Linda Chavez on Immigration and American Identity

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

Linda Chavez is an author, syndicated columnist, and served in the Reagan administration. A longtime analyst of immigration and immigration policy in the United States, Chavez shares her perspective on the current debates over immigration. She explains why immigration remains a net benefit to the United States—and why we should address, improve, and streamline the immigration system. Citing relevant data, Chavez notes how recent arrivals to the United States are following the pattern of earlier waves of immigration and assimilating into the American way of life. Finally, Chavez proposes reforms to the immigration system that prioritize relevant skills and also would be more flexible to market conditions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:15.0	Welcome to Conversations.
0:18.0	I'm joined today by my good friend Linda Chavez,
0:20.0	a longtime friend we served together.
0:22.0	You would have a higher level higher level of course in the Reagan
0:24.0	administration and various political fights over the years and you've been engaged in the
0:28.7	immigration fight our topic for today for a long long time. I think your first book was what 1991. Correct. And it was called, what was it called? Out of the barrio,
0:37.6	toward a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. Very controversial title at the time.
0:42.0	Is that right?
0:43.0	Yes.
0:44.0	People were against Hispanic assimilation.
0:45.0	Liberals were against Hispanic assimilation.
0:48.0	Conservatives were heartened by the data that I presented that showed that Hispanics were assimilating now
0:53.8	of course conservatives believe they would never will assimilate.
0:56.3	Yeah so let's talk about that so you I mean you've been in this fight a long time
0:59.8	it's sort of the it's become one of the nastiest fights in Washington or in American politics really, right?
1:04.5	It is.
1:05.5	It's a very strange phenomenon because my position has been absolutely steady since the 1970s.
1:12.4	I was always pro legal immigration. I always believe that
1:15.8	we should have a balance of immigrants coming in from different places with
1:20.5	different skills levels, but that once they got here everybody had to learn English and the
1:26.2	goal was that they would become U.S. citizens eventually and certainly that their children
	...

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