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>> one sort of other related question because we sort of are talking about immigrant as ingredients and sometimes they are refugees and there's a moral imperative involved and like michael simmons that bringing migrants it's a better form of aid, giving people wages that couldn't happen in their countries. >> in that sense it's a literal substitute for foreign aid.

you take the best and brightest out of the other countries and keep them in the united states and what does that leaf them back home? that's a counter development. after more than ten years their remit answers died by that point and they have less recipients at home. what about the brain drain? that seems to be a negative for foreign development. >> sure, there's been study western europe and eastern europe. there's also the return migration and people do bring skills on the countries. >> they have trade connections. >> also, there's no doubt that what you're saying is the case, that this is by far the biggest

source of foreign aid that we have. if you want to count it that way. and also we don't do a lot of foreign aid so -- i'm always amazed that you look at the polls. it's like 15% of the budget is going to foreign aid when it's less than 1%. it would be smart for us to do foreign aid. if we did it well is another question, i guess, in places like central america so you don't have people that need to flee from dangerous situations but a better scenario from us benefiting from their coming here. >> i think, you know, a proposal like michael would depend on how you manage the mu migration flows. if you did something akin to open borders where there's a very large influx all of a

sudden, you know, i would worry that it would become a tool of corporate exploitation to lower wages to having all new workers at once. people were coming in at market wages and not being used to undercut wages. >> so now we have just a few minutes left before we get to q&a, i'm going to ask that you respond to a question from me. i'm curious, it seems like the discussion is pretty divorced from the rhetoric. if there was one sort of -- please, there's not enough hair pulling as far as i'm concerned. if there's one fact about the u.s. that you would imprez into the mind of every member of congress, what would it be?

>> i would be, what happened with the native born, severity of the baby boomer retirements and how you can't bring replacements all in one year. you have to bring them in steadily. it's just that one fact. right now is do i like immigrant, do i not like immigrant. we need immigrants to change the entire attitude to change towards immigrant. i don't think we are conscious of what we need. >> i don't know that this is a fact that would change a lot of minds but i think -- it seems to me so absent from the kind of conversation we are having is immigration is much more diverse, i think, than people realize, you know, that you have disproportion of lowered skills and you have many in higher bracket, i think that there are reasons for focusing but to step

back and say we have a tre tremendous -- diverse in terms of where people come from, educational background, cultural backgrounds, it's very exciting and good for the vibrancy of the country and vitality of the economy. i think there's a tendency to zero in very quickly on what about those mexican men working in construction and not talk about the jamaican women working in child care and helping for american born women to go to work and accountants who are disproportion number of accountants and of course silicon valley. and actually just your point about high skill and low skill before. the large majority is family unification. they don't have the higher skilled or lower skilled. it's not because of the economic visas. we do very well with that in the united states.

i think we can improve it, not leave so much on the table in ways we can benefit from immigration and certainly we can improve immigration system significantly but somehow the country has managed to benefit noinls even with all of the problems and the lack of reform. >> i would tell the members of congress that we really are lacking and need better data on immigration to improve the quality of the debate. we need longtudinial data, we have hardly any so it's difficult to access what's going on with immigration, what the impact is on wages and employment, it's really tough. what that does is it divorces what's actually happened and

pushes lobby groups to disempower my grant workers. before we go to the room, we do have a question on line and it's for daniel, the great construction dispute. she asks construction industry employers are having hard time of having workers, besides increasing wages what else can these em employers do to attract more native-born workers to occupation? >> training and aparen -- apprenticeship has increased over the years. that's really it.

that's something that's really completed neglected. >> do we have questions in the room? right here. we have the mic coming. if you could just say your name and affiliation and make sure to ask a question in a period of time. >> ii went to post naval graduate schools. where are the jobs? i met with a young man who works for silicon valley, didn't go to college and earns a hundred thousand dollars and i said what's your job, he said to eliminate work, that's part of it. my concern is how do we get people like you to think about the whole question of employment as a holistic issue not just this narrow piece over here because it is so complicated and

just telling us one piece -- >> the question is how to think more broadly? >> i want you to communicate in a way that general public can understand it. the vice president -- >> we are going to try. >> last monday was giving a speech and he said we need people to think like wisemen and communicate in the people, i would ask you all if you're willing to do that but think of a the complex problems in a holistic way and how would you make that happen? >> i cannot fill that one but maybe one of you three can. >> the three are focused on policy institute, we have to be the one arm that looks at the immigration issues. i mean, i think that those are

-- you know, i think there are good questions. i think that my answers, i guess would be -- first of all, i think that there is job growth and low unemployment rates and questions about what's happening with people who are out of the labor force but not are not looking for a job. so there's some growth, but i think there could be much more. there's real concern about the idea that there might be slower growth going forward and how do we do something about that. to me, invest in education or infrastructure, i think there's investment now to say how do we make sure we are stimulating demand because there's absence of demand from consumers, that's the reason because of the lack of growth, so those would be my -- i don't know if that meets joe biden's criteria of being communicative enough. i think those are the big issues. >> i would just say that the

central economic challenge is to get wages to go up. capital share of income compared to workers isn't going -- reached record highs after the recession. there's a number of things we can do as david said, invest in infrastructure, increase unions and make better laws and rules so people can collect bargain and things like that but it's not easy. >> and the language of the people, the more you pay people, the more you spend, capitalism it's a circular system and you get economic growth and more job growth if you pay more money. the poorest people will spend everything they get and the richest will save it and do other things. >> do we have another question? gentleman in the back. >> i'm paul with morrison public affairs group.

i'm a little disappointed because this has been sophisticated discussion about economics but too simple about immigration policy itself. it wasn't until the very end until the dr. kallic mentioned that most immigration is based on family and most of the discussion has been as all immigration is the same, in fact, permanent and temporary, illegal, we can talk about it that way. dr. myers mentioned that about at month the national academy of sciences is going to do a new report on the economic impact of immigration as i understand it. they did one about 20 years ago which concluded that immigration is a net but small benefit to the american economy as much as 10 billion a area in a 14 trillion-dollar economy. in other words a dime if you have 140 bucks in your pocket. it seems to me and i'm a green

card and not guest worker kind of guy. it's a very simple question for you. why would you we ever want more people with fewer rights? >> i kind of feel like we did say we don't want that. we want to have a system of immigration that does respond to the american economy needs and i think as we'll as humanitarian and other reasons. and i think certainly daniel just said and i don't think you're going to disagree, i think people who come as immigrant with full rights and are plan to go stay here is better for the american academy. they'll always be some. it's not like you want people to sign the dotted line and stay forever. that seems to me what we benefit from most and encouraging rather than discourages.

>> right, if there's any role at all for reform, numerous countless cases of trafficking and wages not being paid, if there's any role for that, it has to be in a way that they come in a short period of time and is able to self-petition for a green card and stay permanently. people that we bring in just have them on a direct path to a green card which eventually can mean citizenship if they want it. >> i'm with many copanelists on this. i realized he never mentioned that. it wasn't part of the economic analysis that people do. they don't distinguish really h-1 visas, not part of family reunification. it's unique in the u.s. in canada and australia they don't do it that way.

they're more job oriented or refugees. that's the american tradition and a long-standing one. back to my point earlier about immigration reform every 20 years, it's a different time than it was 20 years ago, when the last national academy report was done in 1990's it was respond to go a different immigration climate. immigrant today are much better educated than they were back then in the 90's and the cost shifted accordingly in the current period. i don't know what the exact calculations are in our report because it's so long i can't remember the numbers. i'm not supposed to heb them yet. [laughter] >> but it's tries to follow -- our report tries to follow what was done before in a similar way with improved methodologies and updated con textual information and we learned a lot over the last 20 years from what they did before.

>> can we get you to give us an exclusive preview here today? >> one of the biggest issues that i think is plaguing our committee is what is the answer, what's the conclusions, it's 12 chapters. lots of stuff. the media will take one point and summarize the whole report. it's a diverse report. we don't have a lot of debate among us. a lot of agreement but many facets. the figure that they have in their mind, that person is disappearing or had disappeared or gone negative in the last five years and it's still big enough feature in some people's minds and might want to build a wall. i should say i'm a demographer

and i think about this things a lot. you have to go to a common denominator and some old idea won't win unless it's a shocking major earthquake or something really major like brexit, no, i didn't say that. [laughter] >> actually i do want to bring up brexit because there's aceps that was done by eu's immigration policies and i think a lot of people -- to many people who are looking at brexit and oh, there's implications for the united states. do you see any lessons lessons from brexit or uk-eu immigration system that apply all year? >> i hope not. i mean, so one thing i guess you could say is in the news today and yesterday is a lot of second thoughts where people who were saying some things and start to

go backtrack, wait a second, there's not negative impact. maybe we are not going to be well off by having another -- benefit from the trade we do in europe. so i mean, i guess i do think at the very broad level that the united states like england, like united kingdom remains that benefit from being engaged with the world and from back and forth, but i think it is also a fairly different context. >> i would say i guess with the one lesson i saw was i thought it was completely wrong to blame immigration for any real negative impacts in britain but the immigration argument for brexit got a lot of momentum from the fact that the government was wrong a couple of

times about wh they thought was going to happen. well, first, when the eu expanded, they thought that only tens of thousands new workers from the eu were going to come in and ended up being half a million and david cameroon said he was going to get migration gown to tens of thousands and never came close to that. it gave a sense to the public that, you know, this government isn't able to adequate manage migration and the system lost credibility and there was a lot of angry people who, you know, voted for brexit. i think that the lesson for the united states is that we should have a more transparent immigration system because having a transparent immigration system will lead to, you know, increased credibility of the system which, in turn, will be to increase public support for immigration. risk & reward if you look at the map of the voting, the places

where there's been a lot of immigration, you're right cameron promised to be lower, they voted to be in the eu. places that have been left behind by the overall economy where there's not a lot of immigration, it's in the more rural areas that are not part -- not benefiting as much from the modern economy. >> the gallup data does show that in counties where there's no immigration, little immigration, those are the ones that responded most likely to say that immigrant come from a free ride and not to work because they have no idea what immigrant really do. whereas immigrant counties they have very attitude about immigrant. everybody gets to vote in america. think vote on information that they are given by political opportunist who try to terrorize them about some imaginary free-loaders. >> we are all up here talking

about brexit is a bad thing and we all probably agree that it is. but there was another part of the argument that didn't get much attention with the united states with the progressive leftist argument there's a lexit, that had to be with the fact that the eu has been a tool to implement level of reforms on country where it didn't turn out so well. they started changing policies and they got a little bit better. paul referred to as aif -- as if you're punching yourself in the face it's going to get better. there was sort of an argument on balance, they did the wrong thing. but after what happened in with greece, how greece was treated by the northern countries, that gave a little bit more credibility as well as to the

people who were voting against it. >> we have -- we can return, we have a question from christine. >> so when i was summarizing the consensus, i would say that part of it is that overall there's been a positive effect on wages. overall for african americans as positive effect on wages but for african american women in gain and african men do see negative impacts and that's where there is in fact, controversy is how big is the impact and the range is -- how big and how do you characterize the number you get. i would say it's a modest impact and george boras said it's a

bigger impact but i think that that's real. if you were going to list what faces african american men, immigration would be 20. there are a lot of challenges. i would be wrong that it's not there. i think that there is some. if you were going to think about what you're going to do to address that, first of all, the best thing to do is have people graduate for high school more, better education. that's been happening to underrecognized degree. there are 3 million fewer black men with high school education, rates have gone down from 29 to 17%, if i remember it right. very dramatically in a 1-year -- 15-year period. we know what to do. how do you deal with the

overincar -- overincarceration. negative impacts on this population that's been facing a lot of challenges. let me add to that too. i like what you said, david, there's a general point that investing in human capital pays off. pays off big time. the younger you educate or -- the earlier you help young children like age one, age four, preschool, you get the bigger payoff over time and we are learning that from scientific studies, the evidence is very

clear, here is the problem, again, it requires investment up front with payoff coming 20 years down the road and our democracy we make decisions in the present or on the next election cycle or budgetary cycle and we are not able to think far enough ahead. we could cultivate the quality of the workforce that we have in place already. we wouldn't need as many workers to produce the same amount of goods. maybe this gdp built out of labor force plus productivity that could be much more favorable and the biggest bang for the buck in my studies comes out of the most neglected segments of the population, and so if they don't bring as many imtbrants in, you sure bertin vest in the people they have and i could see that as part of comprehensive reform where we do both things, cultivate the change that are here and cultivate our needs from our immigrant workers.

>> do we have another question in the group? >> you have hinted disparities across the country the way immigrant are able to integrate and contribute to benefit the overall economy. can you speak more to that and maybe with some advice for state-level legislators on how to reap the most benefits for us. >> identify yourself for us? >> ryan bob with the office of immigration statistics. >> you see economic growth labor force and the economy. that's not a surprise. you see people of ask because immigrant are attracted to where

there's growth. it's both of those things. people go where there is growth but also when they come they become consumers, business owners and contribute the labor and help to expand the local economy. refer to legacy cities or commonly called as the rust belt. cities like detroit, cleveland, cincinnati, pittsburgh where there's an interest in how do we get more immigrant to come here because the big problem with the cities is that they don't have enough population, they don't have enough tax base to cover services and it's a downward spiral in schools, how do you

pay for that stuff to pay other property taxes. so they've been interested in the idea of how to attract immigrant m some of them have tried to say like let's advertise to get immigrant to get here. what you can do to attract immigrant is make it better for immigrant who are already are there and that will attract more people, has the same effect so that's good and also will attract the people who are looking for opportunities. i think you can see a particularly interesting role in relationship to what we call mine stream businesses. so this is in most kinds of cities, also in suburbs that have seen decline in a lot of areas, rural areas as well, you know, places where borded up store fronts, not much happening in an area, that's both a direct impact, right, because you don't have people working there but also has ripple effects to the

whole area because nobody wants to live where there's boarded up store fronts. immigrant come in the area, they open a restaurant. people start to come to the restaurant maybe from that ethnic group from the person who started but somebody else, some hipster group or somebody local, that malaysian food is pretty good. immigrant are more like lick to be business owners but i think that sometimes gets exaggerated. immigrant are much more likely. 21% of mainstream businesses are run by immigrant. that's a place where immigrant are making a disproportionate

kind of difference and turning the dynamics of places where other people get attract today live there. >> so the locality that is receive immigrant get their kids and have to pay for them and you have big arguments over taxation in local area and then when the kids grow up they don't stay in the towns another county or state, spreads the benefits. like santa ana, california, it's encor corporating immigrant, teaching children and helping with health care and graduating them onto another county or state. the federal government needs to help with the areas in the nation's business because it's the nays' workforce being built locally. but the real human capital

investment that's going on is invisible to people except in tax bills. states can do some of that. you see within a state, the people are growing up in the suburbs but moving to places. the biggest cost is related to schools and states and localities share the cost of schools and states can play a big role in equalizing that and i think that's a big point. my big clock is telling me that we are out of time. thank you to the bipartisan policy center for hosting us, our panel, donald, david and daniel,i appreciate it. >> i will add my thank for everyone coming out. you can get a copy of our report online at our website at

bipartisanpolicy.org and research under immigration tab in the website. video will be available on our website later today so if you missed anything, you need to quote it, you can look at it online later today. thank you, everybody, for coming and have a great day. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> donald trump heads to indiana today just outside of indianapolis he's expected to be joined by the state's republican governor, watch live at 7:30 p.m. here on c-span2. >> the republican national convention is a week away and the rnc is currently in the

process of shaping the party's platform by holding several meetings, here is a look at some of the discussion yesterday in cleveland. >> is that the one that you wanting to with? [inaudible] >> page one, line 17 to the bottom of the page and top of line 2 and then replace with language that is going to appear on the screen. >> we are going to be testing the eyes of all the committee members. >> the first three paragraphs of the section on marriage, family and society, the three that deal primarily that deal with marriage and if i might read the language that i'm proposing instead, i don't have a copy myself. >> okay, it's now on the screen, we just want to make sure it's the one you noted. >> we believe that marriage is -- >> marriage matters --

>> we believe that marge matters both as religious institution and as fundamental personal freedom because marriage is one of foundations of civil soishts as marriage thrives so our nation thrives. we believe it affects individual families and undermining families leads to more government costs and more government control over the lives of its citizens therefore we believe in encouraging the strengths and stability of all families. we recognize that there are diverse and sincerely held views of marriage within the party and that support for allowing same-sex couples the freedom to mary has grown substantially in our own party. given this journey that so many americans are in-- including republicans are on, we encourage and welcome a thoughtful conversation among republicans

about st -- the meaning and marriage and our party to respect all families and fairness and freedom for all americans. this amendment that i proposed today is simple, acknowledges a diversity of opinion within our party on the issue of marriage. i'm not here to endorse my constitutional rights which have been made clear by the supreme court last year but i'm only asking you to recognize that many republicans many of the republicans that sent us to do work in shaping our party's platform agree with me. and we should not be excluded

from our party. as a committee member under the age of 40, i represent the majority of millennial republican who is support the freedom to marry. i'm proud to be joined by 64 support evangelicals. if our party wants the future we should be mindful of statistics and we must evolve. we all agree on one thing, the importance of the institution of marriage to our society. gay and lesbian americans like me are simply asking for the opportunity to join that institution and share in that institution and we are your daughters, friends, your neighbors, your colleagues, the couple that sits next to you in church and one day when i'm ready to marry the woman i love

i hope it will be mean. freedom means including gays and lesbians receive the same protection as heterosexual. i choose to be a republican because i believe in the same principles that you do, the freedom, individual liberty and limited government. i'm here 15 years later still in this great party despite the hurtful rhetoric and stamp on these issues. and all i ask today that you include me in those like me and not exclude us by simply acknowledging that thoughtful republicans represent multiple views on the definition of marriage, thank you.

[applause] >> our road to the white house coverage continues thursday and friday as republicans determine the rules for next week's convention in cleveland. live coverage on c-span. now, look at the process for releasing detainees, they spent part of the testimony at house foreign affairs meeting answering questions about the disappearance of detainee who was locate today uruguay. this is just under two hours.

[inaudible conversations] >> this hearing will come to order. today we welcome back the obama administration's top officials, we closing the detention system at guantanamo bay in march. these two gentlemen appeared before the committee to proposal to relocate the prison and detainees as well as the process of releasing individuals to foreign countries. much of the news from that hearing surrounded mr. lewis' revelation that his words unfortunately there have been americans that have died because of guantanamo detainees.

indeed, last month the washington post reported that the administration believes that at least 12 detainees released from the guantanamo facility have since attacked u.s. or allied forces in afghanistan killing about a half dozen americans, that was startling enough but it is particularly disturbing that upon close examination these witnesses made statements to the committee that are inconsistent with the documents and inconsistent with the information that the administration has supplied the committee under the law. specifically the committee asked whether the department of defense ever knowingly transferred a detainee to a country that did not exhibit an ability to substantially mitigate the risks of

recidivism. that it had not. yet numerous intelligence reports provided by the administration suggest that their answers were inaccurate, in fact, the defense department had done so on numerous occasions, the secretary of state has the ability to transfers and under the law congress regularly receives information from the intelligence community on the return to terrorism rate of individuals released to foreign counties releasing as well as preventing terrorists from returning to the fight. simply put many countries just aren't up to the job and a

diplomatic agreement to do the job isn't worth the paper it is written on if a country does not have the resources, does not have the training to keep committed terrorists from returning to the battlefield. yet, the administration has sent guantanamo terrorists to these countries any way to deceive this committee and the american people is deeply disturbing and when given the opportunity to correct the record for the committee, they ignored us. i appreciate that the administration finally responded on tuesday, but it shouldn't take the calling of a hearing to elicit a return letter specially on something as consequential as this. this committee has an obligation to conduct oversight, while we have differences of opinion over

guantanamo policy i don't think anybody here finds the administration's des -- dismissiveness and pressing on terrorist that is having transfer today uruguay, it is not theretical, was sent to guantanamo to uruguay in 2013, we sounded the alarm about uruguay's legal framework and explain today you about the critical resources to prevent travel outside the country that that was lacking in the case of uruguay . what is the result jihad

disappeared and this was after mr. wolosky testify that had we are confident that the uruguay is taking appropriate stems to mitigate the risk of this former detainee and others sent to uruguay. yesterday, cnn citing u.s. officials reported that this terrorist was last spotted in venezuela. he is believed to be headed back to syria or yemen. we have been waiting answers to the committee's inquiry but while i'm been patient the president has been in a rush seemingly to release guantanamo terrorists to where ever he can, i wish we were not here today. holding another guantanamo hearing this week was not my intention but he is loose and my

patience has run out and i now turn to the ranking member. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and mr. worosky and mr. lewis, welcome back, thank you for your service. last time you, gentlemen, were here i made my views of guantanamo be clear and i ask that my opening statement be include in this hearing. >> without objection. >> to recap, national security experts agree with me and i have a letter here from 36 retired generals and admirals calling for the prison's closure and i ask that it be included in the record. the prison is a waste of money a propaganda for terrorists. it's the end of story as far as the prison goes. there were, however, issues raised about transferred detainees that deserve follow up and i say transferred rather than released because it's an

extensive process that goes to removing detainee from the prison and sending him to another country it's not as though they just set loose but it is important to know how exactly we are monitoring transfer-detainees and assessing the risk they pose. those are good questions but because they deal with intelligent settings, we can only classify in settings. i hope that after this hearing in a few weeks or so, we can have a close classified setting to get answers to some questions that you are not really allowed to say here in open session. so why are we here, demanding accountability, since we say records release it sounds like people's minds are made up and i want to make sure all of the

facts are on the table because i think there's plenty of blame to go all around. i think the chairman raises legitimate issues but i do think there's plenty to go around. first the vast majority of guantanamo detainees were transferred out of the prison before president obama took office, total of 780 detainees have been held in guantanamo during the bush administration, 500 were transferred out compared to 159 detainees under president obama. secondly, let's look at the number of transferred detainees and the figure 30% gets thrown around a lot but what goes into the number, includes the total number of transferred detainees that we know have returned to the fight as well as those engagement over the entire life in guantanamo prison. during bush years 2001-2008 the rate of reingaugement was

actually higher than that, 35% with 21% of the cases confirmed and 14% suspected so let me say that again, more than one-third of the terrorists that president bush's administration transferred may have return to the fight. let's contrast with the obama administration, under president obama that number totaling suspected an confirmed cases drops to 13%, 8% suspected and 5% confirmed. that represents seven people. know know one person escaping is one person too much but i just want to have a balance hearing here because if we have made up our minds talking about the administration being reckless, it doesn't seem to me that we are really going to learn anything more. i -- i reiterate most 13% of those transferred since january 2009 have reengaged

compared to as much as 35% during the previous administration. contrast is striking. but let's not get lost in the numbers because this is perhaps the most important point. the transferred detainees return to the battlefield and kill americans were let out during the bush administration, not during the obama administration, if we are going to paint with a broad brush, we need to take the whole story and put it in perspective. the bush administration racked up that average and then some and the obama administration brought it back down and the closure plan would not transfer any person that does not meet the most ebbing -- criteria. that's false. 29 of 79 detainees are cleared for transfer, aamong them

22yemenis, we transfer detainees in home countries. in terms of yemen the government cannot provide adequate securities so the administration has pump it had brakes, we need to find countries that can provide adequate assurances before those 22 will transferred. that leaves 50. ten of them will stand trial, another 40 held as prisoners of war, but under no circumstances in my opinion, is the obama administration simply opening the gate and releasing dangerous terrorists on to the street. look, guantanamo is a mess and it always has been. no one is blameless. any one can cherry-pick but i think the facts and statistics speak for themselves. i think that what we should do ib -- instead of shotgun -- of

having witnesses come where we could be in a close setting getting to the bottom of this matter. any the foreign affairs committee obviously has oversight on this issue. the hearing last march and today's hearing are the only two times the committee has taken up this issue in nearly 15 rrears of guantanamo prison has been open, so since we have our top guantanamo experts today, i hope you can give us your opinion on interesting idea we heard about that prison. i'm going to read you a few quotes, you may recognize them. i will give you a hint. it's one of the candidates running for president. he is the first, this morning i watched president obama talking about gitmo, guantanamo bay, by the way we are keeping open and we are going to load it up with bad dude, we are going to load

it up, unquote. and the second, quote, torture works, okay, folks, believe me it works and water boarding is a form. let's assume it is, but they asked me the question, what do you think about water boarding, absolutely fine but we should go much stronger than water boarding, we should go much stronger because our country is in troubling, unquote, i read that because some people want to expand guantanamo and i can't think of a worse proposal. they would harm us with allies and provide ammunition with adversaries. maybe at some point today what would happen if we went in that direction. again, i hate doing tit for tats

but it's not fair to blame the administration for all the frustrations of guantanamo when we see there were problems and wrong things done in the previous administration as well. so i look forward listening to you and hearing your thoughts and, thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. engel, this morning we are joined by wolowsky, previously mr. wolosky served as the director for transnational threats under president clinton and mr. paul lewis is joining us. we are pleased that he is here. special envoy, previously mr. lewis served as both the

general counsel and minority general counsel, without objection, the witnesses full prepared statements will be made part of the record, members will have five calendar days to submit any statements or questions or any material they want might to submit to the record and i would like to remind everybody that willful misrepresentation or false statements by a witness is a criminal offense under 18 u.s. code section 1001, indeed, that is the case for of our hearings and special lowosky summarize your remarks. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman, good morning, i appreciate you inviting me once again to appear before this committee, i look toward to continues discussion in close session either later today as we have offered or as soon as

possible so that we can have a fuller discussion of some of the classified topics we know are of interest to the committee. all together a total of 779 detainees have passed through guantanamo and of those 700 have departed. the vast majority of detainees transferred out of guantanamo to other countries, some 532 were transferred by the administration of george w. bush. under president obama a total of 159 detainees have been transferred. today 79 remain. president bush acted to wheedling the detainee population because he understood that and i quote, the detention facility had become a propaganda tool for our enemies and distraction for our allies, close quote. president obama has continued to detainee transfer for many of the same reasons. of the 79 detain years detained at guantanamo today 29 are

currently approved for transfer. detain years have been des at a timed for transfer during this administration through one of two rigorous processes. president obama ordered the first ever comprehensive review of all of the 242 detain years in u.s. custody. in 2009-2010 the guantanamo review task force sometimes also called the executive order force comprised of professionals from across the government assembled all reasonable available information relevant to determining an appropriate disposition for the the detainee, based on task force recommendations the department of defense, state, justice and homeland security, the office of the director for national intelligence and the joint chief of staff unanimously determined the appropriate disposition for

each detainee. pursuant to executive order 13567 detainees who were not approved for transfer in 2009 and 2010 could be subject to addition additional review by the periodic review period. representatives from six agencies and departments. none of the prb representatives are political appointees. i would like to briefly discuss the process for detainees, whether, when and where is a process. the department of state leads negotiations with the transfer of guantanamo detainees but we are typically joined by senior

officials from department of defense, as well as those in intelligence community and on the joint staff. generally, transfer negotiations occur in two steps. first the u.s. government obtains or reconfirms that the potential receiving country is willing and principle to reset detainees and measure that is will mitigate the threat that detainees may pose after transfer. second, we engage in technical discussions with foreign officials responsible for implementing the measures. these tech nibblingal discussions offer the opportunity to security measures to specific circumstances under cshes to share best practices from previous detainee transfers and perhaps most importantly to determine based on an individualized assessment from

the circumstances where the statutory standard governing the foreign transfer of guantanamo detainees can be met. once we conclude that the diplomatic negotiations will result in a security framework that we will substantially mitigate the threat a detainee my pose, homeland security and the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the joint chief of staff on the transfer. only after the secretary of defense receives the views of those prin ip ls and only if he is satisfied does the secretary of defense sign and transmit a certification conveying to transfer detainees. ladies and gentlemen of the committee, let me close by saying that although we would prefer that no former detainees engage in terrorists or in

activity following transfer, we believe that the low rate of confirmed reengagement from detainees transferred from january 2009 under 5% is testament to the rigorous interagency has taken to approve detainees to transfer and vetting transfer frameworks. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, mr. lewis. >> chairman royce, distinguished members of the committee, representative donovan, thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the administration's guantanamo detainee transfer process. secretary carter approved 45 detain years and secretary hagel approved 44 detainees