ImmigrationRecorded

Alrighty, welcome everyone to another exciting lecture in the course. And here today, we turn our attention to another key development in post-World War II America: another way to think about changing notions of citizenship in the post-World War II period.

Here, we're going to talk about immigration and immigration reform, and how changes in the 1960s, during that Civil Rights era, would further the debate in this period regarding citizenship—who is an American—and forever change America in ways we feel today. So, here in this lecture, we're talking about another key development in the 1960s alongside Civil Rights that will have a profound impact on how we imagine citizenship, how we think about that question so central to American history in this period and throughout our history: who is an American?

After World War II, the Truman administration wanted to revisit and revise our immigration laws, to put them more in line with America's economic interests and needs coming out of World War II, and most importantly, more in line with our Cold War ideals. In 1924, the United States passed the Johnson-Reed Act, that for the first time in our history established broad, large-scale immigration restrictions.

Now, prior to the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, there were specific nations that were targeted as to be excluded from being a source of immigration. You have the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s; you had the Gentleman's Agreement in 1907, which forbid immigration from Japan. But the 1924 Act was designed to effectively close off our borders from immigrants, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, which had been sources of immigration in the early 20th century. It was 1920s isolationism; prevailed in America. There was this urging to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. Uh, there was intense nativism, racism in the reactionary 1920s. It was the aftermath of the Russian Revolution; there was fear that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe could foment a revolution in the name of communism within the United States. All this explains why in 1924 we adopted the Johnson-Reed Act.

Well, President Truman, in the late 40s, wanted to revise those restrictions and the quota system that the Johnson-Reed Act had established. The Johnson-Reed Act established very strict quotas, meaning we would only take a certain number of immigrants from nations around the world. Instead, Truman wanted a policy that would end the quota system, allowing for people to come from parts of the world that had been effectively closed off as sources of immigration; have a more flexible system that could accommodate the labor needs of a growing American economy in the post-World War II period, where America was entering that period of sustained economic growth after World War II and would need increasing sources of labor from around the world. Furthermore, Truman wanted a policy that would offer asylum to those fleeing oppression from communist states around the globe. It was the early Cold War period; it was the early containment period. America was attempting to establish itself as this beacon of freedom and democracy and wanted to offer asylum to those fleeing communism and reinforce that image of the United States as a beacon of freedom and democracy around the world. Also, uh, Truman wanted to emphasize family reunification, so that immigrants who had come prior to the '24 Act could now bring members of their family and reunify the family. And this was always rooted not just in a recognition of a more humane policy, but really on one designed to promote immigrant success, because when people come as families, or when people come and are able to connect with family members, they create a base of support, which means as immigrants they're more likely to succeed; they can pull resources; they can help others find jobs. If you come as an immigrant without that support system, it's harder for you to succeed. So family reunification was always based on, as well, economic interests for the United States. If immigrants come as families, if they come with a web of connections, they're more likely to thrive and be good little taxpayers. So Truman wanted to, uh, end the Johnson-Reed Act that had been established in 1924, that had a very strict quota system that cut off immigration for most of the world, and have a system that could meet America's economic interests and needs in a growing postwar economy, but most importantly, put our immigration policy in line with our Cold War ideals, making America a beacon of freedom and democracy in the eyes of those around the world who were attempting to win over their hearts and minds.

Didn't really work to say to people around the globe in the early Cold War period, "Look to America as a beacon of freedom and democracy, but you're not welcome here." That was part of the Cold War. But as we learned in our lectures on the Cold War, the Cold War was also a period of McCarthyism, of the Red Scare, of an intense scrutiny of who is loyal and who is potentially disloyal. It was also a period where there's a great fear that communism could take root in the United States and a revolution could break out and destroy that American ideal of the post-World War II period. And it would be that element of the Cold War that ultimately would prevail, because Truman does not get an opportunity to sign into law immigration reform in his vision. Instead, in 1952, Congress passed the McCarran-Walter Act, which kept the quota system in place, basically reaffirmed the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which was designed to cut off immigration from most of the world. And the McCarran-Walter Act, in addition to reinforcing the quota system and foreclosing an opportunity for more open immigration policy, actually intensified the power of the U.S. government to deport immigrants who were here if they were suspected of being communists, even if they were citizens, had naturalized, the citizens of this nation.

So the Cold War was a chance for us to rethink our immigration policy. It was again a moment where we were stylizing ourselves as a beacon of freedom and democracy in contradistinction to the Soviet Union, which we were inclined to represent as a repressive state. But also the Cold War was a time of intense fear of outsiders, outside ideologies, a time of great fear in regards to whether a communist revolution could arrive. It was a time where Joseph McCarthy is running around fanning the flames of communist fear, and ultimately it would be that latter element of the Cold War that would prevail in the McCarran-Walter Act: a good example of how the early containment period was about containing not just communism around the globe, but also the threat of a communist insurrection within the United States that was associated with immigrants, particularly from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Another example of the very repressive immigration policy of the 1950s: in 1954, the U.S. government launched an effort that it officially named with a racial slur, Operation _____, and this targeted people who were here in the country who had overstayed work visas as part of the Bracero Program during World War II. As the economy boomed, as Americans could find good-paying jobs making bombs, bullets, and boots in factories, it created a labor shortage in agriculture. In the 1930s, there was an effort to deport Mexican immigrants, and there were many who were deported because it was the 1930s; it was the Great Depression, and jobs in the fields were coveted by American citizens. But here comes World War II, and American citizens would much prefer working in factories than working in the fields of agriculture, and that meant that now all those Mexicans who had been deported in the 1930s were now missing, and people said, "Hey, where'd all those Mexicans go when we need them?" That led to the Bracero Program, a program that began in 1942 that was designed to welcome in Mexican immigrants as temporary laborers. Well, uh, Mexicans who came as temporary laborers, meeting that labor demand during World War II and its aftermath when American citizens weren't inclined to work in the fields, they bought homes, they had children, children who were born here who, under the 14th Amendment, were citizens, and they often overstayed their visas. There were good-paying jobs here, and they wanted to continue working those jobs. The Bracero Program was a very flawed program in many ways, and it helped increase what we may describe as illegal immigration when Braceros who had come, who had been actively recruited, whose labor was vital to sustaining the billion-dollar agricultural industry here in Southern California, overstayed their visas; they were then targeted in this action of Operation _____, yeah, that was its actual name, that rounded up Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans, their children who, again, were American citizens, and deported them. By 1955, 1 million people have been deported under this effort. So people who, again, were actively recruited by the Bracero Program, who were told, "We need you; your labor is vital; we can't convince our own people to work in the field," were later targeted, also exemplary of the very repressive, reactionary spirit of the 1950s. Containment is a great way to understand the 1950s in many, many ways, and also a good way to understand this reactionary response that dashed the hopes of the Truman administration for a more open immigration policy.

But then in the 1960s, there was a greater opportunity to realize what Truman had failed to realize in the early 1950s. In the 1960s, we would pass sweeping immigration reform that is really our focus here in this lecture—why, why we're able to do this in the 1960s, something that was impossible in the 1950s and seems to be absolutely impossible today. Why were we able to pass large-scale immigration reform? Well, part of it was the decline of McCarthyism, the hysteria that had prevailed in the 1950s. People look back on the McCarthy era in a shameful way, seeing it as excessive in its, um, hysteria, the way in which it targeted Americans, pitted Americans against each other. So, uh, that hysteria dissipated; that fear of a communist takeover in America seemed to be overblown. McCarthy was dead by 1957, and people looked back on the period of his prominence as a shameful one.

Another key factor: Civil Rights in the 1960s. African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans are protesting, are in the streets demanding equality, opportunity. Major landmark legislation has passed: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which opened opportunities to racial minorities. We were in the 1960s thinking differently about race, citizenship, and that stubborn question of who is an American. And that context is vital to understanding immigration reform in this period, where we would open our borders anew and, with it, reimagine the American community.

The reason why that happens is that in the early 60s, America was experiencing the Civil Rights Revolution, this great racial reckoning where our own citizens were demanding opportunity, freedom, the right to vote, to be full and equal citizens. As we talked about in regards to Civil Rights, Civil Rights is about racial minorities in this country not demanding more, but simply to be recognized as full and equal members of this nation. And so, in that context, there was an opportunity to think about those questions in regards to immigration. And that's why in 1965, the same President Lyndon Johnson who signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, will, in the same year of '65, at the foot of the Statue of Liberty—a symbol of America's inclusivity and openness to immigrants—sign into law the Hart-Celler Act, changes American ways that we profoundly feel to this day in the early 21st century.

The Hart-Celler Act did a number of things, and it's a very complex document, but let's center on its most consequential element: it basically overturned the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act that set up the quota system, and did so in a way that was designed to severely cut back on immigration, particularly from parts of the world that in the 1920s were seen as unacceptable as sources of immigration. It opened up immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, and that was really part of the Hart-Celler Act's origins. There was a great, uh, effort to allow immigrants from those parts of the world to come, but because it ended the quota system, it meant that it now no longer mattered what country you came from. As we'll talk about in this lecture, it had unintended consequences, because it meant that now immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, also not subject to a quota system, could come, and those parts of the world would be the major sources of immigration after '65, which helps explain so much of the America we live in today, which has become much more heterogeneous, diverse, pluralistic with this influx of immigrants from those parts of the world. The Hart-Celler Act had an overall cap on the number of immigrants who could come, so again it wasn't nation-specific. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 was the quota system; it said, "We will only take this number of immigrants from your country," and the only countries that had high quotas in the '24 Act were Northern and Western European nations, nations with populations that were white and Protestant. But with the Hart-Celler Act, there was an overall cap, first set very low at 290,000, and greatly expanded going forward, meaning that we'll take that number of immigrants from anywhere—no longer nation-specific. And even when the cap was first established so low at 290,000, it was already flexible to expand, because the Hart-Celler Act also had an exception for people who were seeking refugee status, fleeing communist nations. So now, is the Hart-Celler Act motivated, developed in line with, and through the Civil Rights revolutions of the spirit? It's very much a Cold War artifact, because it was again about establishing this vision of America as welcoming to people fleeing oppression, this beacon of liberty, this image of America as that beacon of liberty. And so people who were seeking refugee status, fleeing communist nations, could also come as immigrants even if the cap had already been met. Many elements that Truman had envisioned when he first advanced the cause of immigration reform in the late 40s, early 50s, were eventually addressed in the Hart-Celler Act. There was an emphasis on family reunification. This is a good example of how the Hart-Celler Act, which still defines American immigration policy to this day, how it remains controversial in our contemporary America. Those who support this element of the Hart-Celler Act call it family reunification. Again, it's based on that idea that if an immigrant comes, his or her family in their home country has priority to also come, and the basis for that was always an economic basis. It was the idea that if an immigrant comes and is able to bring his family, they'll be a web of support for that immigrant. It's really hard to come to a nation by yourself, if you don't understand the culture or language, and succeed. But when you have family members who can, again, pull resources, help you find a job, create networks, in that way you're more likely to thrive and less likely to become dependent on forms of social services and social assistance. So family reunification was always about what is good for immigrants to thrive in America, but what's also good for America, meaning that immigrants will more be more likely to thrive and less likely to be dependent on forms of social assistance. Those who don't like this element of the Hart-Celler Act, including our current president, call this chain migration, and the difference in terms is key here. Family unification sounds good, right? Who doesn't want to reunify families? That has a very positive connotation. Chain migration, the term that Trump and others use, is designed to be very alarming: "Oh, a chain of immigrants; they're pouring in," right? So how you describe this reveals how you feel about it. But at the time of the Hart-Celler Act, family unification was woven into this legislation because, again, it was something imagined to be a means by which immigrants could prosper. Also, the Hart-Celler Act was designed to meet the changing labor demands. In 1965, you still have the great postwar expansion; it's still a period of relative affluence in America, um, and the Hart-Celler Act was designed to meet the labor demands of a growing and changing American economy of the mid- to late 1960s.

So in 1965, alongside Civil Rights, the same year the Voting Rights Act is passed, you get the Hart-Celler Act, which ends the quota system, opens our borders anew to parts of the world that had been closed as sources of immigration. It's about rethinking the American community: who could be an American, who could come and be a citizen? It's about how Civil Rights redefine notions of citizenship, but it was also part of a Cold War context where America was sending Peace Corps volunteers around the globe, attempting to win over hearts and minds in Africa, Asia, Latin America. Here we could put our immigration policy more in line with that effort. It didn't work to say to people around the world, "Look to America as a beacon of freedom and liberty, but you're not welcome here." So all of this context here helps explain why something that seems impossible to do today—pass comprehensive, meaningful immigration reform—was possible in 1965. And it's also a good way of understanding how this fits in with the context of the Cold War and Civil Rights events that we described in previous lectures.

In 1965, prior to the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, less than five percent of Americans were foreign-born. They were the few who could come under the immigration policies of that period. You had the Bracero Program; you also had some groups who remained eligible even with the Johnson-Reed Act in place. A lot of this had to do with, um, the World War II era, where Filipinos, for example, were welcome because of their service to the United States in World War II, and as well the long-standing connections between the U.S. and the Philippines. But despite that, there were very few people in 1965 within this nation who were foreign-born, because most of the world was cut off. That figure of less than five percent was the lowest foreign-born population since prior to the 1830s. The 1830s is really the beginning of large-scale immigration to the nation, when in the 1830s America and its Northern states began to industrialize, and that served as a magnet for immigrants. In the 1830s, Northern states are beginning to transition from an agricultural economy to an urban, industrial economy, and with it came opportunities for immigrants to come, and people came from Ireland, and then later from Western and then Central, uh, Europe. So the story of the 1800s, or the 19th-century story of large-scale immigration, and that begins in the 1830s. But in 1965, we had gone back to that period before the 1830s with this very, very small population of foreign-born immigrants. But then in 1965, we opened our borders anew, and people came. But the people who came after 1965 came from a part of the world that hitherto had not been a major source of immigration to this nation. Though the Hart-Celler Act was in part designed to create opportunities for people from Southern and Eastern Europe to come, what happens is when we end the quota system and we now say it doesn't matter what nation you come from, people came not from those parts of Europe, but instead from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia. And that's one of the many ways in which the Hart-Celler Act—our focus in this lecture—helps you understand the America we live in today, which has become increasingly diverse, pluralistic, heterogeneous: the America we see in our neighborhoods, in our classrooms, and our popular culture. I mean, think about American TV today: shows like Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat and The Mindy Project. America has become much more diverse, pluralistic. Think about the American pastime, baseball: who plays baseball in America? Latinos. And who watches baseball in America? Latinos. It says something about America in 2020 that the all-American stoners are named Harold and Kumar, right? So one of the effects of the Hart-Celler Act in ending the nation's specific system that prevailed was that now anyone could come; it didn't matter what nation you came from, and people came from war-torn parts of the world, economically depressed parts of the world, um, places like Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and it's led to an America that is increasingly diverse, pluralistic, heterogeneous, and America where today the all-American meal is pho and pupusas, not hamburger and french fries, right? But the other way it helps explain the America you live in today: the backlash. As America has become more diverse, pluralistic, heterogeneous, as it has seen the rise of immigrant groups from parts of the world that hadn't been major sources of immigration, there's been a backlash. So this lecture really helps you understand the America you live in today, which has become more diverse, pluralistic, as a result of the Hart-Celler Act, but also helps you understand the America living today with calls to build a wall, cut off immigration, and the most recent presidential election in 2016. A surrogate for Donald Trump appearing on cable news said, "If we don't get control of our borders, we're gonna have taco trucks on every corner," and half of America said, "Hell yeah, that's my idea of paradise, right? I walk out my front door, there's a taco truck right there—wonderful," right? But the other half of America said, "Oh, the taco trucks on every corner—America is changing, and I don't like it."

So with the Hart-Celler Act came this large influx of what's described as the "new immigrants," not from Western and Northern Europe, but Africans, Asians, Latin Americans. They were fleeing parts of the world that were war-torn, and many of the wars we helped create in places like Southeast Asia. They were fleeing zones where economic opportunities seemed to be limited, coming to America, changing America racially. The "new immigrants," the term that's used to describe them to differentiate them from those immigrants in the 1800s. In the 1800s, as we talked about at the beginning of this lecture slide, you get mass immigration from Ireland, from Germany. In the late 20th century, those aren't major sources of immigration. Yeah, still immigrants come here from Sweden and Ireland, but they pale in comparison to the number of immigrants who come from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East. Those are the new immigrants.

So the 1960s, a remarkable time in American life where laws are changing in the way in which they affect American-born citizens. You have the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; we're changing laws and creating opportunities for people who had been denied those opportunities for decades, or in the case of African-Americans, for centuries. Create opportunities for racial minorities to pursue a career in education, buy a house, live the American dream. While all that is taking place in regards to American citizens, you have a change in immigration law that concerns who can become an American citizen, who can come and live within our nation and potentially pursue citizenship. So American institutions are changing in the 60s because we're opening opportunities to our own citizens to access those institutions, and that's why by the 70s and 80s there are people of color in Congress, there are people of color serving on the faculty of prestigious universities, there are people of color increasingly visible in parts of American life where they had been denied access prior. And at the same time, we change immigration laws and open into this nation, create opportunities for people to come from Korea and Vietnam and Cameroon and around the world. And that again explains so much of the America we live in today, where we've seen the face of America change, institution change, and a great backlash to those changes.

There are similarities here, not just in regards to how immigration reform and Civil Rights fit together as changing laws on a federal level and opening new opportunities to people who had been denied those opportunities, whether they are American-born citizens or immigrants—very similar in that way, right? But they're also similar in the way in which they inspire backlashes. We talked about backlashes to Civil Rights: clashes in the streets of Selma, Birmingham, assassinations, a backlash in politics with the development of political movements opposed to Civil Rights. And the exact same pattern follows with immigration. And why, why does this overlap exist? Well, it's all about reimagining American citizenship; it's all about thinking differently, enlarging our ken, enlarging our vision of what America could be. And for many, that's inspiring—to think about an America that is more pluralistic, open—and for others it's anathema, revolting. So so much overlap here between different threads we've been developing at this stage in the class: Civil Rights, citizenship, immigration, all in the context of that Cold War. Again, the term "new immigrants" is coined in the late 20th century to describe those who come after '65, after the Hart-Celler Act, who tended to come from parts of the world that hadn't been major sources of immigration prior: Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia. The vast majority of the millions of immigrants who come after '65 came from those parts of the world, because those parts of the world were zones of civil war, strife, many of which were again created by the United States and its prosecution of wars like that in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, but also because these parts of the world were economically depressed. By the end of the 20th century, the number of people who are here who are foreign-born had more than doubled by 2000: more than 11 percent of the American population, more than 1 in 10 foreign-born. So one of the effects of the Hart-Celler Act was to accelerate the volume of immigration as well as change the sources of immigration.

So you get this huge increase in immigrants, but again, the immigrants who came tended to come from parts of the world that hadn't been prior sources of immigration, and in that sense, changed our vision of the American community.

It's always hard to establish verifiable and reliable statistics in regards to immigration because many immigrants don't want to be counted because some of them may be here illegally, and they fear coming forward and getting counted. And so we should always look at statistics in regards to immigration with a skeptical eye. But some of the more revealing statistics being proffered today, now 20 years after the cystic you see here, indicate that maybe as much as 20 percent of the American population—people living inside the United States today—are foreign-born.

Now again, those numbers seem to be pretty remarkable and uh, maybe not um, accurate. There's a whole cottage industry, particularly in conservative circles, in inflating the number of immigrants to again perpetuate a political agenda designed to restrict immigration. So I think maybe the 20 figure is a little bit overstating, but it's certainly more than it was in 2000. So this has only continued the greater and greater number of people in this country today who are foreign-born. And again, that's a really good way to understand politics, society, culture in America today, where we have seen this large, voluminous growth in immigrants and then also the resulting backlashes. It tells us a lot about America again today.

Not only is there changing racial demographics as a result, but with these new immigrants come changing religious demographics. When people came from Asia and Africa, they brought faiths like Buddhism, Islam, uh, Hinduism, and so another one of the changes in this period that come with new immigrants beyond just racial demographics, religious demographics—as we're becoming more diverse and pluralistic, not just in terms of race but also religion.

Today in America, there is no longer a majority American religion. For most of our history, Protestant Christianity was the majority American religion, but that has ended because of a number of factors: one, fractures within Protestant Christianity; there really isn't a way in which that faith can be majoritarian anymore because it itself has fractured into so many different splinter groups. Then there's the rise of unaffiliated, secular atheists and agnostics. The nuns in religious ceremonies—they're known uh, ceremonies, religious um, uh, uh, in efforts to quantify religious uh, adherence in America today in surveys—that's the word I'm looking for—those who don't identify are called nuns, N-O-N-E, not N-U-N, meaning I have no religion, and that's a growing group, which also means that no longer is Protestant Christianity majoritarian. But the other factor, in addition to the splintering of Protestant Christianity into all different groups and the rise of the nuns—non-affiliated, non-religious, secular Americans—is the rise of Buddhist Americans, Hindu-American, Muslim-Americans. And so this too has to be acknowledged here as part of what's going on in America today.

Now we become more diverse racially; now we have our institutions change with more people of color in prominent positions, but we've changed in terms of religion so that there is no longer a majority Protestant America anymore. There's a lot of interesting scholarship coming out right now about how race and religion are so tied together as part of the backlash in a more increasingly pluralistic America, not just in terms of race but in terms of religion.

It's often said in criticism of immigrant groups: they don't assimilate; they don't live like other Americans. This is one of the many arguments you hear today in the effort to restrict immigration advanced by the Trump administration and others. Well, the problem with that argument—that immigrants don't assimilate; they don't live like majority Americans—is that if you look at patterns in the new immigrants, the way they live is the way in which we all live; that the immigrant experience is the American experience. Changes in patterns of immigration after '65 mimic changes in American society, meaning that the way in which American-born citizens live is the way in which immigrants live. So it's just not true to say that they don't live as Americans do; they don't assimilate, because the immigrant experience is the American experience. If you look at patterns among the new immigrants, they mimic patterns exhibited by American-born citizens after '65. For example, the immigrant experience today tends to be a suburban experience.

Immigrants who came in the 19th century came to cities; they came to New York, Boston, and Chicago; they came to work in factories, live in cities; it was the 1800s; those are the old immigrants of the 19th century. Well, in the post-World War II period, we see the suburbanization of America; people leaving cities to go live in suburbs because they want safe neighborhoods and good schools. Well, immigrants want that too, and so immigrants who have come since '65 head to the suburbs because they want to live in tree-lined streets; they want to live in safe neighborhoods. So that today immigrants find themselves living in the suburbs. If you look at the suburbs of Los Angeles—to make it very local here—in the 50s and 60s, parts of suburban Los Angeles, places like Downey in the 50s and 60s—Downey, the suburb of Los Angeles where people worked in defense industry building missiles in the Cold War—those communities were majority white. That's where the Carpenters—the Carpenters were born in Downey, came of age in Downey—I mean, you don't get more white than Karen Carpenter singing, you know, "Close to You," right? Well, go to Downey today; it's majority Latino, and the second largest group is Asian American. The suburbs of America have become increasingly diverse and pluralistic, and that's because that's where all Americans headed in the post-World War II period.

Also, a good example of how the new immigrants live like we all do is that the immigrants who have come since '65 tend to fall into two categories: there are the highly skilled, well-educated computer programmers, engineers, doctors; and those immigrants come and they thrive in the new economy, the service sector economy that's prevailed since '65, where we have transitioned from an industrial economy where people live in cities and work in factories to the new service sector economy where people live in the suburbs and provide skills. And that service sector economy tends to have two tiers: there's the high end—accountants, doctors, engineers—and immigrants have come and worked in that American economy. Then there's the other side—low pay, low-prestige service sector jobs in retail, home health care, hospitality, fast food. That's the story of the American economy since 1965, with deindustrialization, with the transition to a service sector economy. Today Americans find themselves in these two tiers. Earn a college degree, and you have a fighting chance at the higher end of the service sector economy—professions like engineering, law, medicine. You want to work in those fields, you need a college degree. If you don't have a degree, you find yourself on the other side of the service sector economy—a greeter at Walmart, working in fast food, working retail, hospitality, home health care. Well, that story—the American economy—is mimicked, paralleled by the story of immigration, because some immigrants come, are highly skilled; they work in law, medicine, engineering in Silicon Valley. Other immigrants who come find themselves on the other side of the American economy, working in retail, home health care, hospitality; they're working as gardeners and nannies; they're again working in meatpacking plants; they're doing the low-pay, low-prestige jobs that isn't unique to the immigrant experience; it's the American experience. It's another way in which understanding these new immigrants as living like we all do—another way that the immigrant experience is the American experience.

Is that the majority of immigrants who have come since '65 are female. This again makes the new immigrants very different than the old immigrants of the 19th century, where the immigrants who came in the 19th century from Europe tended to be male because they were going to work in mining, railroad construction; they were going to work in factories—economies that selected for male labor. But the American economy after '65, after the Hart-Celler Act, very different; it's a service sector economy. The American economy since '65 has de-industrialized; we've closed factories, moved them overseas. The clothes you're wearing, the food you ate for lunch, the car that you will later drive today was likely made outside this nation. Rather than an industrial economy, we've created a service sector economy, and that's selected for different forms of labor. We're not building railroads and blowing up mountains and, you know, strip mining anymore; we have a service sector economy, and that service sector economy has selected for female labor—women who are going to work in hospitality, in home health care, in elder care. That's the story of the new immigrants—that the majority after '65 are female; it's what differentiates them from the old immigrants, but it's also exemplary of a trend within America among American citizens, as women have thrived in the service sector economy, as women develop skills that are necessary in the service sector economy, as we've seen the rise of women now out-earning men, the breadwinners in American families, out-earning their husbands. So this prominence of women in labor, women excelling in the new labor force of the late 20th and early 21st century is exemplary not just in the immigrant experience, as the majority of immigrants are now female, but also in the larger American experience.

The point I'm making here in the end of this slide—that the immigrant experience is our experience. Now many of the women who come are very vulnerable because they work in off-the-books employment as nannies, as a source of elder care, and they don't have job protection; they don't have um, protection; some of them may also be here illegally, and so they can't go to the authorities if their boss, their employer, shortchanges them or refuses to pay wages or demands that they work excessively. So women in that lower end of the service sector economy, immigrants in those fields, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, but again, that's not too different than many American citizens who find themselves exploited, unable to form unions so that they could lobby for protection. There are so many parallels. You know, again, the rhetoric of the restrictionists is that immigrants are coming and not assimilating, that they are in many ways alien to the American experience; it's just not the case. The patterns you see in where immigrants work, how they work, and their experiences are very similar to the experiences that all American workers have been touched by since de-industrialization, the rise of a sector economy.

Another thing that makes the new immigrants different than the old immigrants is that they come after '65 in a very different technological age. If you left Germany in the 1870s and got into a steamship and sailed across the Atlantic, you weren't going back. But today we've seen the democratization of air travel; air travel is very cheap today so that immigrants can go back. Today in America, thanks to the deregulation of the airline industry in the 80s, you can go online and get very cheap airfare, so that broke-ass college students or broke-ass college professors can fly around the world for real cheap. And so the new immigrants who come after '65 benefit from that democratization of air travel, meaning they could go back. Also since '65, we've changed our media culture with the advent of satellite TV and, of course, the internet, which is another means by which immigrants today can stay connected to their home country, the culture of their home country, the language of their home country.

Now again, this is often used by restrictionists to say, "Well, they don't learn English, and they, you know, they watch Telemundo and the Filipino channel, and they don't assimilate and become like America." Well, of course, that's a false argument because you can both watch Telemundo and, you know, Tiger—whatever—King, where the hell that thing is, right, and Dancing with the Idiots and America's Got Herpes—all those shows Americans like to watch, right? They don't preclude each other, and you could still speak Spanish or Hindi and also learn English, right? So just because you still speak your native tongue doesn't mean you're not assimilating and learning English. So it's a false argument to cite this as evidence of immigrants not assimilating, and it's also a false argument because all Americans are living in a media age of satellite TV and streaming services and internet culture. The ways in which immigrants today can access those forms of media parallels, mimics the way we all do. So yes, this makes the new immigrants different than the old immigrants of the 19th century—that they come to America in an age of democratization of air travel and internet, satellite TV—all by which allows them to stay connected to their home countries; it doesn't mean they're not assimilating, and it doesn't mean they're not also learning English and living like we all do. And one way that we all live, in this way that immigrants do, is by absorbing ourselves in that media culture of satellite TV and now the internet.

So we can now weave together here immigration reform and the contemporaneous Civil Rights Revolution of the 60s, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 alongside the developments in that period in regards to civil rights and understand how America has changed as a result of both of those forces braided together, developing at the same time. Immigrants come from Latin America; Latinos are now the largest immigrant group, and Latinos are now the largest minority group in America. For a long time, most of our history, African-Americans were the largest minority group, but in the late 20th century that changes with the Hart-Celler Act. And alongside this, you have things like the Brown Power movement, the rise of Latino activism among American-born Latinos who may be third, fourth generation; they become increasingly visible in American life as a result, with the Latino activism, Latino civil rights. Latinos became increasingly visible; alongside that, we've seen a growth in the Latino population as a result of immigration; they have become increasingly visible in our politics, in our sports, in our entertainment. In 2000, the most common name given to baby boys born in the state of Texas was not Billy Bob; it was Jose. Jose was the third most common name given to baby boys born in California. So again, civil rights, immigration reform, changing America's demography, changing how we think of that central, cardinal question associated with civil rights: who is an American?

In a college, on a college campus, maybe 20, 30 years ago, a professor like me had to be careful when he called roll or filled out his grade roster because there were probably three or four Joneses, three or four Smiths, three or four Johnsons. Today, when I call roll or fill out my grade roster, I have to be very careful because there's three or four Garcias, three or four Rodriguezes, three or four Patels, three or four Kims. That's the America we live in—that's changed so dramatically in the last 20 to 30 years with this new diversity, the new changes. These intertwined developments of civil rights and immigration reform has come an opportunity for Latinos to vote into the middle class. That was a lot of what we talked about in regards to Cesar Chavez; it was all about securing opportunity, freedom for Latinos to pursue a career, join a union, get a college degree. But the term "Latinos," of course, very misleading because it cobbles together someone who might be a third or fourth-generation American—whose parents, grandparents were born here—with someone who may have come three weeks ago from Guatemala; they all kind of get cobbled together in this group "Latino," and that's why, despite the achievements of Latinos taking, seizing the opportunities that came with civil rights, we still see high poverty rates among Latinos because again, we factor in immigrants who might not have the same skills, education, and facility with English with someone who might be a third or fourth-generation Mexican-American. And that's why we see high poverty rates for Latinos.

With the Hart-Celler Act came a lot of immigration from Asia—parts of the world that had been closed off, going back to things like the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Gentleman's Agreement, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act effectively cut off all immigration from Asia. But after '65, we open our immigration laws, our borders; we have a lot of strife in that region, particularly again in relation to things like the American war in Vietnam. So we've seen a large influx of Korean Americans, of Vietnamese Americans, Cambodian Americans; also a great deal of immigration from South Asia—Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistani Americans; immigration from Southwest Asia, from the Middle East, also due to that being a war-torn part of the world. And so by 2000, there are 12 million Asian Americans; they too increasingly visible in parts of American life that they hadn't been denied an opportunity to access thanks to civil rights in early 20th-century America. There were many laws on the books that prevented Asian Americans from pursuing membership in unions. When we talked about Cesar Chavez, he worked with Filipino Americans in his process of unionization. So when civil rights opens up those opportunities and when immigration allows people from those parts of the world to come, well again, they become increasingly visible in institutions where they had been invisible prior.

When Asian immigrants come after '65, they tend to be immigrants with means. If you're going to leave Korea and come as an immigrant, you need resources to do that. So many immigrants who have come since '65 have come already with resources that have allowed them to thrive in this way. But again, the term "Asian American" is very misleading; it's no more uh, helpful than "Latino" because it might again cobble together a Chinese-American whose ancestors came here in the late 19th century with someone who came from, um, you know, Bangladesh three weeks ago. And there's a great divergence, a great um, a great diversity in terms of education, skills, and resources. So that's why Asian Americans still suffer from low standards of living. If you're a Japanese American, a Chinese American, a Korean American who's immigrants' ancestors came here decades ago, you're more likely to thrive in America compared to someone who came from, um, you know, again, a part of Asia a few weeks ago and doesn't have the same resources.

Right now, for some strange reason, there's a great deal of nostalgia in America for the 1990s. And speaking as someone who lived through the 1990s, I don't really understand it because the music was bad, mostly. There was some good hip-hop in the 1990s, but, you know, most of the music was pretty bad; the hair was terrible; the clothing—oh my god, look how men dressed in the 1990s; we don't want to go back to that. But in other ways, I can understand why people are so nostalgic for the 1990s. It was the end of the Cold War, and we felt like, you know, peace had prevailed; the economy was pretty good, particularly in the mid-1990s in the Clinton era. So you had peace and prosperity; it seemed like the biggest problem in America in the 1990s was a blow job in the White House, right? That was the big scandal; imagine that, right? That's what we were really worried about—is a huge threat to the republic—a right? So if that was our biggest problem, I think we were doing all right in the 1990s.

In the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism because the Cold War had ended; the economy was good; it seemed like we were going to end the 20th century on a high note. And as part of that optimism, a lot of people said, "Well, with civil rights and the great opportunities that have now become available with this thriving African-American, Latino American, Asian American middle class, with immigration reform and the changes that have come, maybe we could finally leave racism behind." I know it seems so strange today, but by the 1990s there's a lot of optimism that a post-racial America would emerge—that we could finally put to bed this, this American problem of racism and discrimination because we had passed civil rights legislation; it seemed like a lot of civil rights efforts had borne fruit because now racial minorities could pursue careers, opportunities, education that have been steadily denied to them; there was increasingly visible African-American, Latino middle class, Asian-American middle class; we had the arrival of these new immigrants who were changing America, and as a result, maybe we could move on.

In the 1990s, there was talk about multiculturalism, the end of racism, a post-racial America where we would now live in harmony. Well, we know that's not what happened; in fact, quite the opposite. Racial divisions have intensified in the first two decades of the 20th century; anti-immigrant sentiment has flared; we have seen race now become the dominant issue in the culture wars, much more than gender and sexuality. But with the 1990s, and by that point, decades of change in regards to civil rights and immigration reform, there was that optimism that might now be very appealing amidst the nostalgia for the 1990s; it would not last though, because even in the 1990s we were starting to see fractures as a result of demographic change.

In 1992, Los Angeles broke out in riots—or an insurrection, probably a better term—as a result of a couple of events. One was the exoneration of LAPD officers who were caught on videotape assaulting an African-American motorist, Rodney King, in what is probably the very first viral video—well before the internet and well before all of us walking around with our camera phones. A video was caught by someone just driving by who happened to have a camcorder. The Rodney King beating was captured on literal videotape. We call them videos, but we don't capture them on videos anymore, right? Nobody watches a video—chance I don't have a VCR in your house, right? It's one of the many examples of how we're using outmoded terms; we still call them records—anyone bought a record? You know, we still call it TV—anyone watch TV on an actual TV? Nah, right? Watch on my phone, right? So you know, we're still using these outmoded terms, including "video." Uh, but the Rodney King video actually was a video—a guy driving by with a big giant, you know, honking camcorder throws a tape inside and captures these LAPD officers reigning blow after blow after blow on uh, Rodney King as he laid there helplessly. When this video was captured and then beamed across cable news in its infancy in the 1990s, people said, "Well, those guys are in trouble, right? How can they get out of that?" But the trial was moved to Simi Valley, as far away from the incident as possible; a mostly white jury came back with an exoneration for those officers, and that's often cited as the catalyst to those L.A. riots or the L.A. insurrection. But there's another event that's less well-known, unfortunately, and there's a lot to why it's less well-known. Another event that proved to be a catalyst to the L.A. riots was the exoneration of a Korean immigrant grocer, Soon Ja Du, who was also captured on videotape murdering Latasha Harlins. Latasha Harlins was a teenager, an African-American teenager in South Central; she went into the Empire Market in South Central Los Angeles; she went into the back of the market and pulled a bottle of orange juice out of one of the coolers and put it in her backpack; then she approached the um, check stand, the cashier with two dollars in her hand. All this can be seen on the closed-circuit um, camera. The bottle of orange juice cost a dollar seventy-nine; she had two dollars, so it's very clear she's intending to pay for it; she's walking right up to the checker, but Soon Ja Du thought she was shoplifting. So Soon Ja Du grabbed her, and a fight broke out; Latasha thought she was being attacked by this woman; she couldn't understand why she's grabbing, and Latasha fought back, and when she did, Soon Ja Du pulled a gun out from underneath the check stand and shot her right in the head. And so part of the L.A. riots was about Rodney King but was also about another African-American who, in this case, was slain, killed. Soon Ja Du went on trial for murder and never spent a day in jail; she was convicted under some very minor charges and ultimately never served a day in jail for the murder of Latasha Harlins. It seemed to African-Americans in the city that once again you can kill an African-American with impunity. And so there was an immigrant element to the L.A. riots; Soon Ja Du was an immigrant from Korea; one of the epicenters of the riots was Koreatown, and there were many clashes between African-Americans and Korean-run businesses.

Two years later, here in California, there's a proposition on the ballot, Prop 187, that if passed would ban illegal immigrants from securing key social services, including public education—all right, public education, right? We talked about this earlier when we were discussing things like Brown v. Board of Education. When we talk about public education or public services, we are talking about this question of who's one of us, who is the public, who is to serve and be served by such institutions. With Prop 187, if you were here in California, if you are part of the California economy, but were here illegally, you were not eligible for those public services. So you might be here in California; you might be a homeowner, business owner; you might attend a local university, but you're not imagined to be part of the public because you were not here legally. It's really this question of who's one of us when it comes to who's a Californian, who's an American—what matters—that you're here, you're a taxpayer, you're part of the economy, part of the society, or is…

It, a piece of paper, Prop 27, says: "piece of paper. If you're not here legally, you are ineligible." The proposition was nicknamed "Save Our State." The so-called "Save Our State" initiative. So the very name crackles with alarm, backlash, a sense of a California changing with this rising group of immigrants, and as well the increasing visibility of Latinos in California. As we've talked about in this lecture, by 2010, California would be majority Latino. Latinos are a rising, prominent group around the nation, particularly here in the Southwest. And Prop 27 responded to that with this very alarmist nickname, "Save Our State," this idea that California was changing as part of a change in the nation. The way to save our state was to bar people within California from accessing public education and other public services. It required the kindly lady behind the desk at the local elementary school to be la migra, to decide whether or not you are eligible. Required people to prove that they were here legally. Required state officials to report people to federal authorities. This is ultimately how Prop 27, though it passes, passes overwhelmingly, is overturned.

The U.S. Constitution is very clear in regards to immigration; only the federal government can enforce immigration laws. It wouldn't work if you had 50 different immigration laws, right? So the Constitution is very clear, but Prop 27 would require state and local officials to perform tasks that are the exclusive province of the federal government. And that's why Prop 27, though it passes overwhelmingly, is not in place today in California. It eventually is overturned by the California State Supreme Court because it did task the kindly lady behind the desk at the local elementary school with being la migra. This is related to things today like sanctuary cities, and California's a sanctuary state where local law enforcement officials are not obliged to turn over people to ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, the agencies that, again, in the Constitution have the exclusive, um, province of enforcing immigration law. So California can be a sanctuary state so that if you're an illegal immigrant and you're either detained by law enforcement or you come forward to law enforcement because you have evidence you're a witness to a crime, you can do so without fear you're gonna be turned over, because the state of California is not our jobs; the federal government's job is to enforce immigration laws. But Prop 87 did require state and local officials to assume that role, and that's why it eventually will be overturned as unconstitutional.

It's about 1994, where the nation had just experienced a recession in the late 80s and early 1990s, part of which led to, uh, the victory of Bill Clinton in 1992, defeating the incumbent President George Herbert Walker Bush. Clinton won in part because he emphasized the economy. His advisor, James Carville, said, "It's the economy, stupid." Always run on economic issues, and Americans were really uneasy in the early 1990s because there was a recession, and that helped defeat the incumbent president, along with a third-party candidate. Incumbents usually win, and it takes a couple of things to defeat an incumbent president. Keep this in mind if you have your hopes up for later this year; uh, you need either a bad economy, like you had in 1932 with Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression, or, um, in 1992 with George Herbert Walker Bush, or you need a third-party candidate, like you had in 1980 with Ronald Reagan defeating Jimmy Carter. And there was also a third-party candidate in 1992, H. Ross Perot. So Clinton won for those reasons, and a big part of it was the recession of the early 1990s, which made Americans very anxious.

You had, by 1994, here in California, the effects of de-industrialization, where people were losing their jobs, factories were closing. A lot of people came to California in the post-World War II period seeking the California dream: a good house in the suburbs, you know, trips to Disneyland, because they worked in the defense industry, they worked building missiles and nukes. Well, 1994, those jobs were gone because the Cold War was over, and also a lot of factories that were making cars and tires, you know, the Firestone plant in East LA closes, and now it's a mall. Isn't that a great metaphor for what's happened to our economy, right? And so a lot of Californians felt frazzled; they felt, uh, fatigued; they felt harried; they felt economically that the California dream was slipping away, and they blamed immigrants, and that too played a role in how Prop 187 won overwhelmingly, 59-41, not a squeaker.

Now today, we have this image of California's hippie-dippy California, left-coast, blue state. You know, we all drive around in our Priuses with our "coexist" bumper stickers and eat organic quinoa. That might be the image of California today: blue state, so liberal, you know, a bastion of the Democratic Party. Well, that's a very, very recent development, because for most of the post-World War II period, California was a red state. It's a state that gives you Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan adopts California's home state. When Prop 27 was on the ballot, we had a Republican governor, Pete Wilson, who came out emphatically for it. So the California of 1994 is very different than the California of today. For most of this period, we're a red state; we went for the Republican in presidential elections; we had Republican governors. I don't know, very recently, I know a Republican governor signed my diploma when I got my PhD at UCLA: Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? So this is very recent for me. You know, we might think of California today, um, as, uh, so liberal, left-coast, blue, blue state, but that's a very recent development. Of the whites who voted in the 1994 midterm election here in California that had Prop 27 on the ballot, 63 percent of them voted for this proposition that would bar illegal immigrants. So it's part of this backlash here. Also, 1990s, you had the rise of Minutemen movements as part of this backlash to immigration. These were American citizens who grabbed their lawn chairs and walkie-talkies and ran down to the Mexican border, southern border. I wonder why they always go to that border. You know, more illegal immigrants come in from Canada than from Mexico. You know, most illegal immigrants in this country today came on an airplane. You know, the image of an illegal immigrant perpetuated by a lot of, again, anti-immigrant folks is a guy who sneaks across the border, wades across a river, hops a fence. Yeah, the majority of illegal immigrants in this country today arrived on an airplane. The majority of illegal immigrants in this country today are here because they overstayed a visa; they came in legally; they stayed. I mean, you wouldn't know that, again, from the imagery, rhetoric that you get from immigration restrictionists. Want to build a wall; it's not going to keep out illegal immigrants because you can fly over a wall, I think, right? The majority of legal immigrants in America today arrived on an airplane, but we have this image of illegal migrants, people sneaking across one border in particular. I wonder why; why that border is the focus. And so the Minutemen were these, uh, you know, white suburbanites who grabbed their lawn chairs and walkie-talkies, ran down to the southern border, not the northern border, as self-appointed border patrol agents. They said, "We're going to, you know, if the federal government won't do its job, we're going to do it for them; we're going to be Minutemen." And look at the name they selected: Minutemen, a name that's synonymous with America's origins, the citizen soldiers who rose up in 1776 against the British. They stylized themselves as patriots defending a certain image of America here as a group targeting immigrants coming in from Mexico.

Now, the Minutemen movement was more symbolic than effective; there were usually more reporters covering the Minutemen than actual Minutemen. There, they are a nuisance to the border patrol because the border patrol said, "Look, we already had enough problems enforcing the border, and now we gotta worry about this fat 60-year-old guy is going to keel over with heat stroke at any moment." So it was more of a media sensation, but symbols matter, and again, the fact that they selected Minutemen as their name is very instructive here. In the last few years, you had efforts on a state level to target immigrants, like the SB-1070 law in Arizona, the so-called "show me your papers" law that required anyone detained by law enforcement to prove their citizenship, because we all drive around with our birth certificate in our glove boxes, right? Yeah, SB-1070 was seen by Latinos in Arizona as a way of denying them recognition as being Americans. I mean, we're talking about Latino Americans who may be second, third, fourth, fifth-generation Americans; they're just as American as anyone else, but they said, "We, and only we, are the ones gonna be targeted; no one's gonna ask for, uh, you know, a 65-year-old white guy to prove that he's really a citizen, and yet we are citizens too; we were born here too; we're just as much Arizonans, Americans as anyone else." So you had things like that. The Dream Act was proposed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush, the two presidents that preceded Donald Trump. George W. Bush, conservative Republican, said we should have an act that allows immigrants who came as children, no fault of their own; they didn't willfully break the law; no three-year-old says, "You know what? I'm going to be an illegal immigrant; I'm going to go cross that border there." So these are people who came as children who didn't break the law willfully on their own, came of age here in America, as a result they think of themselves as Americans, but are often ineligible because they're not citizens, ineligible to pursue funding for college, many of the other things that require citizenship, and yet they're Americans. The Dream Act would grant them legal status if they earned a college degree or were willing to serve in the military. Again, immigrants often do jobs we don't want to do, like fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the Dream Act, very modest, right? It doesn't give citizenship; it gives legal status, meaning we're not going to deport you; you don't have to fear deportation if you prove that you are going to be a contributory member to American life; you've earned a college degree; you're going to pay taxes for the rest of your working life; you're going to be a contributing member to society; you're going to do jobs that are valuable in our economy with that college degree, or you're willing to serve in the military. That's what the Dream Act would do. George W. Bush, conservative Republican, couldn't get it passed. Barack Obama, liberal Democrat, couldn't get it passed because we cannot do today what we did in 1965 when we passed the Hart-Celler Act, because he couldn't get it passed. Obama said, "Well, I'm going to use my authority as the president to protect Dreamers," and that's what led to DACA, and then the next president's Donald Trump backlashes, right? And so that's where we end this lecture, in the now, in the moment in America that in 2020 has been transformed dramatically by the Hart-Celler Act, a more diverse, pluralistic America, but also America of backlashes, where the two most recent presidents, a conservative Republican, George W. Bush, and a liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, both had the same agenda, and neither of them could get it passed because of the efforts by restrictionists to block even the most modest reforms. The Dream Act is not amnesty; it isn't a blanket citizenship for all illegal immigrants; it targets a certain group, again, children who came not of their own volition, who didn't willfully break the law, who are earning a college degree or willing to serve in the military, and even that we can't pass. Why? Why is immigration reform so difficult today? Why is it very difficult to do what we did in '65, the Hart-Celler Act? Well, because it's about this question of citizenship; it's about this question of who is an American; it's about that question, along with the issues related to this in regards to civil rights and diversity and pluralism. What do we mean by the first three words of the Constitution? "We the people."