WEBVTT - General Chapman’s Last Stand 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:15.796 Pushkin. 0:00:22.956 --> 0:00:27.876 Something there is that doesn't love a wall that sends 0:00:27.876 --> 0:00:29.916 the frozen ground swell under it. 0:00:31.596 --> 0:00:36.236 Robert Frost, one of the greatest American poets, reading Mending Wall. 0:00:37.596 --> 0:00:40.276 I let my neighbor know beyond the hill, and on 0:00:40.356 --> 0:00:42.636 a day we meet to walk the line and set 0:00:42.676 --> 0:00:43.716 the wall between us. 0:00:44.636 --> 0:00:48.156 They walk together down the border of their properties, between 0:00:48.196 --> 0:00:52.236 his apple orchard and his neighbor's pine trees. Every spring 0:00:52.276 --> 0:00:54.956 they have to mend the wall, hauling stones to fill 0:00:54.956 --> 0:00:58.876 the gaps. The narrator asks his neighbor, do they really 0:00:58.876 --> 0:01:01.356 need a wall to keep pine and apple trees apart? 0:01:02.156 --> 0:01:07.076 He only says, good fences, my good neighbors. Spring is 0:01:07.116 --> 0:01:09.076 the mischief in me, And I wonder if I could 0:01:09.196 --> 0:01:11.316 put a notion in his head. Why do they make 0:01:11.356 --> 0:01:14.436 good neighbors? Isn't it weather cows? But here there are 0:01:14.476 --> 0:01:17.916 no cows. Before I built a wall, I'd ask to 0:01:17.996 --> 0:01:21.196 know what I was walling in or walling out, and 0:01:21.316 --> 0:01:23.116 to whom I was like to give offence. 0:01:27.676 --> 0:01:31.156 My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, 0:01:31.436 --> 0:01:38.636 my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is 0:01:38.676 --> 0:01:42.476 about the most famous line from mending wall, good fences, 0:01:42.676 --> 0:01:47.196 make good neighbors. Written in nineteen fourteen, as if it 0:01:47.236 --> 0:02:05.036 were yesterday. The historic home of the US Marine Corps 0:02:05.436 --> 0:02:08.156 is the Barracks in Washington, d C. Eighth the night 0:02:08.276 --> 0:02:12.676 Streets near Capitol Hill. From May until the end of August, 0:02:12.996 --> 0:02:16.836 every Friday night, the public is invited for evening parade. 0:02:17.516 --> 0:02:20.316 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the oldest 0:02:20.356 --> 0:02:24.796 post of the Corps, Marine Barracks, Washington, d C. Celebrating 0:02:24.836 --> 0:02:27.676 over sixty years of performing evening parades. 0:02:27.716 --> 0:02:31.356 It starts at eight forty five, precisely on the immaculate 0:02:31.436 --> 0:02:34.396 lawn in front of the Commandant's house. The ritual of 0:02:34.396 --> 0:02:37.556 honoring the flag, the famous silent drill, the drum and 0:02:37.636 --> 0:02:42.716 bugle Corps marines in the traditional white with dark blue tunics. 0:02:43.076 --> 0:02:54.596 One hour and fifteen minutes of precision marching. Evening Parade 0:02:54.676 --> 0:02:59.236 was the creation of General Leonard Fielding Chapman, Junior, when 0:02:59.236 --> 0:03:02.316 he assumed the command of the Marine Barracks in nineteen 0:03:02.356 --> 0:03:07.276 fifty seven. Chapman believed Marine parades had become anglicized too 0:03:07.356 --> 0:03:12.796 many theatrical flourishes, trick drills, frivolities like the Queen Anne's salute, 0:03:13.076 --> 0:03:16.236 the small hats. The British favor the heavy double soled 0:03:16.236 --> 0:03:22.596 shoes with cleats. My policy was that we will be regulation. 0:03:23.076 --> 0:03:27.356 Chapman once said, we will be U S Marine Corps regulation. 0:03:27.716 --> 0:03:30.436 We will do everything in accordance with the Marine Corps 0:03:30.476 --> 0:03:40.476 regulations and will do it perfectly. I've met a handful 0:03:40.476 --> 0:03:43.916 of senior military leaders in my life. They're not like CEOs, 0:03:44.156 --> 0:03:47.156 who represent an infinite range of variation on the general 0:03:47.196 --> 0:03:50.636 theme of tall white guy. Generals are the product of 0:03:50.676 --> 0:03:54.396 one of the world's largest and most rigorous meritocracies. To 0:03:54.396 --> 0:03:56.796 get to the top, they've had to be more disciplined 0:03:56.916 --> 0:03:59.716 than the disciplined people, and then at the next level 0:03:59.756 --> 0:04:02.996 up smarter than the smart people, then at the level 0:04:03.036 --> 0:04:06.756 after that, more charismatic than the charismatic people, and on 0:04:06.796 --> 0:04:10.196 and on all the way up to five stars. Generals 0:04:10.236 --> 0:04:13.236 are the winners of a single elimination tournament that goes 0:04:13.276 --> 0:04:22.356 on for thirty years. Chapman was appointed Commandant of the 0:04:22.356 --> 0:04:26.076 Marine Corps in nineteen sixty seven, served with distinction for 0:04:26.156 --> 0:04:28.876 four years during one of the most difficult periods in 0:04:28.956 --> 0:04:32.476 Marine Corps history. He was a Southerner, who loved Lincoln, 0:04:32.876 --> 0:04:36.436 A voracious reader, an intellectual, the man who did as 0:04:36.476 --> 0:04:39.276 much as anyone to bring the Civil rights Revolution to 0:04:39.316 --> 0:04:42.956 the Marine Corps. Chapman was once interviewed by a Marine 0:04:42.956 --> 0:04:45.836 Corps historian, and by the end of the recording, which 0:04:45.956 --> 0:04:48.756 runs for hours, you want to follow him into battle. 0:04:50.956 --> 0:04:53.156 Towards the end of the war, when we were pulling 0:04:53.236 --> 0:04:57.156 out of Vietnam, I came to the decision that we 0:04:57.156 --> 0:05:01.676 were going to clean house, shape up, or ship out. 0:05:03.356 --> 0:05:06.156 Chapman shrank the Marines from three hundred thousand to two 0:05:06.236 --> 0:05:09.556 hundred thousand men, let go every marine that he did 0:05:09.556 --> 0:05:13.036 not measure up, made sure everyone who remained knew what 0:05:13.076 --> 0:05:13.756 the score was. 0:05:14.396 --> 0:05:18.796 And I'd make my speech about tightening up the Ring 0:05:18.916 --> 0:05:23.316 Corps and going back to our standards. And I got 0:05:23.316 --> 0:05:27.156 applauded every time. And it was in such sharp contrast 0:05:27.316 --> 0:05:30.956 to what was happening in the other services. See, the 0:05:30.996 --> 0:05:37.516 other services loosened their standards, you know, long hair beer 0:05:37.596 --> 0:05:43.996 in the barracks, Navy, especially Navy especially. Yeah, we went 0:05:44.276 --> 0:05:48.516 exactly opposite directions. The Navy loosened their standards, so did 0:05:48.556 --> 0:05:49.316 the Army. 0:05:50.796 --> 0:05:52.076 To me, what what did he look like? 0:05:52.716 --> 0:05:55.876 Well, he was very handsome. He was, you know, the 0:05:55.956 --> 0:05:58.716 pictures of him when he was young and in a 0:05:58.796 --> 0:06:02.676 pretty incredibly you know, dashing sort of man. 0:06:03.076 --> 0:06:05.676 This is the general's granddaughter, Danielle Chapman. 0:06:06.156 --> 0:06:08.796 And he was still very handsome when he was in 0:06:08.876 --> 0:06:12.476 his sixties and seventies and tall, you know, he still 0:06:12.516 --> 0:06:17.196 had that military posture to him. Also, just an incredible 0:06:17.836 --> 0:06:21.836 stamina and he actually was very proud of that too. 0:06:21.916 --> 0:06:25.756 On the golf course that until he was in his eighties, 0:06:25.836 --> 0:06:28.276 you know, he walked and carried his clubs, and he 0:06:28.276 --> 0:06:31.836 would really rib his buddies about that, and he would say, 0:06:31.876 --> 0:06:33.396 you know, they would ride in the cart and he 0:06:33.396 --> 0:06:38.116 would say, oh, they're over there riding in the cheeseburger wagon, 0:06:38.476 --> 0:06:40.316 you know. But he was. 0:06:40.076 --> 0:06:40.556 He was. 0:06:42.236 --> 0:06:44.236 Walking and carrying his clubs the whole way. 0:06:45.356 --> 0:06:48.476 General Chapman retired from the Marine Corps in nineteen seventy one, 0:06:49.116 --> 0:06:51.196 but he didn't take a lucrative job in the defense 0:06:51.236 --> 0:06:55.316 industry like so many ex military brass do. Instead, he 0:06:55.356 --> 0:06:58.276 goes to his boss, the Secretary of Defense, and asks 0:06:58.276 --> 0:07:01.956 for help in finding another job in government. He gets 0:07:01.956 --> 0:07:05.836 his wish in nineteen seventy three. He's named commissioner of 0:07:05.836 --> 0:07:09.756 what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the 0:07:09.836 --> 0:07:14.756 agency responsible for securing the borders of the United States. Now, 0:07:14.796 --> 0:07:19.476 why does he do that? Being head of the Marine 0:07:19.476 --> 0:07:23.396 Corps is a job of enormous prestige. The ion s 0:07:23.516 --> 0:07:27.436 in nineteen seventy three was a backwater. Why would someone 0:07:27.476 --> 0:07:31.516 take such a big step down. It's not obvious until 0:07:31.556 --> 0:07:36.076 you think about what Chapman has just been through Vietnam. 0:07:36.316 --> 0:07:38.756 He ran the Marine Corps during the worst years of 0:07:38.796 --> 0:07:43.036 the war. And what was Vietnam? A war about a border. 0:07:44.156 --> 0:07:47.156 The country was split in two, with a communist government 0:07:47.236 --> 0:07:49.876 in the north and a pro Western government in the south, 0:07:50.276 --> 0:07:53.436 and the North kept sending insurgents across the border to 0:07:53.436 --> 0:07:55.956 make trouble in the South. That's why the US went 0:07:55.996 --> 0:08:00.076 to Vietnam to secure the border. The Marines were in 0:08:00.116 --> 0:08:01.676 the thick of it. They were way up in the 0:08:01.716 --> 0:08:04.436 farthest corner of South Vietnam, right on the border with 0:08:04.476 --> 0:08:07.676 the North. At one point, the Secretary of Defense wanted 0:08:07.676 --> 0:08:10.276 a wall built along the border to stop the North 0:08:10.356 --> 0:08:13.036 Vietnamese from trickling in. It was the job of the 0:08:13.116 --> 0:08:15.516 Marine Corps to build it, and they couldn't do it. 0:08:15.876 --> 0:08:19.716 They couldn't secure the border. Nothing worked. Chapman saw the 0:08:19.756 --> 0:08:20.956 failure first hand. 0:08:21.876 --> 0:08:26.796 The trouble with Vietnam for the Marine Corps was that 0:08:27.516 --> 0:08:30.236 the army was in charge of the whole thing. 0:08:31.116 --> 0:08:34.956 Chapman Son Walton joined the Marines and served in Vietnam. 0:08:35.196 --> 0:08:39.436 And the Marines that were there, my dad had no 0:08:40.836 --> 0:08:47.236 tactical control. In other words, he couldn't tell the twenty 0:08:47.276 --> 0:08:50.916 six Marines to leave Kisson and go somewhere else. 0:08:52.196 --> 0:08:55.396 General Chapman would make the long journey to Vietnam many times, 0:08:55.756 --> 0:08:58.676 but all he could offer was moral support. There's a 0:08:58.716 --> 0:09:01.956 moment in his Oral History when Chapman describes the orders 0:09:01.956 --> 0:09:04.636 that came down from the Pentagon when the US military 0:09:04.676 --> 0:09:08.396 shipped out of Vietnam. Each branch of the military was 0:09:08.396 --> 0:09:11.356 supposed to pack up and send home anything worth more 0:09:11.396 --> 0:09:15.316 than fifty dollars. Chapman said, no, the Marines would bring 0:09:15.356 --> 0:09:17.516 home everything worth five dollars or more. 0:09:18.036 --> 0:09:21.916 Furthermore, I issued an order that we'd leave our spaces 0:09:21.996 --> 0:09:28.076 in Vietnam ready for inspection, everything cleaned up, all the 0:09:28.156 --> 0:09:34.556 trash buried, all the temporary buildings knocked down and disposed of. 0:09:35.716 --> 0:09:38.556 And we did that too. We lived and left every 0:09:38.596 --> 0:09:44.276 one of our areas in impeccable condition, ready for inspection. 0:09:45.556 --> 0:09:47.956 That's what the Marine Corps was reduced to in Vietnam, 0:09:48.556 --> 0:09:51.956 being the best at tiding up behind them. How could 0:09:51.956 --> 0:09:55.316 someone like Chapman be satisfied with that? If he couldn't 0:09:55.356 --> 0:09:58.956 defend the borders of South Vietnam, then maybe running thes 0:09:59.156 --> 0:10:00.396 would be his second chance. 0:10:00.996 --> 0:10:05.836 He was like nothing better than to be able to say, yes, 0:10:06.676 --> 0:10:10.636 the border is secure, mister Secretary, was the interior the 0:10:10.676 --> 0:10:11.836 border is now secure. 0:10:19.476 --> 0:10:23.236 In the nineteen seventies, a young sociologist named Douglas Massey 0:10:23.516 --> 0:10:28.436 became interested in the subject of Mexican migration. It was 0:10:28.476 --> 0:10:32.516 then as now a matter of political significance, but Massey 0:10:32.636 --> 0:10:38.156 was struck by how little was actually known about the problem. 0:10:38.196 --> 0:10:42.196 Nobody really understood exactly where migrants were coming from, or 0:10:42.276 --> 0:10:45.796 exactly where they were going, or for that matter, what 0:10:45.876 --> 0:10:48.236 they were doing once they got to the US, and 0:10:48.276 --> 0:10:53.756 what happened to the families they left behind. Sociologists are 0:10:53.796 --> 0:10:56.956 the great note takers of the social sciences. They're used 0:10:56.996 --> 0:11:00.076 to projects that stretch out for years, that even consume 0:11:00.316 --> 0:11:04.356 entire careers. So Massey decided to be a good sociologist 0:11:04.676 --> 0:11:09.756 and study migration properly. He found a partner, a mexicanthropologists 0:11:09.836 --> 0:11:13.676 named Jorge Durand, and the two of them began systematically 0:11:13.756 --> 0:11:16.436 interviewing families of migrants around Mexico. 0:11:17.716 --> 0:11:20.796 We pick communities. We pick four to six communities every year. 0:11:21.196 --> 0:11:25.396 We do a complete household roster and collect basic sociodemographic 0:11:25.476 --> 0:11:29.956 information on everybody in the household, plus detailed information on 0:11:30.036 --> 0:11:32.556 everybody's first and last trip to the United States and 0:11:32.556 --> 0:11:34.156 the total number of trips they've taken. 0:11:35.036 --> 0:11:39.236 The survey is called the Mexican Migration Project. After thirty years, 0:11:39.276 --> 0:11:43.876 it's massive, millions of life years of information, case histories, 0:11:44.196 --> 0:11:49.236 extraordinary detail. It's the gold standard. This has got to 0:11:49.236 --> 0:11:53.596 be one of the world's biggest migration databases. 0:11:54.316 --> 0:11:58.956 It's certainly the biggest and most reliable on Mexico US migration. 0:11:59.396 --> 0:12:01.236 When the government wants to know what goes on, they 0:12:01.276 --> 0:12:04.796 don't go to the border Patrol because their data are allowsy. 0:12:05.076 --> 0:12:06.876 They come to the Mexican Migration Project. 0:12:07.156 --> 0:12:10.036 In all of your work with this project, was there 0:12:10.036 --> 0:12:12.716 anything you ran across that really surprised you? 0:12:13.676 --> 0:12:16.316 I guess what surprised me. In the late seventies, when 0:12:16.356 --> 0:12:19.356 I first saw this was just how routine it had become, 0:12:19.476 --> 0:12:23.316 and how institutionalized the circulation was, and how it was 0:12:23.316 --> 0:12:25.996 woven into the fabric of Mexican life at the time. 0:12:27.436 --> 0:12:32.956 How institutionalized the circulation was. The principal finding of the 0:12:32.996 --> 0:12:36.436 Mexican Migration Project is that Mexican migration to the United 0:12:36.436 --> 0:12:38.436 States has a distinctive pattern. 0:12:38.796 --> 0:12:40.196 It's overwhelmingly circular. 0:12:41.156 --> 0:12:43.196 Now, what does circular mean? 0:12:43.316 --> 0:12:46.596 Exactly means they work seasonally in the United States and 0:12:46.636 --> 0:12:50.116 return home on an annual basis to be with their families. 0:12:50.476 --> 0:12:53.196 So these workers there are they leaving their families back 0:12:53.236 --> 0:12:53.756 in Mexico. 0:12:53.796 --> 0:12:59.516 Yeah, yeah, it's overwhelmingly male, young, young males. And the 0:13:00.076 --> 0:13:04.036 typical pattern is you go for several times to earn 0:13:04.076 --> 0:13:05.596 some money to help you back home. 0:13:06.276 --> 0:13:09.276 What made the back and forth circulation possible was the 0:13:09.276 --> 0:13:11.756 fact that for most of the twentieth century, the border 0:13:11.756 --> 0:13:15.356 between Mexico and the United States was porous, more of 0:13:15.356 --> 0:13:17.836 a line on a map than an actual border. The 0:13:17.876 --> 0:13:20.596 border patrol was a tiny force in those years. There 0:13:20.596 --> 0:13:24.436 were no walls, no surveillance drones. If you got stopped, 0:13:24.716 --> 0:13:26.836 you got turned around and sent back home. 0:13:27.156 --> 0:13:32.116 Then you tried again, our family is mainly a family 0:13:32.276 --> 0:13:35.116 that was born and raised in the border area. 0:13:35.756 --> 0:13:40.716 Carlos Morentez, a labor organizer and former migrant worker, talking 0:13:40.796 --> 0:13:44.716 about his childhood in the nineteen sixties. Growing up in Warez, Mexico, 0:13:47.396 --> 0:13:49.516 He and his friends used to swim across the Rio 0:13:49.516 --> 0:13:52.916 Grande carrying watermelons that they would sell on the American side, 0:13:53.356 --> 0:13:55.356 like the river was a pond in their backyard. 0:13:56.436 --> 0:13:59.436 Within a Hella scenes that we were living in two 0:13:59.516 --> 0:14:06.716 different countries. To us being children means that you know 0:14:07.396 --> 0:14:11.276 that we were living in a big with two neighborhoods, 0:14:11.556 --> 0:14:15.716 one south of the river, one north of the river. 0:14:17.076 --> 0:14:20.276 What Marentees is saying in economic terms is that the 0:14:20.316 --> 0:14:24.236 cost of crossing was effectively zero. It was free, and 0:14:24.316 --> 0:14:27.156 what happens when something is free, you use as much 0:14:27.156 --> 0:14:27.956 of it as you can. 0:14:30.876 --> 0:14:35.436 Usually they leave in February March as the seasons start 0:14:35.476 --> 0:14:41.196 picking up, and then return in December for the holidays 0:14:41.476 --> 0:14:44.716 and there's a big fiesta in migrant sending towns. 0:14:45.636 --> 0:14:48.516 Massi is saying that Mexico was where family and roots were, 0:14:48.876 --> 0:14:52.116 it was cheap and close. America was where money could 0:14:52.116 --> 0:14:55.956 be made easily and quickly. This is not the way, 0:14:56.116 --> 0:14:58.836 say Jewish immigrants came to the United States in the 0:14:58.916 --> 0:15:02.476 nineteenth century. They didn't go back to Eastern Europe every summer, 0:15:03.276 --> 0:15:05.996 nor did the Italians who came over in the same period. 0:15:06.716 --> 0:15:09.556 Entire villages moved en mass from southern Italy the United 0:15:09.596 --> 0:15:14.516 States permanently. The price of returning where they came from 0:15:14.996 --> 0:15:19.076 was not zero. Their homeland was not welcoming, and even 0:15:19.116 --> 0:15:21.436 if it were, the cost of crossing the ocean was 0:15:21.476 --> 0:15:26.556 so high that it could not be done routinely. But 0:15:26.756 --> 0:15:31.956 Mexican migration was different. Carlos Morentez remembers his grandfather telling 0:15:31.996 --> 0:15:36.076 him that he wanted to return to Mexico to Zakitacus. 0:15:37.196 --> 0:15:41.596 So the attraction to go back to Mexico will be 0:15:41.756 --> 0:15:45.316 to go back to your real homeland, to the rural 0:15:45.356 --> 0:15:52.036 community that you left behind, with families, with your history, 0:15:52.196 --> 0:16:00.276 with everything the old your identity. 0:16:00.356 --> 0:16:02.956 This is not the story the United States tells itself. 0:16:03.556 --> 0:16:06.076 The inscription on the Statue of Liberty does not read 0:16:06.316 --> 0:16:09.956 give me you're tired, you're poor, your huddled masses yearning 0:16:09.996 --> 0:16:12.796 to breathe free for six months until you make enough 0:16:12.796 --> 0:16:15.596 money to go home again. When we think of immigration, 0:16:15.956 --> 0:16:19.076 we think of the Jewish and the Italian model permanence. 0:16:22.156 --> 0:16:26.876 Second thing, circular immigration is very hard to measure. Border 0:16:26.876 --> 0:16:29.716 controls are designed to count the number of people coming in, 0:16:30.276 --> 0:16:33.276 not the number of people leaving, because we assume the 0:16:33.356 --> 0:16:36.396 number coming in is what matters, which it is in 0:16:36.436 --> 0:16:40.036 most cases, but not in the case of Mexico, because 0:16:40.076 --> 0:16:42.956 if a huge group of people eventually go back home again, 0:16:43.476 --> 0:16:47.556 the only number that matters is net migration those who 0:16:47.636 --> 0:16:55.556 come in minus those who go home. And thirdly, most importantly, 0:16:56.276 --> 0:17:00.556 circular migration is the result of a zero cost border crossing. 0:17:01.196 --> 0:17:03.396 It is what happens when you can swim across the 0:17:03.476 --> 0:17:06.796 Rio Grande or walk from Warez in Mexico to al 0:17:06.836 --> 0:17:12.436 Paso in Texas. So what happens to circular migration when 0:17:12.476 --> 0:17:17.676 the cost of migrating is no longer zero. One of 0:17:17.716 --> 0:17:20.756 the things that General Leonard Chapman heard when he took 0:17:20.836 --> 0:17:25.316 over the IS was that his predecessor had never left Washington, DC. 0:17:26.196 --> 0:17:29.196 For someone coming from the Marine Corps, that was unthinkable. 0:17:29.876 --> 0:17:34.156 Leaders review their troops, so Chapman set out to visit 0:17:34.556 --> 0:17:38.996 everys Field office, close to four hundred of them all 0:17:38.996 --> 0:17:41.196 over the world, some with no more than two or 0:17:41.196 --> 0:17:43.116 three people, and it took me. 0:17:43.076 --> 0:17:45.516 Three years to do it, but I did. I got 0:17:45.516 --> 0:17:49.076 to every single one. I'm real least wont so. I 0:17:49.116 --> 0:17:55.036 spent a tremendous amount of time traveling talking to my troops, 0:17:55.076 --> 0:17:55.716 for whom. 0:17:55.476 --> 0:17:56.996 I built up a very high regard. 0:17:58.196 --> 0:18:02.316 Chapman modernized the agency. When it came to information management, 0:18:02.836 --> 0:18:06.436 he thought thes was thirty years behind the Marine Corps. 0:18:06.836 --> 0:18:09.676 Chapman set up a public affairs office, first in the 0:18:09.716 --> 0:18:13.396 agency's history. He became a familiar face on Capitol Hill, 0:18:13.996 --> 0:18:17.276 and the more he learned, the more alarmed he became. 0:18:18.076 --> 0:18:21.996 There was, as he put it, a general laxity in 0:18:22.036 --> 0:18:25.956 the enforcement of immigration laws. For goodness sake, kids were 0:18:25.996 --> 0:18:29.476 swimming across the Rio Grande, selling their watermelons and then 0:18:29.516 --> 0:18:32.276 going back home again. People were treating the border like 0:18:32.316 --> 0:18:33.716 it was just a line on a map. 0:18:34.796 --> 0:18:39.076 I mean, it's easy to inventage. Yes, twenty five million, 0:18:39.516 --> 0:18:48.396 fifty million, seventy five million. Why not, there's no machinery 0:18:48.436 --> 0:18:49.916 to stop them. 0:18:50.156 --> 0:18:53.476 In nineteen seventy three, when Chapman took over the Ions, 0:18:53.916 --> 0:18:58.276 the cost of crossing the Mexican border was effectively zero. 0:18:58.556 --> 0:19:01.236 By the time he left in nineteen seventy seven, it 0:19:01.356 --> 0:19:08.236 was not, and so it begins. In nineteen eighty six 0:19:08.676 --> 0:19:12.916 comes the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which militarizes the border. 0:19:13.476 --> 0:19:16.876 Then Operation Blockade, which diffens up the border crossing in 0:19:16.916 --> 0:19:21.116 El Pasa, Operation Gatekeeper, which diffens up the border crossing 0:19:21.116 --> 0:19:25.516 in San Diego. The budget of the border patrol between 0:19:25.556 --> 0:19:32.396 the mid nineteen eighties and twenty ten increases tenfold. And 0:19:32.436 --> 0:19:35.556 then today with the Attorney General of the United States 0:19:35.836 --> 0:19:40.396 sometimes sounds like Commandant Jefferson Sessions. 0:19:40.036 --> 0:19:43.476 I have put in place a zero tolerance policy or 0:19:43.556 --> 0:19:48.236 illegal entry on our Southwest border. If you cross the 0:19:48.316 --> 0:19:51.756 border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. 0:19:52.276 --> 0:19:53.076 Is that simple. 0:19:56.636 --> 0:19:59.716 The cost of crossing the border has been escalating for 0:19:59.796 --> 0:20:03.196 a generation, and it began with Leonard Chapman. 0:20:04.276 --> 0:20:05.636 We ran a gallup. 0:20:05.236 --> 0:20:08.236 Hole right after our first got there that showed that 0:20:08.396 --> 0:20:10.156 over something like fifteen percent of the. 0:20:10.156 --> 0:20:13.276 American people had ever heard of the problem. When I 0:20:13.476 --> 0:20:17.756 left three years later and we had another gallon role 0:20:19.396 --> 0:20:21.476 and that over eighty. 0:20:21.236 --> 0:20:22.676 Five had heard of him. 0:20:23.716 --> 0:20:26.996 In his years in office, Chapman made two hundred and 0:20:27.116 --> 0:20:30.316 fifty speeches across the United States. This is at the 0:20:30.356 --> 0:20:34.196 same time that he's personally visiting every IONS field office 0:20:34.636 --> 0:20:38.476 and overseeing the complete overhaul of the agency and making 0:20:38.476 --> 0:20:42.396 his argument over and again on Capitol Hill and giving 0:20:42.476 --> 0:20:46.636 hundreds of press interviews. The United States went from an 0:20:46.716 --> 0:20:50.236 IONS headed by someone who never left his desk to 0:20:50.316 --> 0:20:53.396 an agency headed by someone who couldn't stay at his desk. 0:20:53.756 --> 0:20:56.156 He was relentless wake in America. 0:20:56.956 --> 0:20:59.956 We're telling America about our problems. Then though they had. 0:21:01.396 --> 0:21:05.316 Americans didn't think they had an illegal immigration problem. Leonard 0:21:05.396 --> 0:21:17.076 Chapman convinced them that they did. When I was fourteen 0:21:17.356 --> 0:21:20.116 growing up in Canada, I went to a week long 0:21:20.196 --> 0:21:23.396 track and field training camp at the International Peace Garden. 0:21:24.196 --> 0:21:27.236 It's a park straddling the border between North Dakota and 0:21:27.276 --> 0:21:31.516 the Canadian province of Manitoba. I go for long runs 0:21:31.556 --> 0:21:34.916 each morning with two friends. One day we noticed a 0:21:34.956 --> 0:21:38.276 diner on the American side, so we hopped the fence 0:21:38.396 --> 0:21:42.476 and got a burger. I say fence because the border 0:21:42.476 --> 0:21:45.996 and nets Stretcher Prairie was just a fence, the type 0:21:45.996 --> 0:21:48.796 that someone in the suburbs might have around their backyard. 0:21:49.476 --> 0:21:51.916 On our way back to Canada, we were spotted by 0:21:51.956 --> 0:21:55.356 a border patrol officer. He arrested us, put us in 0:21:55.356 --> 0:21:57.156 the back of his car, and took us to the 0:21:57.196 --> 0:22:00.036 nearest as office. We had to put our names in 0:22:00.076 --> 0:22:03.036 a book underneath a big photo of President Jimmy Carter. 0:22:03.716 --> 0:22:05.956 I decided to be clever and wrote, my name is 0:22:05.996 --> 0:22:09.516 William F. Buckley. Then we got dropped off back at 0:22:09.516 --> 0:22:16.756 the border fence with a stern lecture. When I got 0:22:16.796 --> 0:22:20.076 home and told my parents, they found the whole thing hilarious, 0:22:20.596 --> 0:22:24.476 but as you can imagine, it left an impression. That 0:22:24.556 --> 0:22:27.196 Burger at the diner was my first visit to the 0:22:27.276 --> 0:22:29.836 United States and they ended up in the back of 0:22:29.836 --> 0:22:35.636 a patrol car. I first read Robert Frost's Mending Wall 0:22:35.756 --> 0:22:39.036 not long afterwards in school. The poem is a back 0:22:39.076 --> 0:22:41.356 and forth between a man and his neighbor over the 0:22:41.436 --> 0:22:45.276 value of their fence. One side says, good fences make 0:22:45.316 --> 0:22:49.076 good neighbors. The other side, the narrator says, maybe not. 0:22:49.676 --> 0:22:51.676 It all depends on who the fence is keeping in 0:22:52.436 --> 0:22:56.716 or out. Right from my first read, I sided with 0:22:56.756 --> 0:22:59.276 the narrator because all I could think of was the 0:22:59.316 --> 0:23:02.836 fence I'd just jumped between Manitoba and North Dakota. We 0:23:02.836 --> 0:23:05.396 were fourteen year olds, and the fact that there wasn't 0:23:05.476 --> 0:23:07.596 much of a fence between the countries at that point 0:23:08.036 --> 0:23:10.716 meant that we could do normal fourteen year old things 0:23:11.196 --> 0:23:14.036 like get a burger. Would a better fence there have 0:23:14.116 --> 0:23:17.516 made us better neighbors or would we have just gone hungry? 0:23:18.316 --> 0:23:21.876 Frost neighbor thinks good fences solve problems. And the funny 0:23:21.876 --> 0:23:24.116 thing about that poem is how many people agree with him. 0:23:24.996 --> 0:23:27.676 But do good fences make good neighbors or do they 0:23:27.796 --> 0:23:32.876 just disrupt normal patterns of behavior? So what happened when 0:23:32.916 --> 0:23:36.396 the Mexican border became a good fence? Well, the historical 0:23:36.476 --> 0:23:40.636 Mexican migration pattern was that young men came to America, worked, 0:23:40.956 --> 0:23:44.836 went home, came back, went home again. That's what Douglas 0:23:44.836 --> 0:23:47.596 Massey documented in the Mexican Migration Project. 0:23:48.236 --> 0:23:51.716 Our data from the Mexican Migration Project indicate that between 0:23:51.836 --> 0:23:55.876 nineteen sixty five and nineteen eighty five, eighty five percent 0:23:55.916 --> 0:23:58.596 of all undocumented entries were offset by departures, so the 0:23:58.676 --> 0:24:00.556 net influenced small. 0:24:00.756 --> 0:24:04.436 Between nineteen sixty five and nineteen eighty five, lots and 0:24:04.476 --> 0:24:07.356 lots of Mexican migrants came to the United States without 0:24:07.436 --> 0:24:11.956 legal status. Almost all of them eventually went home, but 0:24:12.036 --> 0:24:15.956 then the border patrol was expanded, the crossing opportunities through 0:24:15.956 --> 0:24:19.556 El Paso and San Diego were shut down, and migrants 0:24:19.636 --> 0:24:23.356 had to adapt. They shifted from the fortified crossings in 0:24:23.396 --> 0:24:26.396 El Paso and San Diego to the most brutal parts 0:24:26.476 --> 0:24:27.436 of southern Arizona. 0:24:27.996 --> 0:24:30.516 Now you're out in the middle of high desert, open desert. 0:24:30.756 --> 0:24:33.916 It's bitterly cold at night, boiling hot during the day. 0:24:34.076 --> 0:24:38.556 There's no water, and death'smount And when you're out in 0:24:38.556 --> 0:24:42.276 the middle of nowhere, it's more costly to stage crossing. 0:24:43.036 --> 0:24:46.436 The financial incentive to come to the United States remains, 0:24:47.036 --> 0:24:50.156 but returning home is now suddenly so risky that you 0:24:50.236 --> 0:24:53.676 don't do it every six months or every Christmas or 0:24:53.716 --> 0:24:57.116 maybe even ever. You stay, and. 0:24:56.796 --> 0:25:01.396 As the male workers stay longer and longer, family unification occurs. 0:25:01.476 --> 0:25:04.956 They send for their wives and younger children, and those 0:25:04.996 --> 0:25:06.596 younger children are today's dreamers. 0:25:07.396 --> 0:25:10.836 In nineteen eighty, what was likelihood of a Mexican migrant 0:25:10.916 --> 0:25:13.756 returning home after his first trip to the United States. 0:25:14.436 --> 0:25:17.796 According to the Mexican Migration Project's data, it was about 0:25:17.836 --> 0:25:25.396 fifty percent. By twenty ten, it's zero. We built a 0:25:25.436 --> 0:25:29.436 wall to keep Mexican migrants out. In fact, the wall 0:25:29.476 --> 0:25:32.916 has kept them in. People who would otherwise have gone 0:25:32.956 --> 0:25:37.596 home stayed so long they put down roots. In March 0:25:37.636 --> 0:25:41.116 of twenty sixteen, Douglas Massey, along with Jorge Durand and 0:25:41.196 --> 0:25:44.756 Karen Prinn, published a brilliant paper in the American Journal 0:25:44.836 --> 0:25:49.916 of Sociology, Why Border Enforcement Backfired, in which they ask 0:25:49.996 --> 0:25:54.316 a hypothetical question, what would have happened if the United 0:25:54.356 --> 0:25:58.316 States had done nothing over the past thirty years, frozen 0:25:58.396 --> 0:26:01.156 the budget and staff of the border patrol at nineteen 0:26:01.196 --> 0:26:06.476 eighty six levels allowed for some circular migration. The researchers 0:26:06.636 --> 0:26:11.316 estimate the undocumented Mexican population of the US would be 0:26:11.356 --> 0:26:15.836 about a third lower a third lower than it is now. 0:26:17.116 --> 0:26:19.636 This is according to the people who know more than 0:26:19.716 --> 0:26:23.316