We often hear these days that the immigration system is broken.I want to make the case today that our immigration conversation is broken andto suggest some ways that, together, we might build a better one. In order todo that, I'm going to propose some new questions about immigration, the UnitedStates and the world, questions that might move the borders of the immigrationdebate. I'm not going to begin with the feverish argument that we'recurrently having, even as the lives and well-being of immigrants are being putat risk at the US border and far beyond it. Instead, I'm going to begin with mein graduate school in New Jersey in the mid-1990s, earnestly studying UShistory, which is what I currently teach as a professor at VanderbiltUniversity in Nashville, Tennessee. And when I wasn't studying, sometimes toavoid writing my dissertation, my friends and I would go into town to hand outneon-colored flyers, protesting legislation that was threatening to take awayimmigrants' rights.Our flyers were sincere, they were well-meaning, they werefactually accurate ... But I realize now, they were also kind of a problem.Here's what they said: "Don't take away immigrant rights to publiceducation, to medical services, to the social safety net. They work hard. Theypay taxes. They're law-abiding. They use social services less than Americansdo. They're eager to learn English, and their children serve in the US militaryall over the world." Now, these are, of course, arguments that we hearevery day. Immigrants and their advocates use them as they confront those whowould deny immigrants their rights or even exclude them from society. And up toa certain point, it makes perfect sense that these would be the kinds of claimsthat immigrants' defenders would turn to.But in the long term, and maybe even in the short term, I thinkthese arguments can be counterproductive. Why? Because it's always an uphillbattle to defend yourself on your opponent's terrain. And, unwittingly, thehandouts my friends and I were handing out and the versions of these argumentsthat we hear today were actually playing the anti-immigrants game. We wereplaying that game in part by envisioning that immigrants were outsiders, ratherthan, as I'm hoping to suggest in a few minutes, people that are already, inimportant ways, on the inside. It's those who are hostile to immigrants, thenativists, who have succeeded in framing the immigration debate around threemain questions.First, there's the question of whether immigrants can be usefultools. How can we use immigrants? Will they make us richer and stronger? Thenativist answer to this question is no, immigrants have little or nothing tooffer.The second question is whether immigrants are others. Canimmigrants become more like us? Are they capable of becoming more like us? Arethey capable of assimilating? Are they willing to assimilate? Here, again, thenativist answer is no, immigrants are permanently different from us andinferior to us.And the third question is whether immigrants are parasites. Arethey dangerous to us? And will they drain our resources? Here, the nativistanswer is yes and yes, immigrants pose a threat and they sap our wealth. I wouldsuggest that these three questions and the nativist animus behind them havesucceeded in framing the larger contours of the immigration debate. Thesequestions are anti-immigrant and nativist at their core, built around a kind ofhierarchical division of insiders and outsiders, us and them, in which only wematter, and they don't. And what gives these questions traction and powerbeyond the circle of committed nativists is the way they tap into an everyday,seemingly harmless sense of national belonging and activate it, heighten it andinflame it.Nativists commit themselves to making stark distinctions betweeninsiders and outsiders. But the distinction itself is at the heart of the waynations define themselves. The fissures between inside and outside, which oftenrun deepest along lines of race and religion, are always there to be deepenedand exploited. And that potentially gives nativist approaches resonance farbeyond those who consider themselves anti-immigrant, and remarkably, even amongsome who consider themselves pro-immigrant. So, for example, when ImmigrantsAct allies answer these questions the nativists are posing, they take themseriously. They legitimate those questions and, to some extent, theanti-immigrant assumptions that are behind them. When we take these questionsseriously without even knowing it, we're reinforcing the closed, exclusionaryborders of the immigration conversation.So how did we get here? How did these become the leading waysthat we talk about immigration? Here, we need some backstory, which is where myhistory training comes in. During the first century of the US's status as anindependent nation, it did very little to restrict immigration at the nationallevel. In fact, many policymakers and employers worked hard to recruitimmigrants to build up industry and to serve as settlers, to seize thecontinent. But after the Civil War, nativist voices rose in volume and inpower. The Asian, Latin American, Caribbean and European immigrants who dugAmericans' canals, cooked their dinners, fought their wars and put theirchildren to bed at night were met with a new and intense xenophobia, which castimmigrants as permanent outsiders who should never be allowed to becomeinsiders.By the mid-1920s, the nativists had won, erecting racist lawsthat closed out untold numbers of vulnerable immigrants and refugees.Immigrants and their allies did their best to fight back, but they foundthemselves on the defensive, caught in some ways in the nativists' frames. Whennativists said that immigrants weren't useful, their allies said yes, they are.When nativists accused immigrants of being others, their allies promised thatthey would assimilate. When nativists charged that immigrants were dangerousparasites, their allies emphasized their loyalty, their obedience, their hardwork and their thrift. Even as advocates welcomed immigrants, many stillregarded immigrants as outsiders to be pitied, to be rescued, to be upliftedand to be tolerated, but never fully brought inside as equals in rights andrespect.After World War II, and especially from the mid-1960s untilreally recently, immigrants and their allies turned the tide, overthrowingmid-20th century restriction and winning instead a new system that prioritizedfamily reunification, the admission of refugees and the admission of those withspecial skills. But even then, they didn't succeed in fundamentally changingthe terms of the debate, and so that framework endured, ready to be taken upagain in our own convulsive moment. That conversation is broken. The oldquestions are harmful and divisive.So how do we get from that conversation to one that's morelikely to get us closer to a world that is fairer, that is more just, that'smore secure? I want to suggest that what we have to do is one of the hardestthings that any society can do: to redraw the boundaries of who counts, ofwhose life, whose rights and whose thriving matters. We need to redraw theboundaries. We need to redraw the borders of us. In order to do that, we needto first take on a worldview that's widely held but also seriously flawed.According to that worldview, there's the inside of the national boundaries,inside the nation, which is where we live, work and mind our own business. Andthen there's the outside; there's everywhere else. According to this worldview,when immigrants cross into the nation, they're moving from the outside to theinside, but they remain outsiders. Any power or resources they receive aregifts from us rather than rights.Now, it's not hard to see why this is such a commonly heldworldview. It's reinforced in everyday ways that we talk and act and behave,down to the bordered maps that we hang up in our schoolrooms. The problem withthis worldview is that it just doesn't correspond to the way the world actuallyworks, and the way it has worked in the past. Of course, American workers havebuilt up wealth in society. But so have immigrants, particularly in parts ofthe American economy that are indispensable and where few Americans work, likeagriculture. Since the nation's founding, Americans have been inside theAmerican workforce. Of course, Americans have built up institutions in societythat guarantee rights. But so have immigrants. They've been there during everymajor social movement, like civil rights and organized labor, that have foughtto expand rights in society for everyone. So immigrants are already inside thestruggle for rights, democracy and freedom.And finally, Americans and other citizens of the Global Northhaven't minded their own business, and they haven't stayed within their ownborders. They haven't respected other nations' borders. They've gone out intothe world with their armies, they've taken over territories and resources, andthey've extracted enormous profits from many of the countries that immigrantsare from. In this sense, many immigrants are actually already inside Americanpower. With this different map of inside and outside in mind, the questionisn't whether receiving countries are going to let immigrants in. They'realready in. The question is whether the United States and other countries aregoing to give immigrants access to the rights and resources that their work,their activism and their home countries have already played a fundamental rolein creating. With this new map in mind, we can turn to a set of tough, new,urgently needed questions, radically different from the ones we've asked before-- questions that might change the borders of the immigration debate. Our threequestions are about workers' rights, about responsibility and about equality.First, we need to be asking about workers' rights. How doexisting policies make it harder for immigrants to defend themselves and easierfor them to be exploited, driving down wages, rights and protections for everyone?When immigrants are threatened with roundups, detention and deportations, theiremployers know that they can be abused, that they can be told that if theyfight back, they'll be turned over to ICE. When employers know that they canterrorize an immigrant with his lack of papers, it makes that workerhyper-exploitable, and that has impacts not only for immigrant workers but forall workers.Second, we need to ask questions about responsibility. What rolehave rich, powerful countries like the United States played in making it hardor impossible for immigrants to stay in their home countries? Picking up andmoving from your country is difficult and dangerous, but many immigrants simplydo not have the option of staying home if they want to survive. Wars, tradeagreements and consumer habits rooted in the Global North play a major anddevastating role here. What responsibilities do the United States, the EuropeanUnion and China -- the world's leading carbon emitters -- have to the millionsof people already uprooted by global warming?And third, we need to ask questions about equality. Globalinequality is a wrenching, intensifying problem. Income and wealth gaps arewidening around the world. Increasingly, what determines whether you're rich orpoor, more than anything else, is what country you're born in, which might seemgreat if you're from a prosperous country. But it actually means a profoundlyunjust distribution of the chances for a long, healthy, fulfilling life. Whenimmigrants send money or goods home to their family, it plays a significantrole in narrowing these gaps, if a very incomplete one. It does more than allof the foreign aid programs in the world combined.We began with the nativist questions, about immigrants as tools,as others and as parasites. Where might these new questions about workerrights, about responsibility and about equality take us? These questions rejectpity, and they embrace justice. These questions reject the nativist andnationalist division of us versus them. They're going to help prepare us forproblems that are coming and problems like global warming that are already uponus.It's not going to be easy to turn away from the questions thatwe've been asking towards this new set of questions. It's no small challenge totake on and broaden the borders of us. It will take wit, inventiveness andcourage. The old questions have been with us for a long time, and they're notgoing to give way on their own, and they're not going to give way overnight.And even if we manage to change the questions, the answers are going to becomplicated, and they're going to require sacrifices and tradeoffs. And in anunequal world, we're always going to have to pay attention to the question ofwho has the power to join the conversation and who doesn't. But the borders ofthe immigration debate can be moved. It's up to all of us to move them.Thank you.(Applause)