- Speaker #0
Welcome to the Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast. The show covering all things health, wellness, culture, and more. The show for all of us who aren't old or better. Each week, we'll interview superstars, experts, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things. All related to this wonderful experience of getting better, not just older. Now, here's your host, the award-winning Paul Vogelzang.
- Speaker #1
Welcome. To the Not All Better Show on radio and podcast, I'm Paul Vogelzang. Today's show is brought to you by Acorns. Acorns makes it easy for everyone to start saving and investing. Today we're tackling one of the most important and misunderstood issues of our time, immigration. Now, immigration is a word that can stir up a lot of emotions and controversy. It is the subject that often divides people today. It divides politicians. It makes headlines. But what if I told you that much of what we believe about immigration, about its effects on our jobs, our economy, and our culture, isn't backed by facts? Our guest today is someone who spent nearly two decades researching this very topic. His name is Dr. Zeke Hernandez. We're going to introduce him in just a minute. He's a professor at the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and his new book, The Truth About Immigration, Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers is getting rave reviews. It just flips the script on how we think about immigration. This isn't just a book about policy, though. It's a book about people, their stories, their contributions, and the undeniable data that shows how immigrants are not just filling gaps in our workforce, but they're driving innovation. They're creating jobs. You're going to hear Zeke Hernandez talk about patents and the creativity of these workers. They're making our communities stronger. In today's conversation with Dr. Zeke Hernandez, we are going to dig into the myth and the reality. Is immigration really a zero-sum game where one group has to lose for the other to gain? What happens when we shift our focus from fear to facts, from seeing immigrants as competitors to recognizing them as catalysts for growth? Zeke Hernandez's work challenges us to broaden our understanding. Zeke Hernandez will share with us today. eye-opening statistics. Literally, you are going to be amazed by this, but they're just compelling real-life examples, a clear non-partisan. This is a non-partisan show, a non-partisan look at how newcomers, from the engineers behind your favorite tech gadgets to the chefs behind the dishes we love, they're essential to a thriving society. And as many of our listeners know, this show is about celebrating every stage of life and every story that adds value. to our world, especially for those of us age 50 and above. Immigration isn't just an issue for younger generation. It directly impacts retirees, businesses, and the future of our communities in a very positive, wonderful way. So whether you're curious, skeptical, or simply ready to hear a new perspective on a long debated issue, stick with us today. You might just walk away seeing things in a whole new light. I'm excited about this conversation. You're going to hear from Dr. Zeke. Hernandez about his wonderful new book, The Truth About Immigration, Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers. Please join me in welcoming to the Not All Better Show on radio and podcast, Zeke Hernandez. Dr. Zeke Hernandez, welcome to the program.
- Speaker #2
Thank you. I'm so grateful to be here with you.
- Speaker #1
I'm equally grateful. It's so nice to talk to you about The Truth About Immigration, your new book. It's been getting rave reviews. We're going to talk about immigration. We're going to talk about your book. I just want to jump right into Dr. Hernandez. Because I think so many of us are hearing more and more about the subject of immigration. It's on our minds. Absolutely. Your book presents this wonderful, fresh perspective. I wonder if you just start right there and tell us what inspired you to write it, especially from this perspective that immigration can be very positive and you have a lot of data to share. We'll get into all of that. But just generally, what inspired you?
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I've been doing research on how immigration affects the economy for nearly 20 years. And a few years ago, I started speaking to audiences from all walks of life. And these were everything from church groups and rotary clubs to congressional staffers, academics to business level executives. And regardless of the audience, one of the things that struck me was that there was a wide disconnect between what we hear in the news and what the average person believes about immigration and what's actually true and correct based on the evidence. And there was another realization I had that became very important. important and why I chose to write this book from the angle that I did, which is that, again, regardless of background, I realized that We as a people have been told two different narratives, both of which are incorrect. One of them is what I call the villain narrative, the idea that immigrants are here to take their job, undermine your culture, threaten your safety. And that's very familiar to anyone paying attention to politics these days. But the other one, interestingly, is what I call the victim story. And this is a very compassionate story. It's the Emma Lazarus poem, Bring Me Your Tired Rapport. And that one tells us that we should be pitiful toward immigrants, that we should welcome them out of pity and morality, even if it costs us. And it turns out that the evidence tells us very clearly that neither one of these is true. Immigrants don't need your fear. They also don't need your pity. And I thought, boy, we need a third story that is not just true, but also positive, that tells us why immigrants are important and essential for a prosperous community, a prosperous society. That was the inspiration, and that's the story I'm trying to tell, and I'm sure what we're going to talk about. Well,
- Speaker #1
thank you very much. I like that. Neither villain nor to be pitied. And as a matter of fact, one of the largest misconceptions that we hear, Dr. Hernandez, is that immigrants take our jobs, they lower wages. However, your data shows just the opposite. And I wonder if you talk about that briefly. I think we're all nerdy about that. I think our audience is very interested in the data. But tell us. how this really actually strengthens economies.
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It's interesting that that was the first question about economics you asked me. In some ways, one of the things that I'm always dismayed about is that that ends up becoming the only question. Are immigrants stealing jobs, lowering the wages of native workers? Again, that's part of the villain story we're told. It turns out that it's exactly the opposite. And it's exactly the opposite for two reasons. First, let me talk about this question of whether immigrants take jobs or not. There's basically two reasons why it doesn't happen. The first one is that when new people arrive to an economy, the economic pie becomes bigger, right? Why? Because it's not just new workers that are coming in, it's new consumers, it's new taxpayers, it's new investors, it's new businesses. That is, the economy is bigger, so you need actually more workers to power that economy, right? So it's not like these new people are competing for a fixed number of jobs that were there before. There are now more jobs available. The second is that immigrants are different from US foreign workers in the jobs they fill and in the... skills they bring. And so they don't compete with the native born directly. So you don't get the zero sum outcome of, hey, I'm here for your job, or I'm here for your wage. Instead, what you get with a bigger economy is that you get more jobs, and you also get a more diversified economy that requires different jobs and different skills. Just to quote one bit of research, the latest study that came out just a few weeks ago, actually, after I published my book, shows that in the last 25 years, immigrants have actually increased the wages of native workers and created jobs for them. So it's a win-win. It's not a win-lose. And that's why we can be optimistic about this.
- Speaker #1
You have this great triangle, the device that you use to kind of set off this idea that investment begats really immigration jobs, and it all really ties there very much together, along with this idea of innovation. And I really thought that was very powerful. And that's kind of the second question. So if the first one really is that immigrants... don't do damage. The opposite is true. We really see that there can be great innovation as a result of immigration into our country and that this leads to investment and job.
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That's right. So let me take a back step here. An economy basically needs five key ingredients to grow and produce prosperity. Okay, those ingredients are one investment, two innovation, three talent, four consumption and five taxes. Without those things, you don't get a healthy economy. Immigrants contribute positively to all of those. Now, let me address that triangle you mentioned, what I call the immigration investment job triangle. And I want to do it with this early last year in hometown Pennsylvania. So I live in Philadelphia. So in my state of Pennsylvania, small town, 3,500 people, EMD Electronics announced the creation of 200 jobs and investment of nearly $200 million. These were skilled manufacturing jobs. Okay. And You know, that story caught my attention because I asked myself, of all places, hometown Pennsylvania, population 3,500, with all due respect, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Why would you have an investment of 200 million bucks creating 200 jobs here? The answer to that question requires understanding the story of hometown. It turns out if you go to their website, you will learn that this is a town that was created in the early 1800s by German immigrants. OK. In fact, they only spoke German there for a few generations. And then you're asking, OK, what does that have to do with this investment? Well, it turns out that EMD Electronics is owned by a German corporation. And it's not a coincidence that many years later, German companies are investing and creating jobs in hometown Pennsylvania. Why? Because when immigrants settle in a place, they serve as a magnet for investment from their home countries, right? Corporations, companies, investors from that country, they develop information connections, trusted relationships, like a conveyor belt of investment that goes between sending and receiving location. And so I and my colleagues have done research showing that actually where immigrants go, investment follows from their home countries. And these investments like EMD Electronics create jobs. So that's That's the immigration investment jobs triangle. Again, another win-win for the economy. And it's not just true of ancestral migrants like Germans in hometown Pennsylvania. It's true even for recent immigrants. For example, a lot of the investments that Indian, Mexican, and Chinese companies are making in the U.S. are in places where there's a lot of Indian, Mexican, and Chinese immigrants.
- Speaker #1
It's fascinating. The other nerdy point, because this is so quantifiable, and that is patent creation. I wonder if you just tell us a couple of the stories that you came across in your research for the book that led to this idea that, in fact, immigrants are often overrepresented in terms of innovation and how they're really driving creativity.
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Yeah, exactly. So that's another of those five key inputs, innovation. Just this morning, I was listening to a podcast episode about CPR, and it turns out that CPR was discovered by an immigrant doctor, Peter Zaffer, in the 1960s. And, you know, we wouldn't have CPR, like this innovation in medical technology that allows you to survive when you have a tragic thing happen to you. So immigrants disproportionately contribute to all kinds of innovation, whether they're in technology or product. And a statistic that I discovered while doing research for the book that really surprised me is that immigrants are only 16% of inventors in the United States, but they are responsible for 36% of all patents in the United States. That's more than double their representation in the population, which is a big effect. And this goes up not just in the CPR technology or the COVID vaccine, or, you know, you and I are having this conversation via Zoom, right, which was invented by an immigrant. I mean, so many aspects of your life from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed are positively affected due to innovations that immigrants bring. And you might ask, of course, well, why? Why is it that immigrants? are so disproportionately contributing to innovation in every country, there's really two reasons. One is because they're different. And I say that in the best possible way. They bring different experiences, different training, different ideas. And when those ideas combine with the market needs and technology needs and consumption in the receiving country, you get novel things coming up, new products, new technologies, new things that we enjoy doing every day. So not just technology, but think of maybe you like a... sport like soccer or basketball. Those are things that were introduced by immigrants. So it's also leisure activities, cultural activities. The other reason that immigrants disproportionately contribute in this case, specifically to technological innovation is that they're overrepresented in the labor market when it comes to people with STEM skills. And people with STEM skills tend to be the kind to produce technology innovations like artificial intelligence, which is now sort of seems to take over the world. If you look at the companies that are producing the technology, they're not just the people that are producing the technology, they're AI innovations like StatGPT, most of the people producing those innovations are immigrants, just because they tend to have degrees in computer science and fields like that.
- Speaker #1
Fascinating. You know, when it came to investing, I used to think you had to have a finance degree or a stash of cash just sitting around in order to get started. But let's be real. We've all had moments where we wish we had started saving or investing. just a little bit earlier, right? I mean, who hasn't looked back and thought, oh, if only I tucked away that extra bit of cash, maybe I'd have a nice little nest egg by now. Well, I've got some good news for you. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. You guys have heard me talk about Acorns before, and it's a tool I wish I had when I was first figuring out how to make money work for me. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing for you, your kids, your grandkids, and your retirement. And the best part, you don't need a lot of money or expertise to get going. In fact, you can start with just your spare change. Acorns recommends an expert built portfolio that fits you and your goals, then automatically invests your money for you. Plus Acorns is now helping even more with your retirement by offering up to a 3% match on new contributions when you open an Acorns later. IRA. That's some bonus cash for your future. Honestly, what I love about Acorns is how simple they've made the whole process. I used to feel like investing was this big, intimidating thing, but with Acorns, it's as easy as rounding up your coffee ready. I've set it up for myself and even for my new grandchild with more to come. Just watching those small steps turn into something bigger feels pretty rewarding. If you've been thinking about getting started, but you don't know where to begin, head over to acorns.com slash NOB. All of this will be in our show notes, but again, acorns.com slash NOB or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today. A client testimonial. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash NOB. Our guest today is Dr. Zeke. Hernandez, Zeke Hernandez has written the wonderful new book, The Truth About Immigration, Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers. It's a wonderful book and you've shared it with me. Thank you so much for being so generous and giving me a copy of it. I really enjoyed it. I can't recommend it highly enough to our audience, but I'm not just the only one. As a matter of fact, I love this review that you've received from Richard Florida, who is the author of The Rise of the Creative Class. And Richard Florida says of your book, Hernandez Marshall's detailed data and moving personal stories to show how immigrants of all backgrounds and skill levels drive investment, innovation, and jobs. We've been talking about that, but they do essential work that Americans need done and create widespread economic gains. Wonderful. I just think that these are the kinds of things that people are saying about your book. Zeke Hernandez is the Max and Bernice Garchick Family Presidential Associate Professor at Wharton. That's a mouthful. Dr. Hernandez, but congratulations on all that you're doing in this wonderful book. I want to ask you a question again. I love these examples that you cite in the book, particularly about the vitality that's created around immigration, both business and culturally. I wonder if you'd just share a couple of examples where you found that immigration has this direct correlation to job creation, as well as vitality in terms of our cultural awareness.
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Yeah, let's start with the job creation, then we'll do a cultural vitality example. And I've just been speaking about high-end stuff, you know, like technology. So let's talk about everyday blue-collar jobs, because I think that's one area where immigrants that don't have college degrees are vilified, and their seat perhaps is not being the kinds of immigrants we want. And one story that I tell in the book that is based on research by Michael Clements, in 2011, the state of North Carolina, there were 6,000 farm job openings. job openings and farms. There were 500,000 unemployed North Carolinians, right? And so you would imagine, you know, maybe these people would really be desperate for farm jobs. North Carolina farmers essentially could not find native workers to fill those jobs. There was just only 200 of them applied. All of them were given jobs. Only seven of them finished the harvest, right? So that tells you the extent to which somehow native-born people, there's just certain jobs they won't do, like farm labor. Who had to fill those jobs? It was immigrant workers. Now, you might say, why does that contribute to the North Carolina economy or to economic growth? Well, imagine if those jobs aren't filled, these farms have to close. If these farms close, they're not able to supply food to the local supermarkets and restaurants in North Carolina or all over the country, which means that at a minimum, inflation is going to go up because prices are going to spike, which is actually exactly what happened after the COVID pandemic, because we were missing nearly a million immigrants in the economy. The same happens in other ways. There's research showing, for example, that when unskilled immigrants move into the economy and do jobs like household stores or construction work, actually native-born workers are able to focus on skills that play to their strengths, like speaking English. And so you get in the construction sector, immigrants doing the entry-level work like drywall, and now a native is able to move and become the foreman, which pays more. So the native is better off, the immigrant is better off, and... construction sites don't have to sit stalled. So immigrants are not just creating, they are preserving jobs because they're filling positions in areas where there's serious job shortages. And that benefits us all, like I just mentioned, not just in the jobs that are created and preserved, but it keeps the prices of goods and services manageable for all of us, right? Those are direct things that impact your pocket every day.
- Speaker #1
I'm from a family of immigrants, and I think it's so nice to have... the cultural influences in our communities that come from these immigrant families. We have certain family traditions that we've brought forward, and others in our family are doing the same kinds of things. That's very present, I think, in immigrant communities, and it's a wonderful part of our country's history.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, when I go around talking about immigration, one of the common concerns that comes up, especially after I'm done talking about the economic side... is that people will say, well, look, I can accept these economic gains, but I'm really worried that the country I know and love is going to change, right? The culture is going to change, the underlying essence of what makes America, America is going to change. I want to reassert whoever is listening that you don't need to worry about that. Immigrants adopt the core cultural values of America very successfully. That's why they come and why they want to become citizens of this country. But at the same time, they preserve certain differences that bring us all these cultural innovations that make our life richer. One of the favorite stories that really surprised me is in the area of music. For example, maybe some of your listeners like salsa music. Okay. I'm an immigrant. I grew up in Latin America. I thought that we had invented salsa in Latin America. That's what I always thought growing up. And when I moved to this country, people thought I could dance salsa because I'm from Latin America. It turns out that I can't. But a few years ago, I discovered something that really shocked me. And it's that actually salsa was created in New York City, in Brooklyn. And it happened as musicians from Latin America started jamming with musicians from New York, and they started mixing sounds and techniques and different styles of music. And out popped this new thing that at first didn't have a name in the 1960s. Eventually, it did acquire the name of salsa. And then it got imported and exported and mixed and remixed. But we have this wonderful genre of music that people love to go dance on weekends. I'm not one of them, right? I'm not good at it. But, you know, that's one example of thousands of little things that we take for granted, right? Not just music, but think of the kinds of foods that we eat, right? That make our palate jump for joy because we're trying new things. So many different things like that. They're not changing the essence of who we are as Americans. They're just making our life richer around the periphery. And that's a really good thing.
- Speaker #1
Dr. Hernandez, you talked about the misconceptions around job loss and around wages. One of the other... misconceptions, I think, is about the draining of our social services and how that perhaps is impacted by immigrants. Again, you found really just the opposite. And I wonder if you'd talk for just a second about how these long-term benefits really are almost enhanced through our immigration that isn't straining social services, but actually fostering them.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. So with this question, in some ways, we're going to finish covering the three main concerns people have about immigrants. One is that they take jobs. Two is that they undermine our culture. The third one is this question of do immigrants really strain our public services and our welfare system to the point of breaking? The short answer is no. Now, there is a short term, long term distinction here. Let me start with sort of the headline and the good news here. In the long run, immigrants are very, very wildly positive contributors to our taxes. Okay. One estimate from a recent study, which is considered one of the best studies on this, is that every immigrant brings in net present value terms, nearly $260,000 in taxes to the country, which is a lot. You add all the immigrants in the US at the time of that study, and that's over $10 trillion in taxes over their lifetime, which is a lot, right? In fact, without that, popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would literally become defunded. And honestly, they would become defunded within a decade, which is very scary. Now, there's other ways we have to deal with those programs, but I won't get into that. At the state level, it's also true that immigrants contribute positively state and local taxes in the long run, right? This takes, of course, time. This takes decades. And sometimes you have to account for their children and grandchildren as taxpayers as well. So the headline is, look, without immigrants, we would be missing out on millions and millions of taxpayers and our popular entitlement programs would become defunded. But there is a fair point that in the short run, and by short run, I mean in the first few months, perhaps in the first year or two of an immigrant arriving to a city or state, it does cost that city or state money to house them. The main cost is actually to educate the children, sometimes in hospital services and other things like that, or, you know. You have to spend a little bit more on roads or infrastructure or policing, these kinds of things. So those are legitimate short-term costs of welcoming new people. And the big problem with that is that we don't have a great federal system to allocate those costs fairly. So that means that some states or cities end up disproportionately bearing the burden of those costs. And then you see the governors or mayors of those localities complaining loudly that, hey, this is unfair. And they're kind of right. That is unfair. But again, I want to emphasize that that doesn't. mean that in the long run, these people aren't beneficial for us, fiscally speaking. It just means that we have to be better at budgeting for the unequal costs across locations of welcoming new people. And we're not very good at that in the United States.
- Speaker #1
Dr. Hernandez, just one final question. I know you're very busy, and we sure appreciate your time. And we actually would love to have you back and talk about this subject in some more details. But you write about the future of immigration. I wonder if you just talk for a second about this, because you talk about these issues. Two interesting phenomena that are taking place throughout the world about immigration choosers amongst countries and then immigration beggars. Two dramatically different scenarios. How can immigration play a positive role in the future of economic planning so that we're not extremes on either side?
- Speaker #2
All the data that I've seen tells me that for countries like the United States, there really are two futures. we either manage decline or we manage growth. Okay. And the only way that we're going to be able to manage growth, given the demographic trends, given that we are aging rapidly, we are not producing enough new birth. The only way that we're going to be able to bring those big five inputs that I mentioned, innovation, investment, talent, consumption, and taxes. is by having healthy, robust pipelines of immigrants. That does not mean chaos at the border. That does not mean uncontrolled, undocumented immigration. But that means that we have to appreciate that immigrants are good for us, right? And I want to emphasize that not immigration is good for us. It's also good for immigrants, but it's primarily good for us. And so then that means that we want to manage our pipeline so that we don't become immigration beggars, right? Immigration beggars will happen if we don't reform our system. if we wait until it's too late to increase the number of immigrants we allow in, and then we're in geopolitical competition with other countries for people. We still have time to reform our immigration system in a way that we allow a lot more immigrants in orderly ways through a lot more pathways so that we can get those big five economic benefits and also all those cultural contributions that we talked about earlier. I'm optimistic. Actually, immigration is very negative and charged right now, but I think... out of pure self-interest, because of where countries are going demographically, immigration will become popular again. I'm not saying in five to 10 years, but I think in 20 to 30 years, immigration will become something that we want to manage in a positive way for all the reasons we've talked about in this episode.
- Speaker #1
Well, thank you, Dr. Hernandez. Yeah, we would like to have you back because I do think this is certainly an issue that is shaping our future. Dr. Zeke Hernandez has been our guest today. He's written this fantastic book. Really, it's so well-written and you do such a nice job of portraying this subject in a way that is very understandable and a real positive gain for our future and for our economy of course the title is the truth about immigration why successful societies welcome newcomers dr zeke hernandez has been our guest congratulations on all your work dr hernandez we are so appreciative of your time we look forward to having you back so thank you best to you and your family thank you it's such an honor to be with you thank you My thanks to Acorns for sponsoring today's show. Acorns makes it easy for everyone to start saving and investing. My thanks to our guest today, the wonderful Zeke Hernandez, author of the excellent new book, The Truth About Immigration, Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers. My thanks to Sam Hanegar, executive producer. My thanks to you, our wonderful audience here on radio and podcast. Please be well, be safe. Let's talk about better. The Not Old Better Show. on radio and podcast. Thanks, everybody. We will see you next week.
- Speaker #0
Thanks for joining us this week on the Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast. To find out more about all of today's stories or to view our extensive back catalog of previewed shows, simply visit notold-better.com. Join us again next time as we deep dive into some of the most fascinating real life stories from across the world, all focused on this wonderful experience of getting better, not just older. Let's talk about better. The Not Old Better Show.
- Speaker #1
Hi, one final thing. Please check out our website for this episode and all episodes at notold-better.com or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and be sure to check out your local radio stations to find out more about the Not Old Better Show on podcast and radio. You can find us all over social media. Our Twitter feed is notoldbetter and we're on Instagram at notoldbetter2. The Not Old Better Show is a production of NOBS. Studios, I'm Paul Vogelsang, and I hope you'll join me again next time to talk about better. The Not Old Better Show. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.
