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tv   Key Capitol Hill Hearings  CSPAN  September 12, 2016 10:04pm-12:01am EDT

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presidential and vice presidential debates on c-span. the c-span radio app and c-span.org. monday, september 26th is the first presidential debate, live from hofstra university in hempstead, new york. then on tuesday, october 4th, vice president ya candidates debate at longwood university in farmville, virginia, and on sunday, october 9th, washington university in st. louis hosts the second presidential debate, leading up to the third and final debate between hillary clinton and donald trump. taking place at the university of nevada las vegas on october 19th. live coverage of the presidential and vice presidential debates on c-span. listen live on the free c-span aid row app. >> the house oversight committee takes a look tomorrow how records were handled by the state depth during hillary clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
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former aides to mrs. clinton are set to testify. that's at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. and later in the day, a hearing on the tactics used by ticket scalpers to purchase mass quantities of tickets online. the witnesses include a broadway show producer, a college sports commissioner and legal representatives from stub hub and ticket fly. that's live at 23:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. >> next, deputy homeland security secretary hail landrieu -- alejandro mayorkas outlines -- this conference was host offed by the migration policy institute.
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[applause] >> good morning. i am so pleased to be able to begin this day today by welcoming and introducing alejandro mayorkas. ale is familiar to many in the room and known personally by many of the people in this room and that's because heels always gone the extra mile in forging relationships and very importantly, in listening. we first met in 2009, when he reached out to me, having just come to town help was to be taking over uscis. it had not yet happened, and we had an incredibly productive first conversation, which grew into a very productive relationship over all of those
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years since, and of course, after having served for several years as uscis as the director, he graduated, he was promoted, through a rather difficult process but nonetheless promoted to becoming the deputy secretary of the department of homeland security, where he has been since, administering a $60 billion budget with 240,000 staff. think about that. but i think it's fair to say that even with that sprawling mission and the incredible range of responsibilities at the department of homeland security has and is responsible for, he is probably spent the bulk of his time of any one issue on immigration issues. so, he has for the span of this administration almost uniquely
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been in places where policymaking and policy execution meet, and that is an extraordinary van -- vantage point. so we wanted to at this opinion, when the obama years are coming to an end, to provide an opportunity for him to reflect on that perspective and to tell us about this -- the record of this very activist administration, during a very demanding time. so, this is really an opportunity to, as i said, inviting him, write the first draft of the history of this era. we're very interested to hear it. we're very interested and placed to have you with us, ali, please come to the podium. [applause]
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>> thank you very much for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you. i should comment on a very previously on my relationship with doris. thank you very much for the too kind introduction. doris is more than a mentor and adviser to meche it's a little bit more unique than that. she's actually my role model in terms of what it means to be a fair, just, and a dignified government servant, and so my friendship with doris is extraordinarily important, not only to my life but to my work. i'm a political refugee. i was born in cuba, and my
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parents brought my sister and me to this country to flee the communist takeover of cuba. my parents did not want to raise their children in a communist regime, and my identity as a political refugee was extraordinarily important to my upbringing and my parents were very focused on instilling in me a deep sense of what it means and what it meant to be a refugee to be an individual displaced from one's home and the country in which one's parents dreamed of raising their children. in 2010 and '11, i had in the course of my work as the director of u.s. citizenship and immigration services the opportunity to learn a great
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deal about our administration, of the refugee system and to learn about refugees displaced all over the world and there was one experience in particular that quite frankly shook my identity as a political refugee. i went with colleagues to nairobi, to view our refugee operation there, and from nairobi we took a small plane to the kenyan-somali boredded and visited the refugee camp. at the time back then, just about six yours -- years ago, the daab had originally been developed for the placement or about 90,000 somali refugees on their way to resettlement in third countries. in 2010, when i visited, there were just over 300,000 people.
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and i would describe them as poor, except for the fact that poverty suggests that individuals have something, but just not enough to make it through. and these individuals had absolutely nothing. i had never seen anything like it. they lived, dwelled, they slept, on the sand, and some of them had plastic bags hoisted on sticks as their only cover, and the others who didn't have those plastic bags had nothing. and i remember sitting in on an interview of a refugee family, conduct bid one of our refugee affairs officers, and the family
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consisted of a bus and wife, father and mother, and four children. and very close knit family. and the eldest of the children was a young 17-year-old, a woman, and our refugee affairs officer asked her where she had been born itch thought she was going to say somalia, and by the way, around the camp, for as far as the eye could see, there is sand and there is heat. there is really nothing. and it's -- it was inconceivable to me how these individuals can even arrive at the daab safely, and of course many did not. the 17-year-old woman in response to the question where she was born, here itch -- here. i was born here. she had lived her entire life, 17 years, in this camp.
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poverty would actually be an exaggeration. daab and i came back from that trip and i had a very difficult time identifying myself as a refugee, political or otherwise, understanding the depth of despair and loss that others who seek the benefits of our refugee system have suffered. and i won't -- please, doris, won't seek to draft the first iteration of a look-back at the obama administration but i just want to share a thought on the notion of identity. because it is identity that has to serve as the foundation of our approach to the difficult immigration issues we confront. we have to give thought to the
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fundamental and foundational question of who we are as a country and who we should be, and how we answer that question on the subject of immigration should be our guide post in traveling through and managing the very, very difficult and sensitive and too often divisive challenges that we face. and so let me give an example or two. the syrian refugee crisis. there were and remain at least two different approaches or priorities that are in tension with one another, and people come down on different sides of that tension. on the one hand, there are many
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who believe that it is one of our proudest traditions as a country to be place of refuge for those in greatest need, and certainly the individuals fleeing the horror that too often occurs in syria qualify in that category, and there is a strong sentiments among many we need to open our arms more widely and more receptively and embrace more strongly a greater number of refugees than we have historically, and historically, of course, we have been the leader in the world in resettling refugees. that leadership numerically we can no longer claim, given the fact that we're speaking of over 4 million individuals displaced from the middle east in this time of great turbulence and terrorism.
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on the other hand there, are individuals who believe that the syrian refugees, as a population, bring a component of concern for our security that is correct a component of that population may very well present a threat to our security, that the vetting of these individuals is especially challenging because we don't have the wealth of background information about them, and we must be, therefore, much more circumspect than the president has expressed as our intention as an administration. and how one answers that tension and the challenge of those competing considerations in my opinion, should be answered by
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how one defines who we are as a country, who we should be and who we want to be, not only today but also tomorrow. and so i don't necessarily suggest what my view of the answer is, but i just think that we must reflect on our identity and what it needs to be as we seek to answer that question. on the issue of security, by the way, one of the things that has developed in my thinking over the last seven years is to frankly add an additional pillar to the three foundational pillars of our immigration system, the three traditional ones are, of course, humanitarian relief, family unity, and economic prosperity. and i do think that the notion of security, the scooter of -- security of our country, northeasts to be explicitly articulated as a fourth pillar,
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given the realities of the world in which we find ourselves. i have found that the community -- that is, of course, not a monolithic entity but the community prepares presents us with the greatest challenge, the community, individuals and advocates and leaders challenge us in the administration most aggressively when the community believes, and whatever the community's views or diverse tonight views are -- when the community believes we are turley acting inconsistent of our identity of who we are and who we should be as a country itch think the rhetoric becomes strongest and the indignation becomes most acute when people perceive a gap between our behavior and our character and our identity. the issue of migration from the northern triangle, from the
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central american countries of honduras, guatemala, and el salvador. many have taken great issue with the administration's removal of individuals who have not qualified for refugee status or asylum status in the united states, and our practice of removing those who have not qualified for relief under our law. the criticism has been that we should be more expansive in how we welcome individuals who i think, without controversy, everybody understands are fleeing despair, great violence, great socioeconomic challenge, and great challenges in their lives. we are a nation of immigrants and we are nation of laws, whether we expand the bases on
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which we seek to welcome these individuals fleeing a better life is a question that is answered by thinking of who we want to be as a country. understanding that we have to manage our borders, are we proudest when we manage those most effectively, and with some orthodoxy to the standards are kick latest in the law or are we most noble when we exercise our discretion with greater generosity and welcome these individuals. i don't mean to suggest an answer but i pose to you the questions that bear on the issue of what one thinks our identity is and should be, and,
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therefore, the answer to that tension and those somewhat divergent questions or at least the answers diverge from those questions, how does one resolve it? i, of course, have my views. some mike describe me as an opinionated individual. i would hope so. i have an opinion on just about every single issue under the sun. that's not say i'm unwilling to change my opinion, but i hope that people who are interested in the issues of our day and the challenges of our times have views and strong views about how best to resolve them. recently the department of justice announced it would be moving its contracted penal
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institutions to government-run institutions. the department of justice primarily runs through the bureau of prisons the majority of its institutions already, but some are contracted out. immigration and customs enforce. relies a great deal, much more so than does the department of justice, on contracted facilities, and the question has aarisen in the descourse whether homeland security show fool suit and end the contracted facilities and we in the federal system should run them ourselves. i think actually one editorial writer captured what i think is a more fundamental question,
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more fundamental question of identity, which is the question of, are we detaining the right people, and are we proud of the conditions in which we house them during the period of their detention. straying a little bit from the question of the day, of whose operating the facility, to the more integral question of who is in the facility and what are the conditions of their confinement. those two questions i don't articulate a guiding thought in terms of my opinion, but those two questions to me go more to the issue of our identity, and that is how we answer that identity should be the guide post of how we resolve that. i will -- because i can't help
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but opine on this last example, and that is children in the immigration system. having prosecuted criminal cases, having observed removal proceedings, having seen first hand the meaning of a removal proceeding on the life of an individual, when removal has been imminently deserved, and clearly compelled by the law, it's a very consequence shall event and in an individual's life and should be, therefore, consequential event in the life of our country, and i have seen very young children in removal
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proceedings without guidance or without representation of counsel. and i harken back to the supreme court decision of plile revs. doe which gave all children, regardless of their -- the lawfulness of their presence in the united states, a right to an education and i profoundly believe that every doe has a name, is a person, and is entitled to a future. wherever that future might be. and it is hard for me as a former federal prosecutor, as a lawyer who has maintained his bar status active, and 0 who views himself as an officer of the court, to think of a very young child in a removal
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proceeding, not understanding the meaning of the procedures and the consequence of what is about to happen. as i look back for a brief second on the last seven years, one of the signature achievements of this administration is the deferred action for childhood arrivals program. daca, that impacted the children as well children who were brought here by no intention of their own, but by the acts of others, and i think how we treat their presence here as they reach the age of maturity throughout the years, is a question of our identity as a nation and how we view our immigration system. it is in fact the twilight of
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the obama administration. i think that a very significant immigration issues will confront the new administration, and i do hope that the new administration confronts the very challenging and consequential immigration issues that will be before it. most notably, of course, the incontrovertible fact that our immigration system is broken, needs to be fixed and what should that fix look like and hopefully me a it be implemented, and as we look at that issue, i hope we think of our identity, who we are as a nation, and who we want to be, and how we answer and respond to that issue hopefully will be a
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reflect how we answer the question of our identity, and on that i will end with just a very brief quote of robert kennedy. our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the american ideal. and i hope we live up to that. thank you very much. [applause] >> well, thank you so very much. we have maybe ten minutes for q & a, which is going to take place from the microphones in the aisle. so meese feel free either in this aisle or this aisle to come to themake crow phone if you have a question, and.
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>> this is frankly too good to be true. >> this tends not to happen. >> really? >> it's early. >> i guess so. i'm awake. >> mr. secretary, thank you so much for those very thoughtful remarks as you're looking back, and i'm really glad you have raised to the questions. i'm just going to ask you about one those of areas because it's one that has troubled me a great deal during this administration, and that has to do with the reaction to the arrival of larger numbers of central americans from the northern triangle, particularly women and children, and we have had in a number of years. and the question on my mind,
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when i think of a refugee, a humanitarian emergency or crisis or something like that, as you have seen, in different parts of the world, i think that the best tool the government has to address that is temporary protection. it's not to throw people into quick asylum procedures or anything else, but really results in our government getting overwhelmed, whether it's our asylum officers you're in charge of, or the immigration judges that the justice department is in charge of. to me the more -- both the humanitarian reaction, the leadership needed in this administration was to use temporary protective status as a way to receive people, and then in time, if the crisis continued, and people could want
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to apply for asylum they could do that in meantime we wouldn't be removing people to the situations where the government itself, dhs, has said now, publicly, in federal register notices, that the violence is significant in these particular countries. and, therefore, we've continued to protect those with tps from salvador and honduras 0 who have been here since '99 and 2001. so, long-winded question bud identity here to hear your comments on that approach. thank you. >> thank you. very much. so this is has been a very, very difficult issue and let me speak to some of the things we have done and respond quite squarely to the issue of temporary protected status, which i know has been -- is now the subject of a great deal of advocacy. quite a number of organizations through clinic, i believe, and extraordinarily wonderful
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institution that i have got to know over the course of the last seven years, i think submitted a letter, if i'm not mistaken to the president very recently. and as i understand it, temporary protected status, protects those individuals already in the united states as of a certain date, and the question will be, what does that mean with respect to the continuous flow of individuals from these countries because the conditions in these countries continue to be very challenging. and so i don't know -- when i say that i mean that -- whether temporary protected status is actually the right solution to the problem. and so that i think is under study. but the administration has done some very, very important things that were announced within the
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last two months. early on we developed a central american minor's program that allowed minors to be brought here without having to take the perilous journey because a determines was made there in the central american countries they could qualify for humanitarian relief and could qualify as refugees or, alternatively, that given the compelling equities their case presented, extraordinary humanitarian relief should be extended and they could be paroled interest the united states. importantly, we've worked with the u.n. high commissioner for refugees to actually build the first of many, many years, of a formal refugee program, also on viating the need for people in
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despair from taking the perilous journey from those countries through mexico, trying to reach the southern border of the united states, and now will have the u.n. high commissioner for refugees administering a formal refugee program in those countries, in country, which is an unusual paradigm for unhcr but an extraordinary move in light of the problems and challenges there, and also costa rica has agreed to serve as an emergency safety zone for those individuals who cannot even wait for unhcr to respond in country. and so i think over the course of the last year, the humanitarian programs have expanded, significantly, i think the expansion will be even greater in the coming months,
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and we have under study the solution that you present that he proposed and support and we'll see what comes of that. >> the solution, the ultimate solution, of course, the ultimate solution is to address the fundamental push factors to enable these countries to actually beat down the sources of violence so that children are safe walking to school, to address the socioeconomic disenfranchisement, the root causes of this migration. >> one more? >> we can take a few. >> so, every issue is pressing. there's so many people with such great need, but are there -- what issues do you see that
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haven't arisen yet but are going to? what are the up and coming issues? what what is the fewer of immigration policile. things not addressed now, problems that you can foresee. i don't know. [laughter] >> so, know nostradamus i am no. that i would have to really geoff thought. to in other words, what's around the corner? what's around the corner is what has come around the corner a lot so i would say it's around the block, over again, which is comprehensive immigration reform and what are we going to do? i will tell you this, too. when i was a federal prosecutor, i was a federal prosecutor for 12 years. i would look at the statutory
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framework in which we operated as criminal prosecutors and i would say, this makes sense. it is a dynamic. it's not without tension. but it's a rather orderly set -- statutory framework that is driven to the three goals of criminal justice: punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. i look at the immigration statutory framework and i find it to completely lack cohesion. that sometimes some provisions have been drafted at one time in our country's history and we go left, and another provision is drafted at another time in our country and we go right itch don't mean that left and right politically. just men in -- mean in direction of our identity, and i the two coexist and are not reconciled.
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and so, for example, an individual who is eligible for removal may also be eligible for naturalization and sometimes the individual is removed and sometimes the individual is naturalized, and i don't understand. yes, ma'am. >> okay. we need to let the ali go but let take the final question. >> good morning. my question has to do with the requirement that congress has placed an your department year after year to maintain 34,000 beds to immigrant detention per night. my first question is, do you feel like that is a fiscally responsible policy, second more important question is, do you think it allows your department the flexibility to address the question you raised earlier of who, if anyone, we should be detaining, and ensure we're not causing undo suffering from the family separation and community disruption that immigrant
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detention inevitably causes. >> so, let me answer that if i may how precisely the secretary has answered it in response to congressional inquiry, which is that there's not a statutory -- in the secretary's interpretation, there's not a statutory mandate that we keep 34,000 people in custody at all times but, rather, we're funded with 34,000 beds and, therefore, we're funded with the capacity to have 34,000 individuals in detention at a particular time. the things are in tension. many have expressed profound concern with the detention of families, with the detention of children. those in enforcement have
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expressed profound concern that in the process of removal, there's a very significant failure to appear rate, that individuals do not appear for their hearings, and therefore removal orders are issued in absentia. that people do not -- that are fugitives from the removal court. and so where one comes out on that, one has to give due consideration to all of the factors, and answer it fundamentally with what you think is most important. one more question. >> we need to let you go. >> okay. i'm sorry. >> i've been told. so, ali, trick. >> thank you all very much. [applause]
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>> more now from the miers policy institute with a look how immigration has played a role during the 2016 presidential campaign. this is an hour. >> okay, well, we're now going to begin with the panel for the day, and as those of us who -- as those of you who have been faithful friends at this conference every year and others who may be new here, we characteristically have begun with a panel that's become a real institution, and that's a panel we call the state of play, and it's basically what is going on with immigration in politics and in the broader policymaking
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and where it touches the political world. we obviously -- this is like -- this is an attempt at a political science kind of a panel rather than a partisan panel, but every year we think, oh, well, we've probably really exhausted the issues this year, and then the next year comes around and it gets even more heightened and even more hyper charged, which surely is the case this year, with the way in which immigration has hit center stage in the election campaign that we're having. so, i am particularly pleased to be able to introduce and work with the next hour or so with this group of people because they're wonderfully qualified to be talking about these issues from various different vantage points.
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what we're going to do is what we have done in the past which is that i'll ask an opening question to each of the panelists and they've -- they'll give us their take on the issues, but then we'll try as much as possible to have some give and take and i encourage the panelists to be asking each other questions and reacting to each other's competentes. doesn't just have to be questions and that of course will open the floor to q & a so you all can participate. the panel this year is karen, who is the national political correspondent at the "washington post". david from, senior yesterday for at "the atlantic" and randall gold, from the national association of latino elected officials and frank sherry, the executive director of america's voice. so, we're going to good exactly
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in the order that we have seated people here, and start with this question, karen. you're a veteran. you have covered lots of elects. you've covered a fair number of immigration battles. tell us why in your reporting and in your experience you think that immigration has become such a top tier issue in this election. is it simply that donald trump has put it there? obviously he has based his candidacy on this issue, or was there something deemer -- and is their something deeper going on that we need to really understand better in order to come to terms with the way in which this issue is being discussed in our political life today. >> well, thank you, doris and thank you for the opportunity to be here. i always think back to the days
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right of after the 2012 election when it was absolutely accepted wisdom -- i certainly knew -- i wrote it a number of times -- that given what had happened to republican party in 2012, given what happened to mitt romney that some kind of comprehensive overhaul of the immigration laws that it was really not a question of if, it was a question of when. and you might recall at that time the republican party conducted what later became known as the autopsy, they, too, came to the conclude that they were going to have to do something to sort of reflect the diversity of the country marco rubio made an entire bet on his presidential campaign that being part of that would be an asset, but interestingly enough -- you can find this on the web site of
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the u.s. patent and trademark office. six days after the 2012 election, mind you, the whole party is freaking out over how are we going to appeal to hispanics. a resident of fifth avenue in new york named donald j. trump wrote out a $350 check and sent in an application to the patent and trademark office to trademark the phrase "make america great again." and he -- it included -- he submitted exactly what it would look like and me block letters. it's kind of extraordinary to go back and look at this now because i do think that whatever and however you can fault trump on his lack of depth of policy issues, he clearly had a sense of what this campaign was going
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to be about for him, and how he would run, even that far back. so, yes, i think it's absolutely trump is a huge part of this, but what he sensed was, i think, in the disarray of the financial meltdown, in the recovery that left a lot of people behind, that people were going to start looking for explanations of this, and one quick explanation, and especially you hear it a lot, in the upper midwest and places like that, where particularly noncollege educated white working class people have been left behind, is that people are coming in and taking our jobs. the fact is that, as has often been pointed out, that the
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benefits of immigration are very widely disperse but -- and globalization in a larger sense, but that there are people out there who see themselves as real victims of this, and so it is donald trump but it is also something i think that it speaks to something larger and, again, it is a real sense of people feeling like they're being left behind. >> okay. david, let's have you add perspective here. i'm struck by the fact that when you see the stalemate that exists over immigration and that's existed as karen says, she would have thought it was not a question of if but when we would do something about immigration reform. when you look back we have in presidents reagan and the first president bush and president
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clinton, presidents that all signed bipartisan immigration bills. they were bills that had things in them that none of those presidents would have wished if they could have done it on their own but at the end of the day there was bipartisan agreement in the congress and they signed those bills. since that time, we have not had anything. we have had paralysis and we have had extreme partisanship from the conservative side of the political spectrum. what can you tell us about what has changed that's critical between that time and the time that we have seen in the 2000s, and what do you think, in looking ahead, it's going to take to bring conservatives back to the table on immigration legislation. >> well, i'm not sure conservatives should be back at the table.
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with immigration reform as it's been conceived for the past a 15 years. think immigration as we have been doing it is a program that is largely lost its purpose from the point of native born americans. it had purposes in the past. today it as program that is run almost entirely in the interest of newcomer and prospective knewcomes and i say that's naturalsized person myself. you visit hillary clinton's immigration web page, every argue. is to the interests of immigrant and zero to to native bornmers and children. that's why it has run aground. we have seen a resort on the republican side against the rank-and-file and on the democratic side a steady drift in a very radical direction where any enforcement at all against noncriminal aliens, who interillegally is regarded now as unacceptable and that's a
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point that hillary clinton has hit very, very hard. unless the person has committed some kind of felony, they shouldn't be removed. and that is true if they've been here for ten years or if they arrived this summer from central america, claiming refugee status. i think this issue has become so white hot and conservatives have moved on photo three main reasons. the n first this way immigration enter acts with social welfare programs. one way to keep the figure to -- don't want 0 you a lot of statistics because in 2010 before the affordable care act went into effect, 27 percent of the unshard were foreign-born. that many of them were citizens, some residents, but' the affordable care act was to a great disproportionate extent a response so at the problem of the foreign bon population of the united states and its children. through the 1980s and 10990s when the american social
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insurance network wag shrinking, the costs of immigration to the social welfare system became progressively less important an issue. but in the 2000s, beginning of medicare part d and bush administration and the obama administrations the american social insurance system has begun to grow again and with the affordable care act is now growing in a very dramatic way. and so the costs of a population that is less skilled, that are going to be net recipients over their lifetimes from the treasury, not net contributors that's correct become very explosive, especially when you have a native born population that is ebb creasingly nervous of stability of the programs they depend on, medicare and social security. that's reason one. the second reason is the interaction with wages and jobs. we're in a time of tremendous constraint on american wages, and great insecurity about american jobs, quite unlike the period before 2008. and i don't think, karen, would rephrase what karen said about
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the immigrant packet of immigration, immigration is a program -- a policy that shares its costs and benefits live live but wheres they benefits are received by people basically at the -- the immigrants themeses s and the people at the top, the harms are received with the people on the bottom third of the population, and as in a time of job constraint, when immigration numbers have become so very big the wage and job effects are very broadly experienced. the last interaction with national security. less an american problem and more something we experience second hand, watching europe, but we just mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and what is striking is all 19 of the killers were foreigners. who were not many of. the violated immigration laws to get into the united states. since the middle 2000s, we win look at our allies and partners in europe, more and more of their security challenges comes from from foreign ares but the
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children of ims in their countries. the acculturation mechanism that people once assumed would work automaticallys' smoothly, american seize in europe that has broken down and they're worried the similar kind of breakdown would happen in the united states. the steroid problems here less extreme than europe. are those the reason why the intense is so intense, the issue is waiting there for donald trump. he, as karen said, he had for all his many faults, one of the world residents greatest marketers and the acute to see a marketing opportunity that the leapeddership of the republican party moved air from it based the leadership of the democratic peat had to taken then immigration policy in a direction where enforce. is so unusablable and justice rage yous any compromise is unease no to imagine as accept teen anybody. >> that give us a lot to talk about and follow up on but i'll try to get all the issues on the table first.
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so thank you, david. roslyn, it's well known that latinos and other foreign-born and minority voters were important in the prior two elects and important parts of president obama becoming president and being re-elected. can you tell us when you look at this election, and when you're looking at the trends, of what is taking place, what do you see about the possible impacts for these voting blocs in this 2016 election, what can we say, if anything, at this point, about turnout, which is a classic problem and issue with foreign-born voters and other minority group voters, despite what the numbers may be. what's been going an with naturalization, witness voter registration, and how about some of the keefe states where some
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of the key states on these issues that will make a difference. >> thank you. first, thank you so much, doris. i very much also appreciate catholic legal immigration network, georgetown law center and the migration policy institute for invite knowing be here this morning. a great discussion. you're absolutely right that latino and naturalized citizen voters played pivotol role in the last two presidential elects and poised to do the same in election 2016. if we go back to 2008, these voters essentially flipped states, such as colorado or new mexico or florida. they helped flip those states from states that have supported president bush in 2004, those states became democratic for the presidential election in 2008, and latino and naturalized
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voters also helped significantly contribute to the margin of victory of president obama in other states such as nevada, or virginia, or indiana. and as we look ahead, one possible scenario in this elect is that history is going to repeat itself. i want to take everybody back to the 1990s and proposition 187 and pete will son's ad where it shows immigrants going over the border and solemn voice intoning, they keep coming, they keep coming, and then i want to take you to 2006 and 2007 where hr-4437 was enalaskad and you have another time of very inflammatory and divisive rhetoric about immigration, and in both of those points in history, we saw a record number of naturalizations followed by record numbers of participation
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by naturalized citizens in voting. so, a key question that we're looking at is, we're once again in a time where it's not just the fact that immigration policy is being debated, but the tone and the divisiveness and the rhetoric about immigrants is front and center in the campaign dialogue, and so we're going to be watching to see what impact that is going to have on turnout. right now, we don't quite have enough data. ... in in...
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voter registration. we are hearing about anecdotally a great deal of energy around increases in voter registration but this is a story that's still unfolding. if we look at the states that are important, it's important to realize this isn't just about the presidential election. latinos are poised to make a significant impact in a senate race such as john mccain in arizona, mark in illinois, north carolina has both very competitive senate and gubernatorial races. nevada may see its very first latina senator, catherine cortez, and florida has its own dynamics where you've got a
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growing puerto rican population that tends to vote democrat. you still have a very politically active population where some of the population has traditionally been republican voters but younger voters are a little bit more diverse in their political attitudes, and you have marco rubio running for the reelection. so, these are all states where latino naturalized voters are going to play a key role in the outcome. i want to go back to your comment about turnout in general among latinos and naturalized citizens. yes, we still have a way to go to realize the full potential of the latino electorate. this is in part because of what we would see as a dysfunctional component of how our political system works. candidates and campaigns come around and invest in voter outreach and voter education every four years around the
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presidential elections and a target battleground or swing states. in doing that, latinos in places like california, texas, illinois, new york, they are completely ignored by the candidates by candidates and campaigns. so you end up like 57% of eligible to vote lived in those states that you don't see any today in the investment outreach, any kind of sustained investment in the voter mobilization. the deputy secretary talked about our identity as a nation and part of our identity is to have a robust democracy, we need to have sustained investment in bringing out latinos and naturalized citizens to vote in every election the matter what state of the union they are in for the long term if we want to have a healthy democracy.
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so we are thinking beyond election 16 and well into the future. >> i put you forth in the list because you have been at this for so long and have seen it through so many administrations and congress of both parts. so, we are in the middle of this battle at this point but it will be over and then there will be the future to deal with which brings us back to congress and the kind of thing kerry and talked about and we will have a new congress and there will be some in both parties that want to do things and others that won't. give us your best thinking of
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the effects of what we are seeing in this campaign of what immigration might be. can you see any scenario in the new congress where immigration reform would be tackled? are we in a kind of scenario david paints of people simply being so divided that there isn't room for a conversation again? what can you tell us about how you're watching the congress and what are the things we should be paying attention to that might be coming out of this campaign that affect what the congress will do in its next iteration? >> okay. it would be a little naïve to expect that congress would
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tackle big things and get them done, but i am naïve. i do think there's going to be a moment of truth. look, if donald trump gets elected, get ready for the barricades and civil unrest. if hillary clinton gets elected they maintain control of both chambers, forget the legislation will be talking about what kind of administrative and state and local progress can be made, and the fights will mostly be there. but if the scenario -- a -- if e congress voteif thecongress votc control of both chambers, i think it is a matter of negotiating with the lindsey graham of the world to get to the senate and we will have reform. but most likely the prognosticators will have a democratic president, senate and republican house and that's the scenario i think most people are trying to gain out are what are the prospects for reform or not reform, what kind of progress can be made through executive and administrative actions as
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well as state and local policies and bad weather is not the short-term prospects, the long-term prospects. my view is there will be a moment of truth if hillary clinton is elected, chuck schumer is the leader and paul ryan the speaker of the house. i doubt you will have a replay of 2013 where the senate is going to go first i think you will probably have a situation where the president and majority leader and others sit down with speaker withspeaker ryan and whr speaker ryan and whoever he brings to the meetings and they say are you going to act or not? i don't think you will see the e senate democrats running into action only to wait for the house to act because we know how that turned out in 13-14. there was no action and it was very frustrating. if the house can't act and set up a conference committee and a possible final deal, there is not much point other than optics to move forward in the senate.
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but i do think it matters that hillary clinton said this is one of the to top priorities, one of the top three legislative priorities along with the justice reform and jobs infrastructure build. she's going to introduce legislation in the first 100 days. there will be a marker so i suspect, and the real question is whether the house republicans will move or not. is paul ryan defrantz and john boehner? i think they both support reform and want reform. but paul ryan and i think gets it. if he's going to be the leader of the modernizing forces of the conservative movement, they've got to deal with immigration reform before it's too late. maybe too late is in for five or ten years, but you can't divide public opinion into demographic changes in the country as long as the republicans seem intense without paying a heavy price. they are already paying a heavy price at the presidential level
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and it's a matter of time and redistricting for them to pay a price at the house level as well. the question is will paul ryan exert the kind of leadership that quite frankly we haven't seen much evidence of today but the idea of him standing up even if he falls on his sword and gets ready to run for president as the person determined to lead the republican party out of the wilderness and into the future, maybe. but at least we will have that moment of truth. if you have a senate an to necrc majoritand acritic majority andk schumer with a track record in a basic commitment he's restated it publicly and privately many times. so there will be maybe a six-month intensive effort to press to see whether in fact there is some possibility of movement in the house that can lead to a final vote.
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but none of us would be smart to put all o our eggs in one baske. i know for us as advocates, we are looking at how to make good on her promise on the administrative reforms and executive actions. there is a huge list and we are not just talking about the chords that may take some time before it comes back. we are talking about a whole range of issues in the priority is an implementation to the detention issues and the treatment of americans who are fleeing violence in the northern triangle and on and on. so there is much that can be done that would make lives better that wouldn't require legislation. let me say that the reason i think there's lots of eyes watching trump and his rallies and david with all due respect i think you are very thoughtful conservative indian immigration
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skeptic in part and fight the economic issues but i think in this election without mentioning race into demographic change is a big factor, we are missing a big part of what's happening in the right-wing of the republican party or at least the populist wing. the fact is this debate has become extremely polarized and racialized and i think the question is what is going to happen on the republican side of the aisle? we look at every public opinion poll that's done on this issue. in the past two weeks there've been three polls come independent. gallup polled said 84% of the american people supporte supporh to citizenship as part of reform. "washington post," abc out just 78%. cnn had one last week, 88%. american people generally are more than ready to reform and legalize undocumented immigrants
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as part of an overall reform but also improves enforcement and modernizes our legal immigration system. but you know, the fact is where the debate is this on the republican side of the aisle. there is a tenacious, highly aggressive, very mobilized anti-immigrants waiting and needed to swing in the republican party. there's certain groups be all know that there is also the conservative infotainment talk radio folks, rush limbaugh, laura ingram that are using this issue to increase ratings and anger their listeners, and it's a very formidable force. in the past three rounds of immigration reform that i've been a part of, each time the populist right has outdueled the pro- immigrant reformist republican right. and that is going to have to change. people say it's reform going to happen next year. it depends if the party can outdueled the populist.
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so they don't have a very good track record. maybe that will change. in the meantime with the strength of the rights movement getting stronger every day there's going to be lots of advances even if they don't happen legislatively. federally you'll see a lot of advances and states you will see a lot of advances, cities as well. look at california today. drivers licenses in the in-state tuition, funding for in-state tuition, access to the program for kids up until the age of 19, more and more cities are doing id cards. the situation where undocumented immigrants live a fairly normal existence. the trust act which says police shouldn't be turning over people unless they've committed serious crimes. that's i think california is obviously exceptional in many ways and you will see more states and cities adopting policies that will say this is
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where i disagree again i don't think there's been a collapse in enforcement. i think there's any recognition. there is any recognition. when barack obama became the deep order in chief deporting people each year the president has deported or immigrants than ever he did it for one reason. he wanted to show republicans that he was serious about enforcement so they should be serious about voting for reform. it didn't work. it didn't happen. and when he finally decided this why are we deporting people who 88% of the american people think should be here legally maybe we should focus on the bad actors and a situation where they lead a reasonably normal life until we can returhe can return to a y normal legislative and political set up. i will stop there.
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>> well, let's talk about this a little bit. this issue of as you put it the anti-immigrants force among republicans on that side of the spectrum as compared to the way you talked about it as immigration having lost its way, having lost any real sense of purpose and basically the contenders being american citizens, and america's interests of immigrants that assumes those are different and in opposition to each other. and frank is talking about something far more political and basically driven by a smaller xenophobic part of the population that has been there historically throughout but that isn't reflected in the broader public opinion when you look at the polling now for many years.
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let's just have comments on that and talk about that. >> let me say something about this attack on the republican party. one of the things that's peculiar about the way people talk, immigration is so central in such a matter of consensus among the american elite who are the beneficiaries of it, it's a redistributionist program, and probably everybody in this room is a net beneficiary, quite a big beneficiary from this program. the people who pay for the program are not here. in the republican world if you say i share this consensus on immigration and on the other hand on health care my view is nothing. i want to take away health care from 23 million people. and you are a hotter nicer and is in rest.
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one of the things i've been arguing the republican party is that it's upside down. the future of the republican modernization means not saying let's have excellent number of immigrants and ever shrinking social insurance network, but the other way around but it's unhealthier where republicans need to modernize and compromi compromise. on immigration they need to keep up with their voters. and once you go through that doppler shift, paul ryan stops looking like a moderate and looks like a representative of some pretty narrow economic interests. and meanwhile, the people who are putting their sadly abused and misplaced faith in donald trump, your fellow citizens have problems that are not being addressed at all by responsible governing elites, so they are putting their faith in demagogues and they offer no constructive solutions.
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and one of the things i -- when you hear the proposal of what is to come, where the democratic party has gone he may have seen on the godfather part two where he explains his offer and it's zero, nothing, there's going to be no enforcement, no heading off this new surge of immigration from central america that is bigger every summer. there is no plan. it's a shocking and unacceptab unacceptable. and there is no discussion about what is the right overall number. one of the places i think the first question we would not build dams with as little cost-benefit analysis as we do. how many immigrants in a year
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what is the number, what impact does that have on wages? it's not an exception to the supply and demand. how are we doing with upward mobility? are we choosing the right immigrants because it isn't just a matter of more or less but different countries. the united states and sweden have different immigration policies viewed very heavily to the low skilled, low-wage people who are not doing well in upward mobility. other countries they take almost as immigrants as the united states did some take more illegal to their population and have people with higher levels of skills and education. canada and australia immigration is a redistributionist policy, only redistribute down and in the united states it redistributes up. >> i just wanted to mention that if the dialogue on immigration policy were taking place in the
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kind of calm and learned discussion about costs and benefits, i think we would all be feeling a little bit different about what is going on in our nation right now and what has gone on in the past. but that is not how the discussion emerges whenever you have these periods of extremely inflammatory rhetoric because what happens is the dialogue becomes one that is extremely disrespectful to immigrants, extremely disrespectful to latinos. as i've mentioned in california during the time of the campaign for proposition 187, you had these arab you could just look at donald trump's comments about new mexico is sending to the united states. these are not reasoned discussions.
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these are inflammatory divisive comments, attempts to reach people at the worst places they are at, and this is a reason the community responds because there'thereis a level of disreso immigrants and their contributions to the country when this issue becomes red hot. >> one point david brought up that we moved passed pretty quickly that might be worth revisiting as the security component. i grew up in south texas, and i remember sort of being mystified during proposition 187 because there was no kind of sentiment like that at all in texas. immigration had been such a part of the fabric of life, and that was in part because the network of social services in texas, in californiandcalifornia it was at
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the redistribution of public resources. but now i go home and it is very different and i think in large part, it is the security question in the mid-2000's, as the mexican government and the drug gangs started going to war with each other and it was beginning to spill across the border again maybe not necessarily in the overall numbers but a kind of hair-raising incident that again when i was growing up, the same ranchers that used t to use to t blankets and food on their ranches so that people coming through on foot would have provisions suddenly produced absolutely terrified. so i do think there needs to be sort of -- and i think that's also a big part of what you have
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seen in places like arizona and new mexico. so there does need to be that conversation as well and especially in the post-9/11 world. >> it's so interesting when you raise the point about security. the first speaker raised the point and typically when we talk about security, we are talking about national security, terrorists, who comes into the country in ways that might create like a san bernardino, not the southwest border and people coming across that are basically crime and drug which has been there for a very long time and of course it's become much more intense with the cartels in central america etc.. do you think of those in the
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southwest border security and the drugs and crime as being synonymous with the way we talk about national security post 9/11? >> i know people in that part of the country talk about it a lot and that's why again, going back to texas as part of the republican party platform they used to have with a call to the texas solution on immigration which was a kind of liberal approach to it. rick perry got in trouble for in-state tuition. but i do think in the last, it was 2014, the texas republican party repealed a part of their own platforms but a lot of republicans have been very proud of. and again, there are a lot of reasons for it, but i do think it was definitely much more
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security related and a sense of danger whether it was again the overall numbers i don't know if there's a definite sense that this -- there was this danger in the chaos coming over the border not just from al qaeda agents but also from mexico's own security problem. look at fast and furious. i think all of this kind of seeped into people's consciousness. >> we have invested such huge amounts of money in the southwest border and in fact the numbers are as historic lows and yet, the fear is greater than its been in office time that we've watched. >> i would like to comment a little policy here. the debate is easily caricatured as the open crowd and the
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xenophobes into people that care about immigrants and americans etc.. let's be clear when we talk about what is referred to as comprehensive immigration reform. we are talking about increased border security. did anyone see the 2013 bill, record increase that just wasn't enough for two thirds of republicans in the senate even though they said we've got to secure the border first. record an employer sanctions. for some reason, everyone is focused on the walls and fencing and borders at the us-mexico border when the key to reducing illegal immigration is a functioning employment verification system. but to do that with 8 million workers in the labor force will exacerbate all the problems we have in the status quo to drive people underground, lead to more exploration and in favor of the employees etc.. the idea is to legalize the good
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actors in the labor force, to have an employer sanctions become a new labor market norm that is effective and to have effective border enforcement and not just how do we ramp up enforcement but how do we modulate legal immigration levels at the low end, family-based, and employment-based. i'm happy to put it all up for question is the question is what is in the interest of that economic growth. but at least we will have to levels to deatwolevels to deal n just enforcement. when we ramp up enforcement as we've done without any corresponding change in the legal immigration system where that growing numbers now leveled off at 11 million, what we do is press immigration stupidly rather than regulating it intelligently. so to me, the idea that comprehensive immigration reform
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is somehow a left-wing fantasy thathat's only in the interest f immigrants when it would have capps and more effective enforcement, it would make immigration legal and hiring more legal and make it more accessible to go after people violating those norms. what's not to like? is a centrist i part is an approach and why ted kennedy and john mccain worked on it and george w. bush was in favor of it. but the republican party has gone to the right not on policy grounds for the most part. it's because there's too many of those people. i think if we don't be honest about the fact that we are dealing with a racial backlash not from all the people that oppose immigration reform, not thoughtful critics that say it's skewed in the wrong direction. let's have those debates. the idea that the best way to enforce the law is increasing repression as if that's going to work has been proven wrong on its face for 30 years.
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so in this room at least we can talk policy. in this room we don't have to believe the talk radio guys come at the borders are getting more out of control and those agents are coming across. there's nthere is no evidence ot all. what we have more people screamed and affected if we have immigration reform? yes. should all the central americans free violence come to the united states? no. is it the central americans fleeing data protection in the region? yes. this is just a sensible, modern immigration and refugee policy that increases the lawfulness and orderliness and increases batting in this activity and increases mortality and decreases disorder. so i just want to rent because of the record straight that if you want open borders, i'm sure that republican opposition will create more and more incentives to people on the left to get more open borders.
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but right now it's on the table is something that is in the national interest and in the interest of the law and order and the economic realm. just had to get that off my chest. >> there are many definitions -- [applause] many ways of looking at what is in the national interest. it's very easy to say what's in the national interest, but it's also often in the eye of the beholder so the difficulty that we are facing it seems illustrated by the panel and the comments made is how do you even have the conversation. obviously we are not having a productive conversation in this campaign. but the issue is right there squarely in the middle of it. it's not going to be done. it will carry over after the election because of the way that it's been highlighted.
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and i am very struck by what's been said along the way. what should our immigration policy before and whose interests should be? what is the national interest. you can say that it ought to be as donald trump says for american citizens and in the best interest of the country. you look at immigrants and immigrant families and communities and they are totally fused. there isn't a p. and they. it is a mixture, so we have to be clear about who it is we are talking about, but at the same time, the policy has lost its way is an absolutely fair and valid critique it seems to me. you listen to what the deputy
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secretary said earlier today and gave some examples of the lack of cohesion and the lack of coherence in with the system does and calls for today, and it is no question problematic. before we open up the microphones, which i will do in just a moment, i would like to know whether anybody would have a final observation or would want to make an observation on how actually to have that conversation structurally, mechanistically. we just go past this election if one does assume a democratic victory, indigo right back into the partisanship that has characterized the congress in the past or is there a way to step back? is there a way to have the more fundamental question?
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what are the questions you raised, what do you think? >> i think it's going to be worse. i think what will happen -- let's go with the consensus view that it's probably a democratic president, possibly democratic senate, probably not a democratic house. i'm not so sure about the senate. hillary clinton comes to office with a more stronger commitment to immigration than barack obama in 2008 but more central to her reinvention of herself as a left democrat. she also has much less with president obama who thought he could work with people in this way. hillary clinton is much more ideological but more partisan and she will use the power of the presidency to try to drive things through administratively and that will make that supreme court seat a red button and she will lose a lot of republicans
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senators agree with her on the merits of immigration reform. most republican members of the house won't. but where you will unite as he realizes they are not, they will be much more nervous about these high-handed executive actions and especially that of vacant supreme court seats there will be tremendous rancor over that. meanwhile, assuming they lose the seat they will be ripping themselves to pieces with incarnations over whose fault was this, and the identity. should they be read by extra traditional business who had a scornful attitude towards rank-and-file republicans. immigration is what we are focused on here but another is health care and wages and jobs. the party of paul ryan has been a party that's been focused on the economic interest of a small
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number of republicans, never mind the small number of americans. other republicans have -- there hasn't been leadership by this and that's why they were waiting for a cynical person might donald trump to seize it, but there will be better contenders. once donald trump is identified, there will be more contenders to take the space but he explored. so it will be a part that has a difficulty. the she will be subject to more criticism and i think just because her view of the way the politics work. >> would you like to give a final comment? >> i do agree it's going to be a big part of this and also the
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internal republican party, ted cruz's hand tested and ready. [laughter] it is really hard to get next year and not just to see on this issue had any number of issues. >> on that note, let's go to the younger generation question. >> thanks very much. from the national skills coalition, my question has to do with which aspects of immigration policy capture the public imagination. over the past ten years, tens of millions of dollars have gone to help train american workers and those grants come from fees paid by immigrants typically from the visas and also others.
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yet those kind of training programs and the fact we are using immigration policy to strengthen american worker skills is something that is just never discussed. it's not part of the who should we let in or the point system debate. i'm curious for any of the panelists if you have thoughts why some of these issues captured the public imagination and remained in the realm of the immigration policy and haven't gotten farther out. >> i think you are absolutely right. we don't just need a policy on immigration that looks at enforcement and looks at the modernization of the system in terms of deciding who comes into the country. we need an immigrant integration policy and that is part and
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parcel to whatever we do in terms of modernizing the immigration system. if we want the communities to feel that immigrants are bringing their talents and skills to the table, then the investment in integration with job skills, english language instruction. there are greater economic abilities and acquisition of english-language. we need to do more of that and we hope this is something everybody can agree upon no
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matter what they would be thinking about the enforcement issues in terms of who comes to the country. >> but any kind of government program getting anything right into the workforce training programs are not exactly a model of either efficiency with grants the public imagination. >> the idea of immigration is one factor in the capital development strategy, that is exactly the wavelength and on. let's have them select themselves and once they've come to the country and realize it is substantially lower in skills if
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we are serious about human capital as the consideration that is where the screen should be a. one reason immigration is soulless and canada take takes m to legal immigrants a higher portion of the grenade dates it is less controversial at all levels and not just the clerical workers but the doctors and nurses and especially if you are in a smaller center you wouldn't get this surgery and he wouldn't get the blanket and the meal.
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people get fat. in the united states it's done in the opposite way. it's very much a pattern in thee post-immigration education. the more globally superior it is by far. universities, pretty good, and then after that it just deteriorates. that seems backwards, doesn't it? >> we have just a few minutes left so i will ask the people at the microphone very quickly, you, you and you to state your question and then i will give the panelists selected opportunity to answer. >> my question is directed primarily he made a very good point that obama has deported more immigrants really as a member than any other president
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has ever. i looked at the numbers and i think he's deported to 23% more than the second george bush has. and made a claim of saying in general the democrats have moved far to the left when it comes to immigration and enforcement of immigration laws. i would like you to clarify th that, and claiming with the fact that obama has deported more immigrants. >> it's a statistical artifact caused by counting removals of t the border with the deportation numbers. if they totally fake number. >> my question is the changes and rhetoric you mighinrhetorich parties. so with the republican party, donald trump had a huge upset on the platform saying more things to get media coverage, because
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the media coverage donald trump was able to get support the party like bernie sanders able to mobilize younger voters bringing up issues that they feel have been ignored for them in terms of what's going to happen in the future with us and things we may be more concerned about and the older generation may not be as much. >> my question is about the way that we are discussing immigration. it sounds like it's something happening in particular to us if the u.s. has no other interest outside of it. so, for example, frank mentioned the demographic shift into the ear of the culture. number two, i think that he mentioned about the cartels. if the consumption and that's what's leading to it, there are no guns built in those countries into the central american migration to assume that people are just coming because they woke up one day and not because
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of an interventionist policy over the years and continues to have, i think it takes away from the discussion because there is a kind of break. the u.s. has broken many things and i'm not trying to excuse the government origin up with the need to do to fix their own policies but to the extent that it shares the responsibility we would like the panel to discuss it in that context not just in the u.s. native context. [applause] these are all important points, and this is a good indication of how there are so many directions one can take a conversation like this. we will be able to take any further. i would invite those that would like to talk with the panelists to come to the front while we have a break until 1:00. please be back for the next
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panel was pleased join me in thanking this very lively group. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the same conference from the migration institute included immigration attorneys and officials from immigration customs enforcement discussing family detention and how the homeland security department handles deportation cases. this is one hour.
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good morning and welcome back. i've been told we have to get going here. i'm charles wheeler clinic and i want to welcome you to what is publicly going to be another lively performance. we are going to talk about two related issues, immigration enforcement and immigrant detention, a complex controversial politically charged etc.. before we do that, before i introduced the panelists didn't open up for questions on that, i want to give a short background. i started out in the late 70s when the immigration enforcement was a very low priority both at the border and also internally. immigrant detention was almost miniscule. that changed in the 80s when enforcement suddenly became an
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issue coupled with of course amnesty. the 1990s the double down into the issue in 1997 whereby 2001 you hav had about 200,000 people detained on any given year for immigration enforcement purposes. into that had more than doubled by 2013 to where now we are at 440,000 people being held in immigration detention. that is five times the number of people who entered the federal prison system and based on criminal issues. complicating this whole issue has been the use of private for contract contractors. the corrections corporation of america, you may have read the two long in-depth articles in the nation and mother jones this year, an interesting spotlight on the problems inherent on
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these issues. department odepartment of justiy coincidence and maybe not. they recently announced they would cut ties with the private contracting world and the deputy secretary has hinted that in fact dhs is also doing an internal review to see if they might be cutting ties as well. summer of 2014 as we all remember slaughter return to family detention. two facilities opened up and got refurbished in new mexico and texas to handle mostly central american women and children, this notion was returned to the bush policy that obama originally ended when he took office. currently, there are facilities operating in texas as well as pennsylvania, but they are also covering mostly central american women and children. they are subject to pending
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litigation with compliance in california, nationwide class action of the florida litigation so that an issue that's going to be working its way up. as far as interior enforcement, the obama administration showed a willingness sort of late in the game to curtail controversial programs such as secure communities and is now replaced it with the 2014 men 2o secretary j. johnson wrote on particular enforcement categories as well as a new priority code priority enforcement program. that is in the title to the program if you didn't know. dhs has made a voluntary and certain major jurisdictions that have been opted in yet. the hope is that up to two thirds.
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to talk on different aspects of these issues the first speaker is stephen manning, whose partner of the immigrant law group and director of immigration innovation. to his right is thomas homan, the associate director for enforcement and removal operations at icd command to his right is elizabeth cedillo-pereira and then finally dree collopy who's the partner and codirector of immigration litigation clinic at the catholic university school of law. so, let's start with you. i didn't ask specific questions. i decided to have the panelists talk for a few minutes on issues
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they thought was most important. >> thank you. this is really great. i'm not sure whom i was telling this to tom i don't know if it is more intimidating being in front of you or the court of appeals talking about these things. in what seems like a lifetime that's only been two years, i don't know why when i get in large groups when i talk about this i still have some reaction. i've been a volunteer lawyer representing women and children who've been detainehave been dey detention centers, first new mexico, then carnes. a lot oa lot of others we devela crowd source defense model that's been used in the detention centers. right now i'm also involved in creating centers of excellence using a legal organizing model that focuses on the education systems in particular under resourced areas for example in atlanta and charlotte.
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we created this technology platform tidying all these people together and we are about to deploy the next that's going to connect porter shelters, the center of excellence, to create a seamless approach to the division of legal services and make sure that every case came when every time and this sort of model. as of yesterday, the project that operates represented more than 35,000 women and children. that's a little less than two years. i've been involved in the case representation of the actual individuals. -before all levels of the agency and i've done extensive programmatic data and analysis and have been involved in the litigation. so that rather broad and interesting viewpoint across
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immigration agencies and departments and court jurisdictions into the administrative space, the legal space, the political space and detention. but the expedited removal program and its corollary in the family detention and how it operates and what it means comem that vantage point i would like to address the question. it is expedited removal and hasn't been a succeshasit been . expedited removal is a policy choice rooted in a prosecutorial discretion to remove a person from the conventional immigration court system and maximize the authority of the government to order detention and inflatable action from the judicial review so without that removal there is no family detention as we know it. so family detention as it is implemented today is only possible because of the policy choice to use section 235 the the expedited removal statute and the attention to the detention authority. so the administration flipped
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the switch on expedited removal and instantaneously, we had carnes. so has expedited removal then at least against the population has been a success and the answer is maybe. that is the perfect answer. it's maybe because it depends on the policy that is driven to address. so what is the purpose behind the policy? i would like to offer a couple different possibilities of why we have the expedited removal. the most obvious is to expedite the removal. that is the purpose of the expedited removal program in the family detention. i think the numbers would show that it's failed. of the 35,000 women and children probably less than .01% have been removed. so it's important to note that nearly all of them, there was originally an expedited removal
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and heard that universally to all of those expedited removal orders are later rescinded so from the programmatic perspective if i were administrating this policy program where nearly all of my front end processing was being undone and i think that is an important metric to assess whether or not it's been successful. if the removal program is intended to support the program and bolster the system by separating the border and trends from the credible claims from those who don't, i also think the numbers don't show that it's been successful. so by choosing to use expedited removal, it now requires us to do three adjudications. so we have a threshold of screening, and affirmative asylum program for the incredible fear screening and then we set it up for an adversarial judge. i think the policy choice created a system shock in the
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program because of the resources that it takes to maintain our incredibly fierce systems. the asylum program has a much stopped functioning in large parts of the country southern oregon we wait years for the interview and los angeles five years, miami and new york is three, charlotte and houston. those resources that normally would have been available to manage and maintain are now being diverted because of the policy choice. >> and so is it about border enforcement? i don't think the metrics hold up here so we cannot detain folks to deter other central americans from coming to the united states. we learned that in the class-action litigation. but even if we could detain to deter, the program actually doesn't have any meaningful real-world impact determines values, so there is field of
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studies done that measured whether or not the policy is on detention and removal for people that are leaving and it's not even a close call. as a detention program i also think if we look at the numbers again, it is a policy choice that also seems not to function right. it's only constitutionally authorized when it's in the furtherance of deportation so here we know at least from the 35,000 women and children that have come for the program analyst in 01% so it is 113 have actually been removed. so, we know we can't detained to deter but we are not detaining to deplore either. so the detention through the removal program seems to be a policy in search of a purpose. it also begs another question
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with the expedited removal program subjecting children to the prolonged detention or family units to detention, what's happening to those human beings? like our empirical knowledge of the effects and impacts on the family units and children of the effect of the disingenuous at an early stage. are we causing irreversible damage or something childhood development? we know right now we have the data showing that there are children who are contemplating suicide so there is aggressive developmental behavior. to fill in the picture we are beginning a robust analysis in the project. i will have to figure out some of the long-term impacts. the two other things i want to mention. one other useful metric in determining whether or not the expedited removal program has
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been a success might be whether it adheres to the rule of law. so if it is the implementation of the policy choice and if we look at the state of play and impact litigation, every time the merits of the governments policy choice have been judicially scrutinized, the implementation has been found to violate the law, the only thing the government survived in court is when they use their structural advantage to preclude article three jurisdictions in actual judicial screenings. the very final thing i would like to mention is the expedited removal policy for the fiscal lens. i became a lawyer cited in the studio with them. i'm not a math person that i i disable the analysis. and here's where the picture becomes more. the expedited removal program then is a success so the direct cost of the border deployment of the detention center, that is a lot of money, but the fiscal
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impact on the office and the entire adjudication ecosystem as i call it is being weighed down by the expedited removal program into this policy tries to expand the border. border. but we also know that some have benefited. so there are some positives. the "washington post" recently reported that the private prison industry has benefited enormously from the expedited removal policy. and so to answer the question that i thought to pose to myself is expedited removal, is the policy choice to use expedited removal against the population were you two years worth of data to demonstrate nearly everyone will be released in , i would have to say no. ..
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