Marrero, whose book discusses the last 25 years of immigration policy and how we got to the point of crisis with a broken down system and a hate filled discourse that doesn´t serve the nation, is participating in the panel called “American Disunion”, to take place this coming Saturday 20 at NOON at Taper Hall Room 101 inside of the USC Campus. See a searchable map here or come to the Festival and ask to be directed to TAPER HALL. Entrance to the Festival is free but parking in the campus is 10 dollars per car.

Other panelists in “American Disunion”, an hour long discussion about the hot political issues of our time, including immigration, are Robert Sheer, journalist and panelist from KCRW´s Left, Right, and Center and author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street and Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party”.

The discussion will be led by journalist Ronald Brownstein, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Editorial Director of The National Journal.

A limited amount of tickets for the hour long panel, while supplies last, are distributed on site at the Festival of Books ticketing booth on the day of the Conversation — free of service charges. Visit booth #464. There will also be a standby line at the venue and if ticketholders have not arrived for the panel by 15 minutes prior to its start, we will let in people from the standby line to fill those seats.

After the conversation, authors will be signing books. There will be a sign at the venue indicating where the book signing will occur.

Quoting from their press release:

Second-generation Americans—-the 20 million adult U.S.-born children of immigrants—-are substantially better off than immigrants themselves on key measures of socio-economic attainment, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. They have higher incomes; more are college graduates and homeowners; and fewer live in poverty. In all of these measures, their characteristics resemble those of the full U.S. adult population.

Hispanics and Asian Americans make up about seven-in-ten of today’s adult immigrants and about half of today’s adult second generation. The second-generation of both groups are much more likely than immigrants to speak English, to have friends and spouses outside their ethnic or racial group, to say their group gets along well with others and to think of themselves as “a typical American,” according to Pew Research surveys. The surveys also find that they place more importance than does the general public on hard work and career success.

BUT, and here is the kicker…they are already more inclined towards liberal ideas rather than conservative ones. I personally think that´s both a generational issue (young Americans are also more liberal, inclusive, etc) and a result of the Republicans “not such a great job of reaching out and representing minorities”. That´s in comparison to a less than stellar performance of Democrats, but a lesser of 2 evils kind of thing.

Again, quoting from the PEW:

They are more inclined to call themselves liberal and less likely to identify as Republicans. And roughly seven-in-ten say their standard of living is higher than that of their parents at the same stage of life. In all of these measures, the second generation resembles the immigrant generation more closely than the general public.

You can read the whole report, hot off the presses, by going HERE

But the other point, one that I make in my book Killing the American Dream, is that this is not the first time in our history when we do 2 things simultaneously: take full advantage of the workers that our economy attracts here -with or without papers- and refuse to recognize their value by pointing out how bad they are for the local economy. Supposedly.
I do understand why politicians do it: It´s always easier to blame immigrants for the lack of ability of political leaders to have policies that ease or promote the creation of jobs across the board or the retraining and assistance of the unemployed.

Here´s a taste of what I´m talking about. An excerpt of Chapter Number 3, Nativism old and New.

It starts with a direct quote from a newspaper editorial decrying the immigration of the world´s poor given the economy at the time in the United states and it follows with a very wise quote by a former US President on a tradition that continues today, immigrant bashing for the same old reasons.

“The working people in America are not in a thoroughly prosperous condition, and there are already many out of employment. We would be glad to welcome the distressed people of all nations, but it must be admitted, under existing circumstances, the wholesale immigration from the Old World is not the unmixed blessing it was so long held to be”.
Editorial from the New Orleans Picayune, 1880

“It is said . . . that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens”.

President Grover Cleveland’s 1897 Veto Message on House bill 7864, which, among other things, would have excluded the entry of “illiterates” to keep out “undesirables”

Between 1836 and 1914, some 30 million immigrants came to the United States from Europe. At the time, there were no immigration limits at all, and practically anyone from the Old Country who made the transatlantic crossing hoping to start a new life was accepted, unless they were gravely ill.
America had not yet established specific quotas for how many people from a particular country would be allowed in, with the notable exception of the Chinese. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to prevent immigrants from China from ever becoming naturalized citizens, the only country to ever have a special law restricting immigration of its citizens to the United States..
Workers from China had begun arriving in the mid-nineteenth century, attracted by abundant jobs constructing the transcontinental railroad and by the gold rush. They were viewed as a burden and competition for low-wage, low-skilled jobs, which, it was feared, would not be in such great supply once the railroad was finished and the mines ran out of gold.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the only legal restriction in an otherwise open immigration policy that had existed since the country´s founding, until Congress established quotas in 1924. So illegal immigration did not technically exist for anyone until that year, since almost everyone was admitted .
According to records on Ellis Island, the nation´s busiest port of entry for millions of immigrants between 1892 and 1954, only about 2% of the arrivals that came thru the Island in the first few decades of its use were sent back to their country of origin after screening for incurable illness, disabilities or evidence of criminal background. That means that 98 percent of those who arrived by boat were admitted into the country. To claim that one’s own ancestors who immigrated from another country at that time were “legal,” and therefore different or better from today’s immigrants, is ludicrous historically; there was no such thing as illegal immigration prior to 1924.
One thing that has remained constant in the ever-evolving state of immigration over the centuries is the persistent sense that the latest wave of immigrants, whoever they may be, are ruining the country—at least according to the previous, more established group of immigrants.
In the mid-1800s, for example, the Know Nothing movement came to prominence. With membership open only to Protestant males of British extraction, the nativist group viewed German and Irish Catholic immigrants as a dangerous threat.
From 1880 onward, especially after a series of recessions rocked the national economy beginning in 1882, more serious attempts were made to formally prohibit immigrants from certain countries from coming to America. The political rhetoric and public unease was focused on newcomers from southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Hungary, and Russia), who represented a different kind of immigrant from previous, now-established groups who had come from England, Germany, and Sweden and other Nordic countries.
In 1894, three young Harvard College graduates formed the Immigration Restriction League to oppose the “undesirable” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who supposedly posed a “threat” to the American lifestyle and were driving down wages. The league worried that the “new immigrants” brought poverty and crime with them, especially in times of high unemployment.
One of the league’s more prominent members was Francis Walker, the superintendent of the United States Census and president of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her book Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Columbia University history professor Mae Ngai explains that Walker was a social Darwinist who believed there were good immigrants and bad immigrants—not because some were upstanding, hardworking citizens and some were criminals, but solely because of their nationality. Walker believed that immigrants from Italy, Hungary, Austria, and Russia were “vast masses of peasants, of the lowest, most degraded possible origins, defeated men who represented the most abject failure in the struggle for existence”.
The nineteenth century, especially the latter half, was a time of large-scale immigration into the United States due to improvements in transportation –faster steam ships with cheaper fare and to improvements in farming which displaced populations in Southern and Eastern Europe. But the immigrant communities that were already established in the United States began to wonder if there weren’t already enough poor, struggling people in the “land of opportunity”, trying to make a better life. The nation was industrializing and growing, but it was far from being a world superpower. At that time, groups like the Immigration Restriction League lobbied Congress, and labor unions supported establishing laws and protocols that would limit immigration.
Although, technically, there were no legal and illegal immigrants at the time, people began thinking of certain groups as “desirables” and “undesirables.” The latter group was categorized as such because of their levels of poverty, education, religion or country of origin and because of the perceived effect their arrival would have on salaries and the economic health of the country as a whole.

For more…stay tuned for more excerpts or buy the whole book: available in English and Spanish and also on Kindle and other E-Book formats

Founding father Benjamin Franklin bluntly expressed this last concern with regard to German immigrants, who made up 30 percent of Pennsylvania’s population, writing in the mid-eighteenth century: “Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation . . . and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. . . . Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it .
“Unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will be precarious,” Franklin warned.
Franklin’s words have a familiar ring. But historians suggest that the real problem Franklin had with the Germans wasn’t that he considered them a threat to the colony. He was miffed because his fledgling business printing publications in German, in particular the first German-language newspaper, the Philadelphische Zeitung, which he had launched in 1732, had failed after only one year.

This history, plus other evidence gathered through my extensive reading and writing on this issue makes me reach this conclusion:

History repeated itself with the twentieth-century nativists: Everyone has their own personal interests, and whoever is able to do so elevates them into a political, public interest.

Also, Benjamin Franklin was something else: wrong. And those who said similar things about the Irish and Italians (they´re drunk, loud and catholic, therefore will destroy our culture), Polish, other eastern europeans (they´re poor, low skilled,pauper and will destroy our economy), Chinese, Japanese (don´t have loyalty to our culture, will destroy it). Even before there was tons of “illegal” immigration -there always was some percentage of unauthorized immigration but immigration was much easier than today, the “concerns” over this immigrants were already rampant in our political culture.

Nothing new under the sun.

Here´s the page of the Committee with the Agenda of the hearing and the list of witnesses and their statements.