energy development, provide a safe and abun dan food supply, manage the state's forestry and safeguard consumers. he represented florida's 12th district in the u.s. house of representatives. thank you, commissioner putnam, for being here. [ applause ] and last but certainly not least, secretary spellings, margaret spellings is with us, the eighth u.s. secretary of education, currently she is president and ceo of margaret spellings and company and a strategic adviser to the united states chamber of commerce, where she's also president of the forum. policy innovation. as secretary of education she led the implementation of the extraordina extraordinary no child left behind and our moderator is back, doug. >> welcome to the panel on immigration in the workforce,

dispelling the myths. as we did this morning i thought we'd begin by letting the panelists open with a few introductory remarks on the topics they think are most pertinent but in an effort to avoid boredom i'll defer to local politics and let the florian open. mr. putnam. >> thank you. 'an honor to be on the panel and talk about an issue that has become one of the hottest, most passionate issues, generated an awful lot of heat but not a whole lot of light and hopefully in separating the myths from reality we can build the consensus we need to have. there's always been a lot of talk about a tough immigration policy. what we need is a smart immigration policy, an immigration policy that makes sense in the 21st century. and so from the agricultural perspective, it is a $100 billion in florida. it is the second biggest industry even when times were good, when tourism and

construction are down, it takes over as number one. and because of the dysfunction and the broken approach in washington, individual states have attempted to move forward on their own, which is an extraordinarily, it's an extraordinary mistake. we need one smartal immigration policy, not 50 not so smart immigration policies. it's important to the economy. it's important to our security. it's important to global xh competitiveness. we want to continue to be that beacon that south florida has become. particularly florida legislat e legislatures, when they talk about going their own way with an immigration policy it threatens our place in the world. that's not something arizona has to worry about, they don't a place in the world, do they? florida has a sterling

reputation where we are the financial center for latin america, we are a destination for international tourism, international investment, international travel, international trade, and so that's that's at stake and why it's so important that we have this single national smart policy that brings us into line and allows us to continue to recruit and attract the type of human talent that want to build their dreams in the you iunited states. >> thank you. secretary spellings? >> a couple of observations. first i love this issue because like education it's very emotional and everybody has their own personal experience with this issue, like we do with our schools, and i first got acquainted with the issue when i was a domestic policy adviser at the white house and doug and i worked together, prior to 9/11, president bush in the early days of his administration was hard at work at creating and thinking through a much more rational market-based, sensible, comprehensive solution, because what we know for sure is that

our current system is a nightmare. it's a mess. it's bureaucratic, byzantine, doesn't make any sense. it's arbitrary and it's just a crazy quilt of policymaking, so we went to work on that, obviously after 9/11. that was shelved. we in the bush administration re-upped the issue in january of '04 with a guest worker program and carlos led the major effort, and one of the things i've observed about this issue is the more you know about it, the more obvious the solutions become and that's why we had folks like senators kennedy and salazar and mccain and kyl and president bush and a whole really wide swathe of folks who were working on this, seeing the way to this more sensible policy. i think the biggest myth in education is that tons and tons of illegals are in our schools that we're paying the bills for, and they're not able to succeed

and so on and so forth, and i will tell you that of the 5 million plus students in this country who have at least one parent who is illegal, 79% of those kids were born in the united states. they are u.s. citizens, like us. and obviously have all the rights and responsibilities of u.s. citizenship, so i think you know, our biggest problem, of course, in education is that we're doing a, you know, woefully inadequate job with educating kids of all strikepes creeds and colors in our schools but these kids in our schools are largely u.s. citizens. the other thing i would say quickly is about bilingual education and so-called immersion, and as adam rightly mentioned it's a crazy quilt of state policy that governed that. likewise, in sta-state higher e

tuition. we'll get into that in the whys and wherevers of this. when i was secretary on this working in the white house, one thing i noticed on this, it didn't occur to me until now ul all of us are from states that have a lot of experience with this, texas and florida and it's amazing how folks in other parts of the country don't understand what immigration really does mean to them. i used to say, have you eaten anything today? have you stayed in a hotel? do you live in something that was built? and so on. and so i think this idea that it's just an isolated few states really is not the case. so i'm thrilled to be here, doug, thank you for having me. >> certainly. secretary gutierrez? >> thank you. i'll talk about the impact on the economy and at a time when we're talking about competitiveness and how do we get more competitive against the rest of the world and china is rising and what are we going to

do? one of our biggest advantages lies in demographics and lies in immigration. every country in the world, every developed country in the world has a demographic problem. japan, of course, is a country that's getting old very quickly. even china is going to get old before it gets rich. russia's population declined last year. they actually declined, and throughout europe, italy, portugal, you name it, spain. spain, i remember when they used to have 12 kids. today, the average family is not having enough to replace the people who are passing on. so this is a big problem for their economy. we grow our economy on the basis of two things, productivity and the number of people in the workforce. if you don't have enough people

in the workforce, you're going to have to do a very good job in productivity to grow gdp. so the key thing is to have enough people entering the workforce that allows you to grow. we have the advantage that people want to come here, that we attract immigrants, that imgrabi immigran immigrants, that immigrants have built this country. so if we get this right, if they get this immigration policy right and i agree with adam putnam, this has to be a national immigration strategy that includes legal, illegal, what are we going to do about the fact that we don't have enough nurses, the laws in agriculture are crazy. we're forcing people to either do something illegal to go out of business or to send your farm to mexico, because that's what our law does to them. so it impacts economics. it impacts job creation. immigrants come and they build

businesses, as governor romney mentioned, more businesses than the average growth of small businesses in the country. you go to new york and you watch the dominican republic community and the number of businesses they have. come to miami and you realize what hispanic americans have done for this country. so it is an economic imperative. if we get this right, forget china, india, japan. we'll have it right for a century. if we get it wrong shame on us because this could be our biggest competitive advantage for the next 100 years. >> fabulous, thank you. alex? [ applause ] >> i would echo a lot of what you already heard, this is a critical ush uand an issue

unfortunately leadership currently isn't willing to tackle. it's a complex issue and we need individuals that are willing to use political capital as president bush was willing to do, to take this on and to find real solutions that address both the issue of illegal immigration, and a pathway to legal immigration. when we talk about immigration, it's very charged emotionally, and for me, it harkens back to president reagan. some of my earliest political memories were of president reagan and i was a little kid and what i remember about him was his positiveism. he had this vision of our nation that was a shining city upon a hill. later on i went back and i looked up what that meant, and i found his farewell address, his final words to our nation from the oval office in january, as he was about to leave his presidency.

an i brought them with me because i think they set a good tone for this issue. he said, "and that's about all i have to say for tonight except for one thing, the past few days i've been sitting at my window upstairs and i've thought a bit about the shining city upon a hill. the phrase comes from john winthrop who wrote it to describe the america that he saw. what he imagined was important because he was an early pilgrim, an early freedom man. he journeyed here in what today we'd call a little wooden boat, and like other pilgrims he was looking for a home that would be free." well the reality is, today we have people journeying here on little wooden boats or rafts made of tires tied together, and they're coming here for the exact same reason, because they're looking for a home that will be free. that's an experience that so many of us that grew up here in miami have, but there's a second side to that, that we have to take on, when we talk about

immigration, that's what happens when it happens illegally. i was the federal prosecutor in miami for five years, and i had some experiences that are horrific. i had the parents of an 8-year-old boy sitting in my office. the boy had drowned in a passage coming from cuba, and they were in my office, thanking me, because they at least were able to stay in this nation. they wanted to come by to say thank you, because we were able to have a funeral mass for our son. we're not sure that the passage from cuba was worth his life. as a matter of fact, we're really confused right now, but at least we have freedom. i had a case where a woman was raped repeatedly on her way over from haiti, because the smugglers, the folks, the coyotes that brought her over,

abused her, and she allowed it because for her, that was the price of passage to our nation. and so the cost of illegal immigration is not simply exclusion, but it's abuse of those individuals that are looking to our nation as beacons of freedom, and so we need to take it on and we need to figure out a way to address the illegal immigration and give everyone a pathway to get here legally, in a transparent way, and in a fair way. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> you can send messages via twitter and we'll give the audience questions as well. i wanted to echo secretary gutierrez, if we ism this right

we'll have an economic advantage for the next century. for too long immigration in the united states was viewed not as part of economic policy. it was a tool of family reunification, an appropriate avenue for those seeking asylum and safety from persecution but it is at the core of our success as an economy and it is one of the great costs of the fact that we have a broken immigration system that we're not going to prosper as much as we could. it is one of the sad ironies we're undercutting it with a broken immigration system so i wanted to sort of ism some thoughts from those on the panel about some of the pieces that come up often and often become contentious and make it hard to ism the job done.

>> it's eis heial to have a temporary guest worker program. we have an issue at both ends of the workforce because it is an economic issue so the high end of the workforce we continue to be a magism in for the most talented people in the world, they come here and go to our university system and ism ph.d.s and masters in all kinds of skill sets we des frperately ne. as soon as they ism their diploma we kick them out of the country an the other workforce equation if we are to be food secure, if we're going to be independent and not reliant on other countries for our food, particularly for our produce, things that tend to be harvested by hand, then we need a method for harvesting that through a temporary guestworker program. if you see a $100 billion industry in florida go away and larger industry in california go

away, and with be dependent on other countries for that supply of food. so a temporary program is essential, because that is skilled labor, contrary to the myth at the peak of the economic boom, only about 10% of, you know, by estimates only 10% of those who are in the country illegally were in ag labor. it tends to be focused on ag labor but there are any number of other industries that we need to continue to refresh the workforce in. maybe it's hospitality, maybe it's hotels, maybe it's restaurants, maybe it's construction or landscaping, maybe it's nursing, as the secretary mentioned. there are a number of gaps in our workforce in america. those gaps existed when the unemployment rate was 4%, and those gaps exist when the unemployment rate is 10%. many of these gaps have really not tracked the other macro economic trends affecting the labor force. >> so doug, let me jump in and

react with some of the education implications of this, because as adam said there's a spectrum and i think what we really all aim to want to work for is a market-baseed aapproach that's rational and makes sense based on the needs of the economy and the work fors, nurses or engineers or folks in agricultural. if we believe we're in a global knowledge economy, which we do, then obviously education is the pathway to have that very skilled workforce or whether it's technically or academically skilled, that's how we're going to bridge this gap and that's why 12 states, including texas, california and new york, as you may have heard about texas, have systems that allow their immigrant populations to attempt public higher education in state tuition levels. four states have banned it outright, alabama, indiana,

georgia, and colorado, and the rest have what i call kind of a don't ask, don't tell policy, which basically leaves it up to institutions to sort of ferret this out or not. one of the things i learned from president bush is always keep your eye on the result. what is it we want to have? we want a thriving company, a human capital system that prepares folks to do that work and we want systems that set that up and we're doing anything but that right now so it makes all the sense in the world to me that we educate kids to high levels as quickly as possible, and in places like texas and florida, and others, that have large immigrant populations that you would be smart about how quickly and how effectively you educated those kids. >> you know, we talk about immigration as a whole, and we generalize, but where do you gg

the immigration from and this group will understand that another advantage that the u.s. has is a border with latin america, and therefore, immigrants who come to this country to work and to dream and to have a better life and to the promise of a better future for their kids, don't really come to threaten our way of life or you know, this thing about assimilation is crazy. or about, you know, hispanics not assimilating, is just another one of these, you know -- >> red herring. >> -- buzz words. i wish all kids assimilated the same way as cuban-americans do, which is they assimilate but

they keep their language, because we frankly, with he need more than one language in the sense of doing business with the rest of the world. >> that's right! keep their own language. because in fact we need another language in terms of doing business with the world. >> that's right. >> thank you. i was surprised by gingrich if he said we need to have one government language. why can't we have more than one language? we do business globally. we need more people to -- one more thing, the other thing is, so in europe, they are having a hard time with immigration. hard time. because most of their immigration is coming from middle east. and in some cases, i'm not going

to say in all cases, but in some cases they have he refused to asymmilate and in many cases their not going to work because many are not of working age, they are older than working age, so they have a problem. japan never had immigration, so where are they going to get it from, and so does china. and we have immigration from latin america and they fit in here as good as anyone else. the language, the faith, the western values, the family. ity -- it is what this country is. latins are what this country is. so that another advantage. given the growth in mexico,

there's going to come a time, in 30 or 40 years where mexico will say, sorry, but we don't have anymore people to send. our population is not growing fast enough and we need them to stay here. again, it's a reason for acting now because the future is so clear, you do not have to see the future to see it coming. >> we will open it up to questions to the audience, before we to, given that we have an enormous range of problems in our immigration system, if you could do one thing, what is the one thing you would work on tomorrow to improve the outlook for u.s. immigration? >> the one thing i would do is try to foster a rational conversation about this issue, what it means to everyone, what it means to our economy and our country -- >> that is what i'm supposed to

be doing. >> and i think that the president of the united states, god willing it will be ours, to have an educational effort around this thing, because we are talking past each other and we get down into the fence and all this other stuff and it just red herring nonsense, honestly in many, many cases. >> and immigration has been a political football. and the democrats have used it very cleverly, you know, every time there's an election coming harry reid introduces a bill he knows will never pass. when it doesn't pass he blames it on the republicans. and the hispanic community who were promised are just being used. and they understand it. and they realize that they are being taken for a ride because they were promised a lot, president has been in power for three years, first two years he

had both houses. nothing happened. he could have made it happen. nothing happened. i'm concerned about some of he's approaches, speaker gingrich said that comprehensive doesn't work so therefore piece meal, the problem with the political football is precisely because we hand people piece meal bills so that they can play with them.imu know immigrants have great excitement and then they realize that nothing, not even a vote took place. that's the trap with piece meal. i happen to think that governor romney, what he was talking about, immigration is the whole thing. it's the 4.5 million people waiting to get in. what is your national immigration strategy, what is our policy as part of our competitiveness approach? and within that you are eventually going to get to what

do you do with the three million born here. the thing is we saturdtart ther we start with the most difficult part. and we often start with the most difficult part because we are playing with it. and that bothers me because in the meantime hispanics are being promised and it all tactics. keep your eye on it as it comes up. >> i think that it's absolutely right and if there's one thing i could do, i would put a clock, deadline on comprehensive immigration solutions. i keep hearing bills introduced and they go nowhere, and they are not meant to go anywhere,

they are meant to get emotion. but we need solution. and several individuals up here on the panel were involved in finding a solution several years ago under president bush and we say, we need to get a slouoluti. part of that means, figuring out what we are going to do with those that are already here. we need them. we need to figure out a way to address that and we need to figure out a way to then have a path way to further future le l immigration. if we don't take it all at once, you cannot solve it. you cannot address immigration unless you address what to do with the individuals already in the united states.

so let's get it done and get it done quickly. >> it requires leadership and that begins at the top. we have not had that since president bush. someone who is willing to have this conversation about what this means to the future of our country. most members of congress understand it, they find reasons why not to understand it. but they know it. they know it's broken and it takes only a glance to see that it is in need of modernization. what we need is that national leader that will facilitate that conversation to importance of this. if you deal with getting the legal path right. and the temporary piece right and the visa program right and

modernize this system that was as messed up as was when they were trying to have the chinese build the railroad cross the country, it was that messed up, if you get that part right, the people that are already here begins to take care of itself, as you fix the early pieces on security and the legal pieces you are creating a natural magnet to get your status where it ought to be. but everyone who is interested in killing it start with the hardest piece. >> if you have a question, identify yourself and ask your question in the form of a question. raise your hand and we will get you a microphone. right here. >> hi, my name is linda vasquez, and bn talking about comprehensive immigration law. i presume you are talking about

federal level enforcement or programs. what about the states? arizona has stepped out, south carolina is dealing with their own laws. do the states have a right to control their own future with immigration to preclude the federal government from doing nothing on at all or stepping in and doing too much? >> who wants it? >> georgia, alabama, arizona are sort of the headline state have stepped out there with their own state approaches and flirted with it last year and thank goodness didn't do it because it would have been devastating to our state and economy. turned constitution, there's a really narrow