usa. dollar a day for a factory hand and its welcome ladies to the promised land. >> you can watch this and other american history programs on our website, where all of our video is archived. c-span.org/history. next, on lectures in history, university of texas and austin -- at austin professor ma hsu teaches a class about the 1965 immigration act and current immigration demographics. the professor describes how the number and country of origin has changed over the last 50 years. her class is about 90 minutes.

prof. hsu: good morning. welcome to our fourth morning of the institutes workshop -- institute of the workshop -- e's workshop on immigration history. glad to see you will hear again. today we are going to talk about the immigration law that has been in place over half a century now, it has had a transformative impact on american society. the basic principles for immigration regulation laid out in these laws are the ones still with us today. now, to remind you, the last major set of immigration restrictions prior to the 1965 act were legislated in 1952. as we recall, that act retained the national origins quota system. right? and you can see from the summary of the national quotas allocated, all countries in the world got an immigration quota. advanced from the

previous legislation, but as you can see, certain countries were greatly favored. northern and western europe particularly still retained over 85% of the immigration quotas. and persons from asia could immigrate, but as you can see, they were highly restricted. asians were also the only group still to be tracked by race in the asian pacific triangle. the mccarran walter act added certain changes were added in -- in terms of having preferences, which we will talk about more today. the mccarran walter act introduced preference for people who have special skills in employment. it also as a preference for relatives of u.s. citizens. so these are becoming identified as priorities and as alternative ways to think about how we admit people apart from race and national origins.

so this system goes into operation, it is immediately subject to protest. in fact, the mccarran-walter act was vetoed by president truman because it retained the discriminatory national origins quota systems, which was a big hurdle in terms of american foreign relations. so we have a succession -- all presidents -- truman, eisenhower, kennedy and then lbj all wanted immigration reform. so here we have a report issued by the truman administration, whom we shall welcome. here we have a publication by john f. kennedy, titled a nation of immigrants. many people believe it was ghost authored by oscar hamlin, pressing for this idea of the united states as a country that can welcome and include and integrate a multitude of immigrant populations. really pressing for immigration reform. however, there is staunch

opposition. it is increasingly minority oppositions, but because of the way the committee structure in congress works, it took a tremendous ups well in order for immigration legislation to finally pass. in 1965, we see lbj signing the new immigration act. he is on -- he is right under the statue of liberty. right? he is surrounded here -- you can see a couple of the kennedy brothers. this is lady bird johnson. and, of course, this is in the wake of the assassination of president kennedy. and immigration reform was a cause that kennedy had really championed during his career as a senator, and when he became president. but it took lbj, with his savvy in congress, but also the ups well -- upswell of civil rights progress to get the legislation through.

now, these are the terms of the 1965 immigration act. and as we go through this, you should consider for yourself whether this is, in fact, egalitarian legislation. one of the pressures is we need to remove overt discrimination from our immigration regulations, and you can consider the ways in which rules and processes for who can immigrate legally to the united states will have an impact. ok. there are 20,000 annual caps for eastern hemisphere countries, this is now applied to all countries. it's now up to 25,000 per country. so every country gets the same cap. right? there is a preference system. there is a set of priorities. -- 75% of immigrant

visas go to family. 20% are based on immigration by employment, and 5% allocated to refugees. ok? now, note this. a lot of times people have the conception that people are here, they did not have authorization and then the complaint is well, you should have just gotten in line, right? but one of the things we need to discuss is , in fact, for most people in the world, there is no line. you only get to immigrate if you have relatives that are close enough relatives. so this is a spouse, children, parents, and siblings of a u.s. citizen. that is it for the family category. you have to have employment that is certifiable by the bureau of labor as being needed in the united states. you have to have an employer in the united states who is willing to file the paperwork on your behalf and wait for you to go through the process in order to

hire you. there is a line for investors. this is, as we will see, actually the most expeditious line, if you have $1 million. or if you qualify to be considered a refugee by the united states government. this is the first time, in 1965, there will be a numeric path to immigration within the western hemisphere. and if you think about it, it is a form of equality. you are treating all countries the same, but because of the historic relationships between the united states and its nearest neighbors, there's been a lot of back-and-forth, the sharing of space, the sharing of communities and economies. and as we saw yesterday with professor alvarez's talk, it immediately generates a set of challenges and problems. you have a law suddenly in place but this doesn't mean people will abruptly change their behaviors.

ok? we have in 1980 a refugee act that will raise admission caps for refugees, so there is more capacity to receive refugees. but there will also start to be a series of immigration acts we will talk about later that are intended to address the enforcement problems. this is the 1986 immigration reform and control act, chiefly. but there are other acts that sort of modify and adjusted the -- a just the immigration law to -- adjust the immigration law to be more accommodating of actual immigration flows. one of the chief acts is legislated in 1990, it in acts temporaryts the visa program for skilled workers. under the employment preferences, they cannot bring in enough skilled people.

this is expanded through the h-1b visa program. it also enacts a diversity visa lottery program. some countries don't use all of their visas. and this program was intended to reallocate those visas to countries that were underrepresented in terms of immigration or where there was a need for more visas. this initial incarnation of the diversity lottery program was actually intended to benefit irish and italians. i will explain this. so here -- all right. this is generally available online. so you can go and find it, there are no restrictions on accessing and using it. but we can play this game. ok, so what part of legal immigration don't you understand? let's see if we would qualify to immigrate to the united states. right, and this sort of sets it

out very clearly. this is to underscore that for many people, there is no line. here is the generic applicant, and there are key questions. do you have family in the u.s.? yes. is your relative a u.s. citizen or a lawful, permanent resident? citizen, youu.s. have to be the parent, spouse, or lawful child. if not, you have to go down to here. yes, all right. congratulations, you have found one of the ways to come in. then you apply and you basically get in line. total time to immigrate to become a citizen, best case, 6-7 years. if you have adult children and siblings, you go down here. the wait time depends. currently, the biggest backlog and the longest waiting times for legal immigration to the united states, these are for people whose immigrant visas

have been approved, but because of the annual cap, the wait times for some countries are 10 years or more. right? and the countries with the biggest backlogs are mexico, china, india, and the philippines. so if we try to do this on the basis of employment, are you skilled? and this sort of varies by department of labor certification. it tends to focus on people who are highly educated and people who are in stem fields. although i did find out -- i checked and found this out -- if you are trained chinese cook, you qualify. if you are a trained french baker, you qualify. if you are a trained japanese sushi chef, you qualify. so it is elective in terms of what it acknowledges as special skills. -- can you prove you are a genius? [laughter]

hsu: or an athlete or a professor? we are talking about people like albert einstein, people with exceptional skills. this is the shortest pathway. the investor pathway is also one of the quickest to go. but to invest, you have to participate in an approved investment program, which creates a certain number of jobs. but this is the quickest pathway. ok. but if you are going to sort of do the regular employment route, mostly you have to have a college degree or some sort of certification that verifies your special skill. you have to be able to prove this. and if you do, you have to have a job offer. and you have to have an employer who is willing to process the paperwork for you. so are they willing to do all of this? it involves legal fees. i have many contacts in austin who do immigration law, and this

takes a long time. it is very complicated. and the employer has to be willing to wait for you to get processed and then hire you. so you can also have a long wait. so this is it. unless you are coming as a refugee and get acknowledged as a refugee, but many people apply to be a refugee, have accepted refugee status, but if you exceed the cap, and it is even lower for refugees, you are not coming to the united states. so, in fact, it is a very narrow door. so if you have questions, you need to get the microphone. all right, so we come back again to this chart. it shows us the impact of the national quota systems, which are running roughly through 1960, very successful in keeping

numbers very are down. then the 1960 act comes into play, it still imposes numeric quotas, but the door is opened up. and it, in fact, had many unanticipated outcomes. one of the big unanticipated outcomes was in terms of who actually came, wanted to immigrate to the united states after the mid-1960's. so if you think about the 1965 immigration act, 75% of the immigration visas are supposed to go to family preference. so u.s. citizens bringing over family members. if you are a member of congress, who do you think is most likely to come in the greatest numbers? we're talking at a time when the u.s. population was approximately 85% euro-american. so you can make a projection, and in fact, this was an explicit promise offered up by

ted kennedy, who continued to advocate for this cause that his brother had believed in. it was promised by emmanuelle cellar, aemanuel longtime advocate of immigration reform. we can change the laws to be less discriminatory, but were not going to change the composition of people who actually immigrate. so congress in this, they did not really understand how immigration works. because by the 1960's, some programs that the united states had implemented in places like western europe and japan to help them recover from world war ii, so we have the marshal program, and it had been extremely successful. so that people in europe did not have that much incentive to immigrate to the united states. so we have diminishing numbers of immigrants in europe. but people in parts of the world that had previously been largely

shut out -- so people in asia, people in central and south america, start integrating more. -- immigrating more and more. but but the pathway that is open -- but the pathway that is open to them is through the employment category. it produces a phenomenon of what we call [indiscernible] and once people are here through the family preference system, they actually start bringing in more and more family members because they are motivated by the comparative economic conditions. the united states is so much more prosperous. you know, even if you have a college degree, and the only gig you can get going in the u.s. is to run a gas station, that is still going to earn you a higher income, greater social stability, and you are going to be part of a democratic political country. fromny, many people

unstable countries, economically and politically, are motivated to come to the united states. but much of that immigration is not coming from europe. to that were i are linda and italy, whose economies were still -- ireland and italy, whose economies were still struggling. this was the movie you saw yesterday called "glenn." -- "brooklyn." so that economy will take more time to become prosperous. the problem with 1965 is that by this time, you had all of this diminished immigration across the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's. many irish and italians would like to immigrate, but they don't qualify, right? because they don't have the right employment criteria, they also don't have close enough relatives to apply for them. so there is this pressure, but

legally they cannot be admitted. and so congress undertakes to fix the situation by passing the 1990 immigration act, including the diversity lottery visa program. that explicitly, ted kennedy again was an advocate for this, that is included. so you are not changing the overall cap, but you are making sure visas can go to certain populations whose immigration you want to facilitate. but as it happened, in the 1990's, this is when ireland's economy picks up and italy's economy picks up, and so not that many irish and italians have come. some key beneficiaries of the diversity lottery visas have been from africa and central america. ok, so these are some of the changes that have happened.

and since the 1960's, literally the face of the united states has become transformed. we have much more in the way of an asian population, much more in the way of not just mexican, we will have a mexican population coming in and the prior practices of having circular migration become more difficult. and in the pressure -- and then the pressure is to actually get citizenship and choose a side. if you're going to try to stay in the united states, you need to try to remain. if you can try to get citizenship and bring over the rest of your family members. so we also have across the 1970's and 1980's, increasing immigration from further south in central america and latin america. these numbers also will be going up for a variety of reasons. so here we have -- these graphs

i have been showing you come from the congressional researcher specializing in immigration. so she has generously shared these. so here we have again, another -- graph showing us the leading countries sending immigrants in certain key decades. in the 1900s, there was a crisis about immigration. too many immigrations and coming from places that we are concerned they are not assimilating. they are coming in too great numbers, from places that don't resonate with the earlier immigration that was chiefly from places like england, germany, france, scandinavia. it has become italy, russia,

and austria-hungary. we have another shift in the 1920's and 1930's when the national quotas go into effect. and it's sort of keeps immigration in terms of composition in place. but after 1965, you can see there has been a transformation. and one of our closest neighbors is the key source of immigration. it is no longer canada as much. canada and the united states are roughly equivalent in terms of political systems and economics. the pressure is from mexico, where there is such a disparity in terms of our economies, but also significant immigration from asia and elsewhere in the american hemisphere. and these patterns have continued.

this is one of our challenges with regard to how immigration policy is functioning. so here -- this chart gives us another sense of tracking scale since 1900. it is tracking legal permanent resident admissions, people who arrive with immigrant visas. and as we have talked about, it is only people who arrive with immigrant visas who have a pathway to citizenship. these are people we decided to admit because we think they should be able to settle permanently. and eventually gain u.s. citizenship. so this is the respective numbers. as you can see presently, we are coming to the same peaks we had in the 1900s.

if we feel a sense of crisis now because of the scale of immigration, it mirrors what was happening about a century ago. but one of the -- well, there are two big differences, one is that now, the key sources of immigration are different, but also the numbers are sort of comparable in terms of the -- comparable, but in terms of the percentage of foreign-born, it was higher here. here we have this addition, a set of regularization of status as a result for the immigration reform and control act. ok? what happens in the 1980's is that there is a recognition that we continue to have a lot of immigration. but now it has become outside of the law, from mexico, but also

other parts of the american hemisphere. and people are sort of doing what they have been doing, they have been working, participating in communities, having families. but now they are subject being really outside of the law. so we are having this problem of unauthorized immigrant population. and there are serious conversations -- and i will say it is important to remember in the 1980's -- the 1980's was really the last time we had more of a bipartisan consensus on how to handle these sets of problems. and we will talk more about the immigration and reform control act, passed in 1986. irca? did -- it things irca had three main goals, but one of the goals was to acknowledge that we have this long-term resident population, they have lives here and are working here, let us undertake to allow those who do not have criminal records

to actually regularize their status. so this is when we get this bump. there was approximately 1.6 million people who had entered prior to -- i think the date is 1982, who were allowed to regularize their status. and then we also had about 1.1 million who had been allowed to come in as agricultural workers these areizing well, people that we have actually recruited, we need their labor. they were also allowed to regularize their status and gain permanent standing. ok? so this is the big bump. but then it did not resolve many of the problems. another key thing that happens is there is alongside that an effort to ratchet up resources to border control and enforcement, the policing function. this was the attempt to sort of make sure the immigration regulations are carried out effectively.

this is also to help us understand who is immigrating to the united states with immigrant visas, legal permanent residents admitted. so this goes with the preference system and gives you a sense of the kind of categories. respectively, the character of the immigrant population separate from countries of origin. the big chunk actually is immediate relatives. these are the spouses, minor children. in a car -- and they are, in fact, non-quota. they are not counted in the quota system. as long as you have this very close relationship to a u.s. citizen, you can immigrate alongside them. so this is not subject to numeric controls. have the family preferences, which then go to siblings, chiefly adult children.

this is also a significant percentage, but this is cap. -- capped. employment is the next most significant chunk, also subject to control. we have the refugees and asylum category. so refugees are subject to an annual cap, but not asylees. they are supposed to just apply and their case is evaluated. ylee, youalify as an as should be able to stay in the united states. these are the numbers coming through diversity lottery program. it is not that significant, but it is in there, and all others. here, we see this regularization of status, this big bump from irca, but one thing we think happened in the aftermath, people started to regularize

their status and then applied for relatives. this gives us a sense of who is coming and how they are coming. those able to come legally. so i am just going to give you a little bit more information about people arriving through the different preferences. so, family unification. historically, from the beginning of when the united states starts to seriously trying to regulate immigration, family unity has always been the chief priority. so even when we go back to the chinese expulsion loss, if you had legal right to enter the u.s. and were a man, you have the right to bring your family with you. so if you qualified as a chinese merchant, you could bring your family. if you qualified as a student, you could bring your family with you. this has historically always

been a protected status. if we go back and look -- let's just look here. it is in the 1920's, before we have systematic immigration regulation, the majority of immigrants to the u.s. are chiefly working aged men. because they come, they work, they make their decisions about whether they want to stay or not, but most of them are coming for economic purposes. so this is why we have regularly high levels of migration circulation. people come and go back. but when the united states becomes more serious about regulating immigration in the 1920's, and this is applying quotas to europe, if people immigrate, more and more they do so with their families. this is also because under the quota system, you actually get an immigrant visa, you are allowed to bring your family with you.

and they all go under that one admission. so now we have much more in the way of immigration in families, and it is only at this junction in the 1920's when the immigrants who come to the united states, we start to get gender parity. it is roughly equal between male and female. this is because a lot of times, we did not place caps on family immigration. does this make sense? and this carries on with 1952 and then 1965. if you are immediate family members, you are nonquota. we will not count you numerically against an overall numeric cap. so chain migration has also been the most common pattern for immigration. it is most common and it makes sense. if you have made this decision that you are going to emigrate

and stay someplace, you want to be with family members. particularly your spouse and children. but you do want to be in a complete family unit. graph,his, again, is a going from 1952, when this category is being written into the law explicitly and starting to be tracked. so we can sort of see -- this is just the overall numbers of people emigrating as immediate relatives of u.s. citizens. and here are spouses and children. orphans, international adoptions. also parents of u.s. citizens. this is sort of, this helps us see change over time, these in bulk numbers, it doesn't show as percentages of overall immigration.

here, this data has been broken down by region. again, starting in 1952, sort of significant but steady levels from europe, but we see real world,into parts of the asia is the green and north america is the red. this would be chiefly canada, and i also think the caribbean would be included in america. that is not sure. thatl have to check breakdown, but more and more from south america. theally, i think this is category that includes meso and central america as well. citizensarents of u.s. , asia -- asians seem much more eager to bring over their parents as well. you can see actually, in terms of the actual numbers, it

is not that high. in terms of based on these crude credit or is -- categories by region, who is availing themselves of this possible immigration pathway. this is to give a more up-to-date and detailed sense of who is coming in, under what status. in 2011, we had actually entering, 1.1 million illegal permanent residence. preferences family -- 1.1 million entering legal residents. next we have family preferences, we have refugees and asylum, employment. as we think about this, when we about the push -- we think about the push for immigration reform, which i think people generally agree is needed -- and there is a significant group that thinks numbers,o lower the the overall numbers of immigrants once again, right?

but then what we have to do is think about what categories of legal immigrants would we actually cut? how can we actually reduce the number? i show you this to help you process through, these are the kinds of choices and priorities that people are trying to sort protractede having struggles about this. another thing, what we talked about before, immigration restriction is very difficult to pass. it is difficult to get enough consensus around specific conditions, because people feel very, very strongly about what kinds of immigrants, what should -- relationships should be encouraged and preserved, and it is also about projecting into our future. who we admit now shapes the future of the country. so we have all kinds of -- in

fact, it has been incredibly difficult choices. is 4.4 million approved pending, and this is important to remember. there are all of these people who have applied, their status has been verified, they are legally eligible to immigrate, but the numeric cap. they are in line. so these are the people in line and these are their categories. right now, one of the pushes is to reduce what is being called chain migration, which is actually family migration. and they are taking aim at this groups here -- group here, u.s. siblings, because it is a significant jump. and the the tie is not as close but it is a significant family tie. and this is what we are going to cut if we decide that we, in fact, need to cut. there is somewhat more of a consensus about employment-based immigration, especially since we are going by the highly skilled.

legal immigration status, this is to give you a sense of process. so the department of labor will set or the categories of workers ,ho qualify as highly skilled these are people in these kinds of fields, the ones that we want to bring into the united states. you also have to demonstrate you are not displacing an american worker. you also need to have your employer be willing to file the paperwork, which means you are always going to have to hire a lawyer. this is costly and also time-consuming. of professions, s ofsans and scientist outstanding ability is one preference. or skilled or unskilled workers that there is a shortage in the united states. it is mostly skilled workers. there will be some variation.

you can also come in as an investor. so let's look at the numbers. from, this is coming dating after the 1962 immigration acts. there was first preference for people coming through skilled employment. and here we have the numbers after 1965, increase in terms of professional employment. and i think many people would say in this regard, the 1965 immigration act has been very successful. enabling the united states to bring in people with college degrees trained in particular fields. i think this is one area of consensus that if we are going to have an emphasis in our immigration regulation, this is the kind of immigrant we want to bring in more of. employment-based immigrants by region.

so it is significant, steady numbers from europe, big increase in terms of immigration from asia. so if you are from an asian country and able to have higher education, this is pretty much the only way to get to the united states. i will say, and it is something to track, there is a difference between having the education credential and being able to find employment in that area. we actually find a lot of people who have college degrees who cannot get -- who are not competitive in the primary employment market, and they end up in small businesses, or starting their own firms. no this is one of the reasons we have this disproportionate percentage of immigrant entrepreneurs. so lots of asians, more and more from the western hemisphere. this we have this

steady and increasing presence of immigration from africa. w, employment-based immigrants by professions. this sort of repeats what is already visibly true in the united states. contributes to the image of the model minority group, preponderantly in white-collar or technical fields, stem fields. and sort of overall educate -- education attainment levels, very, very high. this can also be part of policy, right? so if we think about immigration regulation and combine it with international education policies, we can see there is a set of strategies to this kind of outcome. dr. production in the united states universities extending from 1920 up to the

present, right? we all know there are a lot of asians person -- asian persons on university campuses, so a good percentage are asian-american. more and more, there are more international asian students. this has been true since the early 20th entry.

of international students work and graduate programs. also significant numbers from the western have us here -- hemisphere. i do not know if i have actually shown you this for, but international education programs starting from the earliest 20th is one of the structures the u.s. government starts pursuing an -- systematically to curb influence overseas. if you are educating people you can project will become influential persons in their home countries, it makes sense to educate them in the united states. so there is a contradiction between having discriminatory immigration laws, when it comes to students, students will come, be influenced, and leave. they are not immigrants. there is a big payoff, it is a relatively cheap way to have influence overseas. and this has been a growing set of programs, growing numbers of international students coming to the united states. what this graph captures is key countries that have sent international students to the united states. this is from the research for my second book. but one of the things we can see of particular interest to me, even though we have chinese exclusion laws, chinese are always among the top one or two countries to send students to the united states. and actually goes between india

and china, but now china far outstrips india in terms of the students coming to this country. now, a big change will happen with world war ii. there will be a realization, a growing realization that we are educating all of these very bright people in useful fields that we are not so committed to this idea that they will go away, we are actually willing and eager to have some of them stay and become americans and participate in the united states. and so i showed you that image of the two physicists who came to the united states for education, we go into the cold war, and suddenly it seemed like an extremely good idea to not force them to go back to communist china, but to have them stay in the united states. so this is where they both have the bulk of their careers. so, we are laying the groundwork

for remaking. and this is also to deemphasize what had previously been the emphasis on race and national origins in terms of immigration policy. we need an immigration policy that helps us to bring in the high-caliber persons that will bring positive change to the world, and we can't keep out those that will be burdens on the rest of us. and this is to get smarter about immigration policy, even as we move certain kinds of unacceptable discrimination. so this is a snapshot. this is data from 2013-2014. so if you have been on a university campus, you have seen and experienced this, the numbers of chinese students, international students. it's here -- it's more than the

combined total of groups in india, south korea, saudi arabia, canada, and taiwan. a lot of students coming from india and a lot from china. one of the big forces of change is in this group, undergraduate students. more and more undergraduate students coming from china. part of this is associated with the economic downturn that began in 2008, 2009. and also the retreat of public funding of higher education institutions. and so becoming more and more dependent on the higher tuitions paid by international students. so i talked to a colleague who is an administrator at a community college in seattle, and what she explained is that we need these chinese students to come so that we can pay for the programs for all of the other students. ms. -- this has gone from being away to try to cultivate influence overseas and build international relations to a fiscal necessity for many institutions.

so we have this major shift. with the h-1b visa program, there's a pathway for people who arrive to study for undergraduate but also graduate to get a job in the united states and remain here at least as a temporary skilled worker. ok, so this is making this, this is talking about some of the relationship between higher education programs and employment and immigration. ok, so here we have the 2010 data, ethnic asian students. we don't really have the disintegrated data between asian international and asian-american dude and. though -- students. so 25% of u.s. research doctorates. a huge chunk in certain stem fields. engineering, math, computer science, life sciences.

ok, now i will also comment to you that it is not that there is a natural affinity between asians and the sciences. back to the 1950's, you have oral testimony, we can discern the patterns that taiwanese students knew that if they were to get admitted to a school in the united states and could get employment, they could stay in the united states. the fields they were most likely to accomplish this were science and engineering. very, very practical sets of considerations in terms of choosing the field to study. and i also know this from family history on my father's side, for -- four siblings that all majored in the sciences. my grandfather, who was a confucian scholar, make sure they studied the sciences. he was not letting them go into

the humanities. and they all immigrated. now, we can see this reflected through the relationship to employment. about half of all indian immigrants receiving green cards in 2011 did so through employer sponsorship. and many people can come over, try to get jobs coming over from india, but many can also get jobs because they are in graduate school in the united states. you know, and predictably, 70% of adults aged foreign-born indian americans have college degrees. the national average is 25%, 30%. so this is more than double. recent indian

immigrants holding college in 2010, up from 52.4% in 1980. this is how you know the immigration law is working. we are on this increasing trajectory. but it is also a skimming mechanism. if you compare against the general indian population, only 10% have an opportunity to attend some sort of coursework post high school. this can range greatly in terms of quality. we are really skimming off of the elite of the indian population. i think there is also another difference that you are not necessarily educated in english, but many of the indian students attending elite institutions will already be fully conversant in english. so you surmount the language barrier. in 2011, almost 60% of h-1b visa recipients were born in india.

is set h-1b visa program out there as an additional set of visas. the numbers can vary year-to-year. congress has the capacity to vary the cap. and the language is mutual. we just want better capacity to bring in more highly skilled workers that are needed in particular economic sectors. most of the visas are allocated to i.t. companies. 60% are from india. there is something going on there. i mean, i don't think we have time to go into it, but there are certain ways in which certain kinds of preferences and systems get embedded into law and practice. we have already looked at this chart. i think what i have been talking about in terms of the employment preferences and how they have worked, sort of flesh out this relationship between high

achievement among certain immigrant populations. this is a lot of times, through the high attainment of asian americans, i used as an example that the united states is functioning as a multiracial democracy. but it has also shaped, the high levels of attainment are because they are coming as immigrants. not that they are from the -- they have been in the united states and have been given opportunities to be trained and enter into certain fields. and so if you weigh that against the lower attainment by african-americans, you can see that relationship. ok. we can talk more about this. this is just data. you can visit this link from the pew foundation. they produce a lot of quantitative data and reporting. one of the things i wanted to

illustrate that we can see here of the largely immigrant , populations, which sort of reflect the model minority stereotype most intensively, but the ways in which this is a product of immigration is that in 1960, we had such a tiny population of indians in the united states. the bulk of the population, which has continued to double every decade going back to 1990, the bulk of the population is screened by immigration preferences. this is overwhelmingly an immigrant population disproportionally chosen by the employment preferences. this is the power of immigration policy. you can do this with your immigration laws. it doesn't tell you what to do, sort of a long-standing minority population, how to bring them

up, but there are other things you can do in terms of bringing in people from other countries. this is why it is criticized. we don't have that much time, but this shows us 1967, people who applied to change their student visas. the highest numbers were coming from asia, right after the law changes. in fact, china, which actually was taiwan, was a severe sufferer of brain drain. very, very high numbers. india and korea would be the next highest place at this point in time. i will go through this quickly. so this is just to give us a set of ways in which migration patterns can change. and so here, this high levels of

high levels of taiwanese students going overseas, high levels of taiwanese students in science programs, and they don't really return. they stay in the united states. at one juncture, it was up to the 1970's, 90% or more stay in the united states. they are mostly coming to the united states. but something happens in the 1970's, because by the 1970's, taiwan's economy has started to develop and it is moving into an advanced economy stage. now, part of it has to do with the trickle of taiwanese students that go back to help set taiwan on this path toward development, another significant component is that the united states, between 1950 and 1965, investing a lot of capital in taiwanese agriculture. and with infrastructure, it is

sending experts over to advise taiwan. the united states is deeply committed to taiwan's economic development and eventual political stabilization. though -- so in the 1950's, 1960's, there were not that many jobs for highly trained technicians, engineers, and scientists. but by the time you get to the 1970's, it has changed. so there is more and more incentive for people to go back. again, this is something to think about in terms of, if we are thinking about how to manage immigration flows, actually if we help certain countries to advance economically, we can start managing that immigration better. and in the case of taiwan -- but there have been other places. japan, and as we were talking about, these european countries with the marshall plan, the u.s. has done this in the past , and quite successfully. and i am not going to go into these, but this sort of captures

-- right now, taiwan is sort of a leading manufacturer of sort -- of certain components in the i.t. industry. a lot of these corporations and research facilities and manufacturing firms are based in this area. so we have a new transnational phenomenon. so what happens to many of the scientists and technicians as -- is that they start working in silicon valley. so they sort of establish a sense of the field, they are participating in cutting-edge research, they are working with the leading-edge companies in these areas. they also get an understanding of how to raise capital. at a certain juncture they realize it makes sense to relocate some of the manufacturing over to taiwan. and they are in a better position to do this because they already have these experiences in california. and this is -- they actually are key actors in the globalization

of both the united states and the taiwan economy. ok, does this make sense? phenomenon ahis lot with indian-american engineers. there is a fairly integrated relationship between silicon valley and computer i.t. businesses in india. and so this is another reason why you have this disproportionate number of the visas going to indian workers. there is a way in which there is a very close integration between immigration policy and certain kinds of economic development. refugee and asylee. so this has been at the forefront of most recent events. and so this is just to mark out the difference between refugees and asylum-seekers. to refugees, the key difference is refugees will apply for refugee status and then try to

apply for refugee immigrant visa s while they are away from the united states. they are in some sort of location, many, many refugees are in camp. one of the key aspects of being a refugee is your facing persecution and unsafe conditions in your homeland. you cannot go back. but refugees, before they come to the united states, have already been vetted and authorized. they already have an immigrant visa. but as i said before, you can go through all of these processes, but if the united states has hit its cap, the annual cap of how many refugees they will admit, you have to wait. so there is another line. -- i will add this. you can see the way the united states then gets to control refugee admissions. because you just have that number. you can say, we know we are only

going to admit this number of refugees. one of the tensions and concerns around asylum-seekers is that you don't have the same control. the international law and u.s. law is that asylum-seekers can come to the united states and request asylum. and then their case is supposed to be evaluated. this is the law. but the united states can't control them, the number that apply, you are just supposed to take them in and evaluate their cases and make a decision, yes or no. this also goes to the level of resources needed to evaluate those cases. they have to be adjudicated. and you know, there are all of these kinds of competing concerns. so this is sort of the international law and these are the sort of, what is required of the united states. the united states can apply its own set of criteria as to who is

asylee or an not. there is actually an executive order in place that says that women fleeing domestic abuse should be considered as asylum-seekers. and this is being changed. the government is supposed to follow the principle of non-resettlement, which is that you can't force people to go back. if you force them to go back, they are in danger. we know some people have been forced to go back and in the -- and, in fact, have been killed. this is another part of international law. so this is -- this tracks the numbers and places of origin of refugees since 1975, and we will have a big surge in terms of southeast asian refugees from vietnam, but also cambodia and laos.

. mung are also a prominent population. eventsied to political around the world, and the united states will change it definition andstandards of what groups populations it is considering to going further back, 19 60, we would have a significant influx of refugees coming in from cuba. here.can see numbers we have a response to what was happening in kosovo. prearranged, preauthorized immigration by refugees. ok. this is major refugee and asylum act. 1956, the cuban resettlement act.

a set of resources and programs and policies to help humans make their lives in the united states. support for a period of time, having it placed us a, the idea that eventually will get employed. someure many of you know cuban exiles, there is a strong sentiment of eventual return. this is a real struggle. anause this was definitely anti-communist movement, the cubans have received some of the best conditions in terms of their refugee of status and resources to remake their lives in the united states. of the latino population, cubans share some of the highest achievement levels.

so ted know, the donut king comes in at this juncture, 1975. ' morethe united states than two decades involvement in , the united states feels tremendous ib relation and it is anti-communist. it is driven primarily by politics. 910 -- 1980 refugee act was one of the last things that jimmy carter does. he wants a more permanent refugee status that allows the united states to be more responsive of crises as they arrived. so this is legislated. the 1990 act, this is partially a response ted -- across the as as -- this shows up politicization of refugee

release -- across the 1980's, the none -- the united states has increased numbers of people for people seeking asylum from places like guatemala and el salvador. there are high levels of violence and authoritarian governments. some of this is the product of her u.s. involvement in these areas. of have this big surge central americans arriving in the united states claiming asylum. are defined as economic refugees. to find aeeking better place to have jobs, not as political refugees. so their claims are turned down. ofthere will be a series extensive protest movements. i don't know how many people. i was in college, so i remember these marches. so extensive protests around this denial of their claims and

this leads to changes in policy. one thing is a 1990 immigration act gives a protected status until their cases are decided. a series of cases are filed. the american baptist churches require -- we have the american baptist church cases to require the united states to change its process for evaluating asylum, in a way that more of these cases can be recognized and can be accepted. so more salvadorans and guatemalans are are able to

legally regularize their status. and this is another act further along this line, the 1992 chinese protection act. it followed in the aftermath of the 1989 student protests in china, massive demonstrations publicized around the world, so some of the student leaders were able to flee, but there were already many chinese students in the united states. and this act provides them with amnesty. it allows them to regularize their status and also folded in theirre were people protesting the one-child policy in china. so this is anti-communist. and there has traditionally been sympathy for chinese refugees. the vitas case was to roll that if somebody is seeking asylum or is trying to have their status worked out or adjudicated, you can't keep them in detention and definitely.

-- indefinitely. so these are some of the key cases, these are again broken down by region. i will say this with david he can share with you and you can go back and look at some of the data more. it's important to remember that the bulk of immigration is non-immigrant entries. this is just to think about who these people are. but it is a tricky area as well because we actually know that roughly 60% of people who become unauthorized immigrants in fact a ride legally through arrive legally through nonimmigrant visas. it's not illegal, is not officially a crime, it's a civil infraction to overstay your visa. but then it does leadve you vulnerable to significant kinds of punitive measures, because there are people who have just stayed. i knew people who apply for asylum and got denied but they had been here many years, or their case fell through the cracks, and then it is picked up

and they are deported because they fell out of status. so these are just visas which document your legal rights of entry, but remember there are many different kinds of these these visas, and they have different conditions attached. a tourist visa, how long does it allow you to work, how long does it allow you to stay? i have a student from china, her these it was just approved, she's participating in the fulbright program. f is for students. h-1 is for temporary high skilled workers, we also have the h2 program for temporary unskilled workers. so these are non-immigrants. this is to give you a sense of scale, nonimmigrant visas issued by the department of state.

millions. this is operating at much higher levels than immigrant visas which are for permanent settlement. this is nonimmigrant admissions at u.s. ports of entry. 180,000 million. these are the i-94 admissions. so when you go through the immigration process, it they issue an i94 to register that you entered. compared to immigrant entries, this is operating at a much higher level. this is actually for the nonimmigrant visas issued to give you a sense of distribution. temporary workers are a significant chunk, and then cultural and employment exchange. these are maybe programs that would last a few years or a few months.

now, enforcement. and this is where we have a lot more attention and controversy. this sets out the terms of the immigration reform and control act. it identifies area where, areas where the 1965 immigration act didn't handle well, we still hadn't worked out good procedures for managing the roughly 11 million, 12 million, presently unauthorized immigrants in the united states. the reality is that most are not criminals, most have jobs, most have families, but they just lack that formal legal standing. and what do we do about this population? we don't want this population to keep growing.

what do we do with the people who are here? so it is how we develop a policy that is humane and recognizes the conditions under which we are operating. at the same time, i think most people would prefer that we are not enacting the kinds of enforcement measures that are now being employed. this is one of our quandaries. but this is to set forth efforts in the past. the immigration reform and control act addressed these problems. a bipartisan congressional committee was set up and they came up with these strategies as an effort to deal with the problem as it was emerging 40 years ago. so it's a long-standing set of issues. there were 3 legs. tougher border enforcement, and we see the resources given over to border enforcement agencies will steadily be increasing, so more resources, more staffing,

more building actually of walls or fences, extensive use of technology, for example drums are used extensively to police certain areas and certain areas are just really, really inhospitable, although cj seems to be implying that if we take the u.s. economy there would be this employment and people won't be motivated to come anymore. but that's not a realistic option. penalties for employers who hire unauthorized immigrants, there's an effort to introduce this aspect of immigration enforcement, and a recognition that one of the reasons, the chief reason so many people are coming and staying on is that so many people are hiring them against the law.

so this is another enforcement branch. and then, legalization of unauthorized immigrants who had been in the u.s. for 5 years or more. this is a recognition is that they had been here, they had jobs, dad families,, they had families, recognizing that these people now have claims on u.s. society. so 1.6 million were able to regularize their status. 1.1 agricultural workers who were here, were also allowed to go from temporary to permanent status. it didn't work. you still continue to have high levels of illegal border crossings. one of the outcomes people think happened is that people rushed to regularize their status and then tried to bring in family members, but this produced very long waiting lines, so people are still trying to come outside of the law. we have this ongoing migration.

so a further effort to strengthen enforcement aspects is legislated in 1996, in the clinton administration. construction of barriers, it increasing sanctions on employers, and another problem with the penalties for employers was a ballooning of document fraud. it's hard to figure out a system that can reliably evaluate people's statuses and identities. we hadn't had that point yet, either. so we ratcheted things up again in 1996, still not that successfully. but this tracks the expansion of resources for border patrol budget and border patrol officers, steadily, steadily increasing. this is a breakdown going up to 2013, 2014, budget, staffing, where the department of homeland

security money goes. this is 2015, so we can see this breakdown. this is federal emergency, this is border patrol, secret service, this is immigration processing, immigration and customs enforcement, and this is the transport security administration. this also gives you a sense of, you see the relative size of there is agencies by numbers of employees. somehow the coast guard doesn't get that much my but it has a lot of employees. -- that much money, but it has a lot of employees. so we are devoting more and more

of our domestic budget to this challenge. border patrol apprehensions actually seem to have gone down. this is one way of tracking. i have a slide for tomorrow which, we are spending more money but not getting more effective in terms of solving these sorts of problems. this is another aspect of enforcement, that visas are denied, immigrant and nonimmigrant, because people don't qualify. there is this relationship between the nonimmigrant visa and people overstaying, where consular authorities consider you more likely to overstay your visa and try to immigrate permanently, it's much harder to get that visa. places like the philippines, very hard to get even a tourist

visa. so this is an enforcement strategy. these are denials of legal, permanent resident applications. if you have been a public charge or are considered likely to become a public charge, that is still at play. removals and illegal presence, you were asking about this, illegal presence, if you had a prior convection or record of this, you can also not, back. labor certification problems, i have friends who are immigration attorneys and this is getting harder and harder to get. this is the problem. we will return to this tomorrow, this significant level of an unauthorized population who are legally, legally have diminished rights and protections. and this is a long-standing population. and what do we do about this population? we need to somehow resolve this problem.

so this is what we looked at yesterday, deportations from the united states, which is the red line eerie deportation numbers are actually going down. this graph was compiled by adam goodman, who is also a historian. what he is concerned about is that the removals are actually on the increase. so rather than deporting people, which if you recall requires that you are first evaluated to see if you actually should be deported. you go to immigration court, if you are formerly deported then you are not allowed to come back and you go down in the record. that's why a lot of people opt for voluntary returns, you just leave, there is no record and you can come back eventually. what is happening more is that we have a rise in the number of removals as a strategy, and the removal is the same thing as a

deportation, very similar except you don't get a hearing. you are just some airily removed -- just summarily removed and you are put on record. you can be banned from coming back for 10 years or longer, and if you get repeated removals, if you get removed again, you are banned permanently. so that is the distinction, it is a ratcheting up of the enforcement measures. this is 22-year trends in alien removals, also tracking similar phenomena. this one looks more authoritative, but this one would go to congress eerie this is to track the criminal aliens, go to congress. this is to track the criminal aliens. this is the%age of overall -- this is the percentage of

overall removals. i feel that a lot of people who are being removed in this way are not criminals, but are being removed nonetheless. we are just past 10, it's a lot of information. this is just going back to the new york times, we can look at the maps were people settled. and we could sort of see how the demographics of different areas of the united states have changed as a product of the 1965 immigration act. we could also have questions, because you have been very good about holding your questions. i'm sure there are some parts that were confusing or need clarification. >> my question is regarding overstaying one's visa. what are the penalties for overstaying one's visa, and has there been efforts made to make

that more punitive? >> you can be removed. you can be deported. that is the punishment. it is regarded as a civil infraction. so it's like getting a traffic ticket. so you are not formally a criminal but you are subject to removal. a couple of years ago we had a ut student whose family arrived and applied for asylum and it had gone for years and years and she lived a good portion of her life here in texas, she was enrolled at the university of texas, and then the family's case was decided against them. so the parents were removed a couple of weeks later.

we knew this was happening, and then the student was also removed. so it is also to, i mean, we call it things like deportation, removal. but if we actually considered them as punishments, it really is sort of extreme, removing people for life from this place where they have really made their lives. in many cases now, it involves a family separations. so if you have a u.s.-born kid and one parent doesn't have status and is removed, the entire family has to move with them, are we are talking about separating that family forever. that is something to think about. it's actually an extreme punishment, and to think about relative to what is actually going on, the dynamics of why people come, why they come without documentation, why they

overstay a visa, this is something we have to set on the table and factor in as we figure out what we do in this situation. >> you were saying more money is being spent on border control, and yet it's not as effective in minimizing unauthorized entry. >> we haven't resolved the problem. one of the measures of that is to look at who is actually being caught at the border. people may be choosing other ways to get into the united states, we still have the persistence of this population. we also have, when we talk about tomorrow, the operations of various travel bans, there is the legality of it and also their effectiveness as policy.

so there is this set of trade-offs in what is being claimed and increasing these budgets and increasing the size of certain agencies, and what we are composting. and there are other kinds of trade-offs we are making in this process. so i had allocated that to talk more about tomorrow. >> if a country doesn't meet its quota for refugee visas, are those redistributed to other countries? >> one of the things that happened recently is that the u.s. hasn't been filling its refugee quotas. we have more refugee visas allocated in the past year in the and a half then we have actually been admitting refugees.

you have to have the qualifications as a refugee verified, but one final step is to get that refugee visa from the united states. and the united states hasn't actually been issuing them, and certain countries have been cut off altogether from refugee visas. this isn't going to give you numbers, but it gives you a sense of the international scope of this problem. a chinese artist has made a documentary called human flow, and it's visually stunning but incredibly depressing because he visits a lot of refugee camps around the world. to me it underscores this problems of people in places they are not supposed to be, massive refugee camps.

so for example with many southeast asian refugees that come to the u.s., they spent years, some more than a decade, in these refugee camps in thailand. unless they are given a visa, right now many countries that are politically stable, economically prosperous, are fighting not to take refugees. this is a conflict that is undermining the european union. it's not the case that if one country doesn't take them, another country will. there are massive refugee camps in turkey. this is another set of problems. and we cannot resolve them. but human flow is on netflix. it's really long but it is really, really sobering. lisa has had her hand up.

>> thank you. i'm looking at the labor aspect, and you made a comment that they have to prove they are not displacing an american worker. and i can't understand, from a practical standpoint of an employer, how that is proven, what kind of documentation? i don't know. i don't actually know. you'd have to ask an immigration attorney. but that was written into the 1965 act, organized labor, labor representatives, and this was one of the rationales of the chinese exclusion act, they have traditionally sought to make sure there wasn't unfair competition.

so that gets written into the 1965 immigration. i'm not sure how you actually prove it. but that is one of the things, one of the boxes you would have to check. >> you mentioned the presence of international students at a lot of universities and how they depend on them. you also point out there is a contingent that does well and goes on to achieve doctorates. but i'm wondering also, are there some who struggle because english is not the first language, and is there a dropout rate with that population? >> i don't know about dropout rates. at ut, the students from china i have had have been really first-class, really proactive students, a real pleasure to have in class. they are a little self-selecting if they are taking a class on asian history, right, they are

really interested. but it is the students who are coming from china who are then lodged in a less-selective program, then there are real issues. at the community college level, if you are going to be admitting students you have to make provisions for them if they are international students, and language difficulties, they probably had preparatory coursework that is not exactly in alignment with what you would expect from a domestically-educated u.s. student. many of these programs in fact do not serve the international students well. and there is also a strong sense of consumers rights. these students know they are coming and are paying a lot of money and they have a certain level of expectation. that is not to say that these students are necessarily a good

fit, so it can be very, very problematic. >> my question, 01:28:39 my question has to do with brain drain. you just presented this theory of brain circulation, you looked at taiwan and the circulation of people back there. outside of asiatic nations and places like india and china, will people do tend to return and circulate, how is brain circulation affecting other nations where we have seen a demographic shift of people coming to the united states, for example parts of africa and other countries? >> i don't have specific research on that. i don't know they have been studied. charlotte should know. she sent me information for her

introduction and perhaps she would have a better sense. perhaps her scholars are working on this. i don't know. i don't know what the is. -- what the scholarship is. for the research i have done, the main scholar who works on this is ans annalise, and the populations that she has looked at have been israel and the mideast, not africa. >> in relation to the brain drain, what are some strategies countries have taken to mitigate that flow, to keep their and their own higher education systems and retain those students? this is one of the things

that i was thinking about as i was focusing on international education and its relationship to immigration. there are certain kinds of migration which are facilitated by both sending and receiving countries. international education is one of those areas. the united states is doing it because there's a realization this is one of the ways we can cultivate international influence. we actually like foreign students, even though they may be from nonwhite countries, because they are the elites. we want this kind of person. when i say that americans like chinese students, it is deeply, deeply true. from the perspective of sending countries, it is actually also very useful. if we look at countries that don't have as much in the way of higher education, training, and research facilities, because

they haven't yet developed them, it's actually a good thing to be able to send your students away. the trick is eventually getting them to come back. taiwan is the case i know the best. the government observes a lot of the students are just sort of staying away. we would like them to come back. there's also a recognition that even if they came back, our economy is not at the point where we could usefully employed many of them. so let them stay away but sort of track it and eventually provide incentives to encourage them to come back. this is a very active strategy for certain countries that rely a lot on export of persons, but we don't think about this as much in the u.s. because we think mostly about people coming here. but on countries that rely on sending people away, there is a systematic tracking and set of programs that tries to get people to come back or at least send back resources, send back capital, send back remittances,

but also send back expertise. i'm forgetting his name, but he comes to the u.s., studies computer science, goes into the i.t. industry, so he invests in establishing i.t. programs, i think it's at michigan state but also universities back in india. so this is something you can perform multiple functions. with the indian i.t. industry, i remember reading this account that many of the pioneers, to study in the united states, they go back to india and many are instrumental in establishing the indian institutes of technology, one of the main higher education programs for them. and there is a juncture at which they have to decide, are they going to go with ibm or the computer mainframe system in england, and they pick ibm.

this means in terms of educational systems, and also global businesses, they are oriented toward the united states. it's this kind of relationship, that these are people who are integrated into advancing globalization of certain kinds of economic relationships. and we after member this is not a win-lose situation, it's a set of collaborations that advances the interests of the participants. so this is one of the ways to think about that, the benefits of migration, and to think of brain drain not as lost, not, not as loss, but that it can also be a form of helping you develop economically, if the

economies of the homeland countries get to that level. we don't have this happening in comparable ways say, in the philippines. but it is to think of, what are the possibilities of this ? let's take one last question and then i think i should let you go. and then you have a session with dave. >> i believe you said earlier that salvadoran refugees or asylum-seekers were rejected based on economic reasons. can you go into further detail about how that was justified? they were categorized as economic refugees because the u.s.

administration did not want to deal with them, did not want to acknowledge their claims and allow them to settle in the u.s, and the way to do this was to portray them as economic refugees, not political refugees. because they don't fit the definition of refugee that the u.s. government is choosing to employ. a similar differentiation was s applied to cubans as opposed to haitians, and there were a lot of protests around this, push back, and it led to court cases and lots of changes in policy. one of the thing that happens with the american baptist church's settlement is that a different process for evaluating asylum is then produced, and then they go back and reevaluate the cases. so people managed to stay in the united states, but this is where the sanctuary movement has its genesis. and a lot of people are allowed to have their cases reevaluated

and be recognized as asylum seekers, and then stay on in the united states. but it is how you legally categorize, and it was pointed out this was a choice the u.s. government is deciding to make because they don't want to deal with these people. not a cheerful way to end, but we will talk about post-9/11 and we have a final session where we can think about how history is part of our present and our future. maybe we can come up with something more cheerful to think about. thank you. history tv is in prime time next week on c-span 3. starting monday at 8:00 p.m.

eastern, a discussion in the role of black teachers in the south who fought against full segregation. tuesday, a symposium on the concept of liberty, exploring how the ideas of freedom, law, and liberty have changed throughout history. histories,on oral our women in congress series continues. thursday, historians look at the role of espionage in u.s. complex in the past century and a half. and on friday, the world war 2 series about the outbreak of world war ii to pearl harbor and the rise of a fire attorneys of in germany, italy, and japan. watch american history tv next week in prime time on c-span 3. of presence from james monroe to gerald r. ford