they recommended back then that teenagers be very limit inside their use of cell phones. >> host: now, when you look at the nih study and you look at the slide showing the increased brain glucose activity, what's your conclusion? >> guest: well, i think it's a stunning piece of work, and i certainly agree with mr. foster the exposures are quite low. and that's why we need to be very concerned. what i have done in my book, "disconnect," is to show that dr. volkow's study was not a breakthrough in terms of showing the effects on the brain, but it was one of the most elegant pieces of work ever done. the reason i say it wasn't a breakthrough which is other research which i dock unit in my -- document in my book found in 1994 that dna could be unraveled, and research in 2002 done in finland said you could get an effect on cerebral blood flow, and then in 2006 other

studies were done also in finland showing that you could alter brain energy after cell phone use. unfortunately, many of these studies in the case of one appeared in finnish language and others in english have not garnered the headlines. of course, dr. volkow is to be commended because she's such an eminent researcher, and the study was a controlled study where they looked at the same person when they did not have the phone next to their head and when they did. so even though the exposures were quite low and the phone was simply seeking, as phones do, to get information from a tower with nothing else going on, there was a significant change in brain glucose in exactly those areas of the brain that we model exposure gets into. and we know where exposure gets in the brain because of studies that have been done by the cell phone industry that i discuss in my book as well that show that children absorb about twice as much exposure into their brains as do adults. and that's why we're very concerned, and we're starting a

cell phone safety awareness campaign with pyle middle school here in bethesda and around the country, in jackson hole, wyoming, and missoula, montana, where we're working with teachers and parents to promote cell phone safety. we just want people to be aware of the safe ways to use them, particularly around children. >> host: well, the wireless industry responded to the nih study, and this is what they had to say, dr. davis: >> guest: well, that's actually a misreading of the literature. as i just indicated, there are studies that have shown cell phone radiation effects the brain, they've been around for a while. in fact, governments in israel and britain have recently issued new warnings about reducing direct radiation to the brain for everyone.

the british government health pamphlet was just reissued march 6th, and it says all people should be encouraged to text rather than hold a phone next to their head or use a headset or a speakerphone. and i think that makes sensible advice. and i think it's unfortunate with all of the things going on right now in washington our government has not caught up with what others in the world are advising on this, and that the industry continues to invoke the same advice it's been invoking for 20 years. the fact is this is a fast-moving science. we have got to update our understanding of the issue. and we're in the midst of an experiment on ourselves and our children with no controls because so many of us, including me, are using cell phones today. but i don't hold a phone next to my brain anymore. >> host: devra davis is the author of "disconnect," she's also the founder of the environmental health trust, and she's been our guest on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you so much.

>> host: now, "the communicators" invited the wireless industry to participate in this program, and they chose not to. also if you would like to read the nih study on cell phone use for yourself, you can go to c-span.org/"the communicators." thanks for being with us. >> you've been watching "the communicators," c-span's weekly look at the people and issues affecting telecommunications policy in the digital anal. if you missed any of this program with dr. nora volkow on the long-term effects of cell phone radiation, you can see "the communicators" again tonight and each monday night at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> next, to the u.s. commission on civil rights which looks at the federal and state government roles to combat school bullying. then a speech by afl-cio president richard trumka on worker rights, union activity and the 2012 elections.

after that, a discussion on a new cato institute study on immigration. and later we're life with a -- live with a speech by president obama from dublin, ireland, as he begins his european trip. >> tonight israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu addresses the annual policy conference of the american/israel public affairs committee. follows his white house meeting on friday with president obama. other speakers at tonight's session include harry reid and house speaker john boehner. you can see their remarks live beginning at 8:45 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> c-span's local content vehicles kick off the city's tour in tampa/st. pete this weekend with booktv events on c-span2, including interviews with scott dietche. american history events on

c-span3 there the st. petersburg museum of history, the be network oist plane, and a settlement of an goal la who fought two wars against the u.s. the lcv cities tour kicks off this weekend. watch it on c-span2 and c-span3. >> the u.s. education department has issued anti-bullying guidelines to schools across the country. recently, the u.s. commission on civil rights examined the issue with a discussion on current laws to combat bullying and the level of involvement by federal and state governments. commission members heard from officials with the education and justice departments. this is about an hour and ten minutes. >> i'm chairman of the united states commission on civil rights. i want to well i don't welcome l to this business meeting of the u.s. commission on civil rights. i also want to take this opportunity to welcome back michael yaki, commissioner who was recently reappointed. welcome back, michael.

>> thank you. >> the time is exactly 9:01 on may 13, 2001. the purpose of this meeting is to conduct a briefing on the federal response of peer-to-peer violence and bullying as well as harassment. as information today will be gathered for the purposes of our 2011 statutory enforcement report that will be presented in september of this year to the president of the united states and the congress of the united states. this is an extremely important issue for us all. every one of us in this room and on this panel and listening to this has children in our lives that we love and care for whether they are our own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, students, god children, neighbors. and we all want them to have safe, happy and long lives where they can reach their full potential. i know that i can say that each one of us regardless of our party affiliation or political ideology wants to have communities and schools that are

safe for our children regardless of their race, their national origin, sex, religion, disability status or sexual orientation. where we may differ is how we want to accomplish that goal. to that point, today we're going to hear from various individuals who are going to present to us different points of view and different perspectives on the legal responsibilities and the constitutional and civil rights implications of those different methods to protect our children. i think that as we have this discussion, i know that each one of my commissioners and i will lead by example so that today we have a very thoughtful discussion about these issues with our fellow commissioners and the witnesses so that we prepare for congress and the president a thoughtful and bipartisan report. want to thank each of you for being here today. want to give you a little bit of the ground rules on how we're going to manage the panels for today. we're very fortunate, we've invited 20 highly-distinguished

speakers to provide us with an array of viewpoints. unfortunately, with so many wonderful panelists, time is going to be at an extraordinary premium. in order to maximize the amount of time and opportunity for discussion between commissioners and the witnesses and to insure that those people that are participating on panels laettner the day have an opportunity for their fair share of time, i'm going to strictly enforce allotments for each panelist. panelists are going to notice there's a system of warning lights set up here like a traffic light. when the light turns green to yellow, as we do when we're driving, we know it's time to show caution and wrap up. you'll have two minutes remaining when you see that yellow light. when the light turns red, i'm going to ask all panelists to cease your presentation. we have your written statements, they're part of the record, so we ask you to strictly adhere to that time limit. i don't want to have to cut anybody off which i know my general counsel will require that i do. so, please, keep to that. the first panel will have a ten

minute frame, and the other succeeding panels throughout the day will have seven minutes. also due to the time constraints, i'm only going to be giving a cursory overview of the panelists' background. all of their bios and presentations are out in the lobby, so, please, make sure you receive a handout if you already have not. lastly, i'm going to ask my commissioners to keep their questions and comments concise. i will be calling on commissioners as they raise their hands, and i will fairly allocate the time for them to ask questions. so when you do ask a question, please, make it one question although i know at times there will be multiple part toss that question -- parts to that question. if we all abide by that time arrangement, we're going to have multiple opportunities to ask questions of all the panelists. so we'll now begin with panel one which is the federal agency efforts to enforce the civil rights laws. we have as our speakers russlynn

ali, assistant secretary for civil rights and jocelyn sam yiewms -- samuels at the u.s. department of justice. assistant secretary ali, unfortunately, has a very tight schedule and has to leave early this morning, so in order to accommodate her schedule, i'm going bifurcate this panel. so she will have ten minutes to make her presentation, we'll follow that with questions. that will occur until 9:40. at that time we'll go to ms. samuels who will have ten minutes to make her presentation, and we will question her until 10:10. i want to ask each panelist to, please, raise your right hand and swear or affirm that the information you are about to provide to us is true and accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief. thank? you.? assistant secretary ali, we'll? begin with you.?? >> thank you, commissioner castro. thank you all for the opportunity to be here with you today. this is a hugely important

issue, and the secretary of education, arne duncan, has made clear it can't come from washington alone. the solutions can't come from washington alone and certainly not from the department. so that you are taking the time to think so deeply about this issue, we very much appreciate and will be hugely important moving forward. i don't have to tell anyone in this room and certainly none of you how important the crisis of bullying has become. you would have heard the president talk about it, that we need to shift the paradigm in our nation's schools, the cultures that give rise to bullying, that make it seem as though bullying and harassment are somehow a rite of passage. we are working with local educators and officials across the country to help change those patterns. as the secretary has also often said, students can't learn if

they don't feel safe. so our work in the office for civil rights on this issue has been geared towards that, insuring that students feel safe in our nation's schools, colleges and universities. and that those responsible for teaching them understand their roles and responsibilities when it comes to complying and helping to adhere to the nation's civil rights laws. we are working with educators, parents, community members, advocates and concerned citizens everywhere to help students, to help students understand both what their rights are and to help teachers and their community members and parents understand what they can do in the event that their child is a victim of bullying and what to do in the event that they see bullies or teach bullies in

their schools. we are very proud of the effects some of our recent work have demonstrated her. for example, and i'll talk about it a little bit more momentarily, recent guidance that we issued on sexual violence under title ix making it clear that sexual violence can constitute a violation of title ix, that there are real responsibilities for college campuses and school districts to insure that victims feel safe, that they address cultures that give rise to sexual harassment and sexual violence, and they help prevent it from moving forward. in very short order, several universities began taking action. we have heard that stanford university, that yale university, that university of virginia have all announced that they are proactively changing their standards of proof in

title ix investigations to better comply with the office for civil rights standards and our guidance. we have also recently resolved some complaints on the issues of harassment and bullying, working with our colleagues at the department of justice we are helping school districts that are confronting this issue today. recently in a school district in minnesota a case involving harassment of somali-american students. we worked with local officials there to insure that those students would feel safe, and they would address the very serious acts of harassment that those students suffered. the superintendent, i'm pleased to say, said in the press when asked about this that the office for civil rights and we together with the department of justice

have made her school district better. um, the guidance that we've issued has been designed to help school districts and universities, recipients of federal funds. just that as i mentioned understand what their responsibilities are. we have issues two, recently one on sexual violence where we made it clear, as i mentioned, what the requirements were, um, when sexual violence occurred what the requirements were when adjudication of title ix complaints happens on school campuses, the kind of interim supports that might be required if a victim needs them. we've also issued this past october guidance on bullying and harassment under all of the statutes in our jurisdiction, title vi, section 504 and title ix there, too, with the intent

of making it clear what responsibilities were and providing as much assistance proactively that we could to institutions. we are also embarking on some technical assistance, coordinating our work with amazing relationships with the department of justice so that we can insure that we bring all of our resources to bear to help solve this problem. now, the role of the policy guidance, while intended to make clear what the standards are, are also a little more detailed than you might have seen in the past. that is because we are trying to apply the guidance and the legal standards for school districts and circumstances that they deal with in realtime. we understand some of the concerns about the guidance, so let me proactively address some of what we've heard. we've heard that we are changing

the standards of proof. we've heard that davis v. monroe requires actual notice, not institutions to know or should have known that acts of harassment or violence occurred on their campuses. there though we are talking in monroe about very different circumstances, we are talking about monetary damages and the private litigation since. the courts have recognized that we set different standards. monroe itself did. and since 1994 into 2001 and beyond the office for civil rights has made it clear that the standards for harassment are whether institutions knew or should have known that harassment occurred. we are also very mindful of the concerns around the interplay of our guidance with first

amendment and as our guidance in this october made it clear this, our work in no way seems, attempts to trump the first amendment. those values and core constitutional principles are complimentary, not contradictory to enforcing the nation's civil rights laws. but even so very little of the harassment that we see involves protected speech. physical harassment, violence, threats are never constitutionally protected as i know you know. nor is harassment the same thing as unpopular or a sense of speech as our dear colleague letters make clear. student-on-student harassment violates federal civil rights laws only if it is sufficiently serious to create a hostile environment that limits a student's ability to participate in or enjoy the benefits or

services offered by the institution. the first amendment's free speech clause does not give students license to say whatever they want whenever they want without regard to the effect that their speech has on other students and schools. cannot tolerate discriminatory harassment that interferes with providing a safe, nurturing learning environment for all of their students. and, of course, no universal one size fits all approach will be right for every school or every student struggling with issues of bullying and harassment, and our policy guidances have not in any way attempted to mandate one. but keeping the school free from harassment is primarily a local responsibility and one that we want to help institutions maintain. the other aspect of our work, as i mentioned, some of the very positive feedback we've received has been around our complete

resolution. last year we received a little over a thousand complaints alleging harassment on the basis of race, national origin, sex or disability. that's about 14% of the total number of complaints we've received on all issues. and a 31% increase from 2009. that's almost twice as many as we saw in 2005. we carefully review all complaints. um, we determine whether there, after our evaluation there is sufficient jurisdiction, etc., to launch an investigation, and we thoroughly and diligently investigate. we are also pleased to see an increase in voluntary resolutions around this issue in particular. 13% of our cases were resolved either through early complaint resolution which is a kind of mediation, or through a voluntary resolution and

negotiations. we are collecting data on these issues in ways that we haven't in the past, disaggregated data on instances of bullying and harassment under all of the statutes in our jurisdiction. we are launching compliance reviews on this issue. over the past five years, we've initiated a dozen sexual harassment reviews, one racial harassment and one disability. five of those were began in 2009, and in 2010 we initiated two sexual violence reviews. this year we have initiated two more, one under title vi and section 504, the other on sexual violence under title ix. lastly, the kind of coordination that you will hear from jocelyn and myself certainly during the question and answer period has been hugely important to insure that we provide the kind of

assistance that we know is necessary. we are also working with several other agencies, you would have seen the department convene alongside other agencies bullying summit in august. the president and other agencies at the white house in march to bring further attention to this issue, to understand what the kinds of best practices are so that we can help replicate them, model them and show what's working for the nation. thank you. >> thank you, assistant secretary. i'll now open it to questions from the commissioners. commissioner heriot?? >> thank you very much, ms. ali. >> thank you.?? >> i want to talk about the 800-pound gorilla issue here, and that is, you know, the department has had a sexual harassment policy for some years. um, and it's, in some ways it's very similar to what we're talking about today. it hasn't always worked out that well. for one thing, school districts

have often responded by adopting zero tolerance rules, um, and some of those zero tolerance rules have turned out rather silly. for example n texas a 4-year-old kindergarten student was punished after a teacher's aide accused her of pressing his face to her breasts during a hug. um, at the potomac view elementary school just up the road here in maryland we had a 6-year-old who was accused of sexual harassment and written up, they called the police on him. um, in fact, i'm told that in maryland on, of course, that's just one state, in the year 2007 166 elementary students were suspended for sexual harassment, and that included three preschoolers, 16 kinder gartners and 22 first graders. now, i know the department of education, um, is not looking to punish preschoolers. but the fact is whenever the federal government tibets

involved -- gets involved in an issue that is so very local in character, um, and i believe so much better dealt with at the local level, um, there's going to be overreaction at the local level. how is this policy going to be different? how can you prevent, um, that kind of response? >> well, i certainly can't say whether that kind of response is due to the work of the federal government in the past. um, what i can say is we are providing a kind of technical assistance to insure that institutions understand what rises to the level of a civil rights violation, what clearly our enforcement standards are, and what doesn't rise to the level of civil rights violation. we are also collecting data on things like zero tolerance policies so that we can better understand how they are being implemented. >> but you've got to remember that a school district, you know, the worst thing in a world that can happen to them is to

have a giant investigation which is often what happens. i was a little troubled by your quoting that the school district, school board member praising the department. remember, they're under your authority. you're supposed to know that when somebody is under your authority and they praise you, you're not supposed to take it seriously. you're supposed to realize that that may not be really what they're thing. >> i can only take people for what they say, and what that summit said was, clearly, that she believed that we helped make her institution better. we have also heard just recently from a general counsel in a compliance review that resolved there, the general counsel had been threatened with obstruction of justice when they tried to do their title ix work, when they were confronting issues of sexual violence. and our work helped them facilitate an agreement with

local law enforcement to resolve some of those issues and longstanding tensions there. the general counsel said that we helped break down silos in their institutions and helped make their institutions safer and better. >> again, i worry about the -- >> we do have to limit the follow-ups. we do want to have the opportunity to have all the commissioners ask -- >> sure. >> appreciate that. i'm sorry to interrupt you. commissioner yaki, you're recognized by the chair. >> thank you very much, mr. chair. and i just want to say it's great to be back after my four month furlough. the, just a quick, just a quick response and then a question. i always get a little nervous when people start talking about issues being solely of a local character and, therefore, should be of local reaction because, certainly, we heard that refrain during the '30s, '40s and '50s when it came to certain

items of discrimination that happened in this country back then. but we're not talking about it. we're talking about an issue that has transcended local areas. it is a national issue, and that is why we are having hearing here today. what happens at the enforcement level, at the local level is something that we can discuss and monitor, but it doesn't diminish the importance of what we are talking about today. now, there is one aspect of your testimony, and i think it's probably going to be for both of you in the next round, but for you, ms. assistant secretary, and that is one of the things that has come about in the news has been the issue of cyber-bullying and the fact that, basically, any person with, or young person with ill will or lots of people with ill will can sort of gang up on someone in cyberspace and create the kind of emotional trauma, emotional damage that we're concerned about. could you talk a little bit about cyber-bullying and sort of the potential limits, if there

are, on the authority of ed as well as responsibility of the schools on really what could be described as off campus, but as we all know probably emanates from within a particular school, circle of people. >> thank you. that is certainly an issue in this world of social media. so many superintendents and school folk and university folk are wrestling with. we are working in realtime with our colleagues in the department of justice and in other agencies to produce some guy dance on this issue -- guidance on this issue that addresses the emerging technology and addresses some of the novel issues including that of jurisdiction. that said, we have seen cases where bullying on things like facebook has been done in school and, clearly, rose to the level of adults in school knowing

about it. um, and, in fact, resolved a case just recently where bullying and harassment that occurred off campus that was promoted and talked about through social media rose the level -- to the level of school district officials and school officials knowing about it and therein we worked with them to reso those issue -- resolve those issues. >> basically, anyone with a smartphone inside a class room can engage in that kind of conduct. >> again, the standard, though s whether adults knew or should have known about it. >> yeah. >> so there, that is really going to be a case-by-case determination. we do believe that there are some principles that we can help institutions understand. at this point i think it's premature for us to articulate what they are. we are working with our colleagues to sort through some of the complications, and i would be happy to come back when

we are ready to articulate them. in the meantime, we are focusing on, again, what happens in school, where information occurs out of school that impacts school, making it clear what those responsibilities are. .. >> the way you have done it is authorized by your statute, and

whether the way you have done so will lead to increased in violations of students first amendment rights who politely disagree with school administration views. but my question for you at this time is really a much more pragmatic one, and that's whether you coming in as the 800-pound gorilla will necessarily make matters a better at the local level for students, rather than worse. i can forgive interest groups into thinking that the more levels of government that are involved and the harder it comes down on local officials, the better. but the problem i have with that is that it allows the local school boards to deflect the accountability they have to parents and to the same interest groups that would normally go to the school districts. and it's quite understandable that federal bureaucrats who want to help will also tend to

believe that they can make things better. but when -- there are thousands of school districts. there are tens of thousands of schools. when parents and the interest groups are led to believe that the federal government is the guarantor of preventing teasing of little johnny or little betty, i have a serious concern that that will allow the school district to deflect the accountability they have to those groups thinking we are following federal guidelines, we are doing everything according -- our hands are tied. d.o.e. is telling us what to do. to what extent did you study that issue? and how did you study that issue, the sort of unintended effect of undermining the accountability before you issued your call.

>> thank you for your question. certainly, we want to help, but let me be clear, we also want to do our jobs. we are enforcing laws that, for decades, have been in effect. we are neither expanding our jurisdiction, nor the scope of the laws, nor creating new standards. our work is not designed in this context to imply that constant teasing that perhaps shouldn't be common at all rises to the level of a civil rights violation. we are talking about a hostile environment that is so sufficiently severe, based on a

students race, skin color, sex, national origin, or disability status. and that harassment is so severe that it interferes with their ability to learn, and to enjoy the benefits that every student in our nation's schools, colleges and universities should enjoy. i will stand with my colleagues as we work to enforce the laws that congress has given us the job to enforce. we will provide technical assistance wherever possible so that institutions understand clearly what the airlines are. i have not met a college president or superintendent or teacher anywhere that says that they want an environment where any student feels unsafe. >> i'm going to have to limit the follow up.

i have commissions over your who haven't had a chance to ask questions you. the chair recognizes commissioner achtenberg. is that right? commissioner tiger's. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madam secretary, thank you for being here. you to look like a 8-under pound gorilla to me but we welcome you this way. the administration is not the only branch that is working on this problem are recognizing that it is an escalating issue that we need to address. in congress to a couple couple of bills pending. i know you're familiar with the safe schools improvement act and student nondiscrimination act. both of these have bipartisan sponsorship, and there and both houses. i just wonder if you would comment on those, if you're supporting those, if there are elements in there that help you do your job, that hinder you or just in general, how they affect how you will move forward on this issue.

>> we are reviewing the laws to better understand them, the proposed legislation. we've not taken a position on them as an administration. though certainly any work done with the bipartisan congress that seeks to protect students is work that we will pay close attention to. and if charged with authority to ensure that those laws are enforced, we will diligently do that. >> thank? you.????????? >> we're going to go to????? commissioner kirsanow and then? come back to? commissioner achtenberg. >> thank you? mr. guerre. you stated that the issue of harassment is primarily a local matter. i'd like to follow up on that a little bit. my understanding is that there are at least 44 anti-bullying, harassment laws at the state

level. there are scores of ordinances to the same effect. there are hundreds of statutes that deal with the underlying acts that might otherwise qualify as harassment or bullying, such as laws against battery, assault, stalking, what have you. what evidence is there that state and local authorities are either incompetent, incapable, unwilling or don't have the resources to handle this matter? and could you give us an example of how the office for civil rights adds value or can do something better than can be done than the state and local level to address the issue? >> so, education writ large primarily is a local issue. as i mentioned, and as the secretary often says, on we

can't be a transformational change that our schools need to undergo from washington alone. our guidance was not intended any of our work to suggest that local officials are incompetent, but as we see the complaints, the allegations of the complaints, what we're learning in in our compliance reviews, places where gang rape has become all too common where young girls feel like if they report being raped to school officials, even if they are raped on school grounds, that they will be subject to a kind of public humiliation and victimization all over again.

from general counsel, as i mentioned, that need help as they are working to ensure that justice is done to local law enforcement, but that they also comply with their civil rights responsibilities, standards and laws that have been in place since the '70s and beyond. so, our role, while clear and defined, is but one role in the system, designed to ensure that all children feel safe. we are making clear.?????? thank you commission. >> the chair reco?gnizes??? commissioner?? achtenberg. >> could you restate for the commission the distinction between the context in which private parties seek monetary damages as compared to the context in which the department

through its various vehicles including compliance reviews, exercises its prerogative to set administrative procedures, within the parameters of the civil rights laws? >> the distinction -- the distinction between private, the standards in private litigation and the enforcement of title ix has been clear fo for a very log time since 1979 when it was done. 19 -- in 2001. we did not change those standards in any way. for example, preponderance of the evidence as a standard for title ix investigations when it

comes to sexual violence. that standard has always been our enforcement standard. we made it clear in the guidance that it was, that many institutions as we saw from yale and stanford and others have somewhat of a higher standard more towards clear and convincing. not because they were attempting to thwart their title ix responsibilities, but many because they were dealing with title ix sexual violence and harassment issues in the disciplinary context. of which there was a higher standard. so we were helping to articulate the difference. >> the chair recognizes the vic? chair.???????? >> secretary ali, thank you.?? a couple of very fast questions. you talked about hostile environments so severe interfere with the ability of students to learn. is it crystal clear what actions

about to add up to creating a hostile environment? those are nice words, but it seems to me they are very vague, and to put some specificity, you know, talk about specific instances, just underscores the problem of the vagueness. commissioner kirsanow talked about state and local authorities and their ability and all the regulations that are already in place. well, i spent 11 years on the

massachusetts state board of education. and we were not impressed with the ability at the state level to, anyway regulate bullying. nor were we particularly impressed with the ability of local school authorities, that is school boards. what we were impressed with was the ability of principals and teachers in a school to establish a culture in which such bullying was not acceptable. and the ability of those same local authorities to reach out to parents and say, this is your responsibility, too. and i just, you know, wonder what your reaction would be to

those two points. >> to the latter, yes, there's certainly, as we talk about all morning, the local responsibility that principles are in the best position to be able to spot that with teachers when it's happening in real time. parents and communities have a hugely important role to ensure that what happens out of school also is safe for all students. we at the federal government and of the department of education also have a very important role. one that is designed to provide real assistance. for example, commissioner kirsanow in december, he referenced the 44 states and increasing number that are just developing statewide policy on this issue. in december, the secretary issued a memo to state officials point to what those policies were, how to identify some model

practices and some things that we know are working from the state level. while all of those, local law enforcement, local parents and communities have their responsibilities, schools have a responsibility, too, and adults in the schools have a responsibility under the civil rights laws to ensure that students are free from a hostile environment based on protected characteristics. our work is designed to help them where they need it. remind them where they have fallen short. let's also be clear, if the office of civil rights gets involved in an enforced that way, not any technical assistance way, it's probably too late. some tragedies and unfortunate things have already occurred. so, we are trying to help

?event them on the front end as much as possible.??????? >> we appreciate the time you spent with the kessler today, and i know you had to leave so thank you. >> will now move onto the justice department. jocelyn samuels latinas to make a presentation, and then we will do questions and answers.???? >> thanthank you very much for? inviting me he?re today.???? ?m delighted to be here and?? appreciate the commission's??? focus on basics and the????? important issue. before i get started i like to? ?troduce my colleague who's th? chief of our educational???? opportunity section of the civi? rights division.???????? i'd also like to thank my???? colleagues in ?educational opportunity section for all of the work that they do in these and other areas to ensure that students can go to school free of harassment and discriminati discrimination.

>> we've seen harassment taking on sex, on disability, on national origin and on race. when that harassment occurs and it is not remedied by a school district, we take action under the laws that have been in effect for decades. we been involved in this area for a very long period of time. for example, in the supreme court decision in that gets her

and davis cases, we have brought harassment cases that work with school districts throughout administration. the laws that we enforce as i said have been on the books for decades. among those laws are title iv of civil rights act of 1964, which bars discrimination, including harassment on the basis of race, national origin, sex and religion, and public schools --? [inaudible]? no problem, thank you. we enforce -- [inaudible] we with the americans of his those acts which bar discrimination and harassment based on disability, we foresee equal educational opportunities act of 1974 which among other things requires states and school districts to provide services to english-language foreigner students, and on

referral from the department of education or other federal agencies, we enforce title vi of the civil rights act of 1964, title ix of the educational amendments of 1972, and the rehabilitation act of 1973 which bar discrimination and harassment went educational institutions that receive federal funds violates the laws. now, under title ix, both courts and the department of education have recognized for a long time that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender stereotyping. in 2001, the office of civil rights issued guidance stating that gender-based harassment including that predicate on sex stereotyping violates the law. [inaudible] >> before i continue i just want to provide a little bit of

background information to put in context, the information that we provided in response to your interrogatories and document requests. the educational opportunities section is comprised of 20 lawyers it is a very small group, and we do the very best we can with the limited resources that we have to enforce the laws mandating equal educational opportunity in the hopes of context in which they arise. we get complaints about harassment and other forms of discrimination in numerous ways. from phone calls, from letters, from congressional inquiry. we look into those and marshal our resources to get involved in the cases in which we think we can have the greatest impact. those in which we can promote systemic reforms that can serve as models for school districts around the country. those where there are questions of law that will result in interpretations that would be applied across the board or in various areas of the country.

we do not have the resources or, frankly, the jurisdiction to proceed with every complaint that we get. and a number of complaints that we have reported to you, we think represent only a small component of the amount of bullying and harassment that occurs out there. so for example, while bullying and harassment based on weight or on income or on the parents are all unfair and something that school district should address, federal law separate does not not give us the authority to look at all to take action in those kinds of cases. as a result, the number that we have reported represent those cases in which we believe with our resources where able to make a significant difference, not a representation at the universe of the problems out there. let me talk a little bit about some of the cases in which we

have been involved. as i mentioned, we look for opportunities to help school districts with systemic reforms. and often i should say our cases are resolved by agreements with the school districts who are anxious to ensure that they are providing their students a safe environment to which to go to school. school districts are conscious of their responsibilities here, and along with our colleagues at the department of education, we believe that voluntary compliance and technical assistance to enable them to recognize their legal responsibilities and implement effective practices is the preferred way to promote school safety and anti-harassment policies. so as a result in our cases, we have often looked for systemic reforms that we think will help a school district down the road

to address the kind of conduct that i know we all deplore. in -- as assistant secretary ali minchin, as long -- we entered into an agreement in the school district to address severe and pervasive harassment of somalia american students. our agreement there provided for a review of the school districts policies, training for teachers and staff about both the standards of the law and effective practices to prevent harassment, evaluation of the effectiveness of policies, engagement of an expert to assess whether the school district is, in fact, providing the kinds of supports and oversight that it needs to in order to truly address this problem. similarly, in south philadelphia we entered into an agreement with the philadelphia school

board in a case of truly horrific harassment by african-american students of asian american students that resulted at its climax in having numbers of children sent to the hospital because of the physical violence that had occurred on the premises of the school. in that case as well, we agreed with the school districts that they would retain an expert to evaluate policies and provide advice on how to address bullying and harassment going for. we asked them to a sure that the complaint procedures were effective. we provided for training and notice to parents and students of the resources available to them, if they were subject to harassment. and agree to work with the school district as the report to us on their success in implementing the provisions of this agreement. in both of these cases these were districtwide that i think

will make the school environment for all students in the district a better one. we've also introduced a settlement agreement in cases in which there are cases pending in court. so for example, last year we entered into a settlement agreement in mohawk, new york, on behalf of a student who had been severely harassed on the basis of sex stereotyping. this was a student who engage in effeminate behavior, who was as a result of both verbal and ultimately physical assaults to which he was subjected, forced to stay home and miss classes. and again, the agreement that we reached in this case provided for the kind of systemic institutional relief that we think is ultimately beneficial for the students going forward. similarly, in the lopez case

against the national school board, we were involved on behalf of of a nine year old autistic student who was raped by a teenager on a special education bus. and, you know, the school had knowledge that the perpetrator of this assault had engaged in similar conduct in the past, and had not taken effective action to address it. in this case are settlement agreement, in fact, will enable them to do so, and we look forward to working with them in the future. i'm happy to take your questions. >> thank you, ms. samuels. recently the national council issued a report on discrimination, and at around the same time and national crime victimization survey indicates that about one of for latino students believe that they've been bullied. and the work that you are doing, have you seen anything to substantiate those statistics? >> yes.

i am sorry to say that harassment and bullying seems to be on the increase across the country on the basis of national origin is no exception, particularly following 9/11. i think we had seen an uptick in the amounts of harassment focus on national origin groups. and we do everything that our legal tools provide us to be able to address those situations. one thing i should note and make clear is that there is no federal law that prohibits bullying. our authority goes to harass but which is physical or verbal or other conduct that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile environment that interferes with the students ability to learn. so there is, unfortunately, a level of schoolyard taunting that we do not have the jurisdiction to reach.

and that, of course, is in part in recognition of the first amendment concerns about overly restricting students speech. but to the extent that there is a hostile environment that is created by the harassment, that is something that we absolutely would take steps to address. >> i remind my fellow commissioners that we will now? be doing compound questions or? multiple questions, so please ask a question.???????? commissioner yaki indicated he? wants to? ask a question. >> yes, although i wonder how you define compound. quick question for you, ms. samuels. first of all, thank you for the hard work you have been doing on this. i understand that -- i'm going to stop referring to primates and go to -- i'm going to talk about the elephant in the room here come and that is the fact that we were talking a lot, and

i talked about this last year or the year before about what the commission should be going. and it addressed the issue of bullying of lgbt kids in this country, and the rise and the terrible toll it has taken on families and on young people in this country. to me, the elephant in the road is to the extent to which you have the authority to proceed based upon the orientation of that particular individual, the ability to protect their civil rights. i believe that the state has -- the federal government and the state has that ability, especially when it comes to young people, based on case law going back over one hoosiers about the state's ability to override certain protections, not even override but simply to act on behalf of protecting a young person from our. in this case, serious

psychological harm that can result in suicide, self inflicted harm, and other sorts of things. that is part of why we are having this hearing today, to discuss whether or not, and how, we go about making it clear that a child is not bullied based on these types of factors. but that being said, this is where i'm trying not to make a compound question -- >> ask your question now, mike. >> the case law that you are using, is there caseload that exist out there that allows you to proceed based on sex stereotyping? because i ask that because the -- not really compound, but the follow-up you might want to put in your comment, i'm not going to ask directly have to do with whether or not -- [laughter] >> it would be easier if there were more implementing language

like title vi or title iv, that made more specific on behalf of certain individuals in this country. thank you. >> thank you for your question, compound or not. let me say, the premise that -- [inaudible] has long been -- under title vii which bars sex discrimination in employment and under title -- [inaudible] >> back in the price one has to decision in the 1980s, the supreme court said -- [inaudible] >> okay. [inaudible] >> just in the interest of time, we want you to continue.

>> in the price one has to see in the late 1980s, the supreme court said that people who are penalized for acting contrary to stereotypes about the way members of their gender should act are protected by the prohibition on sex discrimination. now, courts have simultaneously said that the federal laws do not bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. which fundamentally a different category than gender stereotyping which goes to behaviors, mannerisms, the way in which an individual presents him or herself. that said, we know, and there are studies that demonstrate that school policies that ban harassment or bullying based on sexual orientation, have a significant impact. so for example, a recent study that was done shows that there was a 20% reduction in the teen

suicide rate in schools that have lgbt supportive environments, where they of gay straight alliances, where they have explicit policies that ban sexual orientation discrimination, where students feel that they have a place to turn. and this is one of those areas, as across the board, where schools have a responsibility as a matter of treatment of the students to step up and make sure that all other students can go to school in a safe environment. >> i will now recognize commissioner kirsanow followed by commissioner achtenberg followed by commissioner heriot. >> thank you, thank you for appearing, ms. samuels. you were talking about the increase in protected class, harassment understand your jurisdiction over harassment and not bullying, for example, bullying based on matters -- not, harassment of protected

classes. we did the department of justice began tracking data related to instances of protected class, harassment? and what has been the trajectory in terms of the number of such instances, if you collected such data? >> thank you for your question, commissioner. let me make two things clear. first, we do not have jurisdiction over bullying on any basis, even if it is on the basis of sex, race, national origin, religion, or disability. we only have jurisdiction over conduct that amounts to unlawful harassment. in addition, we don't jurisdiction over harassment that is not on a prohibited bases. so it is because of someone's weight, or someone's appearance, that's absentee sex stereotyping approach, we don't have jurisdiction over that.

with regard to our tracking, as you'll see from our responses to your interrogatories, we have only tracked those matters that we, in fact, open for investigation. we get many more complaints every year than we open. and i don't believe that at this point in time we have the means to evaluate or assess the nature of the complaints that have come into have not resulted in department action of some sort. >> i'm sorry, we have to move on to commissioner achtenberg. >> madam attorney general, thank you very much or your participation in this, in this hearing. i'm assuming that the department of justice does not assert jurisdiction when there comes forward a single incident of

playground taunting, as some have accused the department of doing, but when activity rises to the level of creating a hostile environment as you have stated, could you clarify the distinction, sort of consistent with the commissioners question to russlynn ali? and could you respond as well to the notion that most of these issues are better dealt with at the state and local levels? and by professionals such as principals and teachers. >> absolutely. in response to the first question, we do not have jurisdiction and would not take action against single incidents

of playground taunting, absent something like physical conduct that made a single incident severe or pervasive to create a hostile environment. i think one of the things to recognize about harassment is that it is necessarily a very fact-based inquiry. and we are both in the resource constraints and because we recognize that school districts need to be able to address situations in ways that they see fit, not -- we don't find the standards vague, but we will address in intervening cases only where we find that the conduct or the speech is so severe or pervasive that it has limited institute's ability to take advantage of the educational offering. most of our cases are not even

close. in south philadelphia we had students being sent to the hospital. in lopez, we had students being raped on a special education buck. these are serious cases where it is not at all a question about whether a hostile and violent has been created. with regard to local issues, we absolutely think that schools are in the best position to address harassment and into the safety of their school environments, and that's why, first of all, we only get involved when there has been a failure of the school district to take the necessary steps. and why our revolution agreement uniformly contained provision for training of staff, evaluation of procedures, and engagement of experts so that we can get the schools the help they need in order to be able to take the best steps possible to protect their children. >> the chair recognizes commissioner heriot. >> think you. i just want to make sure i

understand and i am tracking the department -- back when i was in school back in the prehistoric days, we had separate personal grooming and dress code for boys and girls, like elementary school in junior high or high school. what is the department's position on such code? >> i'm not aware that there is a caselaw about dress code. well, no, in the old days there were cases that did talk about dress codes, and certainly employers ability to create reasonable dress codes has been recognized in the case law. if we got an allegation that a dress code violated title ix, it's something we obviously would take a look at and make a determination about how to proceed on. >> the chair recognizes -- >> you don't have that no? >> we will not have follow-up question. i'm sorry, we've really got to get through the rest of the questions. commissioner tide is. >> it sounds like your

educational opportunities section is overworked and i appreciate the good work that they are doing. but you mentioned that you would perhaps look at other cases if you had the jurisdiction. and i understand that issue. but also the resources and several times that's come up that you don't have the resources. i wonder if they are not meritorious cases that are falling to the side because of those resources. is there something we can do or recommend to help you to enhance those resources so you can, maybe not a better job, but a broader job? >> thank you for asking that question, commissioner. i think we do do excellent work, but we are truly limited by the resource constraints that we face. and i think with additional funding and additional staff we would be able to, as you say, do a broader job and address more of the complaints that we get that we find to be meritorious,

but that, for example, won't necessarily result in the kinds of systemic relief that we think are the best use of the resources that we have. so we would very much like to proceed in cases which often present each we just facts, but which we simply do not have demands with to be able to take on. >> thank you. >> vice chair thernstrom is recognized by the chair. >> you talked about the philadelphia case, but that is really an extreme case, and as you recognize, it involves physical violence. so, i mean, it seems to me there's a bright and clear line between physical violence and verbal harassment, that i think everybody here would agree on. i'm still having a problem defining when verbal harassment amounts to something that the

department needs to get concerned about. i mean, kids are monsters, and -- [laughter] >> i mean, they are. and you know, you're talking about playground stuff. you're talking about, as you said, kids saying your fat. that can be very winning at a certain age. i mean, it's a lot of wounding stuff that goes on at schools. and that's my point, that the solution to that, are you talking about the culture of the schools. i'm not sure that the federal government can affect the culture of local schools. i'm not even sure states can, to some extent, local districts can. but it really depends upon the

authorities, and there are, frankly, to fuel school authorities that really are committed to creating a culture in which kids feel safe. >> thank you for the question, commissioner, and you know, i think we all agree that abuse by children, whether it is illegal or not, can have damaging consequences that schools ought to attend to. and as i mentioned in citing the study before, school actions on this basis can really make a difference. i can assure you that there are legal standards in place to ensure that we will act, schools, schools accountable, only when the environment that is created involved harassment whether verbal or physical, although verbal is also a

precursor to physical harassment, and we found that in many of our cases. what starts as verbal harassment escalates into physical violence. we urge school districts to take action to nip these kinds of things in the bud, both because it will prevent legal problems down the road, and also because they owe it to the students to provide them a safe environment to go to school. but as a federal government, there are legal standards that govern when we get involved, and we make that assessment in every case, to ensure that we're using our resources, to address and bring legal action against school districts where the harassment has, in fact, resulted in a hostile and violent that limits a students educational opportunities. >> thank you, ms. samuels. i want to thank you for being here for the work you're doing. we appreciate it very much. as panel one leaves come we're going to ask the folks who are on panel to to to come to the podium here.

panel 2 will focus on issues of gender and lgbt standards. those individuals who will be on panel 2 will be of the national women's law center, roger clegg of the center for equal opportunity, gregory eric at the university of california-davis, hiram sasser of the liberty institute and john geesman of chapman university. we asked the panel is, please take your seats. who again, given the timeframe we're in, we are going to asked each panelist to limit their comments to seven minutes. we had you written statements. we have reviewed them. they are part of the record. we will, there have to, have a 70 minute discussion that will

take place among the panelists and the commissioners. and i remain our commissioners again to please keep your questions brief and simple. and not multiple. please, panelists, take your seats. >> coming up next, afl-cio president richard trumka talks about worker rights.

>> no one succeeds in life by themselves. you must be willing to lean on others, to listen to others, and yes, love others. watch 2011 commencement speeches on c-span memorial day weekend, and search more than 800 past commencement addresses from politicians, activists, authors, presidents and other world leaders and more online at the peabody award-winning c-span library. you can share everything we've

covered from 1987 through today. it's washington your way. >> now, afl-cio president richard trumka discusses the u.s. labor movement agenda and recent union activities in states like wisconsin, ohio and indiana. mr. trumka also talks about the 2012 elections, federal budget issues and the state of u.s. economy. from the national press club in washington, this is about an hour. >> who good afternoon and welcome to the national press club. my name is mark hamrick, i'm a broadcaster for the associate press and 9104th president of the national press club. we are the world's leading professional organization for journalists committed to our professions future for our programming, events like this, while also working to foster a free press worldwide.

for more information about the national press club, please visit our website at www.press.org. and to donate to programs offered to the public through our journalism library, you can find information there also at www.press.org/library. so on behalf of our members worldwide i'd like to welcome our speaker and those of you attending today's event. our head table includes guest of our speaker as well as working journalists to our club members. and so, if you happen to hear applause i would remind you that members of the general public are in attendance, so that does not necessary to point to a lack of journalistic objectivity. i would also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences, our lunches are featured on our member produce weekly podcast from the national press club. that's available for free on itunes. you can also call to action on twitter using the hash tag pound npca lunch. after our guest speech concludes

today will have q&a and i'll ask as many questions as time permits. now it's back into our head table guests and asked each of you. to stand up briefly as your name is announced and would ask you to hold your applause until all are introduced. from your right, donovan slack, white house reporter for "the boston globe" and we are proud to announce she is a new member of the national press club. thank you for doing that and being here today. holy is a labor reporter from bloomberg news. paul, a radio reporter from tasha also a new member. alex and it is a member of the wisconsin american federation of teachers, copresident of the teaching assistants association, local 3220, a guest of the speaker. sabrina eaton is a washington correspondent for the cleveland plain dealer. arlene baker is the afl-cio executive vice president and a guest of the speaker today. skipping over the podium,

marilyn geewax a senior business editor at npr, vice chair of our press club speakers committee. thank you for all your work in that regard. skipping over our guest speaker, rod is chief editor, a number of the press club speakers committee to organize today's event, thank you for that. john sweeney, you will recognize him. is president emeritus of the afl-cio, guest of the speaker. thank you for being here today. jennifer de paul is a reporter for the fiscal times. beth ward, a reporter with wax. and craig gilbert is "milwaukee journal sentinel" washington bureau chief. let's give them a round of applause. [applause] >> as you probably know by now, organized labor in america has been under renewed attack this year. while it has not been as physically violent as seen in our nation's history, it has often been bitter at times.

the benefits and collective bargaining rights of unions representing teachers, firefighters, police and civil servants has become a special target. in more than a dozen states politicians want unions to help reduce budget shortfalls by paying more for the benefits and giving up the ability to negotiate working conditions. much of the impetus behind and the union -- behind all the antiunion legislation might be linked back to 2010 election which would control many legislations seats from democrat to republican. in april, ohio's governor signed into law a bill stripping state and local workers of the collective bargaining rights. and a similar bill signed by wisconsin's governor appears headed to that state supreme court. by democratic governors, too, in places like massachusetts and connecticut, for example, what union givebacks to help balance their budgets. their demands may not be driven so much by ideology as fiscal necessity. but for a union member that difference may seem to be

academic. the assault on paper is not limited to public employees. all this occurring at a time when unions are struggling to maintain their membership. today, 15 million, or 12% of working americans belong to unions. that happens to be the lowest level in 70 years compared to roughly 22 million in 1980. our speaker was just beginning his career as a union activist and as a leader. for our speaker today, richard trumka was raised in the coalfields of southwest pennsylvania. after earning his law degree at villanova university in 1974, that's where my son christopher is a rising sophomore, i have to put a plug-in for him. having worked in the coal mines i guess be going to work for the united mine workers becoming at age 33 the youngest president of that unions history. that was in 1982. he served three terms and brought the mine workers into the afl-cio.

in 1995 he became secretary treasurer of the afl-cio, and served in that post until his election in 2009 as the fifth president of the 55 units of the nation's largest union federation represent more than 12 million members. please give a warm national press club welcome to richard trumka. [applause] >> mark, i want to thank you for that kind introduction. and i want to thank the press club for inviting me to speak your today. and i will get right into it, quite further by the way, i want to thank the chef for those wonderful cookies. [laughter] >> i'm sure all of you will recognize. you know, friends, i guess how can we make sense of the spectacle that's been unfolding across the american political

landscape? has mark alluded to, politicians in wisconsin and ohio, and a dozen other states, are trying to take away workers rights to organize and bargain for a better life. but that's not all. in state after state, politicians are attacking voter rights by imposing id requirements, by shortening early voting period, by blocking young people from voting because they are, quote, too liberal, unquote. and even let criminal penalties and fines for breaking arbitrary rules and the voter registration process, all of which so it will be harder for people to vote. especially the least privileged among us. now, just in wisconsin listen to the list of who doesn't have state issued voter ids that will be needed to cast a ballot

under legislation that governor scott walker will signed next week. 23% of elderly wisconsinites, 59% of latina women, 55% of african-american men over all, and 70% of african-american men who are between 18-24 years of age. now, budget proposals unveiled in washington and state capitals across the country this year revealed the despicable campus of cruelty. in michigan, a state senator thinks foster children should be required by law to purchase secondhand clothes with the $79 annual stipend they did for those close. in maine, the governor thinks more children should go to work at half the minimum wage. in north carolina, the legislature thinks that we

should balance the budget on the backs of autistic children. in arizona, the state senate president floats the idea of locking up protesting public employees in desert tent city jails. in new york, a billionaire mayor proposes to fire 5000 teachers rather than tax the bonuses of wall street executives who brought down the american economy. not just meanness, but destructiveness. a willful desire to block the road to the future. now, how else can you explain governors of states with massive unemployment refusing to allow high-speed rail lines to be built in their state? how else can you explain these same governors plans to defined higher education, closed schools, fire teachers when we

know that without an educated america we have no future whatsoever. here in washington, the republicans in congress have decided housing and they are blocking worker training. and transportation infrastructure. i think the final outrage of these budgets is hidden in the fine print, because in state after state, and here in washington, these so-called fiscal hocks are actually doing almost nothing to cut the deficit. the federal budget embraced by house republicans, for example, cut 4.3 trillion in spending, but gives out 4.2 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy individuals and corporations. florida's guiding the jobless

worker, a for jobless workers and using the money saved to cut already low business. and at the end of the day, our governments will be in no better fiscal shape than when we started, but they're just being used as a patsy, if you will, to enriching the already rich. and at a time when inequality in this country stands at historic levels. now, think about the message these budgets and. sacrifice is for the weak. ..

>> the very nature of america, to replace the land of liberty and justice for all with the land of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. you see, i personally believe the united states is not a place as much as it is an idea. for working people the united states of america has offered from it foundation -- from its foundation a promise that everyone can be a full participant in national life. a promise that we, the people, make the rules so that hard work is rewarded with economic security and a fair share of the wealth that we all help create. now, that promise has always been a work in progress.

this year we commemorate the 150th anniversary of our bloodiest war, a war that resulted in the extension of the american promise to african-americans who did so much of the work of creating the united states. we were the first country in the history of the world to embrace the idea that you don't have to own land to vote, that citizens come from -- citizenship comes from where you live, not what you own or who your parents were. we were the first country to make land available to those who would work that land in the homestead act. and in the modern era when giant corporations dominated our economy, we pioneered the idea that we had a right to a voice on the job, a right made real when we came together to form

unions and to bargain collectively. and while boeing and the chamber of commerce may not like it, the law of the land protects working people who exercise that right against any retaliation by their employers. see, in the 1960s public employees finally won those same rights. working people remember full well that these rights were not easily won. the pivotal 1968 memphis sanitation workers' strike began with two men crushed to death in a garbage truck and ended with dr. martin luther king giving his life for the cause of public workers' right to organize together. from the beginning of this country, through our efforts and

our ideas working people have made the american dream real. and what is that dream? well, it's the idea that if you work hard and you play by the rules, you'll enjoy economic security and a better future for your children. it's not that a few of us will be rich, but that all of us will be treated fairly, that we look after each other and they we all have a share in the wealth that we all help create. this spring working people are engaged in a great struggle to defend their dream in green bay and indianapolis and benton harbor, michigan and in columbus, ohio. and not just in the midwest, in new york and los angeles and in florida and texas. quite frankly, in every corner

of our nation. the struggle began after last november's elections brought to power politicians in state capitols across the heartland who had a hidden agenda, an agenda worked out at posh reports with the koch brothers and the american legislative exchange council and other shadowy groups. politicians like john kasich and scott walker campaigned promising to do something about jobs only to reveal when they took office that their jobs agenda was to make them disappear. but the real passion, their real passion was for eliminating the rights of working people. and destroying their unions who are standing in their way of their agenda. and in response working people

took to the streets. on april 4th under the banner of "we are one," we came together all across america, and then we did so again on may 1st when we stood together with our immigrant brothers and sisters saying again that we are truly one. in signs all across the rotunda in wisconsin's statehouse, we proclaimed that we were there to defend the principle that in america we look out after each other. and one of the people who was there is here with us today. and i'd like to introduce him. alex hannah is a graduate assistant at the university of wisconsin madison and a co-president of the teachers' assistance association of the american federation of teachers. stand up, please, alex. [applause]

now, alex stood up for teachers and other public workers in madison over the last couple of months even as he built solidarity with workers in the middle east. you see, his family comes from egypt, and he's strengthened links between movements for change all around the world. and, alex, i want to thank you for your inspiration and everything that you've done so far. you've been a wonderful example for all of us. i'd also like to thank those democratic senators in wisconsin who stood up and walked out on behalf of working people. [applause] and those democratic senators in indiana who did the same thing. [applause] and brought a screeching halt to right to work. [applause] and, quite frankly, i'd like to

thank our democratic and republican friends in the ohio legislature that stood up for workers. [applause] they deserve a round of applause. you see, alex embodies the fact that we are not a nation of isolated individuals. we're a land of communities, we're a land of families. our republic, our democracy is an expression of our solidarity, of our common values and our common life as a nation. in america firefighters rush into burning buildings every day risking their lives to save people that they've never met. social workers care for other people's abused children, and home health workers provide care and companionship for those who need it. and every day you and i pay our social security taxes and

medicare, and that same money is sent out again to provide comfort and security to other people's parents and grandparents. see, this is not just a matter of morality, but it also makes economic sense. and being a community makes more economic sense today than it ever has in the past. and it'll simply not be enough to beat back the scott walkers and the john kasichs and the koch brothers. america's economic fate depends on us coming together to educate our children, to invest in our infrastructure, to face the threat of climate change and to reverse the yawning economic inequality that threatens our future. let me be specific. unemployment stands at 9%. underemployment is at 16%.

housing prices are falling. and foreclosures remain at historic highs. economic growth is hovering at around 2% annually, not enough to put a dent in unemployment especially as tax cuts expire and as the recovery act winds down and state and local governments gear up for more deep cuts. yet instead of having a national conversation about putting america back to work to build the future, the debate here in washington is about how fast we can destroy the fabric of our country, about breaking the promises that we made to our parents and our grandparents. now, understand the ryan budget destroys jobs. it destroys almost all the jobs created during the recovery so far.

it guts medicare. it attacks social security. the one piece of our retirement security system that actually works. and now we see speaker boehner and his colleagues engage in a new round of blackmail with a ransom note that reads: cut medicare, dismantle the government, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs to fund more tax cuts for the rich, or we'll cause the united states to default on its debt. now, why is our national conversation in such a destructive place? not because we're impoverished. we've never been richer. the american economy's never produced as much wealth as it produces today. but we feel poor because the

wealth in our society has flowed to a handful among us. 100% of all income gains going to the top 10% in the last 20 years. and they and the politicians who pander to the worst instincts of the wealthy would rather break promises to our parents and grandparents and deny our children a future than to pay their fair share of taxes. you see, america's real deficit is a moral deficit where political choices come down to foster children forcing them to wear hand-me-down clothes while cutting taxes for profitable corporations. powerful political forces are seeking to silence working people, to drive us out of the national conversation.

and i can think of no greater proof of the moral decay in our public life than that of wisconsin governor scott walker would dare to give a martin luther king day speech hailing, hailing dr. king and at the same time that he had drafted a bill to take away the collective bargaining rights from sanitation workers in wisconsin. see, the ultimate goal of these, those who blame workers for wall street's economic crisis is to unraffle -- unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and in pursuit of power. in this environment working people in our unions must do more, more than just protect our own right to a voice in the life of our nation. we must also raise our voice to

win a better future for all working people. every last one of them here in america and around the globe. see, here's what we're going to be doing. first, we're going to use that voice to end the scott walker agenda as a viable political strategy by winning recall elections in wisconsin and citizen vetoes of destructive legislation in other states and retaking statehouses. [applause] then we'll -- then we'll spend the summer holding the elected leaders in congress as well as states accountable to one measure: are you improving, or are you degrading life for working families? and we're looking hard at how we work in this nation's political arena. we've listened hard. and what workers want is an

independent labor movement that builds power of working people in the workplace and in political life. working people want a labor movement strong enough to help return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation. see, our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate, it's to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our economy, our country. and it doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside to let it happen. the outcome is the same either way to us. if leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, then working people will not support them. this is where our focus will be

now, in 2012 and beyond. we will uphold the dignity of work and restore respect for working people. and this season's political battles teachers and purses and firefighters -- nurses and firefighters have been vilified. decent jobs with economic security have been cast as more than america's workers deserve. low wage, part-time, temporary, no-benefit work is being sold as the new normal for the economy. and we know that only a dynamic, effective movement of working people working together can reclaim the value of work. so our unions must reach out to every working person in america, to those whose jobs have been outsourced and downsized, to car wash workers in los angeles to domestic workers who have few legal rights to freelancers and

young workers who have gigs rather than jobs. and together with the afl-cio's construction and manufacturing workers, our pilots and painters, our plumbers and public employees, our basics and others -- bakers and others we will be heard because the stakes are so high for working america and for, and for us, for working families. so the question becomes, will the country be ruled by greed? by people who would cut or take pensions away from first responders? people who would take away the fundamental human rights of our workers, who would choose tax breaks for the richest among us over a future for all of us. or will we be a country where we choose a future where we look out for each other, where we all have a voice? we'll only win investments in our future if we again embrace

the idea that we are one national community, that our identities are bound up with the promise that all of us have a voice in the workplace, at the ballot box, and that we're all responsible with a deep sense for one another. the fabric of our government, our democratic republic is about making that responsibility for each other real. and this is the message that working people have always brought to our national conversation. it's the message that alex hannah and hundreds of thousands of others who took to the streets of the midwest this spring and that we will take to the polling places of the heartland in recall elections and in citizens' veto campaigns in the coming months. and it's the message that we'll continue to shout this year and next year and the year after

that until we are heard. the moral character of america is worth fighting for, and that is exactly what working people are going to do in the days and the weeks and the months ahead. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> we're grateful we have many of your supporters here in the room -- [laughter] along with we working journalists, hard working journalists. and hard --

>> and nice journalists. >> that as well. and part of our job is to take a look at the very skillful prose which you delivered here today and try to read between the lines. and we're paid to do that, so i hope you can understand some of the questions, why we're directing them to you today the way we will. and these are supplied from our audience for the most part as well as some we came up with having had the benefit of some of your speech having been released in advance. so we'll go right to it. with all the unprecedented attacks against labor at the state level, isn't it time to redirect all campaign contributions to the battleground states, and what will that take? >> well, we're actually redoing our entire political program and the way we do things. as you know, the afl-cio gives very little money to candidates. most of the money we do is used to educate and mobilize our members. but our affiliate unions do give a considerable amount of money

to candidates, and we hope to be able to coordinate that spending in a much more effective way to build power for working people. we will target those. some of them will be targeted toward battleground states. some of them will be targeted to friends that have stood up for worker. some of them will be republicans, and some of them will be democrats who have stood up to help us, and we will stand up to help them. so we will change the way we spend, the way we do and the way we function in a way that creates power for workers and, hopefully, brings the america back at least in the conversation that we're talking about. >> so that's a broad framework, but one might ask, weren't you doing that all along? and if not, why not? >> well, that's, it's a good question. we have been educating all along. the question becomes, are we going to spend all our money in the battleground states? and we've never done that. we've spent money where we've had friends, and we will continue to do that. of course, our focus will remain

in those battleground states, that's why they're called battleground states. [laughter] but we will also focus on our friends. that's someone who has stood up with us and is not in a battleground state that's in a tough race, we're going to stand with them. and we're going to take challenge people that have been against us as well. some will be in battleground states, and some will not be in battleground states. >> so someone hearing this up to this point asked, well, does this mean that you'll be concentrating less in fighting against congressional attacks on social security and medicare? they're worried that you might cede that kind of ground. >> actually, we'll be fighting more strenuously for those type of fights, and let me make this one personally clear. the afl-cio and working america will fight against any proposed cuts to social security and medicare regardless of who proposes them. that's point number one. but we will be mobilizing, hopefully n a year-round basis right now.

we'll be able to hold people accountable. in the past we dismantled our process after the election. and then we would have to reenergize it when issues came up. we intend now to keep that process in effect, and when friends or foe get a little weary and forgetful about who they should be representing, we'll remind them with an educated and mobilized rank and file. >> so is it, as i try and step back from this a little bit and look at the broad picture, is it your sense that washington in general has made too much of a priority out of what might be viewed as trying to be more fiscally prudent? >> well, let me, mark, let me answer that in two ways. first, let's look at the states. are there states that have deficit problems? yes. are there states that are using deficit problems as hysteria and as a front to attack working people? most definitely, yes. [applause] we will stop -- and here there's

not much difference here. we don't have a short-term deficit crisis in this country. anybody will tell you that. any other country will tell you that. what we have is a short-term jobs crisis in this country. create jobs, you lower the deficit. do some other things, have a real health care program, you lower the deficit. so the deficit has been used as a way to cut, cut, cut and to do an ideology. i mean, grover norquist said it, he didn't care about the budget, he cares about shrinking government. and the best way to do that is stop any revenue from increasing and make continual cuts. that means a different type of america. and they keep telling us, they keep telling the public we can't provide good jobs, we can't provide retirement security, we can't -- you have to scale back your definition of the american dream. we totally reject that.

this is up with of the richest nations -- one of the richest nations on the face of the earth. other countries have figured out a way to do it. it's a matter of priorities, and the priorities should be having everybody have a chance to get ahead. every worker get a fair wage, everybody have some health care, everybody have some retirement security. not just the top 10% or 1% or one-tenth of 1%. they've been doing quite well the last 20 years, but the rest of america has suffered because of it, and these deficit fights that they talk about are aimed in that direction as well. now, in the long term -- i want to say this -- in the long term there is something, so you do have to adjust it. but it ought to be shared sacrifice. and people at the bottom have already sacrificed. first, they sacrifice with their jobs. eleven million of us lost jobs, 14 million unemployed. then they sacrifice with their

homes. workers' homes were foreclosed on. then we sacrifice with our taxes as we paid to bail out wall street for their excesses, and they're back to business as usual. nothing has changed for them. they haven't lost their third home, they haven't had a decrease in salary. [laughter] and then they come back to us with a fourth one and say now that you've paid three times, because of these deficits let's eliminate social security or medicare and make you pay again. we think the sacrifice should start at the top, and i think most americans totally agree with us on that, and that's why they support by almost 80% a surtax on billionaires. [applause] >> one short-term problem that is looming is the debt ceiling. indeed, we already bumped up against that, and the secretary of the treasury who also is a

democrat, of course, has said let's deal with this before it's a crisis that the financial markets present to us when we cannot necessarily see it coming, you know, a day or two out. we've seen that happen in europe, we've seen it happen in south america, around the world in years past. as you look at that, and that does not mean that you need necessarily to be in sympathy with the republicans, but how serious a problem is that, and what should members of both parties be willing to give up to attack the issues that surround that? >> well, look, increasing the debt ceiling is a ministerial thing. it's the budget and the long-term deficit that you have to look at. now, the republicans are going to try to say in order for us to increase the debt ceiling, you've got to make all these draconian cuts. get rid of medicare, raise the age of social security, take away head start for 200,000

kids, cut grade school and secondary schools by 25%, take eight million students' student loans away, and we won't do anything unless you do that. look, it's the solvency and the credibility of the united states are at stake. it's not about the debt limit. if they were serious about the deficit, they wouldn't have proposed a budget that cut 4.3 trillion out of it and then gave 4.2 trillion away. let's do the math. that means over ten years their budget is going to reduce the deficit by $100 billion, ten billion a year. now, my math says that doesn't get it. and that's not going to help us. so they ought to look at the problems and be realistic about it. raising the debt ceiling is something that we've obligated ourself to do. it's like the following: it's like you went home one day, and you bought a house, you bought a car, and one day you said, you know, our debt is up to $50,000,

and if it goes up to $51,000, i'm not paying. [laughter] duh. so they take your car, and they take your house because you don't pay. our standing in the world gets very, very tarnished because the dollar has been the currency for the rest of the world, and i think that people should honor that, honor the commitments. and if you want to talk about the deficit, talk about it really. don't come to us with a deficit that says 4.3 billion in cuts so that we can give 4.2 billion of it back to the rich and kick kid off of head start and stop housing counselors and all the draconian things that that budget did, not mentioning gutting medicare and things like that. >> unions have threatened to pull support from democrats many times before when they don't seem to be pursuing labor's agenda, but it seems like unions always come back because they

then realize that republicans in if leadership is worse. so is there something different this time? is. >> ask blanche lincoln. [laughter] >> so are you willing to apply that set of standards more broadly? [applause] >> we're not going to apply a litmus test. what we're saying is people that support workers, we're going to be with them. and candidates that don't support workers, we're not going to be with them. >> so what's the difference between that and a litmus test. >> here's the difference, it covers a whole broad range of things. you could be a friend and make a mistake every once in a while. [laughter] we forgive you for that mistake. the difference is this, that we're not going to spend precious resources helping candidates that don't stand up and help for us. we'll focus on those people that help us. and we'll have more resources to spend on protecting our friends. >> fair enough.

so people want to know how far you're willing to go. you've mentioned the need for independence from democrats before. could this manifest itself in support for third parties such as the green and labor parties? >> was there a question there? [laughter] >> in other words, are you willing to look beyond the two-party structure? absolutely. >> here's what we're looking at doing. we're looking at training workers, too, and recruiting workers to be candidates. so that in primaries we have real choice. we're going to give that a real whirl. >> so is that an answer that you'd look at third party candidates? absolutely? >> if they were supporting working people, we would look at third party candidates. we would look at all of the candidates out there. that's what we're paid to do. and we decide which one is best for our members, and we would support the one that's best for our workers. >> do you need to look to alternative solutions outside the traditional structure? is the current structure getting the job done? >> no.

how much time do we have left? [laughter] we, that's a longer conversation. >> you're a very succinct speaker. >> if you want to look at the system, the system is broken. the supreme court helped break it even more with citizens united. the system needs to be changed so that average, ordinary americans can have as strong a voice as exxonmobil does in the congress. it needs to be changed. the campaign finance laws need to be changed. so i, for one, would be for an overhaul. i'd start at the supreme court probably because they believe that money equals free speech. that's what their decision said. that means that the forefathers sat around the table one day and said, you know, george, you have $500,000, so you get $500,000 of free speech. and, you know, alexander, you only got $100, so you get $100 of free speech.

i just don't believe that conversation took place. i don't believe that. but yet this supreme court equates that. so we need to take on the system and change it and make it more ration also that we can have, again, government of the people, by the people and for the people. [applause] >> so back to your speech, someone asks what is your game plan to spread the spirit of the wisconsin protest to other parts of the country? >> we're out there every day educating and mobilizing. and it's not just in wisconsin. we've cross-pollinated wisconsin people with ohio people with missouri, with tennessee, with indiana. we've gone all over the country, and people are mobilized. and it's not just union people. it's working people in general. small business people are out there supporting us. nonunion workers are out there supporting us because they think these people have gone too far in trying to pay back their rich

donors by destroying the right of workers out there. so we're taking that message everywhere, we're seeing it take effect. and, apparently, we're doing something right because guys like scott walker, his rating in the his own state -- ratings in his own state have fallen like a big rock in a small pond. they think he's gone too far. >> okay. someone says, i didn't hear the word "obama" in your prepared remarks. [laughter] doesn't the president warrant at least an honorable mention? [laughter] >> well, i was talking about people that are off on the wrong course. [laughter] so, of course, i wouldn't mention him. i think the president has done a good job. i think his scale has been limited either because he was too low on things in the fixing or because the republicans have prevented him from being. but if you look at the framework that he's tried to lay out for

getting the economy back on track, i think it's been the right framework. and that's to create jobs, that's to rebuild our infrastructure, that's to give aid to state and local government so they don't lose it, that's trying to get money back into the hands of small and medium-sized businesses through loans that these banks aren't giving out. so i think that's a step in the right direction. i think the scale hasn't been there, and we'll work on that. of course, he's made some mistakes, too, but we'll get to that -- [laughter] >> we have time. [laughter] >> do we? >> we do. absolutely. >> well, i think he made a strategic blunder whenever he confused his stimulus jobs agenda, and he allowed deficits to start walking on top of them. he confused everything. no one understood the importance of the stimulus panel. package. they started talking about deficits and equated the two. i mean, i think that was a strategic blunder. i think putting the colombian

free trade agreement up will be a strategic blunder. one, because i think it's morally wrong to reward a company, or a country that assassinated 51 trade unionists last year. [applause] and just, two -- assassinated a labor leader and a teacher just the other day, day before yesterday. they killed them. and yet we're going to reward them. it'll be an agreement that allows for a country that is not in compliance with ilo standards, they'll be getting a free trade agreement with us. and that's insane. and we will fight that. >> so scale is your criticism. if you had to give him a letter grade, traditional teacher giving a report card, what might that be at this point? >> well, there's a lot of summits whenever i got -- subjects whenever i got report cards anyway. [laughter] most of my grades were the same in each subject, so it didn't much mart matter. it all depends on what you're doing.

if you're looking at enforcing health and safety laws, i think the president gets an a. enforcing trade laws, he gets an a. negotiating trade laws, he's not going to get on the honor roll with that one. [laughter] for direction, i think an a. for execution, well, he doesn't make the honor roll again with that one. but there's a lot of variables there. some of which are way beyond his control. i mean, you've got a determined opposition that says no to any tacks and things of that -- taxes and things of that sort, and that's not his fault, and i hope that we all fight a little harder to create jobs in this country. and i think you'll see him over the next several months make jobs the centerpiece of what he tries to accomplish. >> so he'd make your dean's list. no cs? >> well, i'd say it's finals week. we'll see. [laughter] [applause] >> very good. something in the news on the health and safety front just

these -- just yesterday. an independent report commissioned by the state of west virginia found that the mine explosion that killed 25 men last year resulted from the failures of the owner, massey energy, and rejected the company's assertion that a sudden gas buildup was to blame for the deadliest accident in decades. what's your reaction to that? >> no surprise at all. you have an explosion in the mine, one of two things had to happen. either the laws were inadequate to protect those miners, or the laws weren't complied with. with massey, it has a record of not complying with the laws, of cutting, making shortcuts, allowing things to happen. and when you start making shortcuts, it's going to inevitably catch up with you. and those miners and their families paid the price and, quite frankly, they're still paying the the price. every male in my family died from black lung disease. we knew about black lung. we could have prevented it. in the u.k. it was an

occupational disease in the '20s, and we had coal companies in this country in 1969 standing in the front of a podium and saying we have proof positive that breathing coal dust is good for you. [laughter] i offered to pump it through their air-conditioning unit and share it. they weren't interested in that. but, you know, look, miners get killed every day. workers get killed in this country every single day. they also get, contract pieces of occupational diseases every day. and that doesn't make the headlines. makes the headlines when we kill a bunch of them or they're trapped and we're trying to get them. and we're glad that it makes the headlines then, but they die in ones and twos every single day. every single day. and they get disabled every single day whether you're a construction worker which is highly dangerous occupation, whether you work in different occupations around the country. they yet killed every day --

they get killed every day. and until we had this secretary of labor, the last eight years it was like a killing field out there. now at least we have a secretary of labor that's enforcing the laws in osha and saying you shouldn't have to sacrifice can either your life -- sacrifice either your life or your health to make a living in this country at this point in time. and i might add one other thing. the lunacy of operating a facility whether it's a mine, a factory, a school, a hospital or anything that's unsafe because every single bit of the literature will tell you that the safest facilities are the most productive facilities. so it's a two-finishing er. there's -- twofer. there's no reason to do it, yet it happens every day, and workers die with impunity. thousands and thousands and thousands a year. if we had had, by the way, we dwarf what happened in 9/11 each

year with workers killed on the job. that shouldn't happen in this country. my first job in the mining industry was chairman of the health and safety committee. and i took that job seriously. because i wanted every miner that went in that hole to go home at the end of the shift with all of their fingers and all of their eyes and their legs and their ears. and we all ought to be outraged by what happens when workers get killed and slaughtered in this country. [applause] >> so, of course, you're here in the national press club, and we have upcoming an appearance by arianna huffington. the newspaper guild is calling for people to boycott that, and they complain that huffington and others will get more than $300 million from the sail to aol while -- sale to aol. how do you feel about that issue in general, and then i might

follow up with a question about the news business. >> well, i can talk about the news business, too, because i do have some perspectives on that as well. [laughter] i think we could make you guys a lot better. [laughter] look, i stand with the workers in that issue. workers are entitled to a decent rate of pay, and they ought to be negotiating a fair contract that gives them a decent rate of pay so that the entity becomes productive, can make money and that those workers can have a decent standard of living, so i would stand with them. >> okay. then the questioner says, we have lots of corporate business-owned media other than specialty magazines, why is it there are no labor-backed associations doing investigative reporting, i guess it gets to the ownership of news media properties. >> well, first of all, it comes down to resources. in order to do a news media whatever facet, whether it's print media, written, radio,

whatever it is, it takes a lot of resources. and at the time we don't have the resources to be able to spread 'em around in all those different directions. but let me ask you this question. let's assume that we owned a network, the labor network. what would be the first shot you guys took at us, and what would be the first shot that most conservatives do? you can't, you can't listen to those guys, that's labor. an independent press is a good thing. an independent press that is a watchdog on those that are out there with responsibility to workers whether it's at the federal level, the state level or anywhere else is a good thing. packed journalism is not a good thing. and the fact that you guys are getting squeezed with money and can't do the type of investigative stuff that you used to do is a tragedy for the country. and networks like fox are really entertainment.

they're not actually networks because of their perspective is so slanted towards things. now, i don't say that about every one of the journalists on fox because i think they have some real independent journalists that i think do a credible job. but by and large the network and the programming is awful slanted. away from working people, and that's a tragedy. >> i'll ask you to be somewhat more succinct in this next one just because we're up against time, and there's a final question i want to get to. in a week we'll have the executive director with the nfl players' association with a marquee player to be named later, we hope. that's part of the afl-cio. americans want their football, and so is this going to be resolved by the fall, and how do you see this playing out? >> look, we certainly hope that it's resolved by the fall. and let's start off with the base of all this, and i'm sure demaurice will tell you this.

the football players didn't ask for a single thing. they did not ask for a single increase. they've asked to maintain what they had, that's all they asked for. now, the owners, on the other hand, asked for a couple of billion dollars in givebacks. they want the players, one of their proposals is to have the players pay for the practice facilities, to have the players pay for their travel to and from games. now, they're making -- that's a $9 billion industry. but guess what? it isn't just the players and the owners as people think about. there's 100, almost 200,000 workers out there that'll get hurt because of this lockout. and remember what a lockout is, it's the employer saying, no, you can't come to work. it's not the players saying we won't come. they want to come. but you think about who's going to get hurt. it's going to be the guy that sells the hot dogs, it's going to be the groundskeeper, it's

going to be the small business person at the stadium next to them. it's going to be the bus driver, it's going to be the taxi cab driver. and the cities are going to get hurt because of all that. now, here's the truth about it, i believe. the problem with this is the owners haven't cut the deal among themselves yet. they can't negotiate! they don't know what to negotiate before because they haven't cut their teal. their deal. we ought to be putting pressure on them to say, look, get your butts in a room somewhere, figure out your deal and then come back and let's negotiate this thing out. because while it's a wonderful sport and i happen to love football, i love it with all my heart, it's not just football players and owners in all of this. it's all the other people that are going to get hurt in this process because the owners can't come up with their own deal on how to split their revenue before they come and talk to the

players. >> fair enough. we'll continue that conversation in a week, and we do certainly welcome the nfl commissioner, a representative for the owners to come here and speak at this venue as well. well, we're almost out of time, but before we ask the last question, a couple of housekeeping matters to take care of. first of all, i'd like to remind you all about some upcoming luncheon speakers we have. may 26th, juan williams, fox news, to reply to some comments that were made earlier this year by the then-head of npr. and then demaurice smith will be here on may 27th. gary sinise late in june, he will announce the formation of a new foundation dedicated to raising funds for charities supporting the military. and, of course, as is our tradition -- if i can find it -- i'd like to present you with our traditional npc mug as a token of our thanks today. thank you. [applause] and i would like to, now, ask

the last question. and we're talking about football. you're a native of pennsylvania, football country. a lot of great quarterbacks from there. huge steelers fan, i'm told. these days that doesn't take a lot of investment, but you're hang anything there. you come by that naturally, so here's the last question. given that you're a leader in the political arena, so to speak, if you had to choose, would you rather have lunch with the manning brothers -- not steelers' players -- or the koch brothers? [laughter] >> first of all, it would depend on where the lunch was going to be. [laughter] i personally would probably have, rather have lunch with the manning brothers. the koch brothers are -- me talking to them would not do a lot. although let me think about that for a second. [laughter] i would like to have lunch with them, as a matter of fact. [laughter] i'd like to give them a few minutes to explain to me what they think, and i'd like to indicate in some mild fashion what i think and then see where we went from there.

[laughter] >> very well. how about a round of applause for our speaker today? [applause] thank you. i'd like to thank our national press club staff including our library and broadcast center for organizing today's event. thank you, and we're adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> next on c-span2, a discussion on perceptions and beliefs relating to immigration. then live coverage of a speech by president obama in dublin, ireland, as he begins a weeklong european trip. later, the senate's back at 2 p.m. eastern with an hour of general speeches followed by debate to extend provisions of the antiterrorism law known as the patriot act.

>> tonight israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu addresses the annual policy conference of the american israel public affairs committee. it follows his white house meeting on friday with president obama. other speakers at tonight's aipac session includes senate democratic leader harry reid and house speaker john boehner. you can see their remarks live beginning at 8:45 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. this june on "in depth," the balance between security and liberty, the difficulties of the climate change treaty and the limits of international law. your questions for author and university of chicago law professor eric posner. his books include "law and social norms," and he'll take your calls, e-mails and tweets. live sunday, june 5th, on c-span2's booktv. >> now available, c-span's

congressional directory, a complete guide to the first session of the 112th congress. inside new and returning house and senate members with contact information including twitter addresses, district maps and committee assignments and information on the white house, supreme court justices and governors. order online at c-span.org/shop. >> the cato institute recently released a study addressing certain beliefs about immigration. it addresses arguments about the impact of immigrant workers on taxpayers, the welfare system, unemployment and u.s. culture. policy analysts discuss the report at this one-hour forum. [inaudible conversations] >> hi, everybody. thanks so much for coming. we're going to go ahead and get started in a minute. well, thank you all so much for coming.

i'm laura with the cato institute, and today we'll be talking about the paper, "answering the critics of comprehensive immigration reform." there are copies up front, and we can always get people extra copies if you need them. stuart's recently-released analysis will back up the discussion, and we're very pleased to have frank from ple america's voice with us as well. i'll give you background on both speakers and then hand the podium over to them. stuart is executive director of the national foundation for american policy. he previously served as executive associate commissioner for the policy and planning and counselor to the commissioner au the immigration and naturalization service. he also worked on capitol hill on the senate immigrationand subcommittee. in a prior role at cato, he was director of immigration studies where he wrote on military contributions of immigrants as well as the roles of immigrants in high technology. frank is the founder and executive directer of america's voice in an effort to focus on communications and media as part

of a new effort. frank served as executive director of the national immigration forum, one of the nation's leading organizational policy organizations for 17 years. his work on legislation with the senator kennedy is featured in a 12-part hbo documentary, and he's also appeared on a host of tv networks. and with that, i will turn theet podium over to stuart. >> great. well, thank you. thank you very much. and thank you to cato institute for publishing the paper. um, i'm going to just briefly go through some of the highlights of the paper and then talk about some of the implications as we, as we move forward in thiswe m congress. essentially, the point of the -- >> [inaudible]ntia >> sure. essentially, the point of the paper was to see where it might

be possible to bridge some of the division on immigration inoi the country by looking at five of the main arguments used against having some type of comprehensive immigration reform legislation.nsiv so i'm going the get right into what some of those arguments are and what some of the responses m are.an um, first, that immigration reform will harm taxpayers.ll h the argument is, essentially, that by let anything people or allowing to stay here people why maybe have less skills be a big drain on taxpayers. what we need to look at is to compare the status quo to what a change in policy would be, not some type of ideal world as if we were starting from scratch. what we have now is roughly 11 million people in the country illegally. past research has shown,

particularly when we looked at the 1986 amnesty, is that when people were legalized, they had pretty sharp increases in their income and their salaries. by being legal, it gave them -- made it easier for them to go seek out another opportunity, which made them less likely to be exploited. it also gives them more incentive to invest in their own skills, so that they would also increase their ability to earn more money, and also to the extent that people are getting paid off the books or under the table, it is more likely >> that they would get paid in a way that their contributions would get in the tax system. so simply put, if you put it all together, people who are now in illegal status -- if they start having higher wages, more

mobility, and were more likely to be paid in the formal economy, are more likely to -- much more likely to see increases in tax revenue than we would to see decreases in tax revenue. the other -- the other part of that, though, is that -- is that by having -- is to accompany legalizing people in the country. you also need to look at, you know, what are we going to do to prevent this from just happening again where you would have more people coming in illegally. and one of the main proposals has always been and cato has argued this strongly is having a way for people to come in legally particularly in lower end jobs. if there's one thing you remember from this talk it's hopefully this. when people say that people should just wait in line to come in and work, there is no line. there's no line to come in and work at lower-skilled jobs.

the only possibility for someone who is in another country to come in work at lower-skilled jobs in the united states in a legal fashion is for short-term seasonal work in either agriculture or say in resorts and come for summer and work for a few months and come back. for people who are looking -- who have what they consider dire economic situations, and there's employers who don't want to hire them in the united states, there essentially is no legal way to do that under our current system. the best they could hope for is that they had a relative here and who sponsored them maybe in five or six or ten years depending on their category, they might be able to come into the country legally but for all practical purposes there is not really a line for people to get into. so there's been some past cato research on this question. and i won't go into all the

economic analysis of it but essentially the previous research had shown that if you were able to have a system where people were able to come in legally through legal visas, versus a regime that we have today, or even a tighter regime of tighter border enforcement, the net wealth benefit for u.s. households would be about a $260 billion difference each year. so when you combine that it's going to be easier and more likely that people are have higher wages combined with the idea that you would have people who come in legally versus a regime of tighter enforcement, having a great net welfare benefit for the united states, and families, you see that the argument that that harming taxpayers is not a realistic argument in this case. related to this and this touches

on both taxes and sort of in cases a moral argument is the new legalized immigrants will burden the welfare argument. excuse me, will burden the welfare rolls. this is essentially the second argument that's addressed in the paper. again, we don't really see that this is, you know, the problem that people think it is. it is very, very difficult when you come into the country legally except we make some exception for refugees generally you're at least five years in the country before you're eligible to have access to federal means-tested, what we would call welfare programs. the rates actually to the extent that it even was an issue before 1996, we saw -- we saw the statistics show there was quite a bit of a decrease in welfare use after '96, very large drops. and even today, when you're looking at for u.s. citizens, for the main cash program afdc

or tanf, for u.s. citizens it's essentially, you know, about 1% for individuals that use afdc or tanf which is kind of the cash welfare program. and it's basically the same for noncitizens as well. it's less than 1%. food stamps, you're looking at very similar, about 7.7% for natives and about 6.2% for noncitizens and 3.9% for naturalized citizen and see this comes from the house ways and means committee. now, it is possible that some states have more generous policies although the data on migration does not show that people -- that immigrants are more likely to be flowing to some of those states. and it's also possible for a family with an immigrant head of household to have a native-born child who would be eligible for

benefits so there are -- so that would complete the picture that there are -- it is possible for other people to get benefits. you know, through the u.s.-born child but on the other hand we also need to remember a couple of others things that the u.s. native-born child it's very hard to have a calculation that's fair if you're only going to count the cost of a child, a u.s. native-born child when the child is young but no -- not count their tax contributions when they grow up and start being net contributors. i don't know about you but i think most of us were drains on our parents when we were young. and i think it's the case in general that when you -- you know, that when you do a calculation, that only looks at kids as costs and not count them as contributors to society as when they're adults that's going to be somewhat misleading as well. and that doesn't even get into the issue that the way our social security system is structured, that new workers are

hugely important to helping to fund our social security system. the third argument is another amnesty will beget another amnesty. by having -- by allowing people to gain legal status, that will just encourage an endless flow of illegal immigration. and most of us looked in the 1986 act where we did provide amnesty and then what happened? eventually, illegal immigration came back, you know, relatively quickly. well, there's two issues with that. first of all, there's been some research that's looked at this issue. an economist has looked at this and basically did not see that you could see the difference in the illegal entry before and after the 1986 act. but really the main issue is that the failure of the 1986 act

wasn't that offered amnesty. the reason illegal immigration increased is because there was no legal way put in place for people to come in and work particularly at the lowered skilled jobs and what you end up doing is put in harsher enforcement penalties and started some of the increases in enforcement personnel but you didn't allow the more market-oriented intelligent way of dealing with illegal entry, which was to have ways for people to come in and work legally. i mean, related to this argument is the question of what would constitute an amnesty? generally speaking, amnesty would mean you don't have any obligations but there are ways to structure any sort of legislation in which you would put obligations on people. the ag jobs legislation, for example, relates to agricultural workers requires a certain amount of work, continued work,

in a quasi temporary status for a couple of years. other legislation has required fines that could -- that would have to be -- that would have to be paid, again, those go beyond the typical -- when there's such things as tax amnesty and other types of things, generally speaking you do not necessarily have fines. people may want to say that no matter what, they aren't going to accept the fact that someone was once in legal status should be allowed -- once in illegal status should be allowed to be in legal status but again, that's not -- if you -- that's not necessarily the way we've worked in the united states. that there's no way for any people to have any correction of their situation if there's a way to do it particularly in a legal framework. that would really benefit the country by a system where you allow more people to come in and

work legally which would have a lot of benefits in terms of decreasing illegal immigration and also helping with security because you'd be able to focus more on natural threats at the border. now, at argument unskilled workers were undermine the culture and the english language. the bottom line is we really don't see when you look at the children of immigrants they are not learning english. by the third generation you're looking at 97% of hispanic immigrants report the ability to speak well or pretty well. when there's been surveys done of hispanic immigrants asking whether they think it's important to learn english in order to get along in the united states, it's overwhelming. it's well over 90% say that it's more important to learn english

than to be retaining your spanish language. other research has shown that one of the potential problems that's happening with how strong of an americanizing influence our culture has, is that by the third generation kids who would actually benefit being able to retain their native language actually end up losing it and are not able to speak it. and they would actually be beneficial given they would be able to retain that language given the global nature of our economy. so the final argument is sort of the typical, i think, for more than 100 years argument about that if you let more people in, that's going to mean more unemployment for native-born people. we've basically just haven't seen it. we've seen studies done at the state level that shows that there's no correlation between increased immigration at the

state level and unemployment rates, overall, same thing at the federal level. we just don't see it. i mean, the reason is that there's not a fixed number of jobs. so if someone is a new entry to the labor force, whether it's an immigrant or say a high school or college graduate, they're going to become employed. they're going to spend money from their salary that's going to help percolate from the economy and that's going to create other jobs. people -- there's entrepreneurships where immigrants are very, very likely to create new businesses. and that creates other jobs as well. and you're also filling in niches in the economy which is very likely to increase our productivity which is something that gevani perry and other economists have found that you found increases of productivity

from immigration. so again, we don't see that by letting more people in legally or by having some political compromise for people who are already here that would be an increase in -- an increase in unemployment. so i'm going to wrap up here with a short civics quiz since we have some of the leading experts in government sitting in the audience here. i'll ask a quick multiple choice question together here for people. if a government program is ineffective and unsuccessful, what normally happens to that program? is the answer, a, funding is decreased for that program? is the answer, b, the program is eliminated? or is the answer, c, funding for that program is increased dramatically? c, do we think c is the answer?

[laughter] >> well, you are right. because that is essentially what is happening with our immigration program as i would call it or our enforcer program. starting in 1980 there were 2900 border patrol agents. by 1984, there were 4,000 border patrol agents. by 2000, there were 9,000 border patrol agents. does anyone know what the figure is today? 20,000 border patrol agents. funding on immigration enforcement cross-programs have essentially doubled since 2004. what we see is that the current policy is not effective -- has not been effective. and what we see -- but what we see again as the answer c shows is that the answer has not been to try something different,

which is to have a legal valve for people to qwork in and it's for people to keep working illegally as people come in. i hope some of the facts in the paper help us continue on a path where we can think about no longer having a policy where we simply just keep spending more money on the same policies that really have not worked. thank you. [applause] >> well, thank you, stuart. my name is frank sharry. stuart has been one of the top researchers and policymakers on this controversial and complex area for many years.

and i have to say it's really nice to be back working with the cato institute. it's great to see dan griswold who leads this effort for cato on trade and immigration studies and has also done some brilliant writing and research on this. you know, back in the day, comprehensive immigration reform was much more of a bipartisan effort. there was a time in 2006 when the so-called mccain-kennedy bill got 27 republican senators to vote for it. just to give you a slight contrast in december of last year, when a much smaller measure called the dream act was presented only 3 republican senators voted for it. there's been a real shift. i sometimes wonder -- i now am much more firmly planted on the left for who he is of you who don't know and trying to place me and let me come clean but i sometimes i don't think i left bipartisanship. it left me so i would like to

get back to a place where we're trying to find out and i think the populist on the right and the left are not a majority and that there's a sensible centrist compromised approach that could actually solve the problem and end illegal immigration. now, one of the reasons why the facts don't always penetrate this debate is because there's such a different fundamental diagnosis of the problem. many of us who support comprehensive immigration reform see immigrants as decent people who are trying to make better lives for their families and add value and growth to america. and others see immigrants, particularly those who enter the united states or remain in the united states illegally as bad people. so right from the start, it's basically good people subjected to a bad system or is it basically bad people subjected to sacred law? now, i'm big on the rule of law. don't get me wrong.

i'm so big on the rule of law that i'm glad our founding fathers created legislatures to change laws. when they are no longer working. and that's what those of us who support comprehensive immigration reform want to see happen. that congress fulfill its constitutional responsibility to modernize our immigration system so that it works better in our national self-interest. so we have a very different diagnosis and the sacred law crowd say what we need to do is build more fences, put more government resources into enforcement and the idea is for the 11 or 12 million -- i'd say 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the united states, the solution, the only solution can be that they go home. they either get picked up and deported and they pick up and self-deport. the same that they've given to this strategy is called attrition through enforcement. it's what, for example, lamar smith head of the house

judiciary committee says he's for. and we will see a big debate in this congress in a mandatory e-verify which is a technical term of firing as many unauthorized workers in hopes they will pick up and go home. so we're going to see more of the enforcement-only strategy being debated in this congress. there's others of us who view it differently. okay, i may be of the left but i'm a free market democrat. i believe in free market. i've seen a labor migration from south of the border to the united states in the last 100 years. i'm a realist about these things. 100 years or more ago there was a migration to the rural south to the industrializing north, right? that was one of the great labor migrations of the last couple 100 years. the same phenomenon has been happening in the last 25 years. it's picked up and now with the recession it slowed down but it will pick up again when growth picks up.

is that you have people from the rural south of the border coming to the new immigrant states in the south and in the mountain west in particular as well as the traditional gateway cities looking for better opportunity. let me give you an example, mecklenburg county, where charlotte is, during their boom time when their unemployment was 3%, 9 out of 10 new workers were mexican. and do you know how many of them came legally, very few. do you know how many could come legally very few because as stuart pointed out there was no line to get into and there was jobs a-plenty in charlotte during the construction boom and while the chamber of commerce on the charlotte boom did not include this dirty little secret, the fact is is that everyone in town knew what was happening. that's called supply and demand. the only sucking sound that we've heard in the last 25 years has been bringing workers to

jobs in the united states because they were available and they were going begging. now, obviously, that's changed with the great recession but this is a temporary bump of a 100-year of people moving to opportunity and the question for us is not how do we stop a process which leads as stuart points out to more workers, more consumers, bigger tax base, higher wages -- how do we regulate that? this is where my democratic instincts kick in. how do you regulate it in a way that it's controlled, that it's orderly and that, yes, you take off the rough edges of it. i'm not for open borders. i'm for controlled orderly immigration that serves the national interest. now, here's the choice that policymakers have given the facts, given the reality, given the fact we have 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the united states. given the fact that 76% of them live in families and 67% of them have been here for more than a decade. this is not a bunch of folks who

showed up last week hangs out on street corners, although there are those folks. this is mostly a rooted family-based hard-working community. now what? now what? well, if the goal that we can all agree on is to end illegal immigration, then what's the best solution? the attrition through enforcement folks say, if we just ramp up enforcement as we have for the 40 years, another 10 or 20 years we will rid ourselves of most of these people. they will pick up and go home if we don't pick them up and deport them. others say, well, we have a different approach. why don't we use enforcement at the border, use enforcement against illegal hiring and open up legal channels on people who want to be here on a temporary or a permanent basis? and deal realistically and humanely with noncriminal, unauthorized immigrants who are rooted in american society? that's what comprehensive immigration reform is.

it's not an either/or. it's both/and. it's enforcement and legal channels so that we create a legal system. we end the black market in myimmigration that serves only the smugglers and the bad-actor employees and the folks who break the law and bring it under a regulatory regime to make sure that there's a line people to come in with the same legal rights as other workers. that decent employers are not being undercut by unscrupulous subcontractors. and we add to the tax base. a legal system that grows the economy that's fairer and creates greater growth. so when people say, oh, you guys are open borders and don't want control, wait a minute, you think the other guys who think we're going to drive 11 million hard-working people who have been here, most of them for longer than a decade live -- you think that's realistic? you think that's going to end illegal immigration or is it just going to drive people further underground?

you hear about the arizona law, very controversial. the proponents say a lot of people left arizona. do you know where they went? utah. they went to new england. they've gone to colorado, which is why by the way utah had a very different take on what to do. they said, we have 110,000 unauthorized immigrants here who are working hard, maybe we should figure out a way to have them come into the system, they pay a fine, it's not a free pass. they have to pass a background check. they have to pay their taxes. but they can work here legally because they're valuable contributors and that's a very interesting approach. it's a highly charged issue, as you know but i think inevitably comprehensive immigration reform will become the law of the land at some time. i wanted it to happen in 2006 and 2007 when george w. bush spent whatever political capital he had left on his last great

fight. and i still think he's a hero for doing it even though he's not my kind of president but he had the chutzpah and the guts to do it. so it's going to take what it takes but i'm pretty convinced that the forces of that are driving this phenomenon are going to lead to reform. demographic, economic and political forces are going to lead to reform. we have an aging society. and unlike in europe, because immigrants want to come here, we have a population that is sustained. in china, in italy, in germany, they're having debates -- we don't want immigrants. our young couples aren't having babies. what do we do? well, in china they want to have babies. they're just told not to. [laughter] >> so demographically, immigration is a life blood to america and one of our competitive assets going forward. economically, i know that people love to think about the static

pie. but as stuart points out so brilliantly, the fact is that we live in a diunanimous economy. there's a reason why to put it blunt terms we attract indian high tech workers and mexican low skilled workers they implement rather than substitute for american workers. in fact, they add to the dynamism and creativity and growth of the american society. i mean, think of all of the people in my generation two -- a married couple, both with post-graduate degrees who have an army of immigrants making their two-income lifestyle possible. that is the -- that's a human example of a complementary that we see if two ways. and then finally politically i mean, boy, i used to get criticized on the left a lot for being supportive of a policy that might make john mccain the next president and would make

george bush a hero for latinos for a generation. i wish i was still getting criticized on the left for being willing to do it because right now it's just the other way. i mean, the republican party, i think, is committing slow motion political suicide by alienating the fastest growing group of new voters, latinos are what we often talk about but it's latinos and asian and south asians and caribbean and africans and folks from the middle east. the republican party under george w. bush was fabulously competitive with those ethnic communities and immigrant communities. and now it's not. now it's not. not that democrats have started the vote. they have not. don't get me started. it makes the democrats' job very easy so i think eventually the republican party will come back to its free market principles. we'll realize that immigration properly regulated serves our interests economically.

and that politically it's smarter to reach out and compete for votes than to try to make those people know that you don't want them and you want to send their loved ones home. at least that's my hope. and if you're with me on this, let's try to make it happen in a matter of years, not decades. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much and we certainly have time for some questions from the audience if anyone has any questions. [inaudible] >> absolutely, go ahead, sir. >> you mentioned indian high tech workers, would you approve of any -- [inaudible] >> and it's never done anything under the immigration system and just an automatic green card? >> yes. >> i do too. [laughter] >> yes, ma'am.

first a comment and then a question. having worked in the field as a commissioner on the street with many illegal and legal immigrants, not only latinos, people from other countries and we keep hearing we can't find the people in this country to do the low level jobs that you talk about, yet, we want bill gates out there -- [inaudible] >> i think you have to look at the cultural issues involved with a lot of the mexican, latinos, working on the farms and then go back. so there is a cultural issue in this country for the black community to do the work that you say the low level work won't doe because it's those workers and so my question is -- and i

have mixed feelings about this because in my apartment building write live, they to get some welfare, a lot of them. they have the kids, they're not legal, their kids are getting and they are the food stamps, tanf, the medicaid, you name it. that is in the equation. so what do you think -- i think that the law or the regulation, whatever you want to call it is shortened so that if bill gates say i can't find people to work for me, he gets them over there with a green card. it's the lower level folks who come here and then we send them back to the border. they're hard-working, the 5% that come. what would you do make, like you mentioned like utah or other states have a divided congress jump on board and stop thinking outside of the box to make some of this happen?

>> well, i think the -- i mean, i think one of the things we didn't get into before, neither frank nor i -- we both talked about how illegal immigration policy has not been effective and we've actually seen the numbers of illegal immigrants increased dramatically from maybe around 4 million more than a decade ago to over 10 or 11 million. and even though we saw somewhat of a drop during the recent recession i think those numbers i think recent numbers from pew basically show they stabilized and really what's happened is when we've increased the border patrol and other assets, there has been -- it hasn't been totally ineffective. i think that would be misleading. i think there has been effect but i think what it's done is raise the cost of entry and by raising the cost of entry, once people make it across the border, they make a calculation about whether -- do i want to go back and forth like we used -- like they used to years before or people used to do years

before work for a while and then go -- earn some money and then go back home. or once i'm here am i going to stay here and try to -- because i'm more likely to get caught or there's 300 deaths each year trying to cross into the united states. and so what we really did with our policies inadvertently was a temporary and circular flow and make it a permanent group of people who -- and that's why you saw the numbers go from 4 million say up to 10 million. so some of the things you're talking about, i think a number of these people or at least future people would be much more interested in a legal way to come in, work for a period of time and then go back. there wouldn't be any benefits attached to -- you know, to this kind of temporary work. now, i think you'd want to have some portion of them -- you would want some way for some portion to get permanent status 'cause that would actually keep

illegal immigration down as well. you know, people working very well for an employee and having a chance to sponsor them in some way but i think a lot of the issues that people see would go away if you're allowed the sort of -- this sort of circular flow to go into effect. now, getting congress to do that i think generally speaking it's been felt you need some left/right compromise where the democrats were much more interested in dealing with the people who are already here. and at least some republicans in the past particularly have been more interested in what do we do about preventing future illegal immigration by having some sort of temporary, you know, visa j.c. penney. that's where things kind of -- the debate hasn't really progressed past that. >> does that go down state level. >> utah has passed this. there would be a way potentially

for the obama administration to allow some of what utah is doing. they could do kind of a wide scale deferred action, for example, in which they basically say we're not going to prosecute people or pursue people who have gone through a certain process in utah but, you know, that certainly would be controversial. >> what do you think? i'm not thinking -- people -- [inaudible] >> >>i'm talking about low skilled workers. >> stuart is talking now largely discredited basaro program and it worked to have a legal and orderly flow of workers to this country. and what happened is that when it ended there was no line to get into and the workers kept coming 'cause there was still a demand for their labor. and so the origins of modern -- you know, in our generation

illegal immigration came really with the end of a functioning program that allowed what academics call sojourners. what stuart points out, some of the sojourners and i'm sure you found it in your clinical work become settlers. they are just the same people in different stages. some people go make their nest egg and start a business at back, perfect. others maybe marry, have a kid or whatever and they start to settle. it seems we could fashion a policy we could accommodate both of those eventualities that would be regulated but at the same time would save the agricultural industry in this country. look, i mean, we're going to have a debate about this mandatory -- and it will threaten a crop. it's a threat. they rehire all the time and everyone knows that -- i mean, some estimates say 60%. the best estimates i've seen are 90% of the work force in the

perishable crop industry are unauthorized workers. so you're talking about -- you've seen it in washington, and in california but it's all over. the fact is that mandatory e-verify for new hires is going to, ass the representative of the agricultural industry says, it's going to end up with us importing food and exporting jobs. and not just the jobs that are filled currently by unauthorized workers. but by the 3 to 4 jobs that are related in the agricultural industry usually filled by native-born workers. or legal immigrant workers. so we're talking about a whole regions of the country being threatened by a house republican initiative based on the ideology that we can somehow force these people out of the country because anything less than that would be branded the "a" word. i just i think that's very unfortunate. and i hope we -- this debate that's coming up will lift up the agricultural industry.

my friends and the united farm worker union, they started a project, sorry, i'll filibustering here but i'm so worked up about this. they started a program -- it started from some of their members. they were so tired of hearing, oh, gosh, these immigrants are taking our jobs and so a couple of farm worker union members said in spanish, at one of their meetings, why don't we invite any american who wants to come take our job to come take it and we'll train them. and they started a campaign called take our jobs. they had -- they had thousands and thousands of inquiries of people -- the website and they promoted. steven colbert even promoted it and it got wide play and all the people who contacted them, 7 native-born workers are now doing those jobs. right? this is tough work. and it's skilled work. and i'm not saying that americans can't do it. it's that they mostly don't want to do that. it's as much of a status thing than the pay thing. the pay is 12 to 16 bucks an

hour. the living conditions are tough. but my point is that we just have to get realistic about that reality. now, we can say, fine, we'll just drive agriculture business out of the country. i don't know if that is in our economic self-interest or in our security interest. >> thank you. sorry. >> i know there used to be -- i know there were -- there was a member of congress that used to go and work a different job in his district on a regular basis. maybe that program could be expanded to agriculture for members of congress to pitch in and help out. >> they wouldn't last a day. >> yes, sir. >> thanks for the presentation. so it sounds like there's this solid base of research in economics showing that immigration is a benefit to the united states or break even or marginal benefit. i think there's been a long series of studies showing the economic benefits of

immigration. but it seems like, you know, my own view if it's the major block is cultural, you know, people concerns regardless if it's economically beneficial or not, there's a concern among the american public which is reflected in the republican party and among some democrats and some major concern about some people from a major place crossing in uncontrolled and changing communities in ways that people don't feel comfortable with. so i'm just wondering what you thought about that and that's, you know, how you would address that is pushing for immigration reform? >> i think that's true. that there is, obviously, for a very long period of time there's been these cultural issues but i do think there's actually -- i think more recently i think one of the big dividing lines has been legal versus illegal. i think the fact -- i don't think people would have the same -- and i don't think they do have the same hostility to sort of having a system where people come in legally and work

and fill jobs versus now what they see is people coming in illegally breaking the law and that's where i think a lot of the hostility is created. i don't think it's purely that they don't like the look of people. i really think that there's a much -- and i've seen some polling data where they've asked, for example, what do you think about illegal immigration and it's 2-1 negative. and then if they ask what about, you know, the impact of legal immigrants on the state? and this was done in california and it was 2 to 3 to 1 positive so i think -- i think the illegal/legal line is really what happened. and maybe there's a culture element that's tied into that. >> yeah, i used to think that. i'm sorry to worry about how much culture is influencing and driving this debate. and i think -- and i'm not talking about, you know, the

people who write those awful comments at the end of newspaper articles, you know, the racist screeds that you sometimes read. i think it's much more a discomfort, a fear, you know, i've been working in this area for a long time. when i think about, you know, california had an eruption over immigration in the early 1990s, and it was kind of at a demographic tipping point. it was just before the demographic tipping point. now that it's past that demographic tipping point, when you ask in polls, the field poll in california asks are you in favor of giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship? it's 90%, it's like it's over. but it doesn't surprise me that in arizona where they're getting close to that demographic tipping point, they had an eruption over the last few years. and it's not at all surprising to me that in the new immigrant states in the south that they are starting to have their

eruption and i don't want to be critical of it. i want to understand but a conscious but a real fear that something is being lost when, you know, the evidence -- and this is where stewart is absolutely right. the received overwhelming. i mean, you don't -- you don't have kids growing up in america in immigrant households even if their parents don't speak a word of english or never got past the sixth grade, you know, saying anything but, oh, god, i'm so embarrassed by my parents. they want to lose their spanish, for example, and they -- you know, and if they keep it, they're lucky because they can talk to their mom and dad but outside with their friends and with their siblings they speak english. and they are so americanized so quickly. how could you not be in this country? so the real is not one of cultural separatism, you know, demands for bilingualism. you know, this ethnic separatist movements of any kind. quite the contrary.

assimilation is alive and real and separatism is real and i'm not sure how we address that. the good news is that polling shows that when immigrants first move into an area, the negativity goes up and over time, it goes way down, which suggests that familiarity breeds community rather than contempt. so i actually think that the fact that immigration is now a 50-state phenomenon rather than a, say, 10-city phenomenon as it was a generation ago, suggests that we may go through some very tough times but that this cultural unease like so many times in our history will give way to kind of a sense of community that is not always easy but is often dynamic. >> kind of along that same lines, discussing some of the cultural things, from what i've looked into, it seems to me that the problems with the

descendents of illegal immigrants are the exact opposite problem that the immigrants themselves face, namely, that even though their language -- you know, they have great english and all these kinds of things, there's a lot of problems with high dropout rates and high crime rates among the dependents of illegal immigrants, although not among the immigrants themselves. and i feel like this is an area that needs to be investigated more. it's somewhat difficult to investigate, but what exactly are there their descendents doing and how would immigration reform impact the way that their descendents grow up. and i don't know if you have any comments specifically on how you think immigration reform would change or adjust that situation or not? >> well, i guess i would say briefly to the extent that parents are more fully to participate in a society and earn higher wages, that's going to benefit -- that's going to benefit the kids.

>> there's been a significant number of crime studies that show that the crime rates are not higher among the immigrants or their kids. there is a socioeconomic lag factor the socioeconomic immigrants and the italians at the turn of the last century gets resolved in three generations rather than getting resolved in one generation as it often is for some other groups. or not. and the evidence, you know, gregory rodriguez who has looked at this very carefully shows through intermarriage and homeownership, citizenship, english language acquisitions, et cetera, that the indices of assimilation over two to three generations are very promising and very good. but there is that socioeconomic lag that i think raises questions, you know, are people going to make it or not?

we're optimistic based on the evidence but there's, you know, a fair number of folks that are still in that first and 1.5 generation. we'll have to see how they turn out. >> my question is for mr mr. sharry. i wanted to know if that was implemented on a broad scale, what would you recommend to curb unscrupulous businesses for trying to take advantage of undocumented workers. taking fines and taxes because it's been well documented a lot of times the abuse, a lot of times people aren't bapaid. >> kind of two questions. most employers are decent in america but there are bottom-feeders who undercut them and take advantage of workers. they deliberately seek out immigrants without papers who they can take advantage of. they pay off the books. they don't pay their taxes and they undercut their decent

competitors. think two contractors bidding for a piece of work. one pays taxes and decent wages and even benefits and the other doesn't. and they can underbid the other contractor in a way that's terribly unfair. so we're all for going after bad actor employers. and in the context of reform, we think not only do you want to go after bad-actor employers you want to reduce illegal hiring through employment verification but if you do that which is, quite frankly, the debate is going to be about in this congress -- if you do this mandatory e-verify without legalizing the work force, these people don't go home. they go underground and it makes all the situations worse. less taxes, more unfair competition, more people standing on street corners. more unscrupulous subcontractors. lower wages and i just think it makes a bad situation worse. so, yes, go after bad employers. mandate employment verification

in the context of comprehensive reform but make sure the work force here is legal and that there's legal channels for people coming in the future. that's the holistic fix that will put immigration on a legal footing. utah, we've been very positive about it. you know, honestly, if congress is going to continue to be paralyzed, i just might say, you know -- i agree with president obama on this. we don't want 50-state patchwork of different policies. on the other hand, if we have the status quo or worse over the next 20 years, i might change my mind on that. now, you'd need probably authorizing legislation, you know, kind of the welfare reform model of, you know, states do have the authority. i don't see that happening, quite frankly. and i think any attempt by states is probably going to get gum up in the courts whether it's enforcement or the more -- the legal channel oriented work but i love utah had a guts, a ruby red state saying we're

going to do different. we're going to help with legal chajz in the future and we're going to keep families together and we're going to value our workers here without papers. it's a state version on what we want on the federal version. and i think at the very least it was a very strong message to both parties that your inaction in washington is going to lead to more of this unless you get off your -- your, you know. [laughter] >> one thing that would address what you're talking about in terms of exploitation is -- it's not in this paper but i have a book on immigration where i have a little part there and talk about one of the solutions is to have a u.s./mexico bilateral agreement where essentially in exchange for mexico giving help on enforcement at the border, the u.s. would set up a system of work permits setting an annual total and those work permits would be fully portable. so if someone had a work permit

that allowed them to work pretty much, you know, in any type of job, they would have, you know, pretty similar labor rights that the rest of us have and that's really one of the best guardians of not being exploited and that you're able -- if you don't like where you're working you can go work somewhere else. >> i'm from the state of arizona but i go to school in utah so i have a perspective of kind of both places. a lot of people i spoke in arizona they regret even though they supported immigration reform what they had done. what do you think arizona should do now as a state rather than wait for the national status quo? >> i'll let you take that one frank. >> i'll be happy to tell arizona what to do since i've been telling it where to go in the last two years. [laughter] >> no. you know, i thought it was very interesting this year that the hardliners in the state led by

the head of the state senator, a man named russell pierce came up with a new package of really tough anti-immigration laws. and what happened is that the business community stood up and said, are you crazy? 60 ceos in the state wrote to every state republican legislator and said, haven't we done enough to hurt our state? please cease-and-desist, and they did. it was a remarkable turn-about because the economic impact to arizona has been quite severe, a loss of tourism and convention dollars has been estimated as much as $140 million in the past year. i think arizona was helped -- i know it was controversial and unpopular. helped by the judicial decisions stopping most of it going into effect because i think it had gone in effect, the impact on arizona's reputation and economy would have been worse. i do think at some point it would be wonderful if arizona

would repeal its law but i don't expect that to happen. i think the courts will continue to stop most of the arizona law from going into effect. i think it will stop other states who are looking at copycats if they do it like georgia has. i sure wish this ferment at the state level, though, would somehow urge members of congress to get in the game. in utah, for example, where you go to school, they have two senators, mike lee and orrin hatch -- orrin hatch used to be one of our heroes on immigration. he was a co-author of the dream act. and he voted against it last year. why? 'cause he's scared about the fact that he's got, you know, a tough primary season coming up and he saw what happened to his colleague bob bennett. the mormon church, lds is now advocating quite strongly for senator lee, a new senator to get in the game. and he's saying, you know, no. at some point i'm just hoping

that, you know, some republicans will read cato institute's policy recommendations and research and say you know what? that's who we are as a party. and we should do this. i just think that right now there's kind of a populist tail wagging the free market dog in a way that is really unfortunate. >> one of the arguments that we hear is about how -- one of the reasons why we need to have this reform is because a lot of people are doing the low skilled work that few americans will do. does it show, for example, just how much prices were to go up if we kicked out all of the undocumented immigrants and needed to raise wages to attract american workers. how much would restaurants to have charge because you don't have the waitress and -- [inaudible] >> et cetera, et cetera.

how much -- how much do all of these sectors rely on these workers? how much would prices have to go up in them? maybe that will actually show what kind of contribution that they're making. >> i don't know that there's a study done exactly that because it's great -- you know, there's so many factors that have taken into account. i mean, i think one thing that people need to keep in mind -- i often hear someone will say well, why don't they just pay higher wages and you'd attract more workers but what someone has to understand if you're an employer, you can't just raise wages, you know, through the roof because you can only pay people what is still profitable to work at. in other words, people -- if you had to raise your prices at a restaurant, people not only -- you're not only competing for customers with other restaurants. you're competing the idea of just staying home and not going to a restaurant at all. and in agriculture, one of the things that's actually -- we've

already seen is that some growers have been leasing land in mexico. so there's actually unbelievably there's a way to outsource even agriculture production. so we shouldn't be surprised that when in this case it's really getting around government policy or government regulations that people who feel it's in their livelihood in a legal way to try to find a way to still, you know -- to still operate their business. and it won't necessarily be the way that's most economically beneficial to the united states but it will be a way for them -- for people, you know, to continue their businesses. [inaudible] >> they don't get it and they are -- [inaudible] >> and because you're paying such low wages americans want the jobs but if you hire legal american workers instead they don't realize how much the wages would have to go up and how much it would drive agriculture out

of the country. >> and we don't know exactly -- a lot of times when there's been these raids, i think people have been surprised to see that people who were considered illegal immigrants were actually making pretty good wages in some cases. but, you know, we still -- we still see that it's actually not -- it's not economically beneficial to the united states to have people who have a certain amount of education or training take jobs just so a foreign national doesn't work in those jobs. i mean, that's not really much of a way to live a life, you know, people should work in the job that's best suited for them based on their skills. and it's really not efficient for the economy to have people with a master's degree, you know, working, you know, in a lawn service just because we don't want other people to be in a lawn service. i mean, that would be a silly way to run an economy.

the best way is to have people work in a skill level that's most beneficial for them, to have a fulfilling career and if other people can fill in niches, you know, in other jobs, that's beneficial to them too. [inaudible] >> we probably have time for one last question and then we can wrap it up. yes. >> i have a question for stuart -- >> i'm sorry, what was the name? [laughter] >> i'll just get right to the question. you've written about the program that frank mentioned earlier. could you talk a little bit earlier about your finding about what happened to illegal immigration and illegal crossings when we expanded opportunities for legal immigration. we just had the case earlier this week of the truck that was entering mexico from guatemala with the 500 people. that's some of the cost of an illegal immigration system.

what was the experience with the brecero program when we expanded legal immigration? >> that's a great question. franc alluded to it but what the research really showed is that what happened is early in the 1950s there was a legal entry going on in the united states. and the immigration service decided to have a crackdown but at the same time, the ins commissioner at the time, a general swing, went to the growers and said we're going to expand the opportunities for people to come in legally through what's called the bracero program to work in agriculture. essentially what happened we saw a social science experiment that the results of which you almost never see in terms of, you know, cause and effect. what happened was that the

illegal entry as measured apprehension at the border decreased if 1953 to 1959 by 9%. the numbers of the chart goes as the admissions are going up, the illegal entry is going down. it was getting to a level of apprehensions that if we had that today -- we believe it was under 100,000. cato probably wouldn't even have a forum on this topic but it would just be considered almost a nonissue. what that really showed, even though there were problems with the program but that doesn't mean we couldn't -- we wouldn't -- it wouldn't necessarily operate exactly the same way as they did then but the basic concept if there's a legal way for people to come in and work, they will avail themselves of that opportunity rather than enter illegally. but there were concerns about the program and there were union complaints. the regulatist