migration on the economy. and line of the questions popped who long term is the role of the immigration with social security or medicare or other policies that our certain to increase in the years to come. value have written a lot about how in in the past that the immigration flows have the effect of the 18 population.

but how do think about this going forward? but does this tell us about what we should take of the role of the immigration and what is very difficult? we manage to avoid them for a long time and you never know we still could avoid the fiscal effects of an aging population but there will be a time when it has to be addressed. and it gives the idea is of how to think about immigration so can you address what we see? >> as a demographer and a planner when does the future start?

and 2001 to be exact recant appreciate how that is evil thing but most people mindset is 10 years out of date it is interesting we don't update faster enough. there was a bubble and day bust and a recovery. that those were lagging very much. and as they were being added and then started to pick up in the '70s and the '80s the current decade beery and right now right in the

middle of 2020 from 2016. a total transition of the working age population most of those immigrants of children. the next generation it is all immigrants and children. because the large baby boomers is no 40 years later shrinking the labor force. so there is still 40 percent of the newcomers. and then with the retirement stage. so shifting that reliance tremendously with the

foreign born population as much as we needed them to address because we cannot go back. if you look at the future since 2001. but but we say end terms of the ratio, adjusted at how dependent we are, with that dependency ratio currently is up that 27 and 52030 in the ratio would rise even more. so in the grants have helped

to balance the economic stop aging but they can slow the increase. but this specific occupations but there is a generational support system you cannot separate the natives and the immigrants but they're all intertwined. the generation that is ongoing and becoming so top-heavy no. and i will claim that but i always point although large baby boomer best that has so

much trouble was not our idea. it is the naturally event we can and we are fortunate. >> i was going to add to that. would the bed is important to remember with social security and medicare they feel that they've made their payments and that is what they are getting out. so now is sitting there waiting for him to retire. . .

>> there are all sorts of conversations that happen that are not necessarily getting resulted in washington. about how to we fix social security and medicare. we can slow down the rate of growth in healthcare costs, that would help. if people worked longer before they retired that would help. if we actually raised taxes and cut other spending that would also help. but a lot of this is going to be dependent on having workers be part of that and immigrants and the children of immigrants are an increasingly large part of that. >> let me go along there.

the senator who i remember most in the port, there are some beautiful graphs in there that look at the second-generation who was born in america, educated in in america, how much more do they pay in taxes as they become more educated, going from a high school degree to a college degree to a postgraduate degree. it's amazing the increase. i just noted when i'm trying to sell my house, i hope some of the better educated people shop on my doorstep and not the undereducated ones that i cannot afford to invest in early on. we really have to pay it forward in order to have tax benefits going forward in the future. so the future has started in 2001 we might be in trouble because we didn't do enough. we still have a chance still have a chance for the next decade or the decade ahead. >> did you want to weigh in on this?

>> it does, in a way that you just described when we go back to the thorny, fiscal question of to whom do you describe the cost of educating children? do you ascribe it to i'm in the two obvious choices, the children and the parents, but the picture you are painting here is it's really the people who are going to collect social security benefits are the ones who are reaping the benefit of that education. >> well so the notion that that in this longer-term picture where you imagine the second-generation, this very large cohort of children of the 80s, the 90s becoming important contributors to our

fiscal balance out in the 20s and 30s when the crunch comes that is really the payoff for the investment that was put in at the state and local level in their education, right? >> and there some mismatch with that. if you feel like the federal government is giving a lot of the benefits that the states are getting but that's another area. part of the the reason the report is 500 pages is that we look at these questions like who do you attribute the cost of education too, how do you make assumptions about how you are looking forward what we are going to do in terms of balancing the budget. part of the reason it is 500 pages is pages is that we have a plethora of economists. sorry answer to most of the questions was we will do it both ways. so you'll see things where we look at things on an average cost where we attribute things to everybody. and then we'll do things where we will say is it really fair to

say that immigrants who are coming in should be paying out half that for the cost of defense, there's things called public goods that we generally think don't actually, the cost of which don't increase if you add another person to it. so part of what we do in the fiscal section of the report which we actually did new work in is that we looked at things on an average basis and also on a marginal basis. not surprisingly, if if you don't attribute things like defense to immigrants, they're actually very attractive and they help make the fact that we have these big deficits more affordable for the rest of us. >> that's good but let me go to another thing you said, you also said that we have new immigrants arriving but we also have immigrants who are already here there's two ways to collect late the cost.

do we use a profile of a typical new immigrant to be like people who are already here? or do you use a profile based on those who arrive just recently in the last five years? you want to make immigrants look worse he would use the old immigrants who are less educated. if you honor them to look like a better physical bargain then you would use the new. so so some people prefer to use the old, but the facts are, and it shows us in the report that education has been rising steadily since 1970 from immigrant arrival. each decade is steadily higher and higher. so how could you go back and use the old when really the new is probably underestimated for future educational attainment of new arrivals. i just point that out because that's in the news today and also people are using old immigrants to represent the future and it's not consistent with current trends. >> in the report we do both. so basically on the report we do a number of things.

the first is that we do year-by-year accounting of what these things look like, the first, second, second, third generation, both controlling to the age profile and also looking at whether things are more or less recent. and then we also do something where we do a 75 year projection going forward where we basically look at if you have an additional immigrant calming, what are the taxes paid and services received of them and their children? so their children and maybe their grandchildren 75 years in the future where we are basically adding the set. in general there immigrants look really good. that is sorta where you basically get the amount of money your investing but also that return from those kids in the allocations to that immigrant when they first arrived. and then we also do stuff state-by-state for the state and local work that is showing how

it varies across different places. >> let me just -underscore what might seem like a methodological or accounting issue which is, the measurement of the impact at 75 years rather than a shorter timeframe. i mean the nature of immigration is such that you don't know the actual effects of society until the second-generation reaches. and this is a confounding factor. in any discussion of immigration. that magi draw is that we have been sitting here 100 years ago 1916, the conversation about the impact of the european immigrants who had arrived in the previous ten years would've been dire about their inability to work in industrial economy, there on fit to be citizens of a democracy.

they were producing crime, illness and who knows what else. less than 75 years later, 50 years later, that generation had conquered the world and brought about the american century and had defeated authoritarianism in europe and asia and was confronting communism on the world stage. so if you take a short term view particularly a very narrow contemporary view you lose sight of this. this report when it casted site out in the 75 years production, you, you see entirely different set of assumptions. there is one other housekeeping detail, large conceptual housekeeping detail. if i'm not mistaken, this report says that in assessing fiscal

impacts, correct me if i'm wrong that similar situated and foreign-born have the same fiscal impact is that correct? that there's nothing about being foreign-born per se. >> so what we do is we attribute costs and benefits and i really should have a shade right now. we do this in a number of ways, most are with individual information we have about people so if you are receiving certain benefits or your pain specific taxes we attribute that to you. what we find, even though there certain costs that immigrants have like for example the cost of bilingual education or programs for immigrant children, we attribute to those children but in general most of the costs, and when we average those things in the costs and benefits of immigrants and natives are largely being driven by a few

factors, one of which is their education and their income levels, so the end education of the immigrants themselves, their income and their age. so that is it. and the the number of kids they had. so what we find is that the people who are most expensive are those people that have kids so the fact that immigrants look more expensive has much more to do with the fact that they are younger and they have kids unless to do with the fact that there foreign-born. that is where the question about whether we are looking at them as investments or not. the other thing to notice if you look at an individual whether they are foreign-born or native, you see definite costs and payments in a real life cycle over 90 year. if you start off you find out

that they are expensive when they hit age five and we are sending them to school. so basically and local governments are paying for education and they're in school until they're 17 or 21 and they are expensive. they. they start paying taxes when their 21 or so. you're getting a big benefit as people are paying taxes and not necessarily using services themselves. so you have this picture above the line. then we hit 65 or 70 where the cost to the government are higher again because they are receiving social security and their healthcare costs go up. basically anybody, if you look at an individual person and you look at how they interact with government you see that they get money it at the beginning and the end and in the middle their pain in hopefully to cover those costs and to make the system work. >> so children children and low old people are annoying if they cost money but the important thing here is that a couple that

has three children in the public school is producing the same cost. >> party much. >> it pretty much regardless of their activity so there's one big difference though, same class but the payoff on the backend when the kids grow up for some reason it is higher for the immigrants children then for the children of native born. the second-generation on all of the studies and all the graphs we show is higher payoff and it's not totally clear why. >> i think part of it has to do with that they get a little bit more education. they're probably specializing in things that might have a little bit more payoff, like anecdotally so not looking at

the date of this is sorta like you have the kids of immigrants who are becoming doctors, lawyers and scientists and stuff and aren't necessarily going to be as likely to become -- >> so nothing against that so we started out thinking about the economy is a big complex system rather than a zero-sum game, we talk now about the need to look at a long arc. have you put down those two big markers now let's turn to the issue of the day which is much more the short-term effects of low skilled immigrants where you are going to take us initially. this report adds significantly to the nuance of understanding of the interaction between those workers and others similarly situated workers in the economies in which they exist. so can you just give us the high points of that analysis. >> so both you and the

washington times mentioned the short run, one of the things we talk about is that we don't really know what the short run is in practice. in theory we know but in practice we don't know. so the short run would be that you suddenly have a huge wave of people come in a few months and there isn't really time for much to adjust in the economy, but we we really see that in the u.s., it's more steadily increasing flows. interesting after models have not really dealt with the case of how do they change their behavior knowing that immigration is coming then is gradually increasing. surprisingly we don't actually have a good theoretical model for that. so now overall we should say that we don't actually find what we cited three poor that there's any effect on the employment rate from immigration.

that's actually from other countries but they're concerned about employment rates of natives. so the whole question revolves around what is the effect of that on wages. just like the previous report actually we find that on average the effects of wages is actually about zero. then the question is, what is the picture and theoretically speaking we expect immigration to benefit natives overall including business owners, workers and then we expect there to be winners and losers and that is true with workers as well and who the winners and losers are depends on the makeup of immigration flows. so it's a bit complicated because as said the immigrants are calm concentrated at the top and bottom. so so normally the losers are going to be people,

native workers who see them flows of people just like them. in theory you would expect it to be the natives at the very top and very bottom who are hurt but at the top as i mentioned before there's an issue that there could be a completely different thing going on that you actually help your productivity has increased by having people to work with in your complementary. for that reason and for reasons of equity we are most concerned about the natives in high school dropouts were about 10% of the population. what we did agree in the report is that it does seem as though they had people whose wages are decreased by immigration, however what we cannot agree on was a number so we came to a consensus about the sign not about the number. in in fact there is a big range of studies that range from very

small negative effect actually quite big negative affect and we did not take the step of saying well there is that floor and the one that found the smaller big effect we cannot actually get consensus on that. so we agree that there is a group of natives at the bottom who experience a negative effect. we don't know exactly how large. >> can i just push back on jenny on this point a little bit. it's not in the report i know, but it's a very small effect on natives and yet incomes aren't doing very well for the natives, somebody has to be blamed for that something or somebody. what is it, what else could be causing the fact that incomes are segmented until just recently. >> will now you could write another national research. >> i'm guessing i have. >> but that's a very good point i think actually there might be

a sentiment or two on it and the report, you're exactly right, right, the wages of the less skilled in the u.s., men in particular have been falling, not falling falling quite to the level of female wages and the main explanatory factors that people have in mind for that technological change is off shoring. so moving production of less skilled pax abroad and then perhaps a little bit but i don't think anybody thinks immigration, even the big negative affect is not enough to explain much of this phenomenon. so correct but not a magnitude immigration and then there's thinking that trading goods were not important, that's more of an open question now. those are really the big factors, no one really thinks, this this is such a big phenomenon nobody thinks that

immigration is a big contributor to that. but that is an excellent point. >> this also gets back to the fact that returns to education are increasing. and so when were talking about this especially when were talking about natives with less than a high school education, that's becoming an increasingly small group of people. as more more people are graduating from high school you basically find you have to understand who it is were talking about and so how you sort of think about it. are we we thinking about the 50 or 60-year-old person without a high school degree who probably spent his life in the factory quest and was maybe actually earning a good wage. or we were you talking about the team or 20-year-old african-year-old african-american sieges basically dropped out of school and had a tough time. >> part of this is trying to

understand who these people are who were in specific groups of my we think there might be different effects. one of the other things that were found in the report that's highlighted is that there does seem to be a small, negative effect on the the hours, not necessarily the appointment of teenagers. of immigration. part of that you can imagine has to do with the fact that if newly arrived immigrants and people who are teenagers who were young were going into the workforce you can imagine that there were limited numbers of entry-level job so there's some of that happening. >> i would not say there's a limited number but there's competition and that might affect the wages and that might affect how many hours the teenagers want to work. >> one last topic before he turned to the audience, we've

talked about effects on highly skilled workers in the economy and low skilled workers. how do we understand the effects in the middle? where the report talks, because of the hour glass shape they are not as direct but there are certainly some affects. >> so i don't think that we have really good empirical studies looking at this. we have studies that are somewhat a blend of theory and data looking at this but those studies say precisely because there are not many immigrants coming in with metal skills and because people in the middle might be complementary, they work with the people at the top and the bottom rather than competing with them they suggest at least relatively speaking immigration benefits the natives

at least compared to the low and high. looks like perhaps some evidence is not a salad and some other but they may even benefit from immigration. so the middle and the highest skill probably benefit thing the low skill are probably being heard. see a little bit more about what they constitute, how somebody in the middle might not perceive it directly but in their checkbook accounts they would see the effects. >> well an example would be you can take construction and -- >> you can go first while we talk about say construction and that's a classic, there's a lot of inflows on people from mexico

and central america into the lower-level construction job. but their supervisors of those people and so if they actually do reduce the wages of the natives at the bottom there be a bigger demand for construction services for people and that will increase the demand more likely for natives of what the supervisors and their wages would go up speemac's i was just to say that part of this in part of the reason i think were on these messages than others as i set all up yesterday doing some of this with the national academy directly. so we went through the slides. so partly partly if you go beyond employment and wages there are other ways that for that middle section that benefit from immigrants being in the country. so so what jenny said in terms of housing or construction is probably less because of immigrants acting as

kids construction workers. in certain regions like the midwest where they are losing population, the fact that you want to sell your house, the fact that there immigrants coming in is probably the main thing propped dean up those. there's also industries that are helping make the economy run in the country run. if we think about sort of where immigrants are working in terms of working it in the house, healthcare aids, nannies, there are all sorts of direct effects that everybody, even if you are not working with somebody in your job who is an immigrant they might be affecting your life and sort of helping things run smoother. >> on the consumer side. >> and certainly you're seen many prices and that's for people in the middle will

obviously, notably see the impact is what they pay on goods and services, housing a variety of other factors. >> there were certain industries and occupations that are predominantly staffed with immigrants and often these low skilled immigrants that people don't necessarily want to do those jobs. there is one appearing for long-term care people with long-term care facilities, disproportionate number of them are not very well paid, often recent immigrants who are doing some of the thankless work that we need to do that are becoming as we age as as a society. let's turn to the audience for ten minutes and then will come

back to the panel for closing costs. raise your hand and let us know who you are. >> hello. your study reinforces to confirm previous study showing that the facts on wages tend to affected native boards without a high school education. in addition to that it also affects prior immigrants. does that help explain why there may be a few anti- immigrant sentiments? >> i'm often surprised that there is a more anti-immigrant sentiment amongst immigrants. i think over time and place it is quite common. all immigrants think that they and all prior immigrants are fantastic but everybody who came

after them would somehow not so good. i think it's for this reason. >> i'm jack martin. the importance of this study it seems to me is that it provides information with regard to decision-making which is important because of the fact that immigration is a discretionary policy. it's not written in stone. so, when you find in the study that there are disparate effects with regard to who it is coming in, particularly low educational level, low wage workers having a more negative effects with regard to the fiscal consequences, that would seem to inform the fact that there is a

valid debate with regard to how many of those lower educational level, non-english speaking people come into the country because it has more of a negative fiscal effect. but the other issues really have to do with how many you are talking about. as i understand it, the results of the study suggest that the more, the better in terms of the economic advantage of a large number of immigrants coming into the country. but doesn't that ignore the fact that there are other outside factors such as crowding, and impact on the environment and so on which i assume are not taken into consideration at all on this report. >> so we do not make any policy recommendation in the report. if you go to chapter ten and you're looking for after we

spent these three years doing this what we think the optimal policy for immigration would be, you'll be a little disappointed. partly we were tasked with laying out information and helping inform people to make those decisions. we made recommendations but there about the need for better data. which i shouldn't make make light of it, it would be incredibly useful press to know know more information about who that second-generation is. i think a lot of what you're saying is valid and i think those are interesting questions in policy debates we should be having as a country. but whether and how we would want to change immigration policy and if there is a level. we don't really get into those things. >> i do want to follow up a little bit, the one key thing to know is that the benefit of immigration come from in the immigrants being different from the natives. at least if you put it with it innovation question.

so if we had an inflow of immigrants to the u.s. were basically a twin of every person in the u.s. came in, you would actually expect that in the end there just be a bigger u.s. with everything the same otherwise the same wages, same prices because the benefit comes when the immigrants are different and it allows this great specialization. so one of the advantages of having lower skilled immigrants that are natives is a leading this grader and offering services you don't often get because the immigrants are not sufficiently low skill. that these services are actually offered. so that is one almost impossible to measure benefit of the low skilled immigrant. you need to add the fiscal side.

>> so the demographic differences are actually sort of driving a lot of what we talk about the fact that having immigrants come in. >> the point is it does not offer these policy descriptions. it's a bipolar page report but on the table as a buffet for you to choose from and pressed to argue about later. it really does see a lot of idea. >> but you need to add the specialization, the fiscal and the lowering wages altogether when you make your decision. those are those three things about low skilled immigrants. >> immigration policies a balancing act. you have to balance all of the objectives. i think if we had a more a more data and insight to put into the bouncing equation. >> any other questions? >> morning.

my question has to do with the difference between the national economic picture in the state local economic picture. as researchers, this is clearly a very evidence-based report, what data do you think is in the report that would be of most interest to a state-level policymaker who is trying to evaluate issues at the state level rather than the 30,000 foot the 30,000 foot national level of these issues? >> i did a lot of the work but basically what we do and what is different than what is done before and partly because i thought it was really part press to do is that in this chapter we break out the costs and benefits for state local governments, state by state. a lot of this comes down to those, the characteristics of the different population so the different groups and also the decisions that states are making in terms of the level of spending on education and the

tax system they have in place. but if you are a state budget person or a state legislator, they will basically go to that chapter and look at what things look at in california versus texas. part part of that is breakout how much disparity. the thing i hope they take away from this, because we do find in general that immigrants cost more than they contribute, is that second-generation. where we are actually seeing this return even to many states. the problem is because people are mobile and because state tax systems are less progressive and less based on income, it means the returns are not necessarily as clear for states who have to make that investment in education for what benefits the country as a whole. for state folks i think there's going to be a lot of delving over those

people. >> we have time for one question. >> hello. i'm heather, i want to speak to higher education and international students. can he speak to the effect of international students on campuses in the u.s. and also to after they graduate, so portion of nope we like to remain a work in the united states. what effect does that have on our economy and community? thank you. >> that's a very good question and there's only a little bit in the report on that which i think partly the list is not as big as you would think. i'm trying to think, we did have a couple of papers in their that we discuss that look at how the choice of field of native is affected by

the arrival of the immigrant. there there is only a little part of your question. i think, we can talk after and i can tell you more about what i think we know that's not in the report. but we don't actually have a very good understanding. there's only limited amount in the report. >> it is amazing given this 500 page page report how much is not necessarily in there. and that keeps coming up. >> you now have approximately one minute and a half each for a time to summarize the 500 words. what. what is the take away here? >> are what you want to add. >> let's go across this way. >> one thing that we have not mentioned yet, i do when i talk about these things talk about the impact on natives because i think that is what natives are most interested in.

we haven't mentioned that immigrant it's very beneficial to immigrants. one of the things that we have is a very crude calculation, but we calculate the size of the economy of gdp. it's about 11% larger because of immigration and that in itself is something that some people are interested in, just how big it is. most of of the benefit doesn't go to the immigrants, but chalk that up as a good thing. to summarize what we have show in the papers as we would expect theoretically but we find empirically, immigration raises the income of natives as well as immigrants. that there are winners and losers amongst the natives. on average no effect on the wages of natives. no no effect on the employment of natives. but some negative impact is kim stressed on a small group, which

is by now very unskilled natives. i will leave it at that. >> i would just conclude that two broad points, one being that we cannot evaluate immigration in a static way at a moment in time. it's impossible. the investments or the cost of immigrants are at one point in time and the payoff is later. if we don't look over time were not able to make any decision at all. if at all reasonable. at the same time, the nativeborn population over time is also evolving. we are all evolving through time and the age of the baby boomers in particular would be the dominant factor for the next 20 years. impacting the fiscal state of america so that's just inescapable. fortunately children grow up and children become the new taxpayers in the new workers, the new homebuyers. so we have to keep both of the things looking forward in time. i'll stop there.

>> i think we have covered a lot of what i think is important in the report. i think dallas points about the fiscal stuff is really important. one thing we didn't cover so much is the fact that immigrants are actually moving into larger sets of communities. so there is more geographic dispersion. that is sort of an issue that warrants more study. so i like to think rather than this being the last word on these topics that it is sort of an opening way of putting some information out there that we can then build on and expand what we know and what we need to know about the topic. >> is a set on the onset, this report opens a chapter of study and debate and it will take a long time to digest and to expand on much the way americans produced volumes following it.

this really feeds our study. if there is a really, really simple bottom-line for this, bottom line for this, it is that it is not simple. be wary of anybody, on any side of the argument he tries to convince you that it is simple. >> thank you [applause]. >> i was just terrific. as we are bringing this panel off and we will move the next one on directly. if you need to stretch your legs please do so. we are going to go straight into the next discussion without a break. it was really a wonderful chance to have three people who are part of three years of deliberation they get into and explain for us the information. we are going to move from this discussion immediately into a discussion about the lived experience. and the ways in which the broader trends which we're talking about her playing themselves out on the state and

local level. and while our next panel is getting the microphones. i want to thank those of you who are participating in a very robust social media conversation about this discussion. i really want to, i think there is a lot, there there it's interesting to see what people are pulling out from the panels and highlighting online. i think those are areas we can explore more. i will say that the urban and usc are very excited about trying to dig into some of these consequences in our work together that is going to happen in the next chapter. so we will have our pilot will with their microphones and about 15 seconds and will move right ahead. so urban institute sr. fellow

audrey singer will moderate this discussion. are we good to go? thank you audrey. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> i am audrey singer, senior fellow at the metropolitan communities and housing policy center at the urban institute. we are delighted to have you with us. those of you who are watching on the webcast, welcome as well. before i introduce our panelist i want to say a word about the picture that we have behind us. when i saw that picture i emailed kim reuben asking her if that was two members of the study panel when they received the final report, jumping for joy?

and she wrote back, no, that would be 500 pages a book in her hands, not just one page. so this is a naturalization ceremony naturalization ceremony with a certificate i believe. so we are excited today to have a stellar set of speakers from several communities run the country. next to me is run not toes soto. is the director of connection america in nashville. she is a nonprofit that serves primarily latino families of the national areas for the program on by their homes, starting their business, supporting the educational success of the children and otherwise helping immigrants integrates international. next to her is the general counsel and policy director of the new york city mayor's office

of immigrant affairs. she is an agency that worked to ensure the well-being of immigrant communities and supports economic, social and civic integration. there are numerous programs and policies will ask to talk about those in abyss. bit. she leads program that promotes access to justice by connecting that immigrants to pre-and state immigration legal services and also citizenship support and they do that in a variety of ways, often through trusted community-based organizations and libraries across the city. senator -- also known as mo is a state senator from nevada. i am from the east coast, he has been a member member of the legislator since 2011.

mo is also the cochair of the national conference of state legislatures, task force on immigration. he works with other state senators from around the country to focus attention on state-level concerns around immigration issues and to help and csl influence policy and legislation at the national level on a range of issues. i want to congratulate nas in the study panel expert for this report. it says a lot about a lot of things as we just heard. it is much harder to characterize things at the state and local level and the lived experiences of immigrants in the communities in which they live, work, and, go to school and worship, shop. . .

so it's the nashville and the new new yorker and the nevada and the las vegas that are the places that face the practicalities of immigrants.

in other places around the country have done so in varying degrees. some places especially those with a long history and identity as émigre gateways have been involved in the integration of immigrants into social, political and economic fabric of those places. they are more likely to have well-developed organizations that reach out to immigrants than they have non-profits and community-based immigration set up and started by immigrant newcomers that carry-on this non-governmental role of being in between immigrants and the institutions and the communities in which they are integrating into. other places where immigration is a newer phenomenon, shall we say are somewhat less excited about immigrant newcomers coming

in and often places over time have developed policies that serve to deflect or exclude immigrants often aimed at those that are undocumented but as you know u.s. citizens and illegal immigrants are often ramba -- france -- wrapped up in the same community. i'm going to start. nashville is currently the home up 150,000 immigrants. it has doubled in size since 2000 and immigrants now make up 80% of the population. i would like to talk to you about that in a minute to tell us about the organization and its goals and what kinds of issues to start the organization. >> is great to be here. i would say i'm one of the 40 million in the report.

i came to the u.s. when i was 21 to finish college and stayed here because of marriage. nashville is one of many places that you describe where many nashville and stood not no one who spoke a foreign language who came from somewhere else in a very clear way up until 20 or 25 years ago and it's a response to not only the growth of latino families who are coming to places like nashville or georgia or charlottesville north carolina, but also a response to recognize those families are looking to become part of the community and start a business and buy a house and pursue their american dream but also the nashville community was grasping a change at some welcome more than others and is precisely to

respond to be both a support network for the families that are arriving and also a place to have conversations with native nashville en's about why they come to nashville and why central americans are arriving in order to conditions we live behind and it and what are the challenges and opportunities we are seeking in their new communities. our focus has been promoting the social economic and civic integration of those families. understanding it's a two-way street where the immigrants are trying to learn a new language but also understanding nashvillians will have to adopt and we are more tribute -- diverse community but it will be inclusively take the steps to make sure that those immigrants have opportunities and tools to

succeed and nashville as a whole will reap the benefits. we are an organization at a basic level to break it down helps families buy houses and access financial products to meet their needs. we help them pursue an idea and turn it into a successful business including highlighting the conversation on the earlier panel of people that are coming with family refugees and skill and creativity and turning that into successful businesses which are catering companies, wholesalers and are creating jobs for others, not just for themselves. we are also very invested in the point of making sure the second-generation is also fulfilling what the report says and primarily focusing on

ensuring that the children of immigrants are immigrant kids who are already a growing percentage of our school system and nashville have the opportunity to succeed in high school and become the first in their family to graduate from high school and go to college through a national program developed by the national council of la raza and i will talk more about how that connects and what we heard an airport but certainly we understand that immigrants are not just workers who want a good job but they are people full of aspirations and needs and assets and dreams and we try to be a support at every point in their lives in nashville and hoping we are also bringing nashvillians and immigrants together to understand how our presence benefits our state. >> if you would like to say something i think it's of great

interest. certainly the report spend a lot of time talking about not just the short-term but the long-term benefits of this population and i don't know if you can elaborate on how the second-generation is doing as they become adults as they enter the workforce. are they staying in nashville? what is going on with that? >> nashville even in our 14 year history we can see the change in our community. 14 years ago when we started we were mostly exclusively thinking about the resources and challenges and assets of the first arriving parents. usually they came to nashville for a construction job when it was in the middle of a construction boom building stadiums for football and ed narain and other things and infrastructure investments.

i love to hear the stories from the priests in our community. a neighbor at where we are located in the early 1990s, the church changed by the number of single men that showed up in the church and three years later the church changed again because those men are now bringing their wives and kids that they have sent home now but nashville became a place where they saw a future and a place to go home permanently. in that same way we see not only those adults who are first arriving in learning english and being employed in the servicing industry and hospitality and tourism isn't very important industry in asheville and certainly the immigrant workforce is propelling it in a big way. but also we started seeing a shift of our school system. naturally for us it's more important to see what the school

system is looking like and how many immigrants are in our community. that's a real snapshot of what's happening in nashville. already 25% of our children in kindergarten are latino and 30% of the students in nashville come from homes where english is not their primary language and that continues to grow every year. we have almost 90,000 children and so what we see now is both the children they came with their parents of immigrants but also the children are being torn in nashville who are already in kindergarten and graduating from high school. a few years ago we started recognizing the change in they clamor for parents to help their kids attend school so we brought the program to nashville which is an after-school program to help them succeed. but i can tell you is that we are in front of that american

dream of the parents who might be employed in what is called -- so i would argue that many people in this room could not build some of the great beautiful walls that we see around and i find it very helpful but certainly there are children, this group of people that have not only the expectation from their parents but this eagerness to make sure that they will be the ones in their family who will change the church at three and make it to college. that is great and we are trying to make sure that they have the support to do that however we are also competing with their own self-interest in tennessee and many places in the country. many of these kids who are undocumented are not seen as who they are and therefore colleges more expensive having to pay three times the amount of money that it would cost a student.

so while our state and our governor is pushing a plan that in the next 20 years students who achieve that mark are at least 65% of our city and -- citizens will have records from high school and have some kind of post-secondary education because only 25% of nashvillians because we understand the economic investment for having a more educated workforce will mean to our economy in tennessee. on one hand our governor and their system is pushing that we reach 25%, everyone get a secondary education but on the other hand we have 14,000 students in tennessee who would benefit from in-state tuition rates that are already saying i want to go to college and i want to be a doctor and i want to be teacher. i want to be an engineer but we

are making their work harder and we are making that path more expensive. sometimes we force them to go another route to which they will not pursue further education so we see what the report says and the energy of those kids what is propelling them and the parents that are propelling them to achieve that the eagerness to become the first in the family to go to college to break that educational level that many of their parents do not have but yet in our state we are still grasping this sort of reverse policy that is against our interests that we are not making that possible for these kids and others behind them. >> thank you. so, new york. everybody knows new york is the

place where the largest number of immigrants in the united states has a long history of receiving immigrants, has the statue of liberty. there nearly 6 million people in the metropolitan area but if more than half of them live in the city of new york. it's history as a continuous place of settlement sets at a place in other places but new york is ahead in a lot of ways and it's kind of unfair but they are able to present options and opportunities that other places can't. and so what i'm interested in hearing about is how at the municipal level infrastructure works, how the city government works and invest in these communities and their interactions not only within

their community but with the nonprofit sector, various other city agencies and what it's like in a place with a well-developed and well-funded infrastructure to support immigrants. talk to us about what you guys do and why the city expects so much? >> thanks audrey and thank you all for coming here today. thank you so so much of the urban institute for hosting this really important conversation. i'm really excited to keep talking about these issues and to really dive into the report. in new york city as audrey mentioned we have this broad mandate which i think it is a fantastic one which is to promote the well-being of new york city immigrants and support their social, civic, economic integration. we have more to our unit.

in the city charter and within the mayor's office. we recommend policies to pursue our mandates. we conduct our reach in our city and immigrant communities in the five boroughs and to help immigrants navigate the government and new york city generally. under the leadership of mayor de blasio and our commissioner we really focus on a few particular strategies at moya in this administration. one, to really realize a vision that we have of inclusive government and equitable cities, a government for all new yorkers including the 3 million foreign-born new yorkers and make sure that these immigrant new yorkers have access to city services in order to pursue their dreams to fulfill their

potential. another focus that we have as audrey mentioned as supporting immigrants and accessing justice. for us that means making sure that we can connect people to immigration legal services, support them on their path to citizenship. we have done some research at the urban institute and it shows the economic benefits of nationalization for immigrants in wages and employment. good for immigrants and it's good for their families and it's good for us in the city as well. so it's a big deal for us. and then advocacy on behalf of new york city immigrants at the local state and federal levels. in doing this work we work with a really broad range of people. we are small unit within the mayor's office. it's not our job to serve their immigrants. we do it in partnership with our

sister agencies throughout the new york city government with the really rich and broad kind of community of community-based organizations in new york, faith, labor, business. we work with all kinds of stakeholders and partners in supporting new york's immigrants. and then another key to our success is thinking about testid programs and new approaches for delivering services and connecting to immigrants. i think probably the best-known program that we have launched in this administration is the new york city's municipal i.d. card which was launched at the beginning of 2015 so less than two years later one in 10 new yorkers have a municipal i.d. card.

it's been tremendously successful and i'm happy to talk about war but i think it's been a really great learning experience for us. the partnerships and collaborations that need to happen and how to design a program so they are useful and beneficial to immigrant new yorkers into all new yorkers and that's a real necessary ingredient for program success. >> for more than know something the nypd i.d. is one of those things that benefits not just immigrants that didn't come out of your office. or did they click your office? >> we were deadly one of the agencies involved. >> the ideas if you have one of these i.d.s that you have access to a bunch of things and it provides city agencies and other organizations i.t..

i guess you have got one in 10 now. do you have a sense of how well people are using this and what share our immigrants are foreign-born people? i guess i again want to stress new york really is a laboratory for other places and because they are a little bit ahead of in terms of new immigrants in and the money they have to spend on them. these are lessons for other places. there are many other places around the country in cities in particular that have municipal i.d.s and have had them for a while. we are learning a lot about how populations use them but i wonder if he could tell us more about new yorkers. >> absolutely and we were not the first city to create a municipal i.d. program. san francisco and other cities have these programs and we are talking to those all the time

that are interested in starting programs. in new york i think one of your questions audrey about how are people using the i.d. and what benefit does it have to them we actually did a study with a third-party evaluation firm that came out last month. it really designs into this question a visit working into people like it and what are they using it for, our immigrants actually using it? definitely immigrant new yorkers is a key population and we had in mind in designing and implementing the program. they were not the only population by any means. it is a card from new yorkers and we wanted to be broadly appealing in scope because we did not want to be a card that stigmatize cardholders. we wanted it to be something that signals the identity of all which is that of being a new

yorker. in my opinion. the of the i wish and was really interesting. we confirmed that the card is popular throughout the city. we have cardholders and all zip codes across all five boroughs. there are definitely higher rates of enrollment and an immigrant dense neighborhoods. we don't ask about immigration status by the way so we don't know who is documented or undocumented. do we know who you are? do we know that you live in new york city? those are the questions that we ask 10 people and roll. other things that we have learned in the study are that of the immigrants who have the card and these are the immigrants have responded to the survey.

60% use it as their primary i.d. about 36% habit have that as their only form of u.s. i.d. and a yousaf raza were to things. and using it exactly as we had hoped for various things like entering city buildings, going to pick up their kids at school when oftentimes you need to show i.d. comic using it to open a bank or credit union account with a financial institution. when we were designing the program we worked with a wide cultural institutions in new york city who agreed, we are excited actually about offering a free one-year membership to their cetaceans for cardholders and that's been a really popular benefits for the card and i think it has drawn a really diverse cross-section of new yorkers to the program that are

using it. the museums and the concert halls are thrilled to see new populations come in their doors and enjoy what they have to offer. we have found new benefits this week where the new york roadrunners, a recreational racing club, running club, has offered membership to cardholders and sporting good stores offering discounts. you can get prescription discounts so it's a key to the city for new yorkers. it's in their wallet and they can use it and enjoy everything that the city has to offer and then what i think is the most powerful statistic that came from the evaluation was a really high. , think 70% of respondents talked about how having the new

york city i.d. really did confirm their benefit which says a lot about the power. >> that's really interesting and i can see both the membership in the fifth but also going back to the theme of the socioeconomic benefits. it'll be interesting to watch that over the long-term and to see what happens in new york and other places as well. most of nevada's half a million immigrants are in las vegas. immigrants have been drawn to jobs they are in the hospitality sector and in the construction sector when there was a recent boom. although it's been around for since the mid-20th century, things really took off during

the growth of the late 1990s when a lot of immigrant workers flocked to nevada to help build a lot of the growth we have seen so now 22% of las vegas and nevada's total population is foreign-born. the great recession also hit las vegas very hard and vegas is one of those places that is used to having boom in dust economies but where immigrants have to work the effects tend to go. deep in many communities. so if you could talk about both sides of what you do, what you do for the state and also what you do as a member of this national task force on immigration, that would be great to hear about. >> i'm a cuban immigrant but we

moved to vegas when i was six and a lot of cubans back then were coming from even though my parents had come from nashville a lot of people were coming from that era of castro and literally going from casinos in havana to casinos in las vegas and in the years since we have had a lot of growth. yesterday i know the circus circus hotel which is one of the older hotels in las vegas and we tend to tear things down and build them newer and bigger and so we are going through that right now where we are starting to his tear down some step in building up some new things. from the national state legislature we have a task force. you mentioned 2004, right after that is when i became part of

the task force. we saw your facility and we have been to new york and looking at the economic benefits. we have been all over the country and we have been to the borders including washington state and down in arizona. we have been down to california and we have even been to mexico city to talk to mexico city folks about immigration so we have had this opportunity to look at all these things and some of the things that i see across the country are amazing what they are doing at immigrants. nevada probably one of the biggest challenges in education one thing that is different about nevada is we don't have a state income tax so all the money we get comes from sales tax and property tax. regardless of your immigration status you have to live somewhere and you have to buy

things and our economic studies from the past have shown that our immigrant population at $2.5 billion which is greater than the state as a whole so it's been a real boon for us but as you mentioned we are boom or bust and when the hotels are doing well and construction on all those other new jobs and the other thing is a lot of the smaller microbusinesses and those types of things are doing very well. i remember seeing the ones that you guys have a nashville. they give you the opportunity to have a facility. i have seen a similar thing in minneapolis. so we are seeing those types of things in a nevada we have similar things. as a legislator one of the challenges we had is we had and

the federal folks have it in place sometimes immigration policy that will work we see a lot of states doing different things so nevada one of the things we did that took me eight years but we finally got through was drivers authorization card which is similar to a driver's license but it allows people to drive to be able to get to school or to go to the doctor. we are to know they were driving so this gives them an opportunity to make the roads safer and give them an opportunity. we started that program three years ago and we now have 32,000 individuals that have applied for the card and use it. we have in our education system just in clark county in the las vegas area which is 80% of the population of the data i think we have it's over 80.

it could be more than that but they're at least 80 different languages that the school district has to deal with with hispanic teen a large one. so there are a lot of challenges there. we don't fund anywhere near the national average and with all that growth at our heyday and at the peak we were building a new school every 20 days in the las vegas area. over period of eight years we have told you think it was 16 high schools 32 middle schools. we had kids going to different schools every year and not moving. and so we have put more investment more recently in the last four years into the english language learner program. we were using federal money for that but now we have invested in

the program that we put in the high need english language learner population schools that provides for pre-k and provides for smaller classes in kindergarten and reading and we have seen amazing results there. we have doubled that effort this last legislative session and now we are looking at changing the way we fund schools to reflect the needs for english-language english language learners or special education and those kinds of things. one of the things we talked about the lower skilled jobs that we consider construction the skilled job. somebody is to train them how to do that and unfortunately when they come from whatever country they are coming from while it costs us to educate their children there is a cost benefit

their even though it's expensive but now what we see the same parents who came because they want to make their lives better for their kids and work in hotels their kids are not becoming doctors and lawyers and engineers. in nevada we don't have the issue of out-of-state tuition depending on your citizenship. so our kids are able to go to college although the cost is high in some cases and we are working on bringing down costs especially in community college. >> i think that's a really important point sort of nonquantifiable and it goes back to the discussion by our panelists of what immigrants bring with them already and the fact that lower skilled people have skills that are valuable that they bring into the labor market. not to put you too much on the

spot that as a state legislator from what you have heard on the panel and i am sure you have read the whole report on the way here. you came in on the red eye so a lot of reading but from what you have heard does anything about the state analyses or anything resonate with you as the leader concerned with these things in the state of nevada? >> one thing i know for sure when you have these reports and we have met a few other reports come out this year. you can look at that and while in politics you are ours going to have some folks that it doesn't matter what you presented them they are to know the answer even though it's completely wrong. but for the most part what i see and because the immigration task force is actually bipartisan because i'm a cochair.

we have democrats and republicans and the members of the committee are also that way so we worked together to come up with policies that work. when we see these reports and specifically this one it does look at that issue of the national versus local and as i mentioned earlier depends on which state you are from and the kind of impact especially fiscally and economically that you have. i have seen different states and the challenges that they have and how they fund the things. so having that information -- we have some folks from georgia and other places where washington state where there is a lot of agricultural and the whole center part in a plains states where they have different challenges for immigrants. what we have seen is many things

that are piece mailing immigration policy. so moving forward what we would hope to see is something we'll get resolved and we will get updated immigration policy but that wall said give states the opportunity to be able to customize our individual needs so that is not one cookie-cutter thing for every state but it will allow us to look at if we need this type of worker and that is a great example. while tourism is our bread and butter we still have mining. we are the number three producer of gold in the world behind australia south africa. we need people for those types of positions but we also know we will be building electric cars to set up las vegas and tesla with the biggest battery factory

in the world in nevada. we work with those industries. everything now including when you talk about hotels and hospitality we don't think of those is to knowledge accompanies that everything they do now is technology in the gaming and all that. so we have that great need in nevada to be able to attract those kinds of workers to educate the ones that we do have. >> you mentioned you phrased it very nicely. now i'm going to forget. updated immigration policies. i think we will talk about that. we are in a moment right now for immigration is on the top of the agenda of a lot of policy discussions taking place nationally with this

presidential campaign season and just it has opened up a lot of discussions for opportunities. i was wondering if you could all talk about some of the challenges that you have on the ground dealing with issues that arise as they arise and you talked about bringing nashvillians together, resident nashvillians and i guess it's fair to say that tennessee for most of its 20th century history was bi-racial, had native-born blacks and whites and his immigrants started to arrive that kind of intersect did this society bear and the economy in ways that may or may not have been comfortable and now we are in a moment where

it's the age of inequality and we are talking a lot more about race. we are talking a lot more about immigration and how all of these things intersect. on the ground was he alike in your communities to have these conversations within this context that ultimately whether you have the right facts, this study facts and the facts that you like. it does often come back to the economic issue and so i was hoping you could all offer some comments. >> as the previous panel said there's not one answer and certainly tennessee even though you might think and still wonder, really, and you also think the very conservative state it's not a black-and-white story. i will give you a couple of examples. if you ask any immigrated national how they feel about life in nashville that's exactly

why we have grown so much and why you have your families later because it seems like a welcoming place with a decent quality of life. the greater cost of living. many of the latino immigrants that we have in nashville, both from their countries of origin but many of them are moving from other parts particularly california for the cost of living is higher and where maybe the opportunities are not available as in places like nashville. nashville is a place that has been tested like no other places. in 2007 and 2009 we had an english only referendum and we were the first to take that to the borders and nashvillians defeated that in a way of sending a message that was not who we were and that's not the kind of community were building. i think the fact that a

nonprofit collaborative brings together 10 non-profits under one roof funded by government, local foundations and individuals is a testament to me that nashvillians believe in the importance of investing in organizations like ours and efforts like ours to offer tools and resources to our newest neighbors. you get out of nashville and you get into the rural communities where maple -- maybe he will have not perceived change in welcoming a different way. for many years up until three or four years ago at the state legislature we were fighting immigrant bills often 65 of them at a time and it was a reflection of making life harder for immigrants coming to tennessee and tennessee was way too attractive because we were offering licenses to undocumented immigrants or we have mechanisms to not be a community where all may legal

immigrants were welcome. so interestingly enough three years ago that changed and in a way for the first time we were able to be for something and not just be defending our community against bad things and to to me that's a thermometer that the conversation might change. even more so for the last two years we have been working in the coalition one of our partners in our coalition and the state has led the effort on tuition equality so undocumented kids could go to our schools. many other states it has taken five years or more to get there. and tennessee we are not there yet but the first time we proposed it be lost by only one vote which is amazing in its own way. i can tell you that cosponsored the bill were to republicans not

from nashville but one from chattanooga to our east and one from memphis to our westside. that in itself is also a reflection of the understanding of people of all parties. it's in their best interest and the best interest of the community. it was because the realization of who was the immigration community and employers bringing to him the fact that we need to make this potential workforce that we were educating already more integrated into chattanooga. so i think certainly unfortunately and tennessee also like in many places we are competing to see who can be more unwelcoming often and apparently in the last year the effect of the rhetoric from trump has affected our community too. as we have moved forward in last two years on tuition equality,

that's the one place where nashvillians are moving forward-thinking now is a wise investment and it was the interest of not just the family but if the economic interest in the state. we have taken many steps back and actually we are feeling very concerned about the likelihood of this year when we bring this issue for the third time to legislative session and how we will move forward. i can tell you that it is an interesting tale of people and chattanooga making the a case for why we need these new policies and open the opportunity for kids to go to college but on the other hand we are also making sure that tennessee was not welcoming to muslim refugees and we were one of the states that said don't send us any serious. and so like many places we are

schizophrenic about our view of we want a community at what point and i think the work organizations like ours and the partnerships among them is the only way in a sustained that is going to make sure that people understand on a personal level and also at the community level why all this matters. in nashville in particular often we feel a little bit complacent that we are welcoming community but in fact i have to say when you were describing the work for new york city, immigrant cities and a place like nashville where you are wondering how many people are nashville? i'm more hopeful because i don't think it's unexpected for many

people in the audience who believe that we have sophisticated networks of support by the nonprofit or in their local government and now we have restored the last 20 years. what i'm saying is, that's why i'm here. the reality is there are more -- i'm hopeful that in places like nashville, we are testing testit americans believe about what it means to be an american. i believe the new york probably you feel tested in so many ways. that we would be a community where people believe that that's who we are in the most essential

way and in places like nashville where we are testing testing wht means to be an american by how we are changed by people that come to us and while it's really hard to be hopeful at this individual time, the responsiveness of elected officials come citizens in the non-profits that are on gives me hope that maybe we will get it right. >> before he got a q&a which we will do in a minute i want to ask if he would briefly take a few more comments. >> i'm going to try to be brief. i have so many things to say. i think you part of some really interesting things. new york is different. in reflecting on the last panel we have 3 million immigrants and

60% of the population are immigrants or the children of immigrants. 60% of the workforce is foreign-born, half of small business owners. they are taxpayers and their workers and employers and consumers. we are not going to have a functioning government. we have to have an immigrant inclusion strategy and we know that and it's not like a walk in the park. it's the most diverse immigrant population in the country probably so it means we have to be smart in our delivery of services in light of the population in the city. it's not as controversial of and approaches that might he and other parts of the country. diversity is who we are. we are proud of our immigrants story in the city. one thing that is really

interesting we are increasingly talking more to work counterparts like moya about these best practice strategies, sharing ideas and integrated programs and policies and join together and advocacy. and seeking reform at the national level and in the last two years we have helped spearhead the development of the coalition of localities, city for action that i think over 100 mayors and leaders now. we have monthly calls in the update each other and then we worked together to support the national chains that we all want to see. the foremost of which is an immigration plan but we have also come together to accept

more refugees. speaking from the local government perspective we have come together to promote efforts to seek sanctuary cities. our interest is in really a robust national reform for immigrants and we want to bring that perspective in that voice into the conversation. i do think increasingly there is a recognition and i'm excited to get into the weeds of the report and figure out what is in their from a local perspective that will give us more insight into what we are doing. >> i think i will quickly talk about comets we look to change change policy one of the things that is change the last few years, when i got elected i was the first latino or the only latino in the nevada assembly. two years later i am the son of

immigrants. two years later and immigrants of the two of us became the hispanic caucus and that stayed that way for four years and often we went from two to eight and we went from being just members to all of a sudden now is the majority leader of the senate and we have a committee chairman so a lot of the policies have changed because people knew that they had to pay attention. more important than that was that we went from the immigrant population participation in the elections back then to what it is today has changed and people are paying attention. so we are seeing some changes because the immigrants themselves are becoming more engaged in what's going on and i think as the immigrants do so i think others are seeing these

reports that come out. they actually get to know families, the immigrant families and see the things that are going on. all been very helpful with this whole process so i first see that will become even more so when they will get better policies. when i first got elected it was really hard. like i said it took eight years but we got to that eighth year and doing the driver's license was much easier. we have the opportunity and of course i was the majority leader and that helped but the community as a whole so that's a real important part of this whole mix. >> speaking to this role and state and local leaders opening up the questions no matter how

controversial they are and working through them and having the right tone. it seems like there is a lot going on in the places that you live in and work in. i wanted to open up to the floor for any questions. we have maybe time for two or three. we have got one right here. >> good morning. i want to ask a question question. so it's good to hear that immigrants are contributing to successful constructive ways to the growth of the country and particularly new york and nevada that the i.d. topic is certainly huge and we know why, because there is always the potential for abuse and using it in some way that should it shouldn't be

used. can you tell me more about how you go about -- now it's harder to get a renewal idea in d.c.. now you have to have your birth certificate where he didn't accept out that before so have you found problems with that and their been more forgeries and per certificates are innate issues of people trying to access their card? >> thank you for that question. think it's a really good one. when we were designing the program in the legislative process and the implementation process for the idea of i.d., security of at the card was foremost in mind because we wanted it to be a robust card that would be widely it set did and could be used as somebody's primary ide. we knew being able to ensure the integrity of the card and the integrity of the program with

the necessary for that except vince. one of our main partners in the design implementation process was the new york place department who worked with us really closely to set set up the kinds of protocols we would need to be sure that we didn't know who somebody was when they were applying for a card and we could confirm their address so that when we put that information on the card we could do so with confidence. we have been really pleased with the safety and the security of the cards. in nearly two years we have the strong integrity team that has really secure procedures for issuing the cards. we have not found that to be a weaker standard than comparable i.d.s and when i say comparable i.d.s, i was just thinking about the size of new york city and the number of new

york city residents who have a driver's license. we want the i.d. to be able to serve that purpose at least in the city. >> in nevada we are not there yet when it comes to an i.d.. even a drivers authorization cars specifically says on it not to be used by these persons. we can't limit them from doing that. the other issue with the drivers was the real i.d. act so you have to do it in compliance with that so our card is than the alternative predicted on want a real i.d. you can get this driver's authorization carpet many businesses still allow for that. the other thing is that the mexican government has increased their security measures so those can be used now where in the past it was harder to use that. some of the other south american

countries their cards are also better now but we have been able to use some of those for i.d. purposes especially when you are playing for a driver's license and other things. >> any other questions? >> you probably would appreciate this. most people do not know that right now there are 400,000 fewer homeowners who are from white households from 15 years ago. 400,000 fewer white owner households today. at the same time there has been an increase of nearly 3 million hispanics owning households. to some measure you have done

this in nashville with your earnest asian. at the same time latinos have driven employment growth in the country by more than two-thirds during the last 20 years come the same as educational games. there is a lower dropout. and more kids are attending college and the same thing in business. latina women are coming out with new businesses at a much higher. than the rest of the population which goes to my question. i had asked jason furman who is the chairman of the council of economic advisers conservatives tend to criticize the level of employment right now claiming that it's false and even though we are close to employment the real problem lies with labor enforcement. just so happens that latinos

have had a larger participation. since the year 2000. 69% as opposed to 66 for the rest of the population and even today that continues to set an all-time low level 62 for the country but 66 for latinos. the question i asked mr. furman is do you think that the reduction has occurred among latinos is due in part to the fact that in the report there has been a net wash in the past years where we have actually lost immigrants. >> is your question? is the question you asked for jason furman one of our leading economists is going to ask?

>> i had a question also. the other question is the fact that the participation reduction. chilly for hispanics -- i'm about to finish. have been lowered because more kids are attending school and staying in school so that's a plus and an investment like you said for the future. mike question especially for cecelia would be are you looking at the impact of latinos on the overall labor force participation. because people who think employment is not where should be. >> i woke briefly say -- i will briefly say labor participation in latinos is pretty high.

i don't know for other communities. our concern is more unemployment. we know a lot of people are working two or three jobs because there are no full-time jobs and under employment is our concern. it's not participation in the labor force. >> i think there is a lot in the report that addresses these issues either directly or indirectly. are there any questions from the floor lacks there is one back there. actually i am told we have got to end. maybe we can talk at the end but we have got to stop because our keynote has just arrived. i want to thank our panelists for hanging with us on this topic, this very serious report

and thanks for being with us. >> thank you. [applause] >> this has been a really extraordinary morning and i am particularly pleased that we have gone from a plethora of economists who bring a lot of insight of a kind event be able to hear what's happening in three of america's most dynamic cities and the ways in which that works is playing itself out on the ground and it's really been nice. we are going to close our program today probably with the most fitting possible way we could have and this discussion. i have the great wager in honor of introducing the director of the policy counsel.

cecilia coordinates the policymaking process in the white house and think about that sentence per second you get a sense of the breadth of responsibility that cecelia has had. that means education and health care and energy and climate change and so many other things that probably there is no other issue that has been more central part of her work in her life than what we have been talking about today. she has also relevant to this discussion played a role previously in helping to manage the white house relationship with governors and mayors and other local leaders so again understands the difference between a national and the local government. prior to joining the administration cecilia was that nclr. as i'm sure you all know that

latinos support certain station insured unemployment education property farmworkers in immigration policy. so whether it's been from the state level, the city level, looking at the abacus perspective and now representing the present of united states immigration policy is a larger national context than some of the most fraught and divisive times. the president could we have had no better at pfizer at the site and cecelia. the macarthur foundation and anyone watching the news yesterday may have seen it announced its fellowship. i think they call them the genius awards but they are in fact inspiring young leaders and cecelia's career suggests to us their great insight and understanding. 16 years ago she formed the

macarthur foundation fellows. we all benefit from her pragmatism and resolve and we are really lucky to have her here today. please join me in welcoming sicilian munoz. [applause] >> that is a very nice introduction will be very hard to live up to the family excited that you are doing this and having this conversation. i'm thrilled both to see the conversation about the economic benefits and at some level well-known but incredibly important piece of legislation but also to dig into the work of integrating immigrants. we get an awful lot, an awful lot without being nearly deliberate enough and one of the things this administration has been doing which i'm very proud of and i've lost track of.

she is helping lead the charge on the question of immigration from the point of view the federal government. we are actually aligning the federal agencies on this question -- question of immigrant integration to make sure we are doing our part along with the folks you saw in your last panel. that's a tremendously important effort and we are connecting to this welcoming movement as a way of looking it up in strengthening it. for all that we get which i know you have been talking about all morning economically as well as in other ways in the immigrant community we are doing better and we should and some of the leaders assembled in this room know we are. i'm grateful to be part of this conversation today. this is a timely topic. in preparing my remarks i'm thinking about reflecting, than doing this work are 30 years and there has never not been a

timely topic. wearers in the thick of the debate immigrants and their value to this country and their potential for competing with the rest of us and the necessity of immigration reform. we are in the thick of such a debate now and i should say the outset you folks are just sitting there hoping i would come on the current public debate i'm afraid i will have to disappoint you. i'm a government official may not commenting on things related to campaigns. i am in a policymaking role in making comment on the administration's policy and the interesting and important contributions. it's a very important contribution in a conference at some level what is being cleared for a long time well over a decade and sometimes well over a century and that is the economic contributions to this country are critical to our well-being. fears about competition within the work force are vastly

over -- with the exception of children who turns out our expensive immigrant or not because we educate them because it's the right thing to do. with that notable exception the contributions of immigrants and the offspring we are continuing to educate our well-established and very vital to the well-being and to our future. we know this and the study we have been talking about today provides vital up dated analysis and depth. every conferences so there is room for honest debate here but really there is no serious argument that immigration is anything but a nap positive for our country. we also know we were to fix what everybody's knowledge is broken about our immigration system we could do even better than we are doing economically. when the senate passed its immigration reform proposal in 2013 the congressional budget office found that the growth in economy by additional 5.4% compared to the status quo

reduce the defense budget by eight and $50 billion over the next 20 years reduce the federal debt by three percentage points and in 2023 at 300 billion to the trust fund over the next decade expanding social security solvency and strengthening the housing market and a whole host of good things that are not documented that would have resulted from immigration reform that passed the senate in 2013. i've spent the last eight years working alongside the national economic council during a period of obviously economic downturn and a. epic recovery. i've learned that their arsenal of tools that we have is for economic growth especially in the short term is limited. we use every lever we could get her hands onto commodity economic recovery. this is the lever that we missed