and, again, overon c-span.org. "the ight on communicators" -- texas representative eddie bernice science, hair of the space, and technology committee on increasing the number of omen and minorities in technology fields. ms. johnson: we want to be in own ion to furnish our brainpower. the only way we're going to ever educateto do that is to women and minorities in the stem ields, and that comes in many categories. we've even coined a phrase more ecently called blue collar stem. ph.d.'s or unt of graduate degrees might even be skills y to have those to be very innovative and to be workforce nd a good that is producing some of the innovation. >> tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2.

susan: alan kraut, you have spent your professional career as an historian studying u.s. immigration. many americans look to the statue of liberty's famous poem by emma lazarus that says "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" as the embodiment of the way we think about this country and immigration. as you look at history, does it track with the reality of how we have treated immigrants? dr. kraut: the history of immigration in the u.s. doesn't track at all with emma lazarus's wonderful quotation.

in fact, it has been a love-hate relationship. in the 19th century, there was a popular immigrant saying, "america beckons but americans repel." that is more accurate as to how our relationship with immigration has been in the united states. in fact, one of the great ironies is that emma lazarus wrote the poem in 1883, and one year before, in 1882, the u.s. 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. so we want immigrants to come. we beckon them with opportunity.

we beckon them to take jobs as skilled, semiskilled, unskilled labor to build our country, construct our economy, but after they get here, frequently they are the objects of scorn. they are discriminated against. they suffer some of the worst acts of prejudice imaginable. this is a very complicated relationship that america has with the foreign-born. susan: 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? dr. kraut: the backlashes are caused by a precipitating factor like an economic downturn, or a spike in the size of the migration, or the identity of who is coming at a particular moment.

there are lots of different things that can cause an outbreak of the kind of nativism that we have seen quite recently. it is hard to identify one single thing, but we know that it operates cyclically. there are moments when the united states is more welcoming and moments when the united states is not welcoming at all. we watch this with great interest and try to identify the moments when these things are happening. susan: is the current period of turmoil and debate over immigration different in any important way from past times this country has gone through? dr. kraut: i would argue the current ways of nativism, of anti-immigrant sentiment, of xenophobia is not different in what we have seen in the past. while it seems to us to be peppered with acts of violence and ferocity, there have been other acts of violence, anti-immigrant riots before the civil war, anti-immigrant riots

in the 1880's. there have been lots of moments in american history when the anti-immigrant sentiment has been translated into true ugliness. it has brought great harm to the foreign-born. i would argue the current wave, as unpleasant and offputting as it is, is not all that unusual in the history of our country. susan: what causes congress to ultimately act during these periods? dr. kraut: 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 1880's, the late 1870's and early 1880's and by 1882 you have the chinese exclusion law. in the case of one of the most restrictive immigration laws, the 1924 law, what went on was, the united states had had its fill of foreign-born labor. our industries were fueled by foreign-born labor. we had had a peak period of immigration, and at the end of the first world war, there was the red scare of 1919. by the early 1920's, there was lots of bipartisan sentiment within congress 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. that included southern italians, eastern european jews, russians and so on. the law was structured to get, to keep those groups out. susan: starting in the 1880's to the present day, can you identify either major party with one stance or the other? dr. kraut: 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 early 20th century. in order to keep up wages of american workers, they were anti-immigrant in sentiment. many southern democrats had prejudices, racial prejudices and don't want large numbers of southern italians and eastern europeans coming to the united

states. both parties have groups within it that are anti-immigration, and they become part of an anti-immigrant bloc that is effective enough to pass restrictive legislation. susan: if the first major legislation was in the 1880's, was the country before that? how was immigration law handled? dr. kraut: 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. they also have inspection procedures in place. the busiest port on the east coast is new york. in 1855, castle garden is opened as the new york state immigration depot. it is there that new york state immigration officers interrogate

newcomers, and it is there that volunteer physicians examine newcomers to see that they are not bringing disease to the united states and they will be sufficiently robust to support themselves. it is strictly a state matter until the law of 1882. 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 restrictions. susan: clearly a blanket of different laws became unworkable. dr. kraut: exactly. susan: let's get a snapshot of waves of immigration before federal laws. first of all, we have to acknowledge quite a large contingent of involuntary immigrants, african-americans who were brought in through slavery. what percentage of the population were they prior to the civil war? dr. kraut: prior to the civil war, there are 4.5 million

slaves in the united states. by virtue of a compromise of the constitutional convention, the international slave trade was ended in 1808, but there was plenty of smuggling. there was plenty of replenishment of the slave population. 4.5 million slaves by the time of the civil war. i have a problem with calling them involuntary migrants. they were slaves, a distinct category, not involuntary migrants, not the same as indentured servants or any other category we recognize. the first real mass immigration to the united states in the post revolutionary period begins slowly at the end of the 1830's, and picks up in the 1840's and 1850's. that is the great migration of irish, germans, scandinavians coming to the united states. 4.5 million people between 1840

and 1860. susan: what would that be as a percentage of the existing population? dr. kraut: by the time of the first census in 1790, there were under 4 million people in the united states. susan: so essentially it doubled the population. dr. kraut: it was in that direction. it is extraordinary. the important is of context of history. when we talk about the current time as the greatest immigration into the united states, history doesn't seem to bear that out. dr. kraut: 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 we enter the industrial revolution in the post-civil war period, the need for low-cost labor is essential to our capitalist direction. where are we going to get that labor from? we will get it from abroad. even prior to the civil war, we begin to see the irish, who are very often a source of low-cost labor, we see the germans, who are escaping the aborted revolutions of the 1840's and the german states, coming with their skills and 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. susan: at the same time on the

west coast, the first wave of chinese immigrants were coming. what brought them? dr. kraut: they are coming from a very poor province and they are coming because of the gold rush. they heard gold has been discovered in california. they are coming to make their fortune. of course, most of them don't discover gold, but they do find jobs working on railroads, working in the mines, servicing the working communities. they are cooks, doing laundry. they are also doing mining and railroad building. by the time of the chinese exclusion law in 1882, there were 300,000 chinese in the united states. susan: mostly in northern california? dr. kraut: mostly along the west coast. along the west coast. some of them are going north and end up in wyoming and a variety of different places. susan: before we get into the details of the chinese

exclusion act, i want to learn little more about you. how did you end up having this as your academic specialty? dr. kraut: i started out my academic life as a civil war historian. i was trained in the civil war and the antebellum period. 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. increasingly, i knew that i really wanted to work in immigration. and that would require, since i was done with my phd, it would require retraining on my own. i did a lot of reading and a lot of teaching of a preliminary

immigration course and so on, and i published my first book in the early 1980's called "the huddled masses: the immigrant in american society 1880-1921" and that launched me into immigration history. later in my career, i discovered 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. 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. susan: how many books have you done so far? dr. kraut: if you included edited and co-authored books, nine. susan: all and immigration-related topics? -- all on immigration-related topics? dr. kraut: except for one, which is devoted to the antislavery movement. political anti-slavery but the rest all deal with immigration

one way or another. "silent travelers: germs, genes, and the immigrant menace," which i published in the mid-1990's, squarely addresses the issue of health, disease, and immigration. susan: some of the things i note on your biography include your long tenure on the statue of liberty advisory board and ultimately chairing it. what was the mission of that group? dr. kraut: back in the early 1980's, a young representative of the parks service visited me in my office. her name was heather. she had read my book as a graduate student at the university of minnesota and asked me if i would like to be part of a group of historians and designers and architects who were gathering in west virginia at harpers ferry to talk about the possibility of a museum and the restoration of ellis island.

now, i said of course. absolutely. 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 money for the restoration of the statue of liberty between 1984 and 1986, then the creation of the ellis island museum and the restoration of part of ellis island so it could be a place for visitors to learn about the immigrant experience. in 2003, i was appointed chair of that history advisory committee and i have served in that capacity ever since. 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. we think it is very exciting. susan: you served as a consultant to a lot of contemporary media organizations, telling stories about american immigration. how do you think the american media does telling the immigration story? dr. kraut: 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 is historians, sociologists, cultural anthropologists. the immigration story is complicated. it is deeply entwined with the larger american story. when people ask what i do for a living, i say i write the history of a great republic but i write part of that history more than any other, and that is the part dealing with the peopling of america. if you want to understand that, it has to be contextualized.

for me, i like to serve the media. i believe historians should do the same. it is important, this story, and to critical to our country to get it wrong. susan: let's return to our narrative and the 1882 chinese exclusion act. i want to start with a piece of video from our library. 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. [video clip] >> they were very, very much the subject of discriminatory activities. i am reminded of the case of the people vs. hall in 1854, a very early california supreme court case in which several chinese

witnesses saw a murder. they testified honestly what they saw. the man was convicted, and his clever defense attorney appealed the case to the california supreme court and argued there is a law in california that says indians and blacks can't testify against a white man, and there are only three classes of people in the world, whites, blacks and mongolians. indians included chinese, and chinese were mongolian, indians were mongolians and the california supreme court bought that argument. if we let them testify against a white man, the next thing you know, they will be sitting on a jury box, they would run for the legislature, they would vote and they might even become judges.

what a terrible thing that would be. very racist type of decision. so it set the tone of california history for about the first 100 years. susan: the act did go to the supreme court. how did the supreme court treat this case? dr. kraut: 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 abandon our efforts to keep chinese out of the united states and from becoming citizens of the united states. that was a great injustice. it speaks to another theme,

which is important for us to explore, and that is the theme of racism within american immigration policy. there are plenty of reasons why americans reject particular immigrant groups. sometimes, it is on the basis of religion. anti-semitism, anti-catholicism. always on the basis of color. on the basis of prevailing racism within the american consciousness that governs the way we approach these things. the first dramatic example of that is of course the 1882 chinese exclusion law. 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 to finally abate. susan: so during this time period, you made reference to the 1882 chinese exclusion act, the same year immigration, the first major immigration act.

in 1890, president harrison leave lmost is about to office establishes ellis island. overall, what is happening in the country that necessitated these changes? dr. kraut: 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 this -- religious discrimination and pulled by the promise of freedom, by the promise of economic opportunity and so on. if we think of these pushes and pulls, that is what pushed the irish and pushed folks from the german states and scandinavians out of their countries in the pulledil war period, and them towards the united states, the promise of opportunity and 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 1880's, and while it was still germans coming and still folks from central europe, increasingly, there were folks coming from southern and eastern europe, where we had never gotten significant migration flow from before. it was fear, lots of anxiety about what that would mean. were the states up to processing all of these newcomers? did they have the power and organizational capacity to handle what was on the horizon? and the federal government's answer was no. 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 to 1798 and a bill signed by john adams. roots to 1798 and a bill signed by john adams. they would be uniformed physicians of what would later become the u.s. public health service. this entire mechanism, this federal mechanism, was created to deal with the issue of immigration. how did americans deal with immigration in the late 19th century? with fear and anxiety, and at the same time expectation, the expectation that the newcomers would provide labor as america industrialized. the fear and anxiety was, who are these people? where they coming from? how will they affect the texture of american culture and society? what are we going to do with them all? where are they going to settle?

where are they going to be? what is the implication? this is a very dramatic and dynamic period in the peopling of america, between the late 1880's and the 1920's when restrictive legislation is passed. susan: how many people came into the united states during that period? dr. kraut: 23.5 million. 23.5 million. again, as a percentage of the population? dr. kraut: significant. susan: some eastern europeans, including european jews, were fleeing religious persecution. where does the concept of refugees or asylum from persecution begin to bubble up into immigration law? dr. kraut: the word refugee is not used with any precision during this period. there is a great confusion over who is an immigrant and who is a refugee. we don't get any clarity to the term refugee until well into the 20th century.

so yes, jews, especially after the pogroms of the earlier 20th century, are fleeing persecution in russia, and they are, for all intents and purposes, refugees. there is no definition of that, so they are part of the larger immigration experience. so you have all kinds of migration going on during this period. you have a seasonal labor migration of southern italians that come in march and april. they prefer outdoor work, they build the skyscrapers of manhattan, the federal triangle area of washington, d.c., the stonecutters are experts in great demand. they go back during the winter months, and in the spring, they come again. it is this back and forth. the federal immigration officers

to them as birds of passage, but they were labor immigration coming to take part in the jobs 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. they have come in part not just for economic opportunity but in flight from persecution. they are not going back to the tsar. they are not going back to that world. for them, it is a permanent one-way migration, or at least that's how they look at it. you have other groups, you have poles and slavs and greeks and so many different groups coming for a variety of reasons. it is a big job for the federal government to process these newcomers and inspect them and do all the things that are necessary to make the country

safe as the government understands it at that time. susan: in 1917, they imposed a reading test for immigrants over the age of 16. what was that intended to do? dr. kraut: there was an inclination on the part of some in congress to try and improve the quality of immigration and to exclude those groups notoriously in view of congress, illiterate, under-educated, and so on. nd so as a first thrust in terms of real restrictionism, there is an effort to pass literacy tests. they try it in 1896 and it failed, they tried in 1913 and 1915 and it failed. they tried in 1927. woodrow wilson vetoed the literacy test. when it was finally passed, it was passed over a presidential veto. 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? it had a written form. it was a peculiar kind of merger of other languages. but the lobbying for yiddish, as one example, was such that it made the illiteracy 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, as an exclusionary implement, as a restrictive element, a failure, a tremendous failure. susan: after this big wave, 23 million people coming to the country, in the 1920's the

emergency quota act passed in the d nat octobe-- in 1921 national origin quota system in 1924. dr. kraut: the 1921 emergency national origins quota act was passed in 1922 and 1923 as well. every country was entitled to bring into the united states 30% of those already here, according to the 1910 census. the problem with that is that by 1910, a lot of 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. i think i misspoke before, i said 30%, i meant 3%. in 1924, it went down to 2% of those who are here in 1890. calculate how many european jews were here in 1890, how many southern italians in 1890, take 2% of that and it is the annual quota. it took between 1924 and 1929 to argue about this and figure out every country's quota. susan: where the numbers coming from ellis island? is that where the statistics were being kept? dr. kraut: the statistics were kept at every american immigration port and they were then compiled. susan: i wanted to move from the european migration and asian migration to talk about the southern border for a bit. it is interesting when you look at the 1930's, and we were talking about this before we began, there was the deportation

began, there was the deportation of as many as 400,000 mexicans and mexican americans. then in the 1940's, we began the bracero program, and you referenced earlier, in 1954, something called operation wet back, a terrible name, rounding up people and sending them back to the native country, most often mexico. i'm going to show a video, sort of a documentary produced at the period that talks about the program, and help us understand americans' ying and yang on the mexican migration issue. let's watch. [video clip] >> the term is also applied to many of the toughest and least desirable farm jobs. for example, no stooping here because citrus trees are thorny and more difficult to pick, most farmworkers avoid this kind of job.

all such farm jobs which are tough, dirty, and unpleasant are generally referred to as stoop labor. understandably then, this is the where the american is labor is short and supplemented by mexican citizens, sometimes called nationals or mexican nationals. the term most commonly used is braceros. this means a man who works with his arms and hands. they are 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. >> with americans on relief roles, why bring in foreigners to work on our farms? it makes no sense. >> but it makes sense to the farmer, because they work for lower pay than americans would.

>> but doesn't the farmer realize he is cutting down on american labor, living standards? why doesn't somebody do something about it? dr. kraut: mexican labor in the united states has a long and rich history. first of all, we have to understand the mexicans did not migrate to the united states at first. they were engulfed in the 1840's after the mexican war and the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo, which was 1848. that's when the mexicans living in the southwest become part of the united states of america. they children become citizens of the united states of america. there was, the most restrictive immigration laws of the 1920's, no bar on the hemisphere. mexicans are moving back and forth across the borders easily. there is no barrier for them.

during the world war ii period, it is clear that with so many americans going off to war, there is a need for extra labor. there is a need for planting, harvesting. so there is a program called the bracero program, which, as the film said, means working with one's arms and body. it goes between 1942 and 1964. in general, there were about 200,000 workers per year moving back and forth, during the entire period, approximately 4.8 million. they performed critical functions in the american economy in terms of our agricultural cycle. they had 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 a native born americans, although they really are 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 toward mexicans. once they have served their purpose, many in the united states want them to leave. what we see happening is the deportation of mexicans, and it actually begins after the second world war and picks up during the 1950's. by the 1960's, we are getting them out of the united states. many americans will remember a song produced by woody guthrie and sung beautifully by joan baez called "deportee," about a

terrible plane crash in which a that occurred in 1948 in which a number of mexicans being deported were killed. there were 32 people on the flight and 28 of them were mexicans. what impressed woody guthrie is that the newspapers only reported the names of the white pilots and so on who were on the plane. everybody else was referred to as a deportee and not named in the reports. in some ways, he dramatized what was going on. we had taken this labor and were using this labor and now we wanted to get rid of this labor. by the middle of the 1950's, during the eisenhower administration, there was an operation called unfortunately operation wet back, which was designed to dump even more mexicans out of the united

states and across the border. in all, a little over a million were deported during operation wet back. this is the kind of love-hate relationship with labor from abroad that america had had for a long time. here it was, with respect to our southern neighbor. we wanted them when we wanted them because we needed their labor, and when we did not need their labor anymore, we wanted them to go home. by 1964, the formal agreement between the two governments is ended and that is the end of the bracero program. but it is not the end of migration of labor back and forth across the border by any means. mexican labor is simply too important to american growers. in addition, it helps the american growers to keep the price of their produce low. they are working the mexican laborers way below what you would have to pay american workers to do the same job.

susan: that was 1964. this next video is from 1965, it is at ellis island, statue of liberty, lyndon johnson signing a major bill. let's watch. [video clip] >> those who contribute most to this country, its growth, its strength, its spirit, will be the first 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 for over four decades, the immigration policy of the united states has been twisted and 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 of the immigrants. families were kept apart because a husband or wife or 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 one of the developing continents. this system violated the basic principle of american democracy, a principal that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. susan: i think we have a chart i want to add to the discussion done by the pew organization that looks at american

population post this 1965 legislation. as we are getting this ready to put up -- you can see what happened here from 1965 when the act passed, until the projected population in 2065. the foreign-born population would grow from 9.6 back then to 45 million in 2015 and ultimately 78 million. the three major aspects of this legislation, as president johnson was talking about, families kept together, skills-based system, and repealing the quota you talked about. which had the most impact on the numbers changing? dr. kraut: certainly family reunification has a tremendous impact, as it is described in the legislation, but also skills-based as well. the idea was to get rid of a system that had become very ethnocentric and ugly, 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 is doubtful that kennedy would have been able to get it through congress, but lyndon johnson did get it through congress. in the same time period he was getting three pieces of civil rights legislation through, he was also getting through this very important act of 1965 called the hart-cellar act. it was after senator philip hart of michigan and manny seller of new york. this act got rid of the national quota system and it substituted hemispheric quotas. 120,000 for the western hemisphere, 170,000 for the eastern hemisphere. it changed the immigration flow

to the united states 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 and especially mexicans that had once been unencumbered now was subject to a quota system too. by the early 1970's, 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

wanted to come to the united states. and it is a moment in which our current dilemma over undocumented or unauthorized immigration is born big time. there had always been undocumented immigration to the u.s., 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. moreover, there were folks in the united states who were all tour anxious to hire them for their low wages and so on. and so the entire immigration seen, 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. 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 we talk about a great deal, and that is how do we treat and how should we envelop all of those who are unauthorized in our midst? susan: the policy debate from the 1980's forward focuses on undocumented or illegal immigrants as a policy issue. dr. kraut: it is certainly one of the major issues of confrontation and engagement in the policy world, no question. susan: let's move to 1986 when ronald reagan and congress tried to create legislation to address some of the issues surrounding that. this was the so-called simpson mazzoli bill. simpson of wyoming and mazzoli from kentucky. let's watch. [video clip]

>> this bill that i will sign in most minutes is the omprehnsive -- comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952. it is the product of one of the longest and most difficult legislative undertakings in the last three congresses. further, it is an excellent example of a truly successful bipartisan effort. the administration and allies of immigration reform on both sides ofthe capitol and both sides 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 immigration laws and the act -- and legalization. the act provides these three essential components.

distance has not discouraged illegal immigration to the united states from around the globe. the problem of immigration should not 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. .

dr. kraut: the reality is there were so many millions, estimates vary between 8.5, 9 million, 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the united states, some who had lived here a very long time who raised their children here, who were citizens by birthright in the united states. ronald reagan did something very pragmatic, he issued an amnesty to some of those folks in order to quiet the problem before the rest of the legislation addressed the problem. 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 migrant to those who hired and knowingly hired unauthorized immigrants in the united states. and there were raids and efforts to do this in a systematic kind of way. it never succeeded in the way that those who crafted the legislation envisioned. in part because it became very unpopular from a political perspective to prosecute small business owners, or big business

owners. nd so the government 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 at one border or o another. the coast guard operating off and oast of cuba intercepting haitian immigrants at different times, searching for people who had overstayed student or work visas. in short, the legislation did not do the job it had been intended to do in an effective way. that's one of the reasons why we continue to debate immigration policy and continue to feel very badly about the problem we have, which is good people who want opportunity for their children, safety for themselves and their children, who cross our borders,

but in doing so break our laws. how shall we treat that? we are a nation of laws. on one hand, the inclination is to enforce our laws, on the other hand the humanitarian perspective cannot be ignored. how should we treat this? we continue to debate it. we desperately need a solution. one of the things i do in washington besides teach at american university is, i am a nonresident fellow at a mmigration policy institute, and one of the things we do is debate what a good immigration policy would be. what would that look like? one possibility is it would involve advanced planning. what are the country's economic needs going forward? would we create a five-year plan, 10-year plan for who we invite into our country? what kind of skills they would

have, and how with the skills of incoming immigrants mesh with our desire to be humanitarian and accept the relatives of those already here, the family reunification element of previous legislation. a tremendous number of very hard questions for our country to nswer. clearly we are enmeshed 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 has been taken when americans are asked what is the most important issue for you in the next election, a remarkable number are saying immigration. susan: what is the reality in the 40 years since ronald reagan's legislation? how many illegal, undocumented, whatever the term is, immigrants have come from the southern border of the u.s.?

dr. kraut: we can't count them and we don't know with any great precision how many people are in the u.s. in an unauthorized or undocumented fashion at any given moment. we know that during the period f the recession, after 2008, the number went down. we believe it went from approximately 11 million down to below 9 million. and then it has buoyed back up again as the economy improved. one of the things about migration is it is not a casual decision, it is a very serious decision that people are making to put their lives at risk to ry and go to another country and break that country's laws by entering that country. during a period when the united states is in the economic doldrums, you are less willing

to take that risk than in the periods where jobs are plentiful. you can get a job working in construction, on lawns, a more skilled position depending on your own education and skill set. it is not surprising in the least to see that as the economy has recovered, the number of undocumented has increased. in addition to that, we are now living in a world with a lot of political chaos in various parts of the world. whether we are talking about refugees coming out of the middle east or talking about people fleeing gang violence in guatemala, honduras, el salvador. people are on the move. susan: and there are fears about terrorism in the united states post 9/11. dr. kraut: immigration and refugee policy are national security issues. this is not the first time it

was regarded as a national security issue. it was regarded that way in the 1930's and 1940's, many times. but since 9/11, immigration is a national security issue and that cannot be ignored either. susan: very quickly, just to get it on the record, a snapshot of the current debate we are having, nancy pelosi and president donald trump. [video clip]>> every president in recent memory, democratic and 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 the country i love. he went on to say thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we are a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the 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 close the door to new americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost. pres. trump: our country is doing great, unemployment is very low, we just came out with 224,000 new jobs, the numbers are unbelievable. that is bringing people up like they have never come up. border patrol and ice have done a great job. people are being removed from the country, we are removing them. we are starting with ms-13. we have taken out thousands of ms-13 gangs. we have never had an onslaught -- the reason they came up -- and they come up -- is because the country is doing well and they want jobs. susan: the tenor of much of the discussion in the country. during the 1990's and 2000's, it seemed as though all of the immigration laws were incremental and all of the

politicians who say we need a fundamental revisiting of immigration law, let's finish where we started -- what will it take in this country to enact holistic revision or change the immigration to policy that we eed is a nation? dr. kraut: it would return to a 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 is underpinning the current debate and try to act constructively in creating new olicy. will there 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 was 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, ethnic communities, creating five or 10 year migration plans. there are lots of different proposals out there. but the one thing that is absolutely crucial is that we not continue with of the current chaos of american policy. and so, i wait for that moment,

i anxiously wait for that moment as many others do as well, a moment of illumination and politicians on both sides of the aisle will step forward and say this is too serious of a problem not to solve with policy discussion. susan: alan kraut, a historian of american immigration, thank you for the conversation. dr. kraut: thank you. â >> all "q&a" programs are available on our website, or as a podcast at c-span.org. â >> next week on "q&a," a wall street journal columnist talks about her book, "resistance at all costs." she argues the president trump's critics have become a threat to our democracy.

that is next sunday at 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. eastern on on c-span. >> congress returns for work today. the house starts legislative business at 3:30 p.m. eastern. with four small business related bills on the calendar. at 6: 20 p.m. republicans will attempt to censure intelligence committee chair adam schiff. a vote on that and any other requested votes will happen after 6:30 p.m. eastern. from the senate side, lawmakers return today at 3:00. for more work on a bill expanding nato membership. watch the house here on c-span. the senate on c-span2. >> tonight, on the communicators, texas representative eddie bernice johnson, chair of the science, space, and technology committee on increasing the number of women and minorities in technology fields. >> we want to be in a position to furnish