 1990 and 2010. Remember,

19:04

about 14% of our

19:06

population is foreign born. According

19:09

to those productivity numbers, immigrants are

19:11

punching way above their weight by

19:14

a factor of at least two

19:16

or three. But

19:18

there are problems. The big one

19:20

is that there are simply way more

19:23

people who want to come to the

19:25

US than the US wants. According

19:29

to Gallup polling, 160

19:31

million people worldwide say they would

19:33

like to permanently move to the

19:35

US. The US

19:37

offers permanent residents to about one

19:40

million people per year with another

19:42

three million admitted under temporary worker

19:44

policies. Of those

19:46

one million new permanent residents, about

19:49

60% are related to a current

19:51

citizen. Around

19:53

25% are admitted under employment-based

19:56

preferences. And the rest

19:58

are a mix of refugees. asylum

20:00

seekers and winners of a

20:02

diversity lottery. In

20:05

any country, a million new residents a

20:07

year would be a lot, but again,

20:09

there are 160

20:11

million people who say they'd like to come here. And

20:14

when supply outstrips demand by that

20:16

much, you are going to get

20:19

some chaos. It's estimated

20:21

that 20 or 25% of all

20:23

immigrants to the US, around 10

20:25

million people, are here without proper

20:28

documentation or permission. This

20:30

huge stream of illegal immigration

20:32

and chaos at the southern

20:34

border are what drive the

20:37

political debate. 69%

20:40

of Republicans want to decrease immigration,

20:42

only 17% of Democrats do. Meanwhile,

20:46

83% of Democrats

20:49

say that immigrants strengthen the

20:51

US, only 38% of Republicans do.

20:55

How do all these Democrats and

20:58

Republicans form such starkly opposing views?

21:01

My guess is they don't spend

21:03

much time digging into the data.

21:05

So let's do that together, you

21:08

and me. After the break, what

21:11

the immigration numbers say, what they don't

21:13

say, and what they can't say, I'm

21:15

Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll

21:18

be right back. Hey,

21:26

it's Adam Grant. The new season of my

21:28

TED Podcasts work life is out now. The

21:31

past few years have been full of changes to how we

21:33

work. There's so much more we can

21:35

rethink about our jobs. Join

21:38

me as I dive into the science of making

21:40

work not suck. This season,

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we'll explore how to fix your meetings,

21:44

bust bureaucracy, and make the most out

21:46

of your breaks and vacations. Listen

21:49

to Work Life with Adam Grant, wherever you listen to

21:51

podcasts. Edward

21:54

Jones, who knows that just like life,

21:56

financial planning isn't only about long-term

21:59

goals. the moments big and

22:01

small along the way. And when it

22:03

comes to achieving everyday financial goals, Edward

22:05

Jones works hard to connect you with

22:07

someone you can trust professionally and personally.

22:09

That's why they created their free financial

22:11

advisor matching tool to help you find

22:13

a financial advisor in your community. When

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you take the quiz and get your

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matches, don't expect just a list of

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resumes. You'll also see each financial advisor's

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story and personal interests. And when it's

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time to meet for the first time,

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they'll focus on your story, asking questions

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to understand where you're headed and why.

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Because Edward Jones knows that at the

22:33

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22:36

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22:38

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22:40

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22:50

we explore a particularly complicated topic

22:52

on this show, we tend to

22:54

lean on economists. We

22:57

will get to the economists soon, but

22:59

first, let's go back to Z.

23:01

Hernandez to talk about his book,

23:04

The Truth About Immigration. Hernandez is

23:06

not an economist, although he is

23:08

economist adjacent. His PhD from the

23:10

University of Minnesota is in strategic

23:13

management and organization. I

23:15

study how movement affects

23:17

businesses in the economy, particularly

23:19

the movement of people, but

23:22

also the movement of companies, overseas,

23:24

the movement of capital, of ideas.

23:27

And after nearly 20 years

23:29

of study in this, I've had to come

23:31

up with entire new paradigms of what the

23:33

economy is. Entire new paradigms

23:35

of what the economy is? Don't

23:38

economists already have that covered? I

23:40

hope that I don't insult anyone here. They

23:42

tend to have a very narrow focus. Hernandez

23:45

argues that economists tend to think

23:47

of the economy as a fairly

23:50

technical construct, as do most people.

23:52

They'll think of like money, the stock

23:55

market, inflation, you know, Fed speak, but

23:57

they won't say, well, the economy's people right,

24:00

people exchanging with each other and the movement of

24:02

people and where they move and how they interact

24:04

with each other is the economy. In

24:07

other words, a central part of

24:09

the economy is migration.

24:12

In my world of business schools, when

24:14

I started becoming interested in

24:16

the relationship between the

24:18

movement of people and the movement

24:21

of companies or their investments across

24:23

the world, a lot

24:25

of people in my field balked at the

24:27

idea. They thought, why are you studying this?

24:29

This isn't a business issue. This

24:32

belongs in a policy school or immigration

24:34

is a social issue, so go study

24:36

sociology. But he didn't

24:39

go study sociology. Remember,

24:41

Hernandez grew up in South and Central

24:43

America without much money, but thanks to

24:45

his father's job with the Mormon Church,

24:48

he got a good education in English.

24:51

After high school, he did a church

24:53

mission in Argentina. The

24:55

two years I was there between 1999 and

24:58

2001 were the lead-up to the

25:00

country's worst economic crash in history,

25:02

which if you know anything about

25:04

Argentina, that's saying a

25:06

lot because it's a country that has

25:09

a legendary economic dysfunction. Those

25:12

two years, I saw firsthand

25:14

on the street what unemployment

25:16

really means, what hunger means, what

25:19

suffering really means, and

25:21

that was very moving. I don't know how you couldn't

25:23

be moved by that. It

25:25

really ignited this passion for

25:27

not just helping people, but

25:29

also understanding why, like what

25:31

creates economic prosperity and growth.

25:34

That really moved me, but it relates

25:36

to my immigration story because when

25:39

I finished that mission, I had this

25:41

dilemma or this big decision to make.

25:43

I had a scholarship to study in

25:45

the United States. This is at Brigham

25:48

Young University, yes? Brigham Young University. I

25:50

had a lot of American friends, and

25:53

one of them, without any malicious

25:55

intention, he was supportive of me,

25:58

but he said, you know, Zeke, that ... you're

26:00

gonna steal a scholarship, a job, and

26:02

probably a girl from a deserving American,

26:04

right? And

26:07

I wasn't offended because in my

26:09

mental model of immigration at the

26:11

time, I kinda thought, well, immigration

26:13

is probably good for those who

26:15

migrate, but maybe it

26:17

harms people, maybe it is a zero sum game.

26:19

And so I really did worry about, was

26:23

I taking someone else's slot? I didn't

26:25

have an intention of migrating permanently to

26:27

the US, but I also worried about

26:30

leaving my country and

26:33

my people behind and not contributing

26:35

my own skills and talents to

26:37

helping. And so it was

26:39

kind of a microcosm of all the

26:41

debates we have now publicly about immigration.

26:43

And what happened? Well, a

26:46

lot of different things. I met my

26:48

wife, who's American, we started a family,

26:51

opportunities came up, but

26:54

over time, my own intellectual

26:56

journey about what immigration means,

26:58

whether it's morally right, how

27:00

it contributes to the US

27:03

economy, how it contributes

27:05

to the sending economy, I started learning all

27:07

the things that I talk about in the

27:09

book. And so my moral qualms have disappeared

27:11

based on evidence. To what degree though, has

27:14

your personal story perhaps influenced your

27:16

research? I'm not suggesting that the

27:18

research that you present in this

27:20

book is biased, but

27:22

persuade us that it is as

27:24

unbiased as this type of research

27:26

can be considering your own background?

27:29

I think it's a very fair question,

27:31

and anyone should ask me that question.

27:33

And the honest answer is very little

27:35

to nothing. And here's why.

27:38

I had no interest in studying immigration. It's not

27:40

that I thought I'm gonna be an immigration scholar

27:42

and try to make sense of this life decision

27:45

I made. I saw an

27:47

opportunity to stay in the US and go

27:49

to graduate school because I wanted to study

27:51

that question I started asking in Argentina, what

27:53

creates economic prosperity? That was

27:55

it. And I had this hunch

27:58

that the movement of businesses capital

28:00

around the world, cross-border investment, had

28:02

something to do with that. As

28:05

I tried to follow the evidence and be

28:07

as rigorous and dispassionate as possible, I realized

28:10

that the movement of business

28:12

and capital is inseparable

28:15

from the movement of people. You cannot

28:17

understand one without understanding the other. And

28:20

so I almost reluctantly thought, okay, I

28:22

can't ignore this variable called immigration. And

28:25

that became the start

28:28

of nearly 20 years now of

28:30

slowly understanding how immigration kind of seeps

28:32

into all parts of the economy. But

28:35

the question wasn't, are immigrants good? Or I

28:37

really want to prove that immigrants are good.

28:40

The other way I'd answer the question is the

28:43

vast majority of the research I'm citing in the

28:45

book isn't my own. It's research done by other

28:47

people. The

28:50

research in Hernandez's book tells

28:52

the long and rather volatile

28:55

history of American immigration. The

28:57

history of US immigration really

28:59

is a rollercoaster. At the moment

29:02

of founding, the US had no

29:04

immigration restrictions. Anybody could come. Was

29:06

there any kind of registration upon

29:08

arriving even? Not that I know

29:10

of. The records, at least reliable

29:13

records, started about 1850. That's

29:15

about when we start having good census

29:17

data that tracks first place. But

29:20

I think that also reflects a mindset. It just kind

29:22

of wasn't a thing, right? You just came. They

29:26

came from many places for

29:28

many reasons. But when

29:31

we look back at our immigration history,

29:33

a lot of the stories we tell ourselves

29:36

are more like myths. The

29:40

biggest myth that we have today, and I think

29:42

this myth is really widely shared left

29:44

and right of the spectrum, is

29:47

this nostalgic view that immigrants who came

29:49

to the US from Europe 100 years ago were able

29:53

to succeed economically very

29:56

quickly. That is Leah

29:58

Bustam. And I'm a perfectionist. Professor

30:00

of Economics at Princeton. I

30:02

told you we'd get to the economists. And

30:05

why does Buston think that instant

30:07

success myth is the biggest myth

30:09

about immigration? Well, I think

30:11

that the family stories do get

30:13

compressed. They're sort of like an

30:15

accordionization of your family story. Because

30:18

if you really start asking questions, and

30:21

I'm fourth generation, so I ask my

30:23

parents, well, was

30:25

it the immigrant generation that succeeded or was

30:27

it the kids of immigrants who succeeded? They

30:30

say, oh, well, you're right. The immigrants themselves

30:32

really didn't learn English. They

30:34

really didn't change their occupation. And

30:37

they worked in low paid occupations throughout

30:39

their life. You're right. It

30:41

was the child generation that were able to

30:43

start working in offices, that were able to

30:46

start finishing high school, and even go to

30:48

city college. But that

30:50

piece gets missing sometimes. It's so

30:52

far in the past that the

30:54

first generation and the second generation

30:56

almost become as one. Buston

30:59

and her frequent collaborator, Ron

31:02

Abramitsky, recently published a book

31:04

called Streets of Gold, America's

31:06

Untold Story of Immigrant Success.

31:09

We chose the title of the book,

31:11

the basis of a famous quotation that's

31:13

painted on the walls at the Ellis

31:15

Island Museum. The quotation is

31:18

attributed to an unnamed Italian immigrant

31:21

who said, I came to America because

31:24

I heard the streets were paved with gold.

31:26

But when I got here, I found out

31:28

three things. One,

31:30

the streets were not paved with gold. Two,

31:33

they weren't paved at all. And

31:35

three, I was expected to pave them. Okay.

31:39

Where did the notion come from?

31:42

I'm really curious to know what

31:44

you can tell us about how

31:46

the idea of America and immigration

31:48

to America was presented to immigrants

31:50

from Europe during that time. Well,

31:53

what's true historically is that by

31:55

moving to the U.S., you

31:57

could double your earnings. And what's

31:59

true You today is that by moving to the US, you

32:02

can more than double your earnings. You can increase your

32:04

earnings by 300 or 400 percent. And

32:07

so when successful immigrants came back

32:09

to the home country, both in

32:12

the past and today, they

32:14

often arrived with bling. You

32:16

know, they were wearing a gold watch. They

32:18

had gold necklaces, and they

32:21

were successful in the eyes of their

32:23

countrymen who had not moved. And

32:25

that became a compelling reason to try to move to

32:28

the US. Uhsan

32:31

and Abramitsky dove into the

32:33

data to explore what economists

32:36

call intergenerational mobility. So

32:40

our goal in doing this was

32:42

to understand how quickly immigrants and

32:44

their children move up once

32:46

they get to the US. And

32:49

we're particularly interested in children of

32:51

immigrants versus children of US

32:53

born parents who are being raised

32:56

in similar economic circumstances. Do

32:58

the children of immigrants catch up or

33:00

get ahead? And we

33:03

were comparing the past to today. As

33:05

you're doing this, you mentioned what you

33:07

were looking for. What

33:10

were you expecting to find? Honestly,

33:12

my expectation was

33:14

that the children of immigrants today would

33:17

not be doing as well as the

33:19

children of immigrants from Europe 100 years ago. I've

33:22

just heard so many success stories

33:24

about Italians, Jews, Irish, Germans. I

33:27

just thought there's no way that

33:29

we're going to find something comparable

33:31

today. So give me, in

33:33

as brief or as long as you need,

33:35

a conclusion essentially, which is how on

33:38

average do the children of

33:40

immigrants do versus born in the US both

33:42

then and now? Well, starting

33:44

with today, what we found did

33:47

really surprise me, which is that

33:49

when we're comparing children

33:51

whose parents are immigrants to children whose parents

33:54

are US born, we find

33:56

that the children of immigrants

33:58

are moving faster. up

34:01

the economic ranks by the time they get

34:03

to adulthood. So if you

34:05

take households that are similar and

34:07

have the same level of financial resources when

34:10

the children are young, and then

34:12

you can go ahead 20 or 30 years and trace out how

34:15

the kids are doing, the children of

34:17

immigrant families are doing better on average.

34:20

And it's not only coming from

34:22

those usual suspects, for example,

34:24

children of Asian parents. It's

34:27

coming really across the board from

34:30

children whose parents came from countries all over

34:32

the world, including very poor

34:34

countries and countries from Central America

34:37

that are very much in the

34:39

news today as contributing to

34:41

the crisis at the southern border. So

34:44

that really surprised us, and

34:46

we then went to compare

34:48

the success of children of

34:50

immigrants today to children of

34:52

immigrants in the past. What

34:55

we found is that the rate

34:57

of success is almost identical today

34:59

as it was in the past.

35:02

That does not mean that the

35:04

underlying causes of success are the

35:06

same, but at least in

35:09

terms of outcomes, we have

35:11

a lot to be really proud of in

35:13

terms of how immigrant families

35:15

are incorporating and assimilating into

35:18

the U.S. economy. Okay, next question's

35:20

really easy. I mean, easy to ask.

35:22

I don't know how to answer it,

35:24

but why? Why would the

35:26

children of immigrants in this country

35:29

do better than the children of

35:31

native born? Well, historically, I

35:33

have a really well-documented answer for

35:35

you. For the modern data,

35:37

it's a little bit harder. Let me explain what

35:39

I mean. So historically, the data

35:41

we put together comes from the census, and

35:44

we built the data ourselves. So

35:47

we have all the information you could

35:49

possibly gather about these households. And

35:51

what we learned is that the number

35:54

one cause of success for

35:56

the children of immigrants is where their

35:58

parents chose to sit. immigrant

36:01

families move to the

36:03

labor markets that are booming and

36:06

that are dynamic and

36:08

that provides a wide set of job

36:10

opportunities for their children. So

36:12

what that meant in the past, well,

36:14

we were still a very agricultural economy

36:16

in 1900 and immigrants were

36:19

much less likely to move to rural and

36:21

farm areas. They were more likely to move

36:23

to cities. They avoided the US

36:26

south, which was a cotton growing area

36:28

and an area of very low upward

36:30

mobility for both white and black Americans.

36:33

And even within the set of cities they could have

36:35

chosen, they chose the cities that were really on the

36:37

cutting edge of growing

36:39

manufacturing and those provided

36:42

opportunities for their kids. Actually,

36:44

the children of immigrants had

36:46

fewer years of education than children

36:48

of US born, but yet they

36:50

earned more. Education was not as

36:52

central to the ability to make

36:55

a living a hundred years ago. What

36:57

really mattered was, are you in

36:59

a city that has a wide

37:01

set of good manufacturing jobs?

37:04

So that's your reasoned and empirical

37:06

answer to the historical version and

37:08

now what's the best you can

37:10

do for explaining? For the

37:13

modern patterns, we're relying on very

37:16

aggregated data that comes from

37:18

the IRS, the tax records.

37:20

And so they're very much under lock and key. So

37:23

we don't have all the information like

37:25

where are these families living? What are

37:27

the education levels of the parents and

37:29

so on. The best we can see

37:31

is that from some survey evidence, it

37:33

looks like immigrants are still moving to

37:35

the more dynamic areas. So geography is

37:37

still playing a role, but it's much

37:39

smaller now than it was in the

37:41

past. So that leaves a lot of

37:43

scope for our more speculative

37:46

explanations, like maybe immigrant

37:48

parents value education more, maybe

37:51

they're spending more time with their

37:53

kids on educational investments. We

37:56

are hoping that we're going to get access to some

37:58

data that will allow us to do that. us

38:00

to answer this better. But really

38:02

at the moment, we're in the

38:04

hypothesis-generating phase, so all of the

38:06

potential explanations that your listeners may

38:08

come up with, we'd be curious

38:10

to hear because we hope that

38:12

we're going to be getting access

38:14

to data through the Census Bureau soon

38:16

to really be able to answer this. Well,

38:19

let's talk about some of those

38:21

potential explanations. What about, let's

38:23

say, religiosity? I've

38:25

read that the typical immigrant

38:28

to the US is more religiously observant

38:30

than the typical native born. I'm

38:33

curious if you think that may help explain this

38:35

phenomenon at all? I think it might.

38:37

I think you're right that immigrant families

38:40

report more regular church attendance

38:42

and it's possible that that

38:44

may help build strong social capital, strong

38:47

communities, and that might have an effect

38:49

on kids. What about

38:51

the notion that immigrants tend

38:53

to bond with other immigrants

38:55

wherever they settle and form

38:57

a kind of large extended

38:59

family that has gone

39:02

out of fashion among native born Americans?

39:05

I think that it depends

39:07

on the level of income

39:09

and level of human capital in that

39:11

extended family. For some groups, that can

39:13

be incredibly beneficial. If your

39:15

family has relatively low earning parents,

39:18

but you are embedded in a wider

39:20

community that has a wider range of

39:24

occupations and income, that can really

39:26

help children through what economists think

39:29

of as ethnic capital. Another

39:31

argument we hear is that the

39:33

kind of person who

39:36

immigrates is just not typical, that they've

39:38

got more drive or

39:40

grit or zeal than average. What

39:42

do you make of that argument

39:45

to explain accomplishment for the next

39:47

generation here? It's quite interesting

39:49

because in the modern period,

39:52

immigrants from almost every country

39:54

in the world to the

39:56

U.S. are more educated and

39:58

come from wealthier backgrounds. than

40:00

the typical person in their home country.

40:03

So in that sense, economists

40:05

call those immigrants positively selected.

40:08

Historically, that's actually not true. Historically,

40:11

the Statue of Liberty actually got

40:13

it right that immigrants

40:15

from Europe were the

40:17

tired, poor, huddled masses. They tended

40:19

to either be from the low

40:22

end of the socioeconomic spectrum or

40:24

just average for their home country.

40:27

So when we see children of immigrants getting

40:29

ahead 100 years ago, it's

40:31

probably not because of positive selection. But

40:34

for today, that certainly could

40:36

be the case. When we

40:38

see an immigrant group that has, from

40:40

a US perspective, low education levels on average,

40:42

like let's say we say, oh geez, a

40:44

lot of those immigrants only went to 10th

40:47

grade or 11th grade. That

40:49

actually can be a quite high

40:51

level of education in the home

40:53

country and might be indicative of

40:55

a whole set of family advantages

40:57

or personal advantages that that immigrant

40:59

is carrying with him. We'll

41:04

be right back after a break. Also,

41:06

Leah Buston wanted to hear your theories

41:08

about why even today the children of

41:10

immigrants do better economically than the children

41:12

of parents who were born in the

41:14

US. Send your ideas

41:17

to radio at freakonomics.com and we

41:19

will pass them along. I

41:21

am Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. Please

41:23

stay right where you are. Thank

41:27

you. Listen

41:57

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your first month. That's

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BetterHelp-H-E-L-P.com-free-co-naments. Before

43:49

the break, the Princeton economist Leah Buston

43:52

told us that the children of immigrants

43:54

have better economic outcomes than the children

43:56

of parents born in the U.S. This

43:59

is true today. and it was

44:01

true a hundred years ago. So

44:04

it is fair to conclude that

44:06

the U.S. has some foundational properties

44:08

that help immigrants succeed. One

44:11

interesting piece of evidence in this direction

44:13

comes not from people who move here

44:15

to join family or for work, but

44:18

people who enter the country as refugees. The

44:21

U.S. government defines a refugee as

44:23

someone who demonstrates that they were

44:25

persecuted or fear persecution due to

44:27

race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or

44:30

membership in a particular social group.

44:32

Here again is Bustan. Refugees

44:35

to the U.S. do incredibly well. They

44:38

start out in the first year or two less

44:40

likely to be employed or less likely

44:43

to have high earnings compared to

44:45

other immigrants. But within five,

44:47

six years, they've caught up to other

44:49

immigrants and they've even surpassed other immigrants

44:51

on some of those economic metrics. The

44:54

success of refugees is actually not

44:56

a worldwide phenomenon. Refugees

44:58

are not as successful as other immigrants

45:00

in Canada and they're very much not

45:03

as successful as other immigrants in Europe. There's

45:05

something that the U.S. is doing

45:08

right in terms of being able

45:10

to quickly incorporate and assimilate a

45:13

relatively challenging population that does not

45:15

arrive with as much education as

45:18

an economic immigrant would. Can

45:20

you point to any specific things that we are, as

45:22

you said, doing right? Well, this is

45:24

really just speculation for me at the moment,

45:27

but I think that other countries

45:30

are going wrong in

45:32

refugee policy by trying to do too

45:34

much for refugees, by holding refugees apart

45:36

and saying, for the first 18 months

45:39

or two years, I don't want you

45:41

to work. I want you to spend

45:43

your time learning the home language, so

45:45

taking citizenship classes and taking language classes

45:48

so that you can successfully join the

45:50

economy. In the U.S., that

45:52

kind of incorporation does not happen

45:54

through government assistance, but happens through

45:56

the local ethnic community.

46:00

So what I worry about is

46:02

holding refugees or asylum seekers apart

46:05

from the economy as a whole and saying,

46:08

you can't get a work permit until

46:10

your case is done, or

46:12

you can't get a work permit until you've learned

46:14

English. Actually ethnic

46:17

communities do a very good job at

46:19

helping out newcomers. As

46:21

part of their research, Bustam Abramitsky

46:24

and three co-authors spent

46:26

time with an oral history archive put

46:28

together by the Ellis Island Foundation. It

46:31

included immigrants who had come from Europe between 1893 and

46:33

1957. They

46:37

were asked why they had left Europe. And

46:40

they explained whether they were leaving because they

46:42

were fleeing from violence or facing

46:45

political persecution, or if they

46:47

were simply excited to join

46:49

an uncle who had a shop in the

46:51

US. So it wasn't an

46:54

economic move or a move that looks

46:56

more like a refugee today. Bustam

46:58

wanted to compare those two groups. For

47:01

instance, did one group learn to

47:03

speak English better than the other? To

47:06

measure this, Bustam had college students

47:08

listen to the oral histories and

47:11

rate the English fluency of the

47:13

immigrants. And what we

47:15

found is that refugees did

47:17

speak in a more complex

47:19

way. They used more complex

47:21

vocabulary and more complex sentence

47:24

structure. And why might

47:26

a refugee develop better English skills than

47:28

a different kind of immigrant? If you

47:31

know you're not going home, then you have

47:33

a strong incentive to learn English and to

47:35

find a job and to incorporate it as

47:37

fast as you can. A

47:39

hundred years ago, around a third of

47:42

immigrants from Europe went back to Europe. Sometimes

47:44

they were in the US short term

47:47

in order to save up money, go

47:49

home, buy land, and get married. If

47:52

that's your plan, you may not

47:54

have a strong incentive to learn English.

47:56

You might be able to earn money

47:58

quickly without speaking English. while

48:01

you're holding a manual job. And then

48:03

your plans might change and

48:05

you end up meeting someone here,

48:07

you stay here, but you've already

48:09

lost some valuable time in terms

48:11

of getting assimilated and learning the

48:14

language. Whereas refugees know from

48:16

the very get-go that they don't have a

48:18

safe home to return to and that

48:20

might encourage a different level of

48:22

investment in their own skills. There

48:25

are other ways to measure assimilation. What

48:28

you name your children, for instance, or

48:30

even what you call yourself. Roger

48:32

Naum brought this up earlier when he

48:35

talked about the Judeans living in Babylonia

48:37

versus the Judeans living in Egypt. In

48:40

America, there is a widespread

48:43

and long-held belief that the

48:45

US government itself liked to change

48:47

the names of immigrants. You may

48:49

have heard this from your own

48:51

grandparent or great-grandparent, that when they

48:53

came to Ellis Island, the customs

48:56

official took their long and

48:58

hard to pronounce name and turned

49:00

it into something more American. So

49:03

that is entirely untrue. In fact,

49:05

in my own family, we had the same

49:07

family story. Our name

49:10

was Platt-Nichke, and then we

49:12

come to Ellis Island and it gets changed to

49:14

Platt. I went back

49:16

into the census records and

49:18

I couldn't find my great-grandparents. I

49:21

could only find them 10 years later and indeed

49:23

their last name was Platt. So I

49:25

thought to myself, well let me check under

49:28

Platt-Nichke and indeed there they were. So I went

49:30

to my dad and I said, well what's this

49:32

story about Ellis Island that you told me? And

49:34

he said, oh you know it wasn't really Ellis

49:37

Island. What really happened is

49:39

that our family got together in

49:41

Chicago. We had a large family, it was

49:44

over 100 people, and we

49:46

just tried to decide on what our

49:48

new name should be. And this is

49:50

after we'd been in the country for

49:52

at least seven, eight, twelve years depending

49:54

on the person, and we

49:56

decided on Platt. But we couldn't agree.

49:58

Should it be Platt? with an

50:00

E at the end or plat without an

50:02

E at the end. And so there's actually

50:05

two branches. Well, where

50:07

did this story about Ellis Island come from?

50:09

He said, well, that's just what you say.

50:11

Like the shorthand for saying that as part

50:13

of the process of coming to America, we

50:16

changed our name, we just say Ellis Island.

50:18

First of all, explain

50:21

the infrastructure at Ellis

50:23

Island that makes it

50:25

very unlikely that some

50:27

custom or immigration officer

50:29

there might have just decided to

50:31

shorten a long ethnic sounding name.

50:34

I mean, the US officials at Ellis Island went

50:36

on the basis of the shipping records. And

50:39

the shipping records were filled out on the

50:41

European side. And so no one would have

50:43

changed their name at that point. It was

50:45

simply a matter of processing the

50:48

new arrivals. And there was no infrastructure,

50:50

there were no forms in place to

50:52

assign names. Can you walk me

50:54

through, like in the case of a family like yours,

50:58

what would you say were the major motivations

51:00

behind the name change at that point? I

51:02

honestly don't know what the motivations were.

51:05

I can only speculate that my family,

51:07

much like other families, thought

51:09

to themselves that having a

51:12

long and complicated name might be a

51:14

liability in terms of finding a job.

51:17

Interestingly, in some of the work

51:19

that we've done, we've looked at

51:21

brothers who are given

51:24

differently foreign names. Now,

51:26

of course they have the same last name, but

51:28

one may have the name Vito, and

51:31

then three or four years later, their brother

51:33

John is born. Now, does Vito have a

51:35

harder time on the labor market? And

51:38

it turns out that no, if you

51:40

have a more ethnic, more foreign sounding

51:42

first name, and you compare

51:44

brothers who were born and raised in the

51:46

same family, there is no penalty

51:49

in terms of having a foreign name. So,

51:53

Bustan has produced a lot of

51:56

economic evidence showing that immigration is

51:58

really good for immigrants. By

52:01

association and by reading of American

52:03

history, you would conclude that immigration

52:05

has been really good for the

52:07

U.S. too. But

52:09

that is not a consensus

52:11

view today. And how about in the

52:13

past? Well, when you

52:15

were talking about U.S. immigration, there

52:19

are multiple pasts. Remember

52:21

what Z. Hernandez told us earlier?

52:24

The history of U.S. immigration really

52:26

is a roller coaster. At

52:29

the moment of founding, he said, at the

52:31

moment of founding, the U.S. had no

52:34

immigration restrictions. But let's

52:36

move forward into the 19th century. So

52:39

starting in 1890s, the countries of

52:41

origin changed. All of a sudden,

52:43

instead of Western and Northern Europeans,

52:45

you started to get Southern and

52:47

Eastern Europeans. So this is

52:49

Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians,

52:52

you know, a lot of Jews and

52:54

Catholics instead of Protestant English speakers or

52:56

German Lutherans. And this,

52:59

there's no other way to put it,

53:01

completely freaked out the establishment. And

53:03

it wasn't subtle. It wasn't

53:05

behind closed curtains. Senators like

53:07

Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts

53:10

wrote scathing, scathing articles talking

53:13

about how these Southern Eastern

53:15

Europeans were inferior. They

53:18

commissioned in 1907 the Dillingham Commission,

53:20

which was a multi-year study that

53:23

purported to prove that these immigrants

53:25

were economically, socially, mentally, psychologically inferior,

53:27

that they were unpatriotic, that they

53:30

couldn't assimilate because of their

53:32

different religion, language, etc. Things

53:34

are really changing when you go back around 100 years.

53:38

Starting out in 1917, when for

53:40

the first time, the U.S.

53:43

added a literacy requirement

53:45

for entry, and around a

53:47

third of immigrants at the time were illiterate. And

53:50

so they would be ruled

53:53

out by such a piece of

53:55

legislation. And then World

53:57

War I happened, and that also added

53:59

to the U.S. to the freak out in that these

54:02

elites also became afraid that these immigrants,

54:04

some of whom were from the countries

54:06

the U.S. fought against, were just not

54:09

going to assimilate, that there

54:11

was a national security threat. And

54:13

Congress actually tried to close the border

54:15

four times before they were successful.

54:18

They were successful in

54:20

1921 over a presidential

54:22

veto, which means they had a

54:25

supermajority. And so that led to

54:27

the most pivotal legislation

54:29

in American immigration history, which was the

54:31

1924 National Origins Act. So

54:36

the National Origins Act said the following.

54:39

First, it banned all immigration from Asia,

54:41

all of it. So the quota for

54:43

Asia was zero. And

54:45

then it said, we're going to go back to

54:48

the 1890 census and

54:51

establish that from any European country, no

54:53

more than 2% of residents from

54:56

each country of origin as

54:58

of the 1890 census can enter the

55:00

U.S. in any given year. Now

55:02

why go all the way back to 1890? Because

55:05

by then very few Southern and Eastern Europeans

55:07

had come. And so it was

55:09

a totally racist way to keep out people

55:12

that were Jewish, Catholic, etc. What

55:15

was the decline like? How steep was the

55:17

decline in a very rapid moment? In

55:20

the 1920s, immigrants were about 15% of the population. By

55:22

1970, it was 4.7%. That is

55:28

massive, right? That's where the

55:30

roller coaster like roared down. You know,

55:33

Hitler, by the way, loved the National Origins

55:35

Act. I bet. He praised it. Now,

55:38

according to your book and

55:40

your theories of the economic

55:42

and social power of immigrants

55:44

generally, one would

55:47

think that that massive decline in immigration over

55:49

those few decades from let's call it from

55:51

the mid 20s until the 1970s

55:54

would have hurt the country a lot in

55:56

terms of economic dynamism, innovation, and so on.

55:58

Did it? It did, it

56:00

did. For example, there's a study

56:03

that showed that American

56:05

inventors, so this is not foreign,

56:07

American inventors became nearly 70% less

56:10

productive. American businesses

56:13

patented over 53% less

56:15

for decades because of the loss of,

56:18

say, skilled immigrants and inventors

56:20

from the southern and eastern European

56:22

countries that didn't come. There's

56:24

evidence showing that this didn't

56:26

help native workers in the labor market in any

56:28

way, so you would have thought maybe their wages

56:30

went up or they got more jobs. There was

56:33

no effect on that. So

56:35

there were a lot of losses. Now, of

56:37

course, someone who knows American history is saying,

56:39

wait a minute, like this coincided with the

56:41

post-war boom and America's leadership in the world.

56:44

But I think there's two things there. One

56:46

is, you know, how

56:48

much more could America have gained

56:50

during those years with all this foreign-born talent that

56:52

was missing. But the other thing is the

56:55

baby boom happened, and so the baby

56:57

boom partly replaced the immigrants

56:59

that were lost that would have come had it

57:02

not been for the 1924 quotas

57:04

act, but only partially. What

57:06

was the fertility rate during the baby

57:08

boom compared to now? So

57:10

the birth rate in 1940 was 2.1%, which is exactly

57:13

replacement. It jumped to 3.6% by 1960, and

57:21

then it went down to less than two by 1980.

57:24

And where are we now? We're at 1.78, so

57:29

we're below replacement. And so

57:31

this is a big issue because the baby boom

57:33

kind of saved the country in lots

57:36

of ways. Considering

57:39

the evidence we've been hearing today,

57:41

you have to wonder, at least I had to

57:43

wonder, how exactly did

57:46

so many people in this

57:48

nation of immigrants come to

57:50

hate immigration? Well,

57:52

there are some good reasons. Coming

57:54

up next time on part two of our

57:56

series, How the Immigration and Nationality Act of the

57:59

United States, and the American. Nineteen Sixty

58:01

Five changed everything. The.

58:03

Economics The. The.

58:05

Culture. And then

58:07

later in the series as the

58:10

U S struggles with immigration is

58:12

Canada trying to steal our old

58:14

playbook? Also, we're going to publish

58:17

a bonus episode soon and interview

58:19

about immigration we did some years

58:21

ago with Madeline Albright. See was

58:24

born in Prague and twice became

58:26

a refugee in her youth. She

58:28

went on to become Us Secretary

58:30

of State under President Clinton, as

58:33

well as Us Ambassador to the

58:35

United Nations. or Break died. In

58:37

Twenty Twenty Two, at age eighty

58:40

Four, you'll hear that interview soon

58:42

here on Freedoms Radium, as well

58:44

as the rest of our current

58:46

series on immigration. Until then, take

58:49

care of yourself and if you

58:51

can, someone else to. For.

58:55

Economics Radio is produced by Stutter

58:57

and Rembert Radio. You can find

58:59

our entire archive on any podcast

59:01

app or it for economics.com or

59:03

we also published transcripts and so

59:05

notes. This episode was produced by

59:07

Alina Pullman and Sack with Pinsky.

59:10

Our staff also includes Augusta Chapman,

59:12

Eleanor Osborne's of the Hernandez, Gabriel

59:14

Ross, Greg Ribbon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy

59:16

Johnson, Julie Can for the Earth

59:18

Outage, Morgan Levy Milk, Ruth, Rebecca

59:20

Li Douglas and Sarah Lily Or

59:22

theme song is Mister Fortune by

59:24

the. Hitchhikers. All the other music

59:26

is composed by Louis Scare. As

59:28

always, thank you for listening. To.

59:36

Get the Job Done! As Lin Manuel

59:38

Miranda likes to say, they get the

59:40

job done. He was writing that from

59:42

the office of Intel. On

59:49

the Radio Network. ahead and Time

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