Zeke Hernandez is the Max and Bernice Garchik Family Presidential Professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and world-renowned expert on immigration. He is the author of the book, ‘The Truth About Immigration,” which provides an evidence-based assessment of the nearly innumerable benefits immigration provides. Far from immigrants taking jobs or bringing crime, Hernandez convincingly makes the case the overwhelming majority of prevalent beliefs about immigrants fall into the “victim” or “villain” role and neither bear evidentiary weight. Instead, he argues, immigrants lower crime, bring massive investment, contribute to public coffers, boost innovation, enrich culture and more.
Our current political climate around immigration isn’t merely backwards, he notes, but deeply broken. In our mass deportation haze, we are not merely tearing apart our communities, but removing the very people who already helped make America great. If we are to have a prosperous American future, the only way to achieve it is through immigration.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
04:06 How good is immigration data?
06:31 Why is the immigration debate seemingly so hopeless?
08:36 Unpacking the ‘villain’ or ‘victim’ narrative
10:05 The five key economic inputs immigrants bring
13:49 What Pollo Campero teaches us about immigrant community investment
17:40 What the data says about immigrants boosting domestic innovation
21:56 What is the net impact on taxes with respect to immigration?
26:34 Immigration success evaluations over multiple generations
29:00 The National Origins Act of 1924 and its opportunity cost
34:19 Meaningful overlapping political conditions between 1924 and 2025
36:26 Response to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s skepticism on guest-worker programs
40:00 What about the effects of skill downgrading?
42:57 What do most people not understand about the truth of illegal immigration?
47:52 Why are people pouring over the southern border?
50:39 What is the economic performance of illegal immigration?
53:37 What do we know about the relationship between crime and immigration?
56:44 What about the effect on foreign students in higher education?
1:00:33 The truth about H1-B Visa program
1:03:39 What sensible immigration reform looks like
1:06:54 Harming immigrants is self harm
