the economy of $50 billion, but essentially represents a decline in wages of native workers and what happens is because native wages decline, there's a redistribution effect for the owners of capital, essentially businesses. so what immigration does is it does act to the economy but also redistributes wealth from workers to owners of businesses so there's a redistribute effect and his calculation of $500 billion. so what do you make of that and how do you respond to that? >> this is exactly the second wrong model that ethan put up. it's exactly the effect. this is the consequence of the assumption that labor demand comes down because capitalist is fixed and so that is actually calculated out of this exact graph, the triangle official --

efficiency gain in economy. we have showed you mickey mouse model, some more realistic than others. economies are doing much more sophisticating, one thing that capital cannot be considered, much better approximation that capital adjusted the same way. if labor demand curve is supply, the effect is zero, the distribution is zero, you need to look at the evidence on productivity effect of immigrant, this calculation assumes zero productivity effect, the way productivity effect plus fixed capital. i would say it's not even a starting point for this conversation the way i see it. >> yeah, i'm frankly to disappointed that he actually went with that. i was willing to give him credit, that was the washington times or washington examiner but that's just wrong.

>> question here. >> thank you. department of homeland security. thanks for the presentations. ethan, you concluded more or less your comments with, i don't know a throw away or i would like for you to say more about the idea of aiming for filling shortages and it seems to me that the idea of filling shortage analysis competes with the idea of capital, you need immigrant to fill shortages is an alternative to forcing capital to fill their shortages and i'm wondering what effect that has versus allowing the capital stock and doesn't that happying the ability of workers to bid up wages? >> why don't we take a couple of questions since i saw several questions here?

>> i'm going to talk about the elephant in the room for a moment, undocumented immigrant workers versus native workers and a situation which has been changing and probably will change in the next few years. the increase in the minimum wage. what will happen if many employers find that the requirement for increasing the minimum wage affects them adversely and they begin to hire more undocumented workers to replace the workers that they have because they can't afford to pay them the salaries that they have been paying. would that effect both the wage level for native workers and the number of unemployed and i heard the term use not very much of an effect.

i'm not sure whether that can be quantified particularly in the micro situation like this. my main thought is that our model -- i think economics model are really good for increasing, looking at small changes in wages. the literature -- and i'm a consumer of this literature. that said, we don't know what happens when you go from the minimum wages we have now which i can't even tell you exactly but to $15. that's a huge jump. and so even the simulation models, i don't think any of us would believe what that would do.

in terms of how -- let me think from the employer's perspective for a second. what you're suggesting is that the employer who is optimizer because i'm an economist, i think he's optimizing, he's going to look at the probability of trying to shift to more capital intensive and the risk of being caught and fined. my sense is that i'm a risk capital owner, i wouldn't want to take that many risks. i wouldn't believe more in the shift of undocumented immigrant taking the place of labor. that's my just immediate thought about that. i think we are talking about illegal immigration in the section.

on minimum wage actually i think we have a lot of evidence that don't seem to affect employment very much from that group and the idea could be that people use more efficiently what they have and push to distribution of the cost, if 50% increase minimum wage to $15, one thing about undocumented, undocumented are all paid minimum wage because firms don't want to attract attention on themselves for sure. i actually did work on agriculture work in california which are paid less in under our scrutiny they were paid minimum wage. minimum wage is $15.

immigrant and -- undocumented immigrant on labor market, low-skilled level are kind of like other workers in many respects, they are in the book, they are paid as the other, they don't have a social security number that matches anything and it's not there in the gray economy like people claim in europe. by the way, the difference with native is that they are paid 10-20% less than native but skill currently above minimum wages because minimum wages and go close to paying that hourly wage. but there's also on the other hand what if we also regularize. minimum wage increase to $15 is not going to happen in one year, it's garage -- gradual.

yeah, it would be possible in some elections go one way and not pleasant in the other way. it's a possibility. >> the question is sort of along the lines is it better to wait for kind of innovations to fill the kind of shortages in the economy or is it better -- is immigration the solution to that. i don't really have an answer to that. there's two sides of the same coin in a way. there's an interesting example from history, when we shut down the borders in 1925 there's a lot of concern about what's manufacturing going to do. there was a big analysis at the national bureau of economic research and then the great

depression happened. then the same analysis which was ongoing switched to is automation taking all of our jobs so very similar to the debate today and illustrates. >> people that hold valid immigration visas and including people who overstay their visas and secondly maybe somewhat anecdotal. if i look at washington, d.c. where i live, an awful lot of construction jobs, office buildings, working on roads, renovating houses appear to be held by immigrant, legal or

undocumented, i have no idea while there's still a fairly large unemployment of african-american males in the city. it appears to be a fairly substantial impact in the city, i can't quite reconcile with theoretical studies, i wonder if you can speak to that. the numbers that we use are from the census which are hard to reach every single person from which people start to calculate number of documented. maybe that this people move around we are not having 100% coverage are the best we have to include documented and undocumented. about construction jobs and the

high unemployment in the black community, so here the short circuit that a lot of people look, there are some jobs which are done by some people and unemployed, therefore kick those people that get employment. you do it at the local level rather national level. now, there are many reasons why the unemployment, the benefit outside are generous and some of the undocumented do not have access. they are push to work which is the stronger. the employment rate of with high school degree among immigrant is 70%. native is about 30% because native have access to a lot of other benefits so it's not so painful. they can still, you know, have unemployment insurance, they benefit if they are poor, they

have medical insurance now. you can argue that you can take jobs away from a company and would have to shrink. i'm not sure, there's clearly a problem of job trading. keep in mind that those people with debt-level of education may have some issues with drug abuse and all of this seems to be smaller in the immigrant community who is working at very high level. it's hard to tell. i would say that the best we can do is figure out if immigrant are taking away jobs is looking systemically over the nation to see if places where jobs of immigrant have grown allot and corresponded to shrinking of jobs of natives. as we are showing up there, the opposite is a little true. city that is are thriving are creating both types of job and local multiplier.

i know the appeal of kicking them out and see what happens if the african-american get the job. i really don't believe that this is the way position does. i'm sure so people would be tempted by your type of thinking that, you know, they try some stuff on this way. i think that's exactly the appeal of putting together to say one would solve the other. i really think that it will destroy some of the local jobs, but, again -- [laughter] >> the undocumented should leave and the jobs should be created for the natives.

>> why don't we collect more questions and have very short responses, okay. >> my name is richard and i'm currently working with the american continental group but i'm here basically on a one-year visa from ireland and in 12 days i have to leave because my visa will run out. what i want to know how do people actually get visas overs here. i have come over here and worked like every day for like three different working, campaign and american continental group, but it was -- when i'm looking to stay i would have to convince a company that they have to pay $5,000 and convince the immigration and any american

could do the job that i could do. who are the unskilled people and unskilled people allowed here when people that are coming over and willing to work have to go home after a year? >> another question near you. any last questions? over here. >> hi, my name is diam, a daughter, have you looked at it international, your research compared to other countries and are the universal truths, can we learn something from other countries in the way there's economic research?

>> foundation -- [inaudible] >> i have a question. i tried to switch slightly to lower level. giovanni, you talked about refugees from cuba in miami. so that has overall economy in miami. actually now you have crisis and in germany, you know how many refugees are coming and i am aware that you are working with european market as well, what do you think about the impact of the refugees, sudden surge of refugees in germany or other, particularly in germany but in other european market and the

second question is, i heard that the donald trump was saying that hillary clinton is like another angela merkel in america. when the number of refugees -- immigrant in 1930's and 40's, the lowest point of immigrant in america. mostly refugees from europe. so i'm just -- my question to everybody is that the -- what should be american policy for refugees in this situation? thank you very much. >> thank you. >> i'm going to stop it there. i want to give panelists maybe 30 seconds each to very incompletely respond to these questions or offer final thoughts. do you want to start? >> i would be happy to start. >> i apologize, we can't give the time to your questions that they deserve. >> yeah.

richard, just on your point, i think a lot of unskilled workers get through visa lottery and i empathize with your plate, a lot of people overstay visas which is how we have illegal immigrant in the country, not to give you any ideas. [laughter] >> on your question, i'm going to focus on these two, yes, we do work on -- i do work specifically on other countries and not really even much on u.s. immigration, just to give you an example of -- of the gains to migration, we have done a study in ethiopia, con subjects relatively doubled controlling other factors. controlling for human capital basically compare today similar people. thanks. >> yeah, i was just going to respond briefly to your -- i'm sorry you had a bad experience

with the u.s. immigration system as well. so we made a policy decision in the 1960's basicallyto favor family members of existing immigrant and that's where a lot of the unskilled immigration comes in. unfortunately it's hard to change policy. other countries have a lot more executive control over the flows of immigrant and in those countries it's easier to admit immigrant and change policy to fill shortage and that sort of thing. >> yeah, there are no working visa for low-skilled workers specially for seasonal and agriculture. they're all family members. the research in other countries, it's useful. it's very useful. i would say that each country, they are very unique in this but there are some general consideration such as, i think,

in most research this job market effect of immigrant is rapidly limited. europe has an issue. europe has a problem right now on refugees, it's more linked to the fact that they have ignored this problem and no planning on how to respond to migrant flows, it's been clear for four to five years since the syrian war exploded that this was going to be an issue. europe is much more generous welcome system, much harder, much stronger in dynamic market. europeans much harder to find more job and much more on welfare state. the american system actually seems to be better. people are here and the best welfare that you give to immigrant is a job and that's what has been working in the u.s. both for the economy and for their situation with a lot of issues because at the low end of the wage maybe particularly low. we need to continue understanding how this work and

play across different countries. >> okay, thank all of our panelists. [applause] >> you'll see a long review that i wrote on this literature with a lot of discussion from study and other countries. a few housekeeping announcement, 15 to 20 minute break. there's water available in winter garden on the first floor and restrooms are located on this level. to the left of the elevators and also on the lower level. if you can just turn left when you go to the bottom of the stairs and they'll be there. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> this all-day conference on immigration and economics taking place at the cato institute in washington. they will return in about 20 minutes with the discussion on illegal immigration and heading into this afternoon wrapping at about 5:00 o'clock eastern. the labor department releasing the job's numbers for august with the unemployment rate in august remaining at 4 ppt 9% and the associated press saying 151,000 job added about half the blockbuster gains of the two press months.

275,000 in july, 271,000 in june. job gains slow across most major industries and employers cut workers in manufacturing, construction and mining, some reaction from house ways and means committee chairman kevin brady saying in a statement, today's modest pay of job creation coupled with declining productivity last quarter means that growth in our economy and our paychecks will continue to lag as americans get weighed down by the rising cost of health care. other news from washington today, the commission on presidential debates announcing their moderators for the three presidential and the one vice presidential debate. cbs correspondent will moderate presidential debate along with the university of virginia.

the other presidential debates martha andrew:erson -- anderson cooper and chris wallace. >> there's a forum coming up next week that's being hosted by the group iraq and afghanistan, veterans of america, gary johnson the libertarian candidate getting plugs from hundreds of military veterans apparently according to to the hill that mr. johnson be included in that televised presidential form happening next week hosting by iraq and veterans of america. well, we will be back in just a few minutes for the cato institute returning to talk about illegal immigration while we waitfor that we will show you some of the opening session this morning.

>> good morning, primarily financed by facebook cofounder justin and wife who also serves as president. the subject of today's conference could hardly receive more attention on this presidential campaign. the subject has received less attention which is what the evidence says on the receiving economy. up until years ago i was a senior fellow, the foremost advocates of the view that openness to immigration is one of the ways to reduce poverty in the world and also lack of

openness is one of market failures. that argument is part of the reason that i'm here, part of the reason that my organization is interested in this issue as a grant maker. before i was an employee i was a consultant to them and i did an evidence review on exactly this question so i am please today present to you some of the leading producers and researchers in this area as one of the leading consumers of it. without further due i want like to introduce giovanni peri, professor of economics at uc davis. he's published journals and books about exactly the question that we are going to hear about. he has received grant from the macarthur foundation and if you want to read more about him, you can. giovanni.

>> thank you, david, thank you for inviting me. this is a great panel and a great conference and i want to jump right into my topic in 20 minutes. i tried to squeeze the information here in 20 minutes. so i hope you can read more or less. the question that i'm trying to address and this is can we consider immigration as one of the cause of the wage stagnation specially for low-educated, low-skilled worker, that is happening in the last 35 years. i will show you -- many people think that we have too many immigrant that are taking jobs of native and so the simple supply story is they push the down the wage and first i will give you a couple of hints of how it's played out at the

national level, using framework that the economies use. and then i'm going to ask, okay, if we don't find much of a national level, can it be the local level, can it be specific labor markets which have been inundated of immigrant, wages have been depressed or employment level has been low. as they carry you through research one question will come by because the evidence seems to me to have piled up against this idea that maybe in reality there are some challenges, good reason to think that in some cases immigration can actually boost wages of native workers and we will go through this. i think there are two fact that is people put together and say immigration hurts wages and there's two simple facts. first in the last -- i'm going to takes 980 to 2014, this is when the wage between low-educated and high-skilled opened up. i'm going to show a figure about this. noncollege educated people in terms of wages has done really

relatively badly in the 34 years and in 34 years a period which which immigration has increased a lot in the united states. here fact number one. college educated has done much better. this is the growth of wages, people that have some high school degree or more than a bachelor and this is the percentage change of their wages, of weekly wages over 34 years and you see that the more than coverage educated have done relatively well the wages have grown 20 to 30% in 30 years so almost 1% per year in one turn. the drop out have done very badly but also high school diploma not well, their wages have gone down. if you break this in two groups, the college and noncollege, college educated have done quite

well, noneducated have done quite poorly. could it be that migration is responsible for this? stating this factor and stating that migration has increased the share of foreign born, then immigration must be the culprit. if you're willing to do the next step there are a bunch of other things that have change. economies have documented that international trade, offshoring, unionization and manufacturing sector have shrank dramatically. it's not clear implication from just the growth of immigrant, and if immigration has to be a reason at the national level for explaining -- let's look at immigration at the national level has changed the supply of those fife group.

if it's just a supply story, too many immigrant that came in that -- low-skilled group relatively to high-skilled group, then there should be a very high supply of immigrant down here and very low-supply of immigrant down here. if they change the structure of wage through supply forces, then the flow of less educated must be much, much larger. the truth of looking at the picture in 34 years and comparing flow of immigrant to the size of each group in percentage terms, immigrant have been much more, income of immigrant has increased the supply of highly educated much more that be less. a little bit of the facts. so it's almost -- [inaudible] >> goes exactly the opposite way from what you would need and increasing these. it's true that the high school dropout influx of immigrant has

been larger than the high school inflow of natives. maybe they have played some role. immigrant, the economy have used simple model of supply and demand. this is quite broadly used model in the field. i have criticized this model a lot because they consider everything else productivity fixed and we will talk more about this. let me show you that even taking the model that people that assume depressive effect on immigration like and use, how far do we get in explaining this changes in the wages through immigration, i'm going to show you. taking a simple demand-supply model and increasing the supply of native, of immigrant, sorry, and leaving everything else fixed, how far do we get in explainingplaining the wage change? and i'm going to focus can we explain the performance of noneducated and among college

educated can we explain bad performance of the least education which are the group of high school dropouts. so here -- [laughter] >> i see that -- yeah, think about the way it was written. that's why i gave the pdf and not the powerpoint. there's a simple model that says and let me point out here that the relative wage of two groups, college and noncollege, let me get -- the relative wage of college and noncollege worker depends on relative productivity which is the first term that i wrote there and relative supply. so if you increase the relative supply of a group and you leave the relative productivity unchanged then you're going to depress the wage of that group and the effect -- the wage of the group depends on the parameter which is called

elasticity of supply. it's the change of college and noncollege that's being generated by immigration, how much would it predict a depression of the noncollege wage relative to the college? and then we can do the same exercise between high school dropout and nonhigh school dropouts and is the relative supply can and how much generate this depression of wage of high school dropouts. the important parameter here that we need to do, estimate, which is as i said that elasticity. i'm going to take the parameter that people who are in favor of finding a negative impact on immigration are going to argue is the correct wasn't. so i'm going to bias this model as much against as myself and so

in favor of finding a negative effect on immigration as i can. in this parameterization the college and noncollege elasticity and there's a certain consensus of what the elasticity is. even between 1.5 and 3. in reality, difference people with high school and people that are dropouts are more contentious. i'm going to take in this exercise the most negative potential elasticity or the smallest, most negative scenario saying that people with no degree and people with a high school degree are notvery substitutable and have the same elasticity.

think of this of a measure of how different they are in the labor market, how their relative supply affect their relative wage. .. >> the question of the border

security of whether we do or do not have a secure border and how exactly would measure what border security would actually mean, this question gets at the heart of every debate over immigration policy in this country. it's what we'll be talking today with two very different perspectives. consider this. the u.s. now employs over 21,000 border patrol agents and according to migration policy institute we spend more each year on immigration enforcement that on all other federal law enforcement combined. on top of that apprehension at the southern border, a statistic which colors used as sort of a rough proxy for them of people trying to cross the border without status, those apprehensions are at near 40 year lows. but for all we know about the input, agents we have, how much technology in different sectors, et cetera, actually measuring what we know to be a secure

border has been both elusive and divisive. scholars are in general agreement that the sunrise population seek out about 12 million people in 2007 and has dropped ever since. according to the most recent estimates in the center for immigration studies, there are 10.9 million off immigrants in the u.s. today. to put this another way to unauthorized immigration is declining and for countries like mexico, it's now net negative. but why this decline in what's contributing to it? without jumping to four had one of the key questions we will be debating today is whether border security has played a role in that decline or, frankly, whether border security has been largely ineffective part least has missed its intended target. i have to say the answer to this question is more than merely academic. and really how we define border security, whether border security actually deters

unauthorized migration will be one of the key questions in any type of immigration reform conversation, whether next year or anytime in the future. is border security is effective in deterring unauthorized migration, then the question becomes what types of border security are more effective than others? shall be putting our limited resources towards building a wall or maybe put more boots on the ground or more technology, or something else entirely? is border security is not effective, given a much we currently spend on it each year, should we be putting this money and resources elsewhere? are there parts of border security that are less effective than others? here to bring some clarity to this issue are two of the leading scholars of the question. douglas massey is professor of sociology and public affairs at princeton university and codirector of the mexican migration project, an annual survey which been gathering data on documented and undocumented

migration from mexico for nearly 30 years. brian roberts is an economist who is focused on the past decade on conducting quantitative research on issues related border security and immigration policy. he has worked in institute for defense analyses and consulting firm and nathan associates. in 2010 he was the assistant director for border and immigration programs at the office of program analysis and evaluation of the department of homeland security. it also worked in dhs office of policy and its science and technology directorate as an economist and program manager. deal to be from pennsylvania and a ph.d in economics from the massachusetts institute of technology. please join me in welcoming our panelists. [applause] >> it's a pleasure to be here today. i been studying mexican immigration for latin america and immigration generally for a

long time now. and one thing i've learned is that when congress makes immigration policy, it doesn't make policy with any knowledge of immigration, and it is not really trying to achieve anything in the management of immigration. auditions and congress responded to domestic clinical contingencies, how is it going to affect me in the next election. how can i use immigration as it took to mobilize voters ?-que?-que x how can i use it to gain resources for my agency's? or support a cause only. we look at american immigration policy in many ways it more about america's hopes and aspirations and fears and apprehensions than anything else. and to understand where we are right now we have to go back into the 1960s, the 1960s were the civil rights era. the civil rights era was more about hopes and aspirations,

riding past law, indian jim crow, the racial icing public policy that had been the racialized for decades at the federal level. and so what i'm going to do is give you a short history lesson and then talk about where we are now and present some data. what you see on the screen is a summary of immigration flows from mexico over the past 60 years. in the late 19, three lines. the blue line is legal immigration, the redline is temporary worker immigration, and the green line is undocumented migration. and that is border apprehensions divided by the number of border patrol officers. if you have office with you get more apprehensions. by dividing by the number of border patrol officers to get a

rough proxy for, noticing this is the actual number of undocumented entries. this is the trend over time and it's consistent with a lot of other data sources. back in the 1950s, right after operation wetback ramped up apprehensions along the border, the trend it was importing about 450,000 guest workers into the country from mexico every year. and illegal -- legal immigration permanent residents was running at about 50,000 per year. in the late 1950s there were about half a million mexicans coming to the trend it each year, 450,000, 90% were situating back and forth. studies show even among legal permanent residents a huge fraction were using their permanent resident document as a de facto from it guest worker visa.

heavily circular flow. in 1955 comes along at its hopes and aspirations. the civil rights act passes in 1964. in 1965, congress amended the immigration nationality act not as a tool to achieve any objective for immigration necessarily but to the prejudice a system that been put in place in the 1920s that had banned asian immigration and african immigration and set up goes to favor northern and western europeans and distribute against southern and eastern europeans, and reduce the overall number of immigrants. so by the 1960s, dan rostenkowski is in charge of the house ways and means committee, kind of been out of shape about how congress talked about the grandparents. immigration reform is really about civil rights, redressing

past wrongs. it was debated very much in the sub rights. the summers were against it because they were afraid they would change the racial composition of america. they insisted on if you would change the immigration system we want to put a limit on immigration from the western hemisphere. because that's where brown people are. and so in 1965 congress rewrote the immigration nationality act, createcreate a preference systet gave preferences to family members, relatives or family members already in the united states. a smaller segment to labor needs in the united states. this was used to allocate visas outside the western hemisphere initially. the western hemisphere before 1965 had no numerical limits on immigration. mexicans could enter on in limited numbers and about the terms of the 50,000 per year. they capped the hemisphere at

120,000 visas and by 1976 had ramped down these quotas to 20,000 visas per country per year and that's a global quota system. it's been a global cap of about 290,000 visas. also in 1965, congress let the% of legislation expire. that it sponsored the temporary worker program known as the% program. been abroad in those workers in the late 1950s. so in 1965 there was a dramatic break. congress if you read the debates they didn't talk about, half my people coming in from mexico, how is this going to affect things. it was more about is, are they going to let asians? those with a concert at the time. so what happened in 1965 is is a massive break in the system and you see it there.

that's the genesis of the contemporary era of undocumented migration. you go from a system where you have to let people come into the united states with legal visas also been circulating to a new system with the temperate worker program is gone and legal permanent resident visas are capped at 20,000 what happens? the flows have been established over the past two decades. all the migrants are connected to employers and the united states. it was institutionalized into expectations and practices on both sides of the border. quickly reestablished itself under undocumented auspices as you can see with the green line. then stops growing and begins fluctuating. basically in the 1970s the labor flows have prevailed in the 50s were reestablished, only know that as the juniper certainly under undocumented

auspices. that created a new dynamic whereby since they are illegal migrants, illegal by definition they must be criminals and lawbreakers. this gives rise to a new threat narrative in the american media were latinos in general and mexicans in particular are portrayed as a great threat to the nation. a series of metaphors are brought out to explain this to the public. there's the flawed metaphor where illegal migrants are going to flood america and round his culture and innovate society. overtime a metaphor that what that was the martial metaphor of the united states being invaded by an alien army at its characterizes being occupied. board of the officers were trying to hold the line against the aliens. these are all terms that were widely used.

you can see this in the figure. i did an analysis of leading newspapers, the "washington post," the "l.a. times" and "the wall street journal," and look at references to mexican immigration as a flood crisis or invasion in leading newspapers. you can see the rise in these metaphors herald of the rising undocumented migration. they take about the same time undocumented migration peaks and begin to fluctuate. every time there's a peek there's another piece of at the immigrant legislation or anti-immigrant policy that is enacted. what this did was set off a dynamic where you had this exogenous effect from outside the system where there was a massive change in policy and sunlit illegal migration begins because as the opportunities for legal entry of a well-established legal system. illegal migration increases so you get a big increase in

illegal entries which, of course, drives up apprehensions which becomes the visible manifestation of illegal migration. these are estimates i use from the general social survey and other sources, federal sources, data. that tries to move towards restrictive legislation, restricted operations, increasing the number of border patrol agents, the size of the border patrol. in the end of that produces more like watch hours. if geif you have more people ane resources devoted to catching people at the border, you get for people at the border. that feed feedback on the syste, drive-up apprehension. the legal migration takes in 1979. and begins to fluctuate with no real secular trend there after your but apprehensions continue to rise you're not because our people are coming but because more and more efforts put it to catching those who are coming.

it becomes a self-perpetuating dynamic. every apprehensions increased, that of the border patrol gets out of with a press release. via the invasion is continuing because apprehensions are rising. therefore, we need more resources. more resources, or apprehensions, because the self perpetuating cycle. you can see this, this is our standardized index where we defied apprehensions i people looking for them. just keeps going up and up and up even though the trend really has flattened out. and this resulted in progressive militarization of the border, exacerbated by things like the cold war, during the dr. ward and the war on terror in the '90s and 2000.

you can see this massive increase in border enforcement. this is in $2013, this is the border patrol's budget in real terms. it's flat. [inaudible] that just puts it through the roof. now remember that illegal migration inflows peaked right about here. so all this occurred well after the flow speed and really like 2000 of those already beginning to decline into the united states. so this massive militarization

which was completely disconnected from the underlying traffic along the border occurred and it had a pronounced effect. not necessarily the ones that were intended. i'm going to regret what the effects were and then i'm going to show you data that supports the views that i outlined. at the border effective militarization or border outcomes transform the geography of order crossings. shifting the places that migrants used to cross. and also incidentally shifted geography of migrant settlemen settlements, create a whole set of new destinations throughout the united states. and also increase the use of coyotes or border smugglers. it increased the cost of using coyotes. it had actually no effect or limited the fact of the problem of border regions despite all the resources put into it. and had virtually no effect unlikely ultimately getting into

the united states. it increased the risk of death and injury during border crossings. so that's what the changing rally on the border. how did the israelis change my good behavior? according to the data, though so effect unlikely to of taking a first undocumented trick. you are not discouraging someone for leaving for the united states without documents. but it did drastically decrease the likelihood of return from a first tribute and to decrease the likelihood of taking an additional trip the likelihood of returning from an additional trip. it didn't stop the basic info but really stop the outflow. that had serious consequences. now i'm going to be drawing from now on most of the day the, before were publicly available data from surveys or from the government in the united states.

companies data from the mexican migration project which i've been running with my colleague at the university of guadalajara since 1982. we've been collecting data every year in the field doing surveys of communities throughout mexico and we go into a committee, take a sample come find out who in each household has ever been to the united states for ago has ever been in the united states, the most recent trip, total number of trips, information includes wages, working conditions, destination, states, metropolitan areas of residence and legal status your and then for each household had and then later on in the data series sponsors as well we collect a complete history of migration and border crossings. again from roughly whenever they left school to the time of the survey. we know information about every time they headed out to the united states, what happened to them at the border, how many

times there have prevented, where they went and what they did. all this data as you can see this is a website are publicly available. so from the very beginning this was a public database and the current have about 4000 data users including many from the department of homeland security, i might add. that make use of the mexican migration project database. it's the largest compilation to my knowledge of information on the movement back and forth of documented and undocumented migrants from mexico to the united states. surveys from its october by service in the united states, people who have settled in the united states and no longer return back. most of the surveys we've done in the winter months when migrants were circulating back. this has become more difficult because they don't circulate anymore as we will see. what i'm going to do, i estimate a series of equations and i'm focusing on the u.s. context and the mexican context controlling

for demographic, background, human capital, physical capital, region origin and committee size. that's just all held constant at what i'm focusing on is the u.s. context, and the key variable is of course border enforcement. this is as little variable we estimated to eliminate indoctrinating from the enforcement effort. and it's the law of the border patrol, and log of the instant of border patrol budget. we also control for the rate of unemployment growth in the united states, rogue access to residents and work visas. and the u.s. minimum daily wage, the rate of gdp growth in mexico, the homicide rate in mexico and the mexican minimum daily wage. we are trying to hold as best we can economic and social circumstance on both sides of

the border constant and look at the effect of border enforcement. and so the rest of the evidence i'm going to present a series of figures and what they show is absurd problem of cross integration location predicted from our mexican migration project data from the life history of all these different household heads we have a team led which are hundreds of thousands of person years of observation at this point. the solid line is the observed figured that we get when we just tied to the data and estimate it as a simple estimate. and the dashed line is what we get as a predicted value from the model. the only thing we bury over time is the order enforcement effort as measured by our border patrol budget and the everything up in that model constant.

and so you see the raw trend is that everybody crosses at the same place through a run 1986-1987. immigration reform control act targets busy border crossings initially of course, capasso and san diego. and then this begins the process of decline that occurs over time. and it really takes acceleration in the early 1990s. 1993, 1994. operation blockade is launched in el paso. full-scale militarization of that sector. 1994 operation gatekeeper in san diego, and that sector. and, of course, migrants initially walked into this wall of enforcement resources which wasn't there before and suddenly there, and so the next time they try, they avoid the built-up areas.

and so the net effect was to channel my gratian away from el paso and san diego into the sonoran desert and through arizona. prior to 1993-1994, the arizona senator was a complete backwater. to have that insignificant immigration into arizona since the 1920s. a number of crossings that occurred along the arizona portion of the border was fairly small. so as you can see the effect of the militarization was to, in fact, shift the points of border crossings. it increased the likelihood of crossing with the coyote. you see the raw trend predicted from the border enforcement effort, the dashed line. people always use a lot of border crossing guides to come into the united states, but what the administration did, it

turned into the very common thing into a one of% thing for everybody not crosses with border crossing guides were as back in 1970 was only about three quarters cross with crossing guides. it also dramatically increased the cost of border crossing, change it from about an average of about $500 in real terms through the late 1980s and then accelerating up into 2010 when we cut off the data, it was about $2700. it's now according to the latest data from the mexican migration project on 2014 is pushing my thousand dollars. so it did increase the cost of border crossing, and it also increased the risks of border crossings. here's the dashed line is the effect of the militarization on the raw number.

you see it roughly explains the trend. so things that were change quite dramatically. so what's a poor margaret did it was depends on what happens to them when they attempt to cross. what you have is a solid line is the other probability of apprehension over time. which basically a ranges to a ranges between 20-point to-20-point for. very little trend. you see that the effect of border enforcement was really quite minor and slight increase over time but the increase in statistical terms without significant instrument not commiserate with an exponential increase in border enforcement efforts. about life at the very top is the problem of ultimately gain entry over a series of attempts. and you can see that through 2006, 2005 possibility of

getting in was about 100%. afterwards it begins to fall off and maybe that's an indication of border enforcement finally having attracted maybe not. very few people are migrating after 2007-2008. you don't get very stable estimates. and this is the observed, this doesn't look, look at the observed, probably at taking a first a doctor trip to the united states, the solid line. the dashed line is the effect of border enforcement, which you see us know. you see a dotted line and that's the effect of the average age of people at the risk of migrating to the united states without documents. has been put up and up and up and then come back to that in a second.

so that's what a shift in the average age of the mexican population that has pushed down the rates of the probably of migration in recent years. this repeats the analysis only now we've got the object decline, the dark line. that online shows rejecting from mexican fundamentals only, the mexican conditions only the dashed line is what you get when you predict from use fundamentals only. you see the fundamentals have not changed that much. and if the fundamentals are not driving the downward slope of the migrants, it's really the average age as you see here. >> this shows the probability of returning from a first trip, and as you can see it is spiky but it goes down and the trend is really explained larger by the

increase in border enforcement. conclusions then, from 1986-2010 the united states spent about $35 billion in border enforcement. in so doing transformed what had been a circular flow of workers going to three states into a subtle population of families living in 50 states. in the 1990s particularly the effect of border enforcement was no on the problem of leaving for the united states but profound on the problem of returning to mexico from the united states. at the increase in the info and that's why you saw in giovanni's slides that all of a sudden there's all these unskilled workers coming in in the 1990s. they always come in the difference, they are not going home. because it's too costly and risky to circulate back and forth so they settled. by pushing the close away from california a transfer would have been a regional flow affecting

california, texas and illinois intellectually national population. it reduced outmigration while living in my gratian unchanged to double the net rate of undocumented immigration and increased undocumented by bush go. could a population of 11 million people undocumented u.s. residents, 50% of the 60% of mexican immigrants are a document at about two-thirds of central americans are currently a document. all while attempting to in undocumented vote which would've ended on its own accord after 2000 your the demographic transition shifted to for children in mexico from seven children in 19622.2-2.3 children today. next has become an aging society. and rates, labor force growth are decelerating. mexico's average age has

steadily risen and is now about 28 years big average age in mexico is 28 years. if you look at any migration curve, as the protectors a pattern to its flat at about 15 or 16 echoes up, except 11, 22 and then declines are probably funds out again over age of 30. if you don't migrate between the ages of 15 and 30 you're unlikely to migrate at all. what happened in mexico is mexico's become an aging society, average age increases increase and that's driven undocumented migration down to very low levels to the point where it's now zero and has been for the last eight years. it's likely negative in terms of from mexico alone. that's the current mexico-u.s. border. my back is to the pacific ocean and i'm standing on the hill. the left is united states. the right is tijuana. just for comparison issue, this is the korean demilitarized

zone. [laughter] it's a misnomer, demilitarized zone because they are the two most militarized border anywhere in the world today. [applause] >> i'd like to thank alex and data for inviting me to come there today. i'm going to talk about illegal immigration outcomes on the southern border, what are they and why have they changed? i want to start with some disclaimers that all opinions expressed are my personal views and do not necessarily reflect those of the u.s. government or any office in. i want to stress my analysis and presenting it positive is not normative. trying to understand what happened through 2015, i'm not making any evaluations or recommendations of what should happen or what should happen in the future. i apologize of a lot of slides to go through. i'm going to go through them quickly. the topics aren't what do

americans believe about illegal immigration? what border enforcement measures need to be reported? what our estimates of these measures are the southern border? what has illegal migration across the southern border changed? and what challenges exist with respect to measuring and recording outcomes related to these phenomena? what do americans believe about illegal immigration? they believe it is increased in recent years. 2015 paul the most recent national poll asked best guest number of immigrants coming to you illegally has increase or decrease in the past two years with 69% believe it is increased. that holds true for any breakdown across political affiliation or liberal, moderate, conservative and together sociodemographic rate down that you can do with the data. if you go back and look at the data from 2000-2015 it shows a large majority of americans

believe that the board is insecure, and that the u.s. isn't doing enough to prevent illegal immigration across its borders. these are the exceptions. what border enforcement measures need to be reported? i argued with my colleagues that the following three measures are really the core measures. the first and most important is the number of successful illegal entries. that's really what immigration enforcement is designed to prevent. and two other measures should be reportereported to the probablyf apprehension which is the average chance someone will be caught when attempting illegal entry. and the probability about border deterrence which is if you are caught and subjected to any political consequence and you are returned to your home country, what is the chance you try again? number one is the strategic

outcome that is the first order of importance and number two and three are outputs of border law enforcement. we've argued all these measures should be report in the performance management framework. the scope of estimates that could be developed for illegal immigration are broad your borders are complex. they include land, sea and air force. there are two very long plan borders. the southern does all the attention. there are different entry domains, ports of entry and between ports of entry. it's my duty as government should develop estimates of all of the key flows and stocks related to illegal immigration. the focus of today will be on the southern border between ports of entry. that's where most illegal immigration into this is believed to have taken place. there's a map of the border. not as dramatic as doug photos but it shows that the border,

2000 miles long and its punch worked at various points with ports of entry where people can legally go back and forth between the two countries ended between these port arthur long stretches of terrain that can be completely empty and depopulated or can be somewhat populated with some rural areas for small towns. what our estimates we have for these measures? this is the measure that dhs and its predecessor organization has traditionally ported which our e apprehension fictitious apprehensions from 1925-2015, and doug has talked about this data. but i think this graph is interesting in that it shows recently there's been a very, very big structural change in that the number of apprehensions of mexican nationals has fallen quite a bit i'm at the number of apprehensions of non-mexican

nationals has risen quite a bit. apprehensions are not a good measure, not a measure of all of the key strategic outcomes which is successful illegal interest. what has to get done to go beyond that? it felt pressured report measures in the 1990s after the gipper act images of measured results will be published and then withdrawn and debated over the next 25 years. this is documented in a study published bipartisan policy center in 2015. current efforts center on known floafloat day which is collectey the u.s. border patrol. known float day comprised of three distinct types of data, apprehensions which include those who are caught, not do so trying to figure apprehensions of people who are trying to evade. are also people who cannot to debate and that's an important point. turn backs, the border patrol makes us with of those observed to enter the u.s. and then leave

act into mexico, perhaps because they felt they were seen by border patrol and they wanted to get back without being caught. got a ways artist and to those who actually successfully evaded border patrol. got a ways artist made on the basis of a body of evidence that border patrol systematically collects and processes. dhs today reports as a horse southwest security measure be called the interdiction effectiveness ratio count and what is it -- by equation was altered to be a line. that's the ratio of apprehensions plus turn backs to apprehensions plus turn backs plus got aways. simple ratio. it is intended suggest with the probability of apprehension is. border patrol patrol as the cowe also an estimate of successful illegal entries. unfortunately, it is my view

that these measures based on known float day on a credible. the reason is first got awaits systematically underestimate the true number of successful illegal entries for well understood reasons. they are going to be successful in trees by people that you observe the evidence for whatsoever. also the interdiction is fundamentally flawed because no clear interpretation as a measure. it does not measure the probability of apprehension. it includes apprehension of people not trying to evade border patrol, for example, some asylum seekers who are turning themselves into border patrol. it also is ethically legitimate to include turn backs. so any measure that combines data on the page and on evaders and/or includes turn backs is going to be fundamentally flawed. all of us did useful for the purposes it should not be used to keep border security measures. what's an alternative? an approach that has been used

since 1990 is a reprieve trial small. is based on the following simple conception of process of illegal entry. migrant into the border to illegal entry. if they are caught they return to mexico or the home country of application of any consequence. and that's it was not to try again or to return home or perhaps live in the border region. this model has been used to measure successful illegal entries and the public approbation for a long time. it was first used, published in a book in 1990, a foundational book but it was used i dug and todd reesing are in 1995. they use of -- more recently it's been used by a study is important to apprehension records which has not been publicly released by the department of homeland security. backup slides will be public

available provide a more technical explanation of the model. there are a lot of potential data sources to estimate these measures using the repeat trust model potential to analyze the phenomenon of migration from mexico to the united states. a lot of this research, i guess the color, does it show? story. i have some animation. there we go. a lot of research has used the date of the mexican migration project which for many years was really the only source of data and this generated an immense literature and a lot of insights into the nature of migration from mexico to the u.s. i'm going to present research that is based on two other sources. first, this is a survey that's conducted by annexing research institute and the survey, they did extensive survey of people

in the border region including those who are caught by law enforcement authorities in the us and returned. at all some gorgeous use border patrol apprehension records. that's an excellent study 2012 that reviews all of these many surveys that could potentially be used and if you're interested i highly recommend it. is very thorough. recent analytical estimates, dhs recently commissioned the institute for defense analyses to make estimates of the three measures for the between port to bring on the southern border, the at ports been made on the southern border, and in the maritime domain. people try to come in by boat. the data use was dhs internal administrative records as well as migrant served to this report has not been made available to the public. i can't present its results. what i can present our results based on publicly available data

that dhs publishes on its website. these estimates are not as high quality as the other study essence but i can't present them. this chart shows as the successful illegal entries between ports of entry on the southern border, all nationalities. they exclude asylum seeking apprehensions who would believe largely turned themselves into enforcement authorities once they arrive at the border. at the shows estimated legal entries from 2005-2016 and it's a 95% drop. this is an estimate of the deterrence rate. if you are caught by border patrol and returned to mexico, what is the chance that you will give up trying to reenter and go home or make alternative arrangements and not attempt

illegal entry? from 2005-2010, that probably was at a fairly low levels, 15%, maybe 20%. that's consistent with what doug showed. after 20 than it has risen dramatically. it's a real structural change in behavior at the border. the possible expedition for this is that it's driven by consequences that border patrol has been instituting on a large scale since 2010. files to estimate problem of apprehensions, that is estimated using the publicly available data. is risen from 20% to 30% through 2010, to about a little over 50% today. which is again, there's been a significant rise. what is illegal migration across the southern border changed?

illegal migration from mexico is this is the economic conditions of use, economic conditions in mexico, law-enforcement efforts, democratic change in mexico all factors that go to the site in his talk and just incorporate into his research. i'm going to present an alternative view using different data. this is based on both 2012 on published research that was updated this year. i don't have a paper available on it. i could osha results that are based on public available data. it's possible to do this research using dhs administered internal records. the results are going to be higher quality but i'm showing you what i can present base of publicly affordable data. we used the mexican equivalent of the american community survey. it is a nationally represent survey done on a courtly basis. this survey when it surveys

house with a observed migration events in house over assemblies to migrate abroad. it does not identify legal versus illegal immigration to we developed an approach to estimating the probability some old buddy is deleted -- migrating illegally. we are going to stick our sample to working age men with less than post secondary education. that's the group that has the highest propensity to publicly migrate. up economic splintered ribs are going to be the u.s. unemployment rate and the mexican expected wage rate. enforcement explanatory variables include border patrol enforcement ask after by the number of agents, and the consequences, the number of misdemeanor and felony prosecution. we use control variables. we control for border enforcement using enrichment that's based on the border patrol budgetary process. that backup slides go very much

into the methodology. i will say we are identifying impacts of economic and enforcement of variables by taking advantage of geographic variation across the border and across mexican communities where enoe is intimate and across states of the united states. so the research is different from previous research both in terms of the data that is used and the methodological approach that is using and the variation is taking advantage of. this is the overall u.s. unemployment rate. it shows what a great recession and also had an economic recovery afterwards. this is reflected in higher hirings and job openings in the construction manufacturing and other sectors. there has been a recovery and job openings in these sectors as well as hires. this is the variable we use. for the mexican economic conditions.

it's the expected income that a person in the enoe so they can expect we see in mexico. it's their expected wage multiplied by the actual possible of them getting a job if they shows that has not risen in the enoe sample over the last 10 years. here's the border patrol agents. doug already talked about that. finally, they shows prosecutions of border crosses, misdemeanor and felony. there's been an increase in both. this is the part of the border enforcement intensification over the last decade. the preliminary results based on publicly available data suggest that enforcement has had a significant impact on the decision of people who are migrating illegally. it also suggests that were as misdemeanor prosecutions had a significant impact, felony prosecution have had a significant impact.

that's consistent with that rise at the border detroit rates i showed earlier. finally, u.s. economic conditions are martial significant and the mexican expected income variable is highly significant. i can't believe i've gotten this far. [laughter] i didn't go so well in my pockets of this money. counterfactual simulation to we take these results and we predict historic levels of aggregate illegal immigration of this population for mexico. so we basically do a historical prediction using actual historical value of all of our explanatory variables and then we simulate counterfactual centers. what would have happened if explanatory variables remain constant after 2005 level?

we hold economic variables constant. demographic change in mixer should be captured in the counterfactual because of the enoe survey which is capturing the change. here's the results. the blue shows the historical prediction of the regression model using actual values. then when we hold constant age and consequence values at their 2005 level, you can see that it got enforcement buildup had not taken place we would've expected, the counterfactual just got it would have been a rise in the flow. finally economy variable, we can see that as the great recession start it had a very powerful impact on migration decisions of individuals. but as the recovery took place, that impact lessened over time. what this counterfactual graph is really saying is that in the absence of enforcement we would've expected recovery in

the flow of people from mexico to the u.s., but that enforcement plausibly as for the first to introduce a disconnect between u.s. business cycle and illegal migration from mexico. posset analysis your a new flow, asylum seekers during this event important phenomenon that's developed since 2012. a new flow of migrants has emerged of asylum-seekers from central american country. and determines the dynamics of the cell requires its own separate analysis. i think me and you will remember the debate that broke out in 2014 over whether this flow is affected primary by because such as crime and poverty or by u.s. policies actual or perceived. i don't think these explanations are mutually exclusive. i also think based on strategic research that root causes can link until a reason why the

flows have emerged but they cannot explain the dynamics of the flow over time. finally, what challenge of exist with respect to report outcome for the to illegal immigration. first can executive branch produce a report with credible estimates? it has been crippled by an overriding concern with little optics at every level. bureaucratic obstruction and a lack of analytical capabilities. is afflicted with five years of failure. congress had to specify in detail over time what dhs would report but that's often, that's been ignored in the past. teaches sectors can change it was reported to the public as evidenced by instability in reported measures. it may be the case congress and the public might have more confidence in a third party conducting this work and alternative such as congressional commission or outsourcing to independent institution should be considered. can executive branch share information? are missing or reporting as this is not enough.

teaches us would have to earn credit of assuring its data, methods and results with the research community. it needs to establish a partnership with the research community. that partnership with pride in the 1980s but it long ago disappeared. this must be to on a completely level depoliticized wingfield. many federal agencies routinely share very sensitive data with external researchers. gear o other than this has done this for a long time. there's ways to share data with protecting confidentiality. teaches resistance to data sharing is very fierce. technical challenges. it goes without saying meshing flows that are seeking to escape detection is analytical challenging but research has shown it is possible to credibly do this. research can always be improved. ..

also an application of consequences. they are largely underwear with illegal immigration and the u.s. government faces challenges in establishing its current ability in this area. i would like to thank the following secretary jay johnson, and of the people who

work for them for both secretaries who had supported and enabled good research. there are some very fine people in that group. john whitley. the retired chief of border patrol micah fisher. teresa brown gordon hansen an economist at the university of california san diego another economist formally employed by dhs who played a key role in the research that led to that counterfactual chart. and a very contentious issue. robert warren and others and many others i could write out 70 names i have no time to go through them. thank you.

>> thank you so much to both of you. i found this to be a fascinating discussion. you do ball to come to opposite conclusions so we will dig in a little bit more. to me it seems like the key question comes down to this. with the unauthorized migration had stopped on its own accord at least after 2000 without that strong border security and how much weight do we actually assign to the demographics and how much do you guys assigned to things. i will put that ball to you. where do you fall in this. >> just a reflection on what we have seen here. actually my analysis goes from 1965-2010 and during that

timeframe they were analysis that were consistent with each other. quite a few people were trying to get into the country. so successful injuries and that has dropped. into very low levels. we haven't seen really for four or five decades. post 2010 numbers. they are very few mexicans trying to get into the united states. i said that in my presentation.

it's really hard to get to the stable estimate. in a given year. they have larger samples and apprehensions but still the number of mexicans attempting to enter the united states by all measures are as a record lows. the number of mexican apprehensions haven't been this low since the early 1960s. and then it is negative is it is basically over. i think an illegal migration is basically over. and it was over by 2010. that was a terminable to the demographic shift in mexico. we could debate about the effect of border enforcement today. i don't have any information either way. it could be we know that a lot of what used to be run-of-the-mill stuff

involving border crossing has now been criminalized so that back in the day and then they tried again. according to the data i have seen including from there they been previously the ported was largely driven by the fundamentals there has been a

huge revival in temporary worker migration. and according to that the interim temporary work visas. but a growing number of the legal immigrants circulating back and forth. you have this ironic situation where you had 11 million undocumented migrants because they can't circulate in the legal component is

increasingly sick elated back and forth. it is back to status quo. it is causing huge problems domestically. i became aware of the nature it is a survey that doesn't capture that much information. as doug said that has fallen into zero over the last years. the data that we are using it is is like the american community survey. it is capturing a civic and certificate number.

it is still a relatively rare event. there is enough there you can make stable estimates they are capturing data on about 1500 migrants who have been returned to mexico every year that is a pretty large sample. it's directly going to the border crossing points i completely agree that bringing into the analysis the expansion of the use of temporary work visas in recent years is important. and i think it's can require using data on temporary worker visas at the individual level.

it needs to be brought into the research mix. any to be made available to researchers a final point i would say is about the economic factors. the economic data from 1870 to now do not show any evidence that income levels and standards of living in mexico are actually converging. it came as a big surprise to me. that is apparently the empirical reality. if you look at per capita gdp levels from 1870 to now the ratio has hovered between three and four.

there is no sign it was done in the early 2000's and one could sense what they found evidence for the mexican income levels will converge to a permanent gap. the economic gap seems to be something of a very long structure. it will always be there as an inducement to migrate where

does that fit in. i think a lot of the flow is ending up in the legal stream eisenhower carried out the operation but he also more than doubled if you are interested in that is fascinated and offers many lessons.

what you can see as it was usually very accurately to manage illegal migration. it was the border patrol in the biggest opponent of the program was a department of labor. i know that it has a very bad reputation as leading to human rights abuses. and things of that nature. but leaving that aside it instructs and there is a lesson that one has to consider the legal migration programs both in terms of positive analysis. i know we are getting in between all of you.

the lunch will be held on the second floor just up the spiral staircase. c-span.org.

"washington journal" continues. mark and joining us now is krikorian, the executive irector at the center for immigration studies. he's here to discuss donald rump's immigration speech this week, the long-awaited immigration speech he gave on wednesday and how the issue of affecting the political landscape and its impact on the 2016 election. so much for joining us today. guest: thank you for having me. host: remind viewers first started what is the center for immigration studies. tank.: we're a think we're online at cis.org and we the ne information and do usual think tank stuff. we have a blog, do publications and we are the only think tank on the immigration

issue.c side of the we're in favor of tighter enforcement and lower levels of we look at peaking, the economics and the law enforcement angles and everything about immigration. host: okay. to what was your reaction donald trump's immigration speech laying out his policy on wednesday night? guest: well, i was --i mean, i was concerned because for two and the e candidate campaign had been meandering all over the place saying all kinds things, contradictory things, things different than what they immigration, re in so it seemed like after a year of running as mr. immigration control, they still hadn't what they were for. alarming, s kind of actually. so when the speech actually happened, i was quite pleased. it's probably the best immigration speech any nominee for a major party has ever given. now, my only quibble would be it would have been nice if he'd dialed down the intensity

f it because it was at a rally so there was a lot of sort of yelling and ra-rah and all this given in a t was duller format, it might have been better because it really speech.ubstantive he had 10 points, nine of them on illegal immigration and the reducing legal immigration. well-informed y substantive thing. the only thing is if it was a trumpish, it might have been more effective. but the substance of the speech was eally -- or i think hard to argue with. host: you wrote a piece in the donaldk daily news about trump's immigration policy saying that he tripped on and he needs to smarten up about how to deal immigrants million currently in the country. in his remarks wednesday night, he said that that's the the first ssue, issue, being -- securing the border and stopping the flow of immigrants.

but do you agree with him saying who are here is the secondary issue, or is that something that needs to be dealt concurrently? guest: it's definitely a secondary issue. see, the reason this has become issue with him is that during the primaries, he was saying hat, well, all the illegal aliens -- it's actually closer to 12 at this point, 12 million them, round them up with immigration -- or deportation force, and we're going to do it two years. that was nonsense. that's not going to happen. skeptics have ever said we'd be rounding up and deporting everybody. he had to walk that back. the question was how was he going to walk that back? speech, i think he addressed it appropriately. he said, the first thing we have is fix the problem. the goal is -- if you think about illegal immigration, it's things, two overarching goals. one is what do do you about the here.als that are that's the secondary question.

the first, how do you make sure we don't have enough 12 million aliens down the road? once you fix that, it's a lot the r then to address people who are still here. some of them will go to amnesty, probably. a presidential candidate should not be talking about that in my opinion and that was one of the when ms a week or two ago he started musing publicly on television about, well, it amnesty if you let them stay or pay back taxes and what have you. are buzz ll, those words used by the pro-amnesty crowd but even beyond that, it's simply irresponsible to even be speculating about that until you fix the problem. debate how you bail out the boat until you fix the water in in etting the first place. host: we are talking with mark krikorian from the center for studies about donald trump's immigration plan which he laid out in a speech this past wednesday night. are taking your calls, democrats can call 202-748-8000.

republicans 202-748-8001. independents 202-748-8002. have a special line for those who are undocumented immigrants living in the united can call 202-748-8003. that there tioned was this previous talk by the candidate about perhaps softening his immigration stanstance but on night, he seems to come out very firmly, both in tone and in content. do you think changed between that time he considered softer approach and actually delivering the speech? during the couple of weeks before the speech -- this talking about this softening thing -- i think the campaign just hadn't decided what they were going to do. a co-campaign manager, on a nn connolly said couple of the shows a couple of

said, his hat position on immigration going to be determined. his is not the way to run a campaign. if you're going to soften -- well, not soften but if you're going to make the it and get it over with. in a sense, it's not talking about softening because he's not talking about all the illegal aliens anymore, which was a dumb thing and never should have said it. the way i see it is not so much a change or pivot or hatever word they're using for it. he actually went more if kind of a gut reaction. at sitting around the bar the end of the day say, we need to deport all these illegal aliens. that's not a policy. he did.hat he had a gut reaction. the speech this week was turning into ut reaction real-world policies that are actually things that we can do. host: okay. we're talking with mark for rian with the center independent studies and also of the book for keys for and ration, both legal illegal, which was put out in

2008 as well as how obama is america through immigration through 2010. up next on our line is eric plains, in from white maryland, an independent. good morning, eric. good morning, america. i'm eric. and i want to say i love america. you know, i came here as an immigrant myself, and i came country legally. to wait in , i have lines to come here. trump, you know, 200%. statement today is to the hispanics.to the black lives don't matter to clinton. they don't matter to her. hispanics, she doesn't care about you. she cares about your vote. democrats wanted to solve the immigration issues, they would have done it when obama both the house and the

senate. and actually, obama has deported than any hispanics other president. but you are still planning to as if they were sheep. now, to solve the immigration you need to stop it somewhere, because what is the giving papers to everybody if in five years we have another 12 million people. eric, that's a lot to unpack and i want to give mark a chance to go through all of that. well, i mean, the first thing i think to note is that as a legal , he's immigrant. and he did have to jump through a lot of hoops. there's a lot of bureaucracy you there's fees you have to pay, paperwork you have to fill out and, you know, maybe that should be a little not going to it's be that different. there's always going to be a lot of hoops to go through to be a legal immigrant. have to wait for a while depending on what category you're coming in. line is, legal immigrants have stood in line in illegal immigrants cut line.

and an illegal immigrant may not have papers yet, but the point is, he's cutting in line to get into the united states while the or l immigrants are waiting the would be legal immigrants are waiting abroad for their turn. withere are lots of issues regard to illegal immigration but the first kind of fairness ssue is that some people are waiting in line at the ticket and other people are just cutting in line and getting in first and it's wrong. it's unfair. what about the notion that democrats have had a chance to fix the system and they haven't yet. they're still asking for the vote of -- uest: there's something to that. i mean, during president obama's first two years, he had majorities in both houses of congress. now, what he would have passed, passed uld have something would have been terrible so in a sense i'm very glad he didn't do it. have an opportunity but he chose to move on healthcare and not immigration because really, immigration was important to president obama. he's not -- his mother is a

mayflower descendant. visitor r was just a here who was briefly here for a year or two and left. resonate just didn't with him. he didn't think it was very important and so he just made his little priority. to this day, that's left a bad taste in the mouth of a lot f his allies who want more immigration, more amnesty, less enforcement, that when they had the chance. he didn't take it. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] caller: you say he was an

immigrant but he does not understand that undocumented immigrants were brought here as kids. we had no other options. chance to fix a the immigration system but he is already set on an agenda. to keep the system messed up. the's let mark address fact that millions of immigrants who are here did come here as children. they were brought by their families. should they be treated differently than others who are here? the thing in congress as they call this the dream act. they have used the term dreamers for these kids, illegal immigrants brought here as children. there is a case to make for amnesty for both kids but unfortunately, there is a couple of problems. the actual dream act legislation has come up several times in

congress has voted down repeatedly partly because it includes people who came here as teenagers as opposed to people who came here at 18 months old or something like that. something like the dream act that was narrowly tailored for kids who really came your young and spent their whole childhood here, not who came here at 16 years old, and there were other elements to it is something i can live with an something that could have passed. the problem is, that these young by thehave been used so-called comprehensive reform advocates. they have used them as poster children. rather than fix their problem with one targeted bill that was kind of tight and had some compromises and could pass, they used them as kind of an thistising to say this is young man who has been here since 18 months old and never had trouble with the police and does well in school and he wants

to join the army and kill america's enemies. all 12 million illegal aliens should get amnesty. that kind of advertising will not work. the people who suffer are people like the caller who frankly could have had his problem fixed if congress and the administration were willing to look just in a narrow way at the problem instead of using him as a prop for a bigger issue. host: the policy of dapa which addressed children who were brought over, donald trump says he would get rid of that as well. do you agree? isst: the problem with daca not that it legalized people who came as kids. met widely in my opinion but the problem is it's illegal. congress to not pass it on the president said once congress failed to pass it, he said i

cannot wait for congress, i will do it anyway. that's not the way democracy works. the problem with daca and dafa would besimilar which for a illegal immigrant parents of foreign born kids is that the president is not allowed to make law on his own. regardless of the substance of the issue -- if present obama issued an executive order saying the sunshine chine everyday and everybody should be happy and it worked, it still wrong, it still unconstitutional. is -- up next is steven or democratic line. i have sood morning, much anger and so many problems with immigration. they should shut that department down. they are the worst people.