Politics & Polls #30: Immigration & Border Control with Doug Massey

Feb 10 2017
By Julian Zelizer & Sam Wang (Produced by B. Rose Kelly and Edited by Bonelys Rosado)
Source Woodrow Wilson School

A federal appeals court has blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order issuing an immigration ban barring people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Trump also has made moves toward building a border wall with Mexico, which recent figures suggest may cost an estimated $21 billion. If implemented, what would an immigration ban and a border wall accomplish?

In this episode, professors Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang take a deep dive into immigration and border control with Doug Massey, one of the country’s leading experts in this field. Throughout the discussion, Massey busts many myths, including the question of whether the effect of a border wall is to keep people out of the United States - or cage them inside. Massey is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He studies international migration, race and housing, discrimination, education, urban poverty and Latin America, especially Mexico. 
 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 
Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the author of several books including, most recently, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." Zelizer is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published more than 600 hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.com

Wang is professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University. He is known for his books "Welcome to Your Brain" and "Welcome to Your Child's Brain" and for his founding role at the Princeton Election Consortium, a blog providing U.S. election analyses. In 2004, Wang was one of the first to aggregate U.S. presidential polls using probabilistic methods. He has also developed new statistical standards for partisan gerrymandering. A neuroscientist, Wang's academic research focuses on the neuroscience of learning, the cerebellum and autism.