at the time of katrina statewide. mostly test scores. now 10% do just like the rest of the state, there are not many bad schools left because they have a system their father for now. there are some and they need to keep weeding them out. it is not perfect but but far better for the kids to have that. >> the constantly improving system. >> a static, neighborhood-based school system. >> afterwords airs on booktv at 10:00 pm and sunday at 9:00 pm eastern. the afterwords programs, booktv.org. >> we want to introduce you to first-time author helen raleigh.

her book is called the broken welcome mat. when did you come to the united states? >> guest: i came to the united states in 1996 as a graduate school student from mainland china. >> when did you become a us citizen? >> guest: 2013. >> host: when did you begin the process? >> guest: the day after i arrived as a student i want to stay in the united states. 17 years to jump through the legal hoops, to become a naturalized us citizen. >> host: what were the hoops you had to jump through? >> guest: legal status. our immigration law is stacked against the people, the immigration law, a family preference, because i don't have

a family here, i need to maintain my student status and employer, that is the only way to be a legal resident through employment. i got a job offer from citibank and working for several fortune 500 companies maintaining my work visa and eventually daimlerchrysler waiting to sponsor me with a work visa but because of the supply of the visa it is less and the demand so i am stuck for five years with 0 programs so i got married at the end of that process, that is how i became a us citizen, through marriage. >> host: do you think if you haven't gotten married you would be in the system somewhere? >> guest: probably not. by the end of that i had run out of options and that is another hurdle. when you don't know how long, i

cannot buy a house or change jobs because the next employer is waiting to assume all legal costs and the risk is to continue the process and they are waiting to do that. i am at the end of the rope and have to leave. >> host: you write in your book "the broken welcome mat: america's un-american immigration policy and how we should fix it," is the burden on employers or schools to say yes, we want her to stay and then have to prove you need to stay? >> guest: mostly on the applicants. this is another problem with the immigration system. somebody like me who has skill sets, knowledge, education, two masters degrees from the united states, i could sponsor myself,

i want to be american based on marriage. we don't allow people to do that in the united states. it is a burden to find somebody, whether that is my husband or employer, somebody -- our immigration system engenders dependency. we should have an immigration system independent like in canada. i can apply for a green card in canada based on skill sets and not the education i have. we don't do that in the united states. >> host: let's say you wanted to come from mainland china to the united states, what would be the process? can you get on the plane and fly over here? >> guest: no. there are several ways to do this. if you want to become an immigrant, you can come as a

student or a temporary worker or a tourist. you can go through marriage, employment, or family but employment and family, there's a very long wait. based on the current status, to sponsor my sister, i can sponsor my siblings. starting today. nobody will review her application until 14 years from now. that is a waste for somebody from china between 1914 years. a different country by country? >> guest: country by country. some countries like china, philippines, mexico traditionally supply this country a lot of immigrants v weight is much longer. the uk or european countries,

the weight is shorter. it is very complex process. >> host: could your sister come over before that is up? >> i would have to be her sponsor. to go to school, she can do that but it is a nonimmigrant visa. to find a job, i have that. >> host: helen raleigh, what would you like to do, how would you like to change immigration? >> guest: make it better. in my book i offer several solutions. the key is to make the system simpler. we have a very complex system. when you have a very complex law, a federal judge once joked

our immigration law is so complex it is more complex than the tax-cut. that is the government because the tax code is pretty complex. it increases the wait time, the cost, discourages people who do not have means to go through the process. the second thing is we need to change from a family reunion based into a marriage based, focus on marriage. i don't want to get a read on that, there is a need for it but we should have canadian style, australian style, skill-based, marriage focused immigration system, 4 people who have skills, knowledge that our economy needs, creating a

whirlwind situation and that person will be successful because they can make a living based on their skill sets and knowledge. those are the key. in order to get half the country to support this immigration reform we have to exercise border security, national security. those things present a challenge. my only disagreement is getting national security -- it does not help our country, does not help immigrants, you lose the other half of the country. border security has to work hand in hand with making the system easier, simpler, so people can come here and benefit our country. >> host: what about increasing the h1 visas? >> guest: interesting question. going back to the problem, our

current system is the legacy of the 1965 immigration law. we have not updated since 1965 which we have a very quota driven system. it was not set by market demand or reality. it was based on pure political calculation. whether we say 85,000 h1 b or 100,000, where does that number come from? it has nothing to do with reality. based on market demand, that is based on market demand. if you look at countries like canada or australia they have national job databases, a joint effort between government and private sector depending on how many jobs on an annual basis, that is something we should use.

we need to -- rocket scientists, that is not what i remember because that is not reflecting what we need in reality. let the market tell us how many skill sets we as a country need. >> host: was there any point in your process you could have taken a shortcut and been an illegal immigrant? >> guest: no. there is no shortcut. we have a very bureaucratic system. may i show you a quick story? part of the system is you have to present your fingerprints. when i got married that is a status change. keep in mind when i got married,

i am already 13, 14 years in this process, have to provide fingerprints. by this time they have a dozen sets of my fingerprints but want me to provide another set of fingerprints which is fine but the way they did it they communicated with me through first-class letter, told me helen raleigh, at the time and this location you have to present your fingerprints. i have business travel. the only way to communicate back to them again is through first-class letters. can you reschedule? i sent my letter out, never heard from them. the second month i copied the letter, my second letter to reschedule. not going to happen.

i did this three months in a row. it became a problem, don't provide fingerprints, cannot proceed with the rest of my case. they won't reschedule me. so i called customer service, can you help me take this appointment? i was told no, we cannot. you can only communicate afterwords, first-class mail. apple knows exactly where i am right this second. yet our federal government, i cannot communicate with them to schedule fingerprints easily, rather than show you how bureaucratic the system is, there is no shortcut really. >> host: could you find -- let's go to the illegal immigration issue. 1986 there was a lot of illegal immigrants, 11 million or so in the country now. should they be allowed to stay? >> guest: i have a chapter in my

book to address it. you can't talk about immigration reform without addressing immigration, there are two sets of population, you are talking about who are already here, people coming here, it is easier to deal with because the population dropped 60% because the rhetoric from the president serves as a deterrent and better border patrols etc.. based on my research, most of them are economic migrants. the reason they stay is number one, a temporary work visa, a lot of people if you have a

hungry kid to feed, you can't wait 14, 17 years to do that because you have to risk everything to do what you have to do. with this population who are already here, the solution is temporary work visa. if they don't have a criminal record we should offer temporary work visa. if they are students they get a student visa. they are temporary visas. people who want to become immigrants can follow the rest of us to become legal immigrants but many of them just want to make money, get education and go home. we should make those things easier for them. the reason this approach will be successful is historically we have done so. our country from 1942 to 1965 is a program with mexico to bring

labor to our country, agriculture helps with construction. during this period, 6 million african workers came here and went back. of immigration was down by 90%. why? when they legally come to do work they go back and come back, they don't have a sense to stay. they don't have incentive to bring their family here. you can easily get a cheap -- no reason to run the risk of illegal labor. it is the situation. we have done that. we need something like that, similar, temporary work visa program based on market demand to bring people here.

>> host: we have been talking with father helen raleigh. here is the book, "the broken welcome mat: america's un-american immigration policy and how we should fix it". >> helen raleigh, thank you for being on booktv. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our primetime lineup.

that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> the brain is an incredibly sophisticated timing device. if i say two sentences like they gave her cat food or they gave her cat food, two different meanings there, based on pause. another example is music. music doesn't make sense blues music would be less enjoyable in internal list universe because it is already out there, sort of a change. i give an example, now might be

a good time to plant that audio clip. this audio clip will be a song. the challenge to you is to see if you can recognize the song and if it reminds you of anything else. later i will give you a clue. they look at me with blank face but the name of the group is the beatles. and so see if this song reminds you of anything, can you play that please? ♪ >> does that remind you of any one or two songs? anything else? >> my girl. >> any other beatles songs?

somebody said yesterday. people who picked up were paying attention to the notes but the timing was totally of yesterday. it was a hybrid song in which you cross both songs, spatial and temporal. that is how important time is to everything we do, the idea that time is -- how sophisticated the brain's ability is to tell time on hundreds of milliseconds to a few seconds. and if you slow music down or speed music up too much or slow speech down or slow speech up it ceases to be speech or music. there is this very critical

range, the goldilocks zone of timing. >> is a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. next weekend we will be at the baltimore book festival taking place at the city's inner harbor. .. next motherboard on line senior editor brian