Extra: How Much Do You Know About Immigration? | Freakonomics Radio

The political debates over immigration can generate a lot of fuzzy facts. We wanted to test Americans’ knowledge — so, to wrap up our special series on immigration, we called some Freakonomics Radio listeners and quizzed them. FOLLOW FREAKONOMICS RADIO: YouTube: https://freak.ws/3yIl6dl Apple Podcasts: https://freak.ws/3yAvQh0 Spotify: https://freak.ws/3TsdCmV ABOUT FREAKONOMICS RADIO: Discover the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers to uncover things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to the future of education, from markets for marriage to the surprising utility of wolves. ABOUT THE FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK: Freakonomics began as a book, which led to a blog, a documentary film, more books, a pair of pants, and in 2010, a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. Hosted by Stephen J. Dubner, it’s one of the most popular podcasts in the world, with a reputation for storytelling that is both rigorous and entertaining. Its archive of more than 500 episodes is available, for free, on any podcast app, and the show airs weekly on NPR stations. Freakonomics Radio is now the flagship show of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which includes the podcasts No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK PODCASTS: Freakonomics Radio: https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ No Stupid Questions: https://freakonomics.com/series/nsq/ People I (Mostly) Admire: https://freakonomics.com/series/people-i-mostly-admire/ The Economics of Everyday Things: https://freakonomics.com/series/everyday-things/ Special series: https://freakonomics.com/topics/ CONNECT WITH US: [email protected] https://twitter.com/freakonomics https://www.instagram.com/freakonomics/ https://www.facebook.com/freakonomics/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freakonomicsradio https://www.linkedin.com/company/freakonomics-media Subscribe to our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bKm0cf

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner, and this is a bonus episode. It's one last addition to our series called The True Story of America's Supremely Messed-Up Immigration System. I learned a lot making this series, including how little most of us know about immigration. One of the main voices in those episodes was Zeke Hernandez, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He came to our attention because of a book he has got coming out soon called The Truth About Immigration. The book includes a quiz, and we thought it might be interesting to have some Freakonomics Radio listeners take this quiz. So that's what we're hearing today. Let's see how they did.

• 0:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hello?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Hi, this is Jacob.

• 0:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Jacob, hey, this is Stephen Dubner. How are you?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Good, Stephen. How's you doing, man?

• 0:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm doing great, thank you. I'm here with Zeke Hernandez, who's a business professor at Wharton. Hey, Jacob, how are you?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Good, man.

• 1:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, Jacob, tell us your last name and how old you are.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Sobolski, and I'm 30 years old.

• 1:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Where do you live and what do you do?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  I'm a United States Marine Corps officer. I live in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I work as a combat engineer officer on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

• 1:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, Jacob, would you consider yourself an expert on immigration to the US by any chance?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  No, sir, not really. I am from Texas originally, but no.

• 1:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Have you lived outside the US, whether on Marine Corps duty or otherwise?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. I lived in Japan, Okinawa, Japan, for four years.

• 1:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, Zeke, as I mentioned, is a business professor at Wharton, but he's also an expert in immigration and has written a book called The Truth About Immigration, which was one of the foundations for a series that we are getting ready to put out very soon. And we wanted to run this quiz with listeners. This will come out after the series is aired, but in order to make sure you, Jacob, wouldn't cheat, we're asking the questions before the series aired, because-

• 2:03Speaker 01

  That's smart, Stephen, because I definitely would.

• 2:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  I appreciate the candor. Okay, so Zeke has some questions for you.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  All right, Jacob, you ready?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Okay, here's the first question. What percentage of the world's population are immigrants? That is, people who live in countries they weren't born in?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  I'll say 33%.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  You said 33%, right?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  So the right answer is 3.6%.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Damn, oh my gosh.

• 2:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  But Jacob, Jacob, can I tell you what? You shouldn't feel bad because when I first read that number in Zeke's book, 3.6%, I literally put my thumb on the ink to smudge it, to see if it was a typo. I thought, there's no way. And my guess was around 30% too.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  I still feel bad, though, but if I'm in the same ballpark as Stephen Dudd, I feel okay. I'll get the next one, I promise.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  All right, here comes the next question. Let's ask you the same question, but for the US. That is, what percentage of the US population is foreign-born?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I'll say 9%.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  9%, okay. So I'm sure you adjusted down because of the answer you just gave. The right answer is 14%.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, I don't feel as bad.

• 3:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, Jacob, I know it's impossible to go back in your mind, but pretend that we had asked you those two questions in tandem. The percentage of the world's population, and you thought 33%, and then percentage of the US population that are immigrants, foreign-born. What do you think you would have said?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Just looking at like the headlines I read about like immigration crisis and things like that, I think I'd still be around 33% to like quarter of the population, just from the headlines I'm reading.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's the common, I think, reason why people always, on average, overestimate. It's just that the headlines make it seem like this is an issue or a problem, depending on how you see it, that is much bigger than it actually is.

• 3:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Zeke, I wonder if maybe Jacob being in the Marine Corps may also influence his thinking a little bit, because, you know, the military is one of the most integrated institutions in this country. Do you know anything about how people, either in universities, the military, you know, sports teams are another institution that tend to be more diverse than a lot of other populations? Do you know anything about the difference in how different groups like that answer questions like these?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  You know, I don't. I would love to know, but I don't.

• 4:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, Zeke, have one more question for Jacob?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's ask you this question. So, the average undocumented immigrant in the US has lived in this country for approximately how long? I have four options for you. Three months, two years, 10 years, or 25 years?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go with 25 years.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the correct answer is a bit over 10 years. Somewhere between 10 to 14 years is about the average.

• 4:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  I will say this. Jacob has gotten slightly less wrong with every question, which I think is a sign of an intelligent person. He's adjusting. I think we need to give him one more, and I think he's gonna nail it, Zeke.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I appreciate the opportunity, gentlemen.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  All right. So, 21% of the children born to US parents, that is native parents, are high-income earners, meaning they're above the middle class. Okay, 21%. What is that percentage for the children that are born to immigrant parents in the United States? I have four options for you here. So, A, 15%, B, 21%, C, 28%, and D, 35%?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Man. I'm gonna say C, 28%.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  You were close. The correct answer is 35%, but you were on the higher end. Most people would guess below that. Most people would think that the children of immigrants are poorer than the children of native parents, but it's the opposite.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  That makes me think of The Millionaire Next Door, that book. You know, that like all these immigrant parents that come in, like make their kids wealthy, then they blow it all by the second generation?

• 6:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Are you telling that as a cautionary tale or as a personal story from your past? I'm curious.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I have blown no money. No, I grew up ridiculously poor. But now, you know, captain of the Marine Corps, have a house, so this is... We're doing okay.

• 6:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations. Jacob, it was great to speak with you. Thanks a million.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you.

• 6:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, this is Steven. Can you hear me?

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Hi, I can.

• 6:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's your name?

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Lindsay Priggy, and I'm here with my husband, Brian.

• 6:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, Brian. So Lindsay and Brian, is Brian gonna take the quiz as well?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  I want a prediction right now. Who do you think will do better, Lindsay, you or Brian?

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Ooh, can I get a hint about what the topic is?

• 6:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nope.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  I'm gonna say me, only because he had no idea I put his name on the list.

• 6:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nice, okay. Where do you live and what do you do?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  We live in the suburbs of Chicago. He works in health tech, and I primarily am at home with our kids.

• 7:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Would either of you consider yourself an expert on immigration to the United States?

• 7:11Speaker 03

  No.

• 7:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Excellent. Lindsay and Brian, I'd like you to meet Zeke Hernandez. Zeke has written a forthcoming book called The Truth About Immigration, and he is going to quiz you on some immigration facts and statistics. Does that sound okay?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  All right, Lindsay, here it goes. As of 2021, about 8% of Americans lived in poverty. What percentage of immigrants lived in poverty in the United States?

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Ooh, I would say significantly greater than 8%, maybe 45?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Turns out the correct answer is 13%. So you were right that it's higher than 8%, but you significantly overestimated.

• 7:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, Zeke, I don't blame Lindsay for overestimating. I think the way that immigration is in the news would lead most people to do that. I am curious what most people answer when you ask that question. Was Lindsay about average in that regard?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  I would say that's still a bit high.

• 8:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you're saying Lindsay is slightly more wrong than even the average person?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  In this particular case, yes. I'm sure that that's not true for all aspects of her life.

• 8:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, Lindsay, do you wanna put Brian on, and we'll see how wrong he can be on the next one?

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Sure, he can take the next one.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Hello? All right, Brian, immigrants are responsible for what percentage of all patents in the United States?

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Now, are you calling that named inventor? Or is that just responsible in general?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, responsible in general. So it could be named inventor, or it could be patents that others file because they work with immigrants.

• 8:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Brian, the fact that you asked that question makes me wonder if you are responsible for any patents.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  I do have one pending.

• 8:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations. What is your patent pending?

• 8:56Speaker 04

  It is in pharmacy management software, in clawback management from PBMs.

• 9:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  This would be software that's used by the PBMs, the pharmacy benefit managers, or by the independent pharmacies?

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Used by the independent pharmacy to defend against PBM clawbacks.

• 9:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  I like it, Brian. Okay, what's your guess, then?

• 9:18Speaker 04

  I'm gonna say 40%.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Brian, that is a very good guess. The correct answer is 36%. And let me break that down a little bit, since you asked a sophisticated question. So in 23% of patents, immigrants are the inventors on record. And the additional 13% that gets us to 36 is that without immigrants, native-born inventors would file fewer patents.

• 9:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Brian, were you born in this country, or did you immigrate to this country?

• 9:45Speaker 04

  I was born in this country.

• 9:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Who in your family immigrated? How many generations back?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  During the Revolutionary War.

• 9:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, Zeke, do you think that if Brian were a much more recent immigrant, or maybe if just his parents' generation immigrated, that he would have more than one lousy patent pending?

• 10:01Speaker 02

  More than... Obviously, that's what the statistics say. You know, I think statistically, if you had, you know, probably the level of education that you have, or you were in an inventive field, it's probable that you would.

• 10:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, Brian, I am just curious. You gave us either a remarkably good guess, or you kind of had a good feel for this, or you just figured out what was about right. Which of those is most true?

• 10:26Speaker 04

  It was a guess based on working in tech and knowing the number of H1B visas that are issued, and figuring there was probably a correlation there.

• 10:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so, Brian, you did better than your wife? At least on the first question, but I think we need to have another round. So would you put Lindsay back on, please?

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  All right.

• 10:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, Lindsay, you witnessed that, I know.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  You have a little bit of a hole to dig out of, but I know you can. So, Zeke, let's have another question for Lindsay.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  All right, Lindsay. So, on any given year, the US gives a lot of green cards. What percentage of those green cards or permanent resident cards go to immigrants that are here to reunite with their families? That is, family-based immigrants? And that would be as opposed to employment-based, humanitarian, or other kinds of green cards? I'm looking specifically for what percentage goes to family-based migrants.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  For family-based, I would probably say that it is easier to come in if you have somebody that is here and can sponsor you. So... Oh, man. I'm gonna go a half, 50/50.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  50/50? It's a pretty good guess. The right answer is 2/3, 66% go to family-based migrants. But your reasoning is very good reasoning. It's not uncommon that people underestimate that number, because I think the average person thinks that the US gives a lot more work-related green cards than it actually does. But our law very, very strongly favors family reunification since 1965. And so, we don't have as big of an employment-based program as other countries do.

• 12:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, Lindsay, you definitely did a lot better on question number two than question number one. We need to put Brian back on and see if we can equilibrate here. He's either gonna emerge as the total family champion, or you will have pulled him down from the pedestal.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  It'll give us something to discuss over our anniversary dinner this evening.

• 12:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Congratulations.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 12:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  What number?

• 12:32Speaker 03

  13.

• 12:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  What is the material for 13? It's probably like a funhouse mirror or something terrible.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I don't actually know.

• 12:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, I'll tell ya, it's lace.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 12:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Does that give you any ideas?

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Maybe you should've looked that one up, dear.

• 12:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Have you received a gift yet?

• 12:53Speaker 03

  We like to gift each other more the gift of time. And so we made time for each other tonight and we're gonna go be childless and grab a bite to eat.

• 13:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  I expect Brian to be wearing lace. That's all I'm saying. All right, let's get one more question for Brian. Zeke, please.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  All right, Brian, here we go. So about 100 years ago, most immigrants into the US came from Europe, especially Southern and Eastern Europe. Today, most of them come from Latin America and Asia. So here's a question. Today's immigrants, are they assimilating at a slower rate, at a faster rate, or at the same rate as immigrants from 100 years ago?

• 13:35Speaker 04

  I'm gonna say that this is where the rosy painting of history would lead me to say slower, but I think the answer is actually that they are assimilating faster than 100 years ago.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  It turns out the answer is actually at the same rate. And that means that when you look at the rate at which immigrants, in terms of their income, catch up with native workers, or the rate at which they adopt cultural values, and there's various ways to measure that, the rate is the same today as it ever was.

• 14:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  But Brian, I'm really curious about the way that you gave your answer and the way you thought it through. Can you just talk a little bit more about your impression of the history of US immigration 100 years ago?

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Yes, I think there's a whole lot fewer places where you would see a large concentration of immigrants from the same place. If you look at Chicago, there was a high population of Polish immigrants. South Boston had a high population of Irish immigrants. I just don't see those sort of centers of immigration like you would have years ago.

• 14:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Zeke, is that the case? Or is Brian just not seeing these newer centers of immigrant populations?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  I don't know that we have great measures to compare exactly. What we do know is that both in the past as today, immigrants often enter and settle into ethnic enclaves. So think of a Chinese immigrant settling near Chinatown. And within about 20 years, you find them in neighborhoods that have half the ethnic concentration as they did when they arrived. There's reasons why people settle in ethnic enclaves to begin with. And it's not just because they want to be around people who might speak the same language. It's also because they tend to be cheaper. And as they move up the income ladder, they can afford to move to, say, a slightly more expensive suburb or buy their first home. And then by the second generation, the children are well-integrated.

• 15:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, right. Brian and Lindsay, thank you both so much, and I hope you have a great anniversary dinner. Thanks for joining us, and we'll send you some Freakonomics Radio stuff, okay?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  You're welcome. Thank you for having us.

• 15:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Cheers. Bye. We will have more of our immigration quiz right after this break. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. Hi, Faye?

• 16:13Speaker 05

  Yes, hi.

• 16:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, this is Stephen Dubner. Nice to meet you.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  Nice to meet you.

• 16:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you just tell us your full name and where you live?

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Sure. My name is Faye Duffler, and I live on Long Island.

• 16:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what do you do?

• 16:25Speaker 05

  I'm an associate director in an art gallery in the city.

• 16:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you consider yourself an expert at all on immigration to the United States?

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Not at all.

• 16:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Perfect. Okay, perfect for our quiz. So we've got on the other line Zek Hernandez, who's a business professor at the Wharton School at Penn, and he's the author of a forthcoming book called The Truth About Immigration. And Zeke is going to ask you some questions, and we'll see how much you know. Does that sound okay?

• 16:55Speaker 05

  Okay, let's go.

• 16:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  And let me just say, whether you answer beautifully or horribly, you're still going to get some Freakonomics Radio swag.

• 17:02Speaker 05

  Awesome. I'm a little less nervous now.

• 17:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, good.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Hey, Faye, nice to meet you. Here comes the first question. What percentage of the US workforce is composed of immigrants?

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Composed of immigrants? Hmm. I'm going to say 30%.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  30%. That guess is on the high side. The right answer is 18%.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  You kind of went high, perhaps because in New York immigrants are a higher percentage of the population or something. I'm just wondering.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  Also, I was thinking tech, and I know that there are a lot of international employees doing that kind of work. And then I was also thinking about like, not illegal immigration. Well, yes, illegal immigration, like farm workers and things like that, which I don't know if that would even be counted as part of this.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  It is, it is.

• 17:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, Zeke, I'm very much with Faye. I would have given a higher answer as well. And I do think it's because, Faye, you and I live in New York, which is, I mean, Zeke, can you just describe how anomalous a place like New York is in terms of immigration compared to the rest of the US?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  So 35 to 36% of New York's population is foreign-born, which is quite a bit above the national average of 14%.

• 18:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nice. Okay, let's give Faye another question.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  So, Faye, you just mentioned undocumented immigrants, so I'm going to ask you a question about that. How long do you think the average undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States?

• 18:29Speaker 05

  Hmm. I'll say 10 years.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Wow, very good guess. Very good guess. Spot on. It's a little, it's somewhere between 10 and 14.

• 18:37Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 18:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Faye, can you walk us through your thought process there?

• 18:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Are you just innately brilliant?

• 18:44Speaker 05

  No, not at all. What my thought process was, when I think about people I know who have used undocumented workers, not me, like, but nannies or people who work landscaping or construction, you know, they're here for a while. It's not like they come and go. And maybe it would be different if it was, you know, picking fruits and vegetables. I don't know that landscape at all. But, you know, I know that people have jobs and stay here and do those jobs for a very long time. And it's not easy to get home, so they often stay here, obviously, because they can't go back and forth.

• 19:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good reasoning. Okay, Zeke, one more question for Faye.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  So the average native-born American receives about $8,000 in welfare benefits. What is that number for immigrants in your estimation?

• 19:34Speaker 05

  I bet it's low. I bet it's like...

• 19:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why do you think it's low?

• 19:41Speaker 05

  Because, now, this might be falling into some sort of stereotype, but I think of immigrants as like extremely hardworking.

• 19:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that reckoning based to some degree on having seen Hamilton? I have to ask.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  No. No. It's because, you know, it's like anecdotal, like chatter that people say. And some of it's not always from the kind of people, like, I don't necessarily want to, you know, there's a lot of racism. But there are people who will say, you know, there are certain kinds of people that work really well in kitchens because they work really hard because they have nothing. They're hungry. Not hungry, literally hungry, but they're like, you know, hungry to work. They care, you know, versus other people who are lazy. And so like, this is the kind of thing that sort of gets stuck in my consciousness. Whether it's true or not, I don't know.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  But I think anyone who comes to this country to make it, I think of them as being hardworking. So I would think that they probably, even if they had to go, you know, on assistance, it wouldn't be for very long. I don't exactly know, but I'll say $3,000.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  So, you know, very good reasoning. The number is 6,000, so it's a little bit higher than you thought. The number would be much lower for undocumented immigrants because, for one, they're not eligible for many benefits.

• 21:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  But directionally, Faye's answer was right, and her reasoning, Zeke, I thought, was really good. Faye, I'm just curious, when you form an opinion or an assessment of a given situation like you just did, and you put a number on it, I'm curious what you think are the sources for that assessment? In other words, would it be mostly personal experience and observation or anecdote? Or would it be from consuming media and so on?

• 21:30Speaker 05

  Oh, boy. I mean, who's to say? It's so hard to... Figure out where the streams are coming from, but it's true. Maybe all of these things, I don't know. I know that there are people who can be, I mean, this is terrible, but can be abusive to undocumented workers that work for them because, you know, they have the leverage. But also, it's just there is this theory that, you know, people who are, again, who are immigrants just work really hard to get where they are. Now, that also could be because, like, my family was an immigrant at one point, and I know, you know, how they suffered and what they had to do. And a lot of people I know, I'm Jewish.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  So it's like you know the stories of those people and what they did when they came here and how, you know, they didn't want to be seen as dependent. They wanted to be independent. I guess that's probably part of it, too.

• 22:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Faye, thank you so much. It was great to speak with you, and thanks for listening to the show.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  Thank you. I love the show. I'm so excited that you called, and I got a chance to play this quiz and learn a lot, too. So, thanks.

• 22:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me ask you one last question, Zeke. You know a lot about immigration to the US. You are an immigrant to the US. We told your story in our radio series. I'm curious whether these conversations today with listeners taught you anything or informed the way you may think further about studying immigration?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  That's a good question. Thanks for asking me that. I think that they taught me that I need to not just understand what people think, but why they think what they think. And I think that they also taught me that I need to understand people's backgrounds more, because as we interacted with the listeners and you asked, well, what do you do? Or they revealed things about their parents or their family experience or where they work, that was also very revealing. I think I need to do a lot more than that, more than just focus on facts. As a professor, as a researcher, I'm in love with facts and figures and evidence. And I think rightly so, but perhaps I'm not enough in love with how we get there.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  I'm in love with the scientific method, but perhaps I'm not in love enough with trying to understand how different people from different walks of life reason through these issues.

• 23:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's a really interesting answer, and it makes me think back to an answer you gave in one of the episodes in our series when I asked you whether your immigrant experience has influenced the way that you think about immigration. And you basically said, well, it's inevitable that everyone's experience will inform them to some degree, but that you have worked incredibly hard to be disinterested and dispassionate about your pursuit of the data. It sounds like you are not backing away from that, but adding something to that now, which is that as much as data and empirical thinking can do, that people are people and it's really

• 24:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  hard to understand people often, but extremely important to do so.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah, I think I need to go in my own way, reflect and think about how I need to incorporate that because when I reflect on my own experience, even though I am an immigrant, I didn't want to emigrate because I had negative stereotypes about immigrants. When I came here to the US, I made a very sharp distinction between me as a educated immigrant who was coming here on a student visa and, you know, all those other immigrants that I thought, you know, I wasn't like, who perhaps don't come here for education or might cross the border without authorization. But as I started interacting with undocumented immigrants in the US for a variety of reasons,

• 25:30Speaker 02

  whether it's my barber, who I tell a long story about him in the book, or others. Through church, family experiences, community, I started realizing it's just much more complicated. I had a very simplistic understanding of who these people are, why they made the decision to cross the border illegally. And so that led me to go to the data and think, OK, what are these immigrants doing? Who are they? And why do we have such a permanent population of undocumented immigrants? And so I guess this is my very long way to say that my own journey required decomposing the why of how I think about this topic. And so perhaps I've underestimated the need to do that myself with others

• 26:15Speaker 02

  and be more patient with them.

• 26:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  That again was Zeke Hernandez. Thanks to him and everyone who took Zeke's quiz today. And this concludes our series, The True Story of America's Supremely Messed-Up Immigration System. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Alina Coleman and Zach Lipinski. Our staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Julie Canfor, Lyric Bowditch, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Sarah Lilly. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers. All the other music was composed by Luis Guerra.

• 27:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  As always, thank you for listening.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  We've started to do text searches of old newspapers for words of ethnic foods, like spaghetti, right? So we can see how spaghetti diffused spatially throughout the US.

• 27:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, that's a good idea.

• 27:26Speaker 06

  The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

• 27:33Speaker 05

  Stitcher.