Zeke Hernandez (3:02)

Hey, dj, thanks so much for having me on. It's an honor.

David James Gonzalez (3:06)

Excited to talk about your book. There's so much to get into, but to begin, would you mind just introducing yourself to our audience? Tell us a little bit about yourself personally and professionally.

Zeke Hernandez (3:16)

Yeah, I think in the bio you just read, people know a little bit about my professional side. I would just add that I'm a professor at a business school. So in addition to doing research on how immigrants affect the economy, I teach global business. And on the personal side, I was born in the little country of Uruguay. I grew up in a handful of different Latin American countries following my father's career around. And so that gave me some early life exposure to different cultures, different countries, different languages. One of the reasons I speak English in addition to Spanish is because. Is because of those moves. And yeah, and I was not expecting to be an academic. I didn't even know what a PhD was when I started college and I somehow ended up doing what I'm doing. And maybe to say one more personal thing, my wife and I have been married for over 20 years. We have five kids and we're avid soccer fans as a family.

David James Gonzalez (4:21)

Wonderful. In regards to soccer, what teams do you follow and cheer for out of curiosity?

Zeke Hernandez (4:27)

Well, I think that the team that everybody would probably know would be Barcelona. I caught the messy fever early on and it never left me. But also, Uruguay is a soccer obsessed country and so I'm a fan of Nacional de Montevideo, which is a club that most people outside of Latin America would not know, but it's one of the two best teams in Uruguay.

David James Gonzalez (4:52)

Neat. I didn't make this connection until again, you reminded me your background. And being from Uruguay, I'm sipping on yerba mate right now. So definitely a popular beverage. Perhaps. I think in Uruguay. I've known some Uruguayos who love to drink mate.

Zeke Hernandez (5:11)

So yeah, absolutely. That's the other obsession. Soccer and mate are probably the two big cultural characteristics of of our country. So yeah, we were drinking it before it was popular and trendy, Right?

David James Gonzalez (5:26)

Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. For the energy drink phase or craze. Well, let's get into the book a bit more and if you wouldn't mind, also Sharing with our audience, you mentioned how academia wasn't necessarily the. It wasn't your plan. It wasn't becoming a business school professor and even studying immigration. This is. Wasn't necessarily in the cards as you mapped out your maybe your early life trajectory and professional trajectory. So what led you to study immigration and eventually write this book?

Zeke Hernandez (6:00)

Yeah, I mean, look, nobody's more surprised than I am that I wrote a book at all and that I wrote a book on immigration. There's so many ways that I could approach this, but I think perhaps the shortest is having grown up in countries where there was poverty and lack of development. I was exposed to that a lot. You know, my family was not wealthy, nor really poor. We were sort of somewhere in between. And so I want to be clear that I don't consider myself coming from a very poor background, but I did see a lot of poverty and a lot of suffering growing up. And that just was always on my mind. And this, this question of why are some people poor? How do you create economic opportunity? How do economies develop? It was just always, I think, there in the background. And after trying a few corporate jobs and not liking them and realizing that I had a real passion for academia, I went into a PhD program at a business school with some suspicion that there was a connection between business and investment and economic growth and development. And that was sort of the extent of my. I wasn't that sophisticated in how I was thinking about it. But the point I'm trying to make by saying that is that, like, immigration was not on the radar at all, right? It's not like I was like, oh, I'm an immigrant. I want to study immigrants. I had no academic interest in the subject. But then as I started taking early classes and in, you know, what are the theories and the evidence that we have on how the economy works, how firms work, how investment happens, how jobs are created? I just. The simplest way I can put it is that I realized that one cannot explain those things without understanding the movement of people, right? We talk about, in economics, in very technical terms about, like, capital and labor, right? As, like, the two big basic inputs into the economy. Well, guess who moves capital and labor and ideas and all the things that we talk about. It's people moving, right? So you can't move capital, you can't move labor, you can't move technology, you can't move ideas if people aren't moving either. And as simple and basic as that insight sounds, I realized that very few people were actually connecting all those dots, right? Linking the movement of people to the movement and development of all those things. So, anyway, that was the origin story. And then now it's been, you know, two decades of trying to understand. What does that insight really tell us?

David James Gonzalez (8:41)

Yeah, that really resonates with me and members of our audience that have heard my podcast. It'll somewhat sound like a broken record. My own trajectory is very similar in the fact that it. You know, I grew up a lot around the movement of people and taking that for granted, I grew up primarily on. Along the US Mexico border in San Diego. And as I became more and more exposed to the field of immigration studies through reading and scholarship, it started to explain. Right. Things that I had seen my whole life and take it for granted even as a historian, as I'd bring in a lot of my classes. And migration, movement is a big theme in all of my classes. And you know, that basic premise, right. That you could make an argument. Right. Student history doesn't begin until people start moving. Not student history, but world history. Right. The history of humankind. I mean, this is the most basic thing that humans have done, you know, have moved for various reasons. Right. We like to usually sum all this down to opportunities. Right. And opportunity costs went out, but much more complicated. And that's what's wonderful about your books, has a very strong research and academic basis, but it's very accessible and it addresses the different reasons why people move.

Zeke Hernandez (10:08)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a really good point. You know, you reminded me of something. So there's a very good book. I mean, I know we're talking about my book, but why not talk about other. Other. Other good books? Sonia Shah has this. This book called the Next Great Migration that I really enjoyed. And she uses, you know, biology and history and anthropology. It's a very insightful book. But the whole point that she makes is that movement and migration is the norm, not the exception. But weirdly, somehow, the way we have conceptualized this, and this is not just among, like, nativist thinking, but even in, like, the biological and environmental sciences, scientists have long made this assumption that movement is the exception. Right. And she essentially uses the book to prove quite compellingly that movement is the norm. And that matters a lot, because if the default is lack of movement, we think about things very differently than if the default is movement. And I think that that's a very profound point. Right. My book talks about a very specific kind of movement and its economic and social effects, but there's a much deeper issue about the movement of all things. Anyway, that's very philosophical. But it's also very practical, if you think about it.

David James Gonzalez (11:27)

No, it very much is. I think if people reflect on the movements they've made throughout their lives. Again, I begin a lot of classes with students. You're a university professor, too. By pointing up this fact that I have students. How many of them? I teach in a university in Utah, so I asked them how many of them are from outside of Utah. Right. And despite the fact that even our university has a strong regional pull from the Intermountain west, we still have students moving from across the country. And I point out that I think what disrupts and challenges our idea of movement and mobility is the concept of borders. That seems to be the movement that people really take notice of and matters. But yet, in a country such as this, the United States, several of our students have moved distances that would have crossed international borders. Many of our students have crossed international borders for other reasons, but even those moving domestically, you know, and it's just that there seems to be that. That cognitive barrier in some ways is how we think of movement and migration within the framework of national borders. Right. That makes it much more politicized and has all these other social aspects to it.

Zeke Hernandez (12:40)

Yeah, that's such a good point. Right. And imagine if you couldn't. Right. Imagine if you couldn't move from, say, Nevada to Ohio. Right. You know, that, that, that would limit you quite significantly. Yeah. If it's okay to tell one more like, book origin story that I think is relevant here in the context of what we're talking about, you know, because, I mean, I kind of explained why perhaps academically I got into migration, but how did that lead to a book? And a book that's not written for academics, it's written for the general public. What happened is that if you fast forward, you know, say 12 years after I started my graduate program and I had now published decent amount of research on immigration, I started to get invited to give talks about immigration as things like Brexit and the rise of Trump and all of this were happening. And as a way to engage the audience, I just developed like a 10 question quiz with really, really basic questions, like, very basic stuff like how many immigrants are there in the United States? Right. Things like, things that you think you should know if you have an opinion about immigration. And, and I administered this questionnaire to groups from all walks of life. We're talking everything from, like, Rotary clubs in, like, central Pennsylvania, which is very conservative, to alumni of, you know, very liberal universities around the country, to business executives, and surprisingly, even to, like, Congressional staffers on, on Capitol Hill. And what surprised me was that regardless of background, location, political orientation, everybody bombed this TED question quiz. And it wasn't like, close. It was like, you know, on average, you're maybe getting three questions.

David James Gonzalez (14:20)

Right.

Zeke Hernandez (14:21)

Okay. And like the Rotary Club. A Rotary Club in Central pa, I expect that. But congressional staffers responsible for our immigration policy, you would expect them to be more informed. And when I realized the sort of level of ignorance on this issue compared to what the evidence actually tells us, which is, you know, a lot, that was also a moment to say, okay, there's a problem here. And the problem is not just that people in general are ignorant of this issue, but that we as academics have done a very bad job of communicating what we know. Right. It's our fault as much as like anyone else's fault. And so this book is an attempt to try to bridge that gap and to make available in an accessible narrative form.

David James Gonzalez (15:06)

Right.

Zeke Hernandez (15:07)

Things that are. That we know with reasonable rigor, but to tell it in a way that maybe isn't hard to digest.

David James Gonzalez (15:15)

So.

Zeke Hernandez (15:16)

Yeah, that's why we're talking.

David James Gonzalez (15:18)

Yeah. Very good. No, and I agree. And I think in that aspect of it, one thing that I found so appealing with your book is, I mean, I've been studying migration now for close to 20 years, perhaps. I'm trying to think, and I mean academically, that is. And what your book does a wonderful job of, again, in addition to being accessible, is bringing a lot of data together. You have your own unique questions, which a lot of our interview will talk about. But then you bring in a lot of other information that I've read and pieced together, and there's been great work. I mean, I've found that, right. As I've been reading, journalists have been doing wonderful work for, for decades, again, historians, social scientists. And so the information is out there.

Zeke Hernandez (16:12)

Yeah.

David James Gonzalez (16:13)

And, and I've tried to figure out this puzzle, too, in that why there's an aspect, there's. So there's a lot of ignorance on the actual data. Right. And what people actually, on these questions that we're going to talk about. And, and as I've, you know, I now sit from the perspective, like the evidence, and I'm sure you agree with is so overwhelming. And it is, you know, even pick your genre if you love novels. Right. And memoirs. I mean, it's, there's, there's so many novels and memoirs. Right. That, that mention. Right. That the key theme is migration and movement again, journalism, again, legal studies, et cetera. Yet our Public, and it's a global problem. This is not just a US Problem, but. But it's a central aspect of our politics and has been throughout my whole life, a debate over the benefit that immigration brings. Right. And yet. So why is that? Why is there so much ignorance? I don't know so much. Is it. I think part of it certainly is media. I think in late 20th century America, early 21st century America has become so fractured, so siloed. Social media has only exacerbated this issue. But the key issue, you know, at the center of this is, you know, the information is there, but yet seems like for whatever reason, it's hard for people to get a hold of it, you know, So I don't know, is that an accessibility issue? I think part of it, yes. Is that, you know, an Amer. Does it say something about the public and what, you know, they're more easily distracted or entertained, what they want to read. And I think certainly social media. And I do have an AI question at the very end, just to throw in and have us think about these new technological advancements and how it's shaping and catering the media environment, I think are a big deal. But I don't know, just your take on that and that very central problem of how to get this information out there, because it's there. How do we get more of it in front of people? What's that challenge?

Zeke Hernandez (18:22)

Yeah, no, that's a complex issue. I would say my view is that you're right, but that it's not. That the technology and the new media environment is not the main explanation. What it has done, I think, is it accelerated something that has in some ways always happened and it was always there because the polarization and the misinformation existed well before Facebook came online. Right. And then. And then all the follow on social platforms. So I think it's supercharged. Something. I. I would say there's two things that, that I'm very concerned about. One of them is it's a framing and narrative choice issue. Right. And if you, if you look at the story, the narrative, not, Not. Not any specific fact. Right. Not any specific issue, but the overall story that people believe about immigration and that is advanced, whatever you read about it, overwhelmingly, there's two things that Americans, and I would say people all over the world have been told. The first one is what I call the victim. Sorry, not victim. The villain story. I call it the villain story. The idea that immigrants are here to do you harm. Right. They are gonna take your job, they're gonna Commit a crime against your sister, you. They're going to destroy the cultural heritage of the country that you love.

David James Gonzalez (19:45)

Right?

Zeke Hernandez (19:46)

That's, that's not a new story, right? I mean, the, the current administration is certainly telling that story, but it's been around in the United States at least since the Irish arrived in the 1840s, right? So, so that's been around. And that's true, you know, that, that's true about like, you know, narratives about Muslim immigrants in Europe or whatever, right? That's always been there. What's more, in some ways, what's more shocking to me is, is that if the villain story is telling you that immigrants are there to hurt you, you would imagine that the alternative story is, no, immigrants are here to help you. But that's not true. The common alternative was what I call the victim narrative, right? And victim is, you know, Emma Lazarus poet Bring me your tired, your poor held masses yearning to be free, right? These are needy outsiders. We, you know, someone helped our ancestors, let's give them a hand. It's the moral thing to do, right? Or look at these poor people. Even now, when we see these immigrants being targeted by ice, we think, oh my gosh, these poor victims, right? And so there's a lot of victimization of immigrants. And that is moral. It's compassionate, I believe 90% of it. But notice that it's not a good alternative to the villain framing, because both could be true, right? It could be very costly to do the morally right thing of welcoming needy outsiders. And so the problem is that we constantly have these political battles of, well, you need to either fear these outsiders or you need to pity them, right? And that's just a false trade off, and that's as old as time. And so what I'm trying to do based on, again, based on evidence, is to say, no, no, no, the correct alternative, the correct counter argument to the victim, sorry, actually to both the victim and villain narratives, is to say that immigrants are good for us. It is in our self interest to welcome them because they improve our economy in very powerful ways. They improve our society in very powerful ways, right? And so it's neither victim nor villain. And so I think that's the issue. And then I know I'm being a little long winded, but besides the framing, the problem is that while the minority of people believe in the villain story, only about a quarter of Americans believe immigrants are bad for the country. More than three quarters believe that they're good, right? So you would say, well, then why are we having these fights it's because that minority that pushes the villain narrative, they're very passionate about it. That is all they talk about. It's the number one issue they vote on. Right? It's like that annoying friend who discovered that carbs are bad, right. And all they can talk about is how evil carbs are. And you're like, I don't know. I kind of like carbs. I mean, I don't think about carbs all day long. You know, they're okay, but you don't spend all your time talking about carbs, right? So it's like that annoying friend that's like the one person that dominates the conversation, but the other 10 people in the conversation are like, I don't know. I mean, carbs are probably okay, you know, maybe not in excess, but they're fine. Right? And so we have the tail wagging the dog and that we have this minority that's, like, always talking about how bad carbs are. In this case, carbs are immigrants, of course. And so that. That asymmetry and passion and effort and funding then makes it so that the. The villain narrative seems to be the thing, right? When. When it's actually not. So I think that that's as old as time and super media. Media has supercharged that, you know, in the way that you said.

David James Gonzalez (23:20)

Certainly. Thank you. Excellent. That. That gets us to some of these very key points that you make in the beginning of the book, particularly your realization that standard economic models, you know, of economic growth, you know, didn't take sufficient account, the movement of people. This is what probably we've been talking about, this going beyond the villain. The villain and victim narrative. And so you're, you know, you begin the book by, you know, putting your cards on the table. And you've mentioned this in ways several times that we've been discussing right now that, you know, the conclusion, you know, is. And the evidence supports that immigrants are net positive contributors to everything that makes our society successful. And you use this analogy of a, you know, a swamp versus a lake society. Can you explain that a bit more? And how. Which one do we want? And how do immigrants, you know, factor into this?

Zeke Hernandez (24:20)

Yeah, I mean, it's. In some ways, it's a good. It's a good. I mean, who. Who wants a swamp, Right? We all want to live in a healthy lake, but yeah, I mean, just imagine, right? And I'm not an expert in the science of lakes and swamps, so it's just an analogy. But any body of water that doesn't have a healthy inlet, it Just rots, right. It becomes a swamp. It stinks. There's no renewal. There's not a lot of life in it. And so societies and economies are a lot like that. If there's no new flow of people and ideas and investment and, and innovation and, you know, you know, you think, what, whatever good thing you want, right. If there's no flow of it, it's going to rot, it's going to stagnate, Right. If you want a historical example of this, you know, think of what was it like hundreds of years ago, right, when China closed itself off to the world, right. And lost its status as, as a superpower. Right. That, that, you know, China made a very conscious decision to become a swamp society and it paid the price. And it has, in one could say that for now, hundreds of years, it has been trying to recover from that decision. Right. And the United States has actually been a Lake society since its origin. It has been a very welcoming place. Despite our politics and fights and all that. We now are led by a movement, at least led in the sense of who's in charge politically, that has tried to close America off. And that's not just to immigrants. That's just to almost like anything foreign. And I don't want to get too political here, but regardless of your politics, I think it should worry you that you want no new flow, no new inflow of things. Right. And so I think clearly we want a lake society. And I'm sure in the next minutes that we have left, we'll talk about what those inputs are and why those inflows are so important.

David James Gonzalez (26:19)

Certainly. And let's move in that direction. One of the, in the early chapters really expands on this link that you make between immigration, investment and jobs. They form this triangle that leads to this Lake society. One of these initial issues is that I think, and again, a lot of this goes against perhaps popular discourse. I wouldn't say common sense. It's not common sense necessarily. You would hope common sense would be based on something more than ideology. But what I'm pointing to here is that immigrants actually revitalize economically depressed areas. In my own field of scholarship, there's been several books, particularly in Latino urban studies and US Urban history, that have, over the last decade or so have started to show exactly this. Like doing comparisons with metropolitan areas near Chicago and Dallas and actually showing how immigrants coming in have. In some of these areas. Right. Like near Chicago, like reversed. Right. What we've scholars refer to as the urban crisis. Right. Deindustrialization. Right. The fleeing of Jobs of employers and have brought a revitalization. So through your scholarship. And how do you explain this, how do you help people make sense of this aspect, that immigrants are actually positive in revitalizing, not depressing areas, because some would point to what they see, you know, either through media or what maybe they live around and say. It looks like it's the opposite to me.

Zeke Hernandez (28:00)

Yeah. I mean, yeah. So let me, let me, I'll start with like an overview and then I'll give a very specific thing. So we're talking about like lake versus swamp societies. We talk about economically depressed areas. If you talk to anyone who lives in an economically depressed area, there are, and this is a lay version of economic theory, but there are essentially five things, and you can use the five fingers of your hand, There are five things that these places are desperate for. The first one is investment. The second one is talent, talented people moving in. The third is consumption, people buying stuff. Right. The fourth would be taxes, right? Having a healthy tax base and then just innovation, right? New ideas, new technologies, new businesses, that kind of thing. So just to summarize, investment, talent, consumption, taxes and innovation, okay, those are the five inflows, to use my lake society analogy, that you need. You could think of them as five little streams that are coming into the lake. And economically depressed areas have lost many of those, right. If not all five, three or four or two. Right. And so if you think about it, immigrants bring those things, right? The inflow of immigrants brings those things. Let's start with investment. Just because, you know, investment to me is the seed of everything. If no one's investing in your community, you can't create jobs, right. Those companies won't, you know, employ people who then will pay taxes, who will than have money to consume and etc. And so if, you know, one of, one of the things that immigrants do is that they increase the amount of investment in any community, including in economically depressed communities. And they do that in two ways. The first one is that immigrants are 80% more likely to start businesses than non immigrants, right? 80% more likely. This is in the United States, right? So that, that means that an immigrant is almost twice as likely to start a business or as a non immigrant person. And those businesses, they're not just like the ethnic restaurant that sells food that you can't live without anymore. I mean, yes, it's not just the corner store that sells calling cards so people can call their family back in Central America. Yes, it is those businesses. But we're also talking about technology businesses, right? So Think of, you know, we're having this meeting by Zoom. Guess what? Zoom was founded by an immigrant, right? If you're addicted to duolingo because you're trying to learn French for the hundredth time, well, guess what? An immigrant from Guatemala started duolingo. You know, nearly half of the Fortune 500 firms are immigrant founded. And so when you look at both large and small employers, it's the investment that immigrants put into these new businesses because they're so entrepreneurial, they're creating a lot of the jobs that then provide the income for people to spend and have mortgages and buy homes, et cetera. And so, you know, why would you not want that, right? Like, tell me a community that does not want investment. I have yet to hear from one, right? You might say, well, I don't want investment from someone who eats curry instead of steak. We can have a conversation about what that means, right? But that's a separate issue if you're talking about strictly the economic case, it's very, very clear that if you want investment, you want immigrants in your community. Let me pause there. I don't want to take too much time. I'm sure we have other questions to get through.

David James Gonzalez (31:40)

No, that's great. It reminds me of one of your opening examples of your title entitled Invasion of Idaho. Because to bring it home and bring it closer to home, these debates are happening across our country, particularly across the West. Post Covid. Right. As that we got all this news is this big outward migration, which I've always chuckled at, and I understand the numbers show an outward migration in net population decline in California. That's my home state, Southern California. And so I obviously take it personal and people are throwing shots at my home state. But you give this example of this Invasion of Idaho, right? And which to me initially, if it wasn't titled Idaho, I would have read as Utah, because I can't tell you how many times I've heard, right. People talk about all the wonderful things that. And growth, right? So when you. When you're reading the newspaper and you're reading the economic assessment of the Intermountain west, right? For at least I think a decade now, if not more, right. Idaho and Utah have just been booming, right. In that sense, through this economic growth model, right? And what has that been been driven by? People, right. Flows of migration, a lot of that coming from California and other places throughout the west and Southwest. And in, you know, then it's led to a lot of other conversations about, well, what else are these, right. Californians and everyone else Bringing that we don't like. Right? So they love the growth. They love the booming property values, in essence. I mean, I was here in Utah 25 years ago for a little bit, and, you know, back then, you know, rents, property values were super low, were a pittance compared to what it was in the West. And now property values here, you know, half a million dollars median home, you know, in. In Utah. Right. I mean, it's. It's become a very. And you get that throughout the West. Right? So I just saw. I felt that that open example you gave really illustrates this. This growth model that we see, that that is cheerleaded, right? And, and, you know, by boosters and st. All this stuff, right. And then. But even in a domestic sense, it's like, oh, but what values are they bringing? You know, they're.

Zeke Hernandez (33:59)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a good point, right? Because that example of the invasion of Idaho just to. To complete it. The point of the example is, is to show that all the complaints that people have about Californians moving to Idaho are the exact same complaints that people have about immigrants who are foreigners. Right. Who are. Who are from a country outside the United States. You know, I think it's very important to tell that story because I think it tells us that we just have a problem with population growth.

David James Gonzalez (34:30)

Right?

Zeke Hernandez (34:31)

We want all the benefits of new people. Right. But somehow we don't want the people that come with them. And you can't have your cake and eat it too. Right? And I can tell you this. I've spent the last, what, nearly two years now crisscrossing the country, talking to people about this book. And, you know, it's not just podcasts. I've been with groups that represent every walk of life. So think of chambers of commerce or mayors or, you know, politicians, business leaders, small business owners. And I can tell you the problems of population growth are much better than the problems of population decline. Like, I mean, you would much rather have a bunch of people wanting to move into your community. And yes, you have to deal with building, housing and, you know, adding schools. And I get that these can be contentious issues, but you'd much rather deal with those issues than the issue of, holy crap, everyone's moving out, nobody's investing. Right. The biggest employers are leaving, they're relocating because there aren't enough workers. Right. If you want an example, just recently, I think it was Tyson Foods closed their biggest. The biggest employer in Nebraska. The biggest single employment plant in Nebraska. Left, right. I mean, that is terrible. That is gutting for A community. And that coincides with lack of immigration. Right. And so you do not want net out migration. Right. And you do want net in migration. And there are ways to manage that that are reasonable, that that create win win opportunities.

David James Gonzalez (36:11)

Very good. I want to go to the, the subject of innovation and you, you raise a really good example and of, you know, that I, of course, and appeals to me as a historian, you, you referred to a key policy about a hundred years ago that, you know, really reflected how long we've been, really reflects how long we've been dealing with this, this issue, this trying to get to the question of immigrants and what they bring and the politics of immigration. What I'm referring here to is the 1924 National Origins Act. Will you explain what that was and how that impacted, in your estimation, innovation and thereby conversely, what we've seen on the opposite side as immigrants and immigrant flows have allowed to crisscross more freely?

Zeke Hernandez (37:01)

Yeah, I would say if there's anyone here listening who does not know what the 1924 National Origins act is, please look it up. Right. My explanation will be insufficient. But you have to, and you have to, if nothing else, if you want to understand current political moment we're in in the United States and the stakes, read about the 1924 National Origins Act. What it was. It was the most restrictive law in the, in the history of the United States. Sorry, the most restrictive immigration law in the history of the United States. United States. And, and what it did is it imposed for the first time in this country's history, a quota, a limit on the number, but also the origins, the sources of people that could move to the United States. And to understand why that law was passed, you have to understand what happened in the 25 to 30 years before that. The United States had been receiving lots of immigrants from mainly northern and Eastern Europe up until about the 1890. And then after that there was kind of a turning point in which most immigrants started coming from southern and Eastern Europe. Right. Think of Italy, Greece, Russia, you know, Eastern Europe, that kind of place. And so there was a freak out. I mean, that's the only way to put it, a national freak out, particularly among political elites with. Because the belief was that Southern and Eastern Europes were just unassimilable. Right. They were, you know, I mean, you know, we can accept like English Protestants and German Protestants, but no, you know, we cannot handle, you know, Italian Catholics or, you know, Eastern European Jews. That is going to break the country. And you know, this coincided with the rise in the, you Know, kind of eugenics and the pseudoscience that eugenics was.

David James Gonzalez (38:48)

But.

Zeke Hernandez (38:49)

And anyway, the concerns were actually very similar to what we're hearing now about Asians and Latin Americans. Very, very eerily similar. Okay. Anyway, that culminated in a process whereby in 1924, Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins act, which said, we're done. We have to, you know, in the interest of sort of national security and cultural homogeneity, we have to restrict immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. And so a quota was set, essentially bringing down immigration from Southern and Eastern European countries to virtually zero. Not zero, but virtually zero. Limiting immigration from Asia to precisely zero.

David James Gonzalez (39:29)

Right.

Zeke Hernandez (39:30)

Immigration from Asia was not allowed, and then favoring immigration from Northern and Eastern Europe to preserve sort of the Protestant white stock. And I want to be clear, this is not me making revisionist history. I'm using the same terminology as the framers of that law. Right. They wanted to keep America white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant. Right. That was their stated goal. Anyway, that's what happened. The demographic effect of this was enormous. Immigrants went from being 15% of the US population in the early 1900s to being less than 5% over the next 40 years. That is a enormous demographic change. And so there were many parts of the United States that had been exposed to a lot of Southern and Eastern European migration that all of a sudden lost the inflow. Okay. Anyway, that's the National Origins Act. We could talk for hours about it, but I'll stop there. It had many, many effects. But let's talk about innovation, which is the one you asked about. A few studies have been done showing how this affected innovation in the United States. One of them shows that US Born scientists who became less exposed to Southern and Eastern European scientists exhibited a decline of 70% in patenting. 70%. Right. That's huge. And that decline was permanent. They never recovered from it. Why? Because what immigrants bring, besides being bodies that do important jobs or being consumers, they bring new ideas. Right. And so when you have Southern and Eastern European scientists who think differently, who maybe have seen different problems, who solve problems in different ways, and their ideas get combined with US born colleagues, you get innovation, you get patents. Right. And when you lose them, that recombination of ideas and ways of thinking goes away. And that is a massive effect. Right. And we're talking about, you know, if you want to think of why, say, patenting matters to you. Well, most of the technologies that you're using, like right now, to listen to this podcast, exist because someone patented a good idea, the medical device or medical Treatment that is saving the life of someone you love is patented and as a result of new ideas brought by new people. And you might think, okay, this was just an anomaly. It was a hundred years ago. How does it apply today? Well, let me tell you how it applies today. There's a very good study done on all patents filed in the last 20 years or so that shows that today immigrants are responsible for 36% of all patents. Okay, that is a huge number. And it's even more impressive when you realize that immigrants are only 16% of inventors who patent in the United States. So they're punching at more than double their representation in the inventive population. So a lot, literally a lot of the technologies that you depend upon exist because an immigrant came with a new idea, with a new skill, that new idea and skill was combined with the ideas and skills of non immigrant colleagues and out popped Zoom, Google, you know, a technology that allows you to make your home more energy efficient, a technology that makes you healthier, a technology that saves a life. And so that's what's at stake when it comes to immigration, right? It's not just bodies that fill jobs, it's minds that bring new things. And just I'll say one more thing about this. This is not just highbrow stuff like patents. I mean, patents are very visible. But think of the foods that you eat, right? Think of your favorite supermarket and the staples you buy. At least half of the things that you buy every day to eat wouldn't exist if it weren't for immigrants in this country, right? And so innovation isn't just patented highbrow stuff, right? It's what you eat, what you buy, what you spend your time entertaining yourself. So your life wouldn't just be, you know, your life might not exist, right, for one, but the quality of life that you have also is deeply affected by the innovations immigrants bring.

David James Gonzalez (43:36)

Wonderful. Yes. In, in your, you know, one of your chapters, you explain, you know, these different effects as the quantity effect, novelty effect and remix effect and, and, and how in illustrating how immigrants spur this type of innovation that you've been referring to here, and it is, I mean, truly just to start, I think one could just simply start making a list, right, of what are their favorite foods, what type of music do they like to listen to, what consumer products or technologies do they use, and start googling, or pick your favorite chatbot, I guess, and start prompting it to tell you the basis of the origins of these things. And we'll find, yes, they all require on the movement of people and the innovation that it spurs. I think your work does phenomenal work at really opening this. And this was where a lot of this, this, I love this aspect of, you know, the data that you bring. That when people really start reflecting, I think on again, what we depend on, what we use, consume, et cetera, what we rely on, then it becomes common sense. Now we really say, oh, the real common sense is actually this stuff that's backed up by data.

Zeke Hernandez (44:46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think again, you don't have to be a social scientist or historian or economist to see this. You just literally look around, right, like just, just like, you know, don't, you know, forget the headlines for a minute. Don't pay attention to what a politician is telling. Just literally look at what you do every day and ask yourself, how would it be different had there not been immigration? And you will be surprised, right, if you're actually open minded and willing to be honest with yourself, you will be shocked at how your daily life is like profoundly affected by the kind of ways of movement that we have allowed in this country.

David James Gonzalez (45:24)

Wonderful. Your book deals and basically addresses every major, pretty much every major hot topic issue in regards to immigrants. We don't have time to cover all of those. You know, this ranges from the challenge of undocumented immigration to our immigration system, it's visa system, the various pathways that people have. You know, people listening to this podcast may have heard, right, the limited pathways. We often hear that people need to get in line. The rejoinder to that is often. But there is no line, there is no pathway. So those are all in this book and I want to plug that. However, our time is short, so there's a couple of things I want to chat about because it continues to deal with the economics, you know, of this. All these things have economic implications. But there are two essential questions. Someone may also say, well, yes, I love all these products, right? I love all these things that immigrants bring. However, I'm still very concerned because it seems unfair. You know, it's unfair in that I'm competing with an immigrant for a job. They're taking our jobs. This is something you even mentioned in the book that you heard as you were contemplating the idea of leaving Uruguay, coming to the United States. You're told, right, you're going to take someone's job, you're going to take someone's, you know, potential spouse, right? And you're going to take, take, take. So there's aspect of immigrants, take, take, take, they take jobs, they take public Resources, Right. Yeah. They reduce, erode public coffers.

Zeke Hernandez (47:02)

Yeah.

David James Gonzalez (47:02)

What does the data show?

Zeke Hernandez (47:04)

Yeah. So for what, I want to start by emphasizing that I really do understand these questions. These are fair questions to ask. Okay? I have no problem with people asking those questions. What I do have a problem is that most people don't want to listen to the answer. Right. The question is good, Right. But then, you know, pay attention to the answer. So while it might seem common sense that you have more people who are competing for more resources, more jobs, you know, who now are making more claims on, you know, the public, you know, the public resources that governments are offering, while it seems common sense, the data shows that it's exactly the opposite.

David James Gonzalez (47:43)

Okay.

Zeke Hernandez (47:44)

And so, again, right. We spent hours on each one of these questions. The short of it, let's start with the jobs question. So the idea that an immigrant is competing for your job, it seems like it makes common sense, right? Because there's more people now applying for the same position. But that is only true. That is only true if the arrival of immigrants does nothing to grow the economy, if it doesn't make the pie larger. And, and, and that is, and, and that assumption that the economy stays fixed in size when new people arrive, it makes no sense. And the evidence shows that, Right? Because when you have a hundred thousand new people arriving in your state, well, guess what? Your economy is a hundred thousand people bigger, right? And those hundred thousand people, they don't just apply for jobs. They need to spend their paycheck on things that you might be producing. Right? And so because the economy is bigger and consumption is bigger, the demand side of the economy grows, which means that now the economy just needs more jobs. So there are more jobs to go around to begin with, right? And this is so important to understand, right? Immigrants don't just consume, they produce and increase the demand side of the economy. The other fallacy, and the expectation that an immigrant is going to steal your job or is competing for your job, is that you're also assuming that that immigrant is identical to you. They have the exact same skill set, they're interested in the exact same job. They're willing to do the exact same job. But we know very clearly from evidence that that's not the case. Immigrants are different, right? They're willing to do different jobs, maybe because of lack of language skills or other forms of education they bring with them. They're also better suited for certain positions, Right. That are different from what you're better suited for. And so what we also see is that immigrants and Non immigrants sort of sort into different jobs, they sort into different roles within the same firms. And so it ends up being win win rather than zero sum. Right? And if you want a good example of this that is very kind of daily, just think of your local restaurant, right? When you go to your restaurant, think of who the waitstaff is, who the person that welcomes you is versus the person that's cooking versus doing the dishes. Right. Versus parking your car if you, you know, if the, if the restaurant offers a valet service, right? It's just immigrants and non immigrants sorting into different jobs. So I think, you know, once you realize that immigrants are, are making the economic pie bigger and bringing different things to the labor market, that concern that the immigrant is going to take your job, actually you should be excited because the immigrants are increasing and diversifying the economy in a way that creates more job opportunities for you. And that's actually what the evidence shows. The latest study, and this is actually like, came after I wrote the book. So this is like, you know, cutting edge. The latest study looking at the last 25 years of the US economy shows that the arrival of immigrants actually increased job opportunities for natives and increased the wages of natives by a little bit. Not, not by a lot, but increase them, not decrease them. And then when it comes to public coffers, it's very similar, right? If you think that immigrants are just here to, you know, consume welfare resources and yes, sometimes they do. You're forgetting that immigrants are also adding to the tax base that is paying into the system, right? So in the same way that immigrants are increasing the demand side of the economy and therefore increasing job opportunities, they're also paying more into the tax system that then allows the government to, you know, provide more services. And so I think if you, if you think of those two things, then those concerns go away. There's some really interesting research that also came out after I wrote the book. So I'm mentioning it here because, you know, if you want to read the book or if you're going to read the book, you're going to read the book. But you might miss out on what I'm about to say. There's a psychological study on something called efficiency neglect. And efficiency neglect is a psychological bias whereby when people think about population growth, they think of new people just as consumers, but not as producers. Right? And so people overestimate the amount that new people will consume, but underestimate the amount that new people will produce. And because of efficiency neglect, we tend to think about population growth in zero sum terms. Instead of thinking that population growth is like, hey, the pie is getting bigger for everybody. So we have to fight a bit against that bias. And it's a bias and I get it, you know, I really understand it. But you know, when you set the record straight, there's nothing to be worried about there.

David James Gonzalez (52:23)

Very good. And yes, for our listeners there is, there are a lot more examples that Zeke gets into in these chapters. It's, you know, the short answer to these questions are, you know, based in, you know, in the overall thesis that an argument that immigrants are net positive in all these ways. And so there's a lot more data in detail that he presents. So I just want to plug that. I do have one more question. You have time for one more question. I hinted at it earlier. You don't really address it in the book, but it is about AI. It is about how generative AI and what is coming from what we hear, agentic AI. So generative AI is the stuff that is more reactive. It spawns to our promptings. It's like a super search engine, if you will. And again, it's more complex than that. But anyways, it still relies on human promptings. But what AI is moving towards and apparently the threats to our economy and jobs that we're being told is through this agentic version that's coming, right, it's not going to need our prompting. It's going to replace a lot of jobs. And we do see, I think particularly quite shockingly for entry level white collar recently college grads, the job market ain't too good for them right now. And part of it is the restructuring of the economy that's having as a matter of AI. I'm just guessing you've thought a bit about and I don't know if I'm presuming too much, just let me know. But I'm wondering what your thoughts are about AI and how it may impact migration, that is the movement of people. Are we going to continue to need as many immigrants? Because that's another big point that you make in the scholarship for a while has really, you know, mentioned in regards to population growth and decline and we need a growing population. China again is one of those examples of what happens when you have a declining birth rate and, and you don't have immigration to, to counter that on what that does economically for society. But just, you know, I don't know, this is again really just tossing it out there and wondering what your thoughts are about what the impact of AI will have on the movement of people and things that you discuss?

Zeke Hernandez (54:33)

Yeah, I mean so far everything you've asked me, I have data and facts and evidence to answer. We're now in the realm of speculation. So anybody who tells you I have the answer for sure and this like they're lying to you. And so I will speculate, but I want to be careful to preface my speculation by saying that's all it is. The truth is nobody knows exactly how AI is going to affect the need for people and the need for workers. We simply don't. However, I am not a believer in the alarmist. You know, AI is going to replace all humans. I'm also not on the other extreme of like the over optimist. That AI is going to solve all our problems. I think it's going to be somewhere in between. Right. We've been here before. When I arrived to my job at Wharton. Gosh, it's been what, 14 years now. This was like there was a lot of excitement about self driving vehicles. And back then everyone was telling me that in five years there would be no humans driving anything. Well, it's been 14 years and there are plenty of humans driving a lot of things. But the other thing is that the arrival of self driving technologies require a new set of skills and a new set of workers that we couldn't have imagined before. I think with AI it'll be very similar. So rather than replace the need for people, rather than replace the need for migration, I think it's just going to require different people with different skills. It might lead us to attract migrants from different places. And so yeah, I don't think people are going away. The other thing is, let's not forget that we are in a historically unprecedented decline in birth rates. Right. The US is now at 1.6, which is well below replacement rate. We're approaching Europe level fertility rates. And so we need more people more than ever rather than the opposite. And so if AI is not going to replace people and we're in that demographic cliff that we are, I think the need for migration is at least as big as it ever has been, is my sense.

David James Gonzalez (56:34)

Great, thank you. And fair. I appreciate you humoring me in responding to that question, even through speculating, because that is indeed what we're all doing. We're all trying to take our best guess on what's going to happen. Well, Zeke, again, thank you so much. You know, one of the things I really enjoy about what your question does and what you're pushing against this villain victim narrative, it's something I've found really a key in what I seek for and questions to answer in the things that I research and write. And that is, you know, you show this aspect of agency of that is these contributions, right? And viewing people through these, you know, very zero sum, you know, lenses they either take or we need to appeal to our benevolent side and rather than looking at what they contribute, has always been a key analytic and I think part of the narrative that has definitely been missing in immigration studies. And perhaps one of the things that has drawn me to that is to try to do what you're doing, to counter by showing the evidence overwhelmingly shows what people contribute and what they do, that they are agents of positive movement and success. So thank you for that. I'll plug for our audience too, that your book is available in audiobook. So if you don't have time to read it, you can listen to it. If you need it on an E reader, it's available there too. So it's very accessible. Thanks again, Zeke, for your time and coming out to New Books Network.

Zeke Hernandez (58:01)

Thanks, DJ for what you're doing as well. It's been an honor to be with you.