data from prior to the great recession so i can demonstrate to you just how important immigrants are for economic growth. 44% of workers in agriculture are immigrants. immigration enforcement has destroyed many farms that grow fruit and vegetables in the state, force others to grow more expensive less profitable crops like wheat that can be harvest bid machines and move crops and activity down south across the border in mexico where labor is plentiful. 23% of workers in arizona are in the construction industry. the construction industry has been decimated by the housing collapse but has been hurt more in arizona because of laws like sb1070. in the peak of housing prices in phoenix in june, 2006, through to the trough in september of 2011, they declined a whopping 55.9% in price. it was a second worst decline of any american major city in the united states.

immigration policy does not deserve all or maybe even most of the blame for that decline in price, but one major reason why it was so great in phoenix is the state drove out 11 hundred,000 people with sb 10ds 70 and employer sanctions law. 100,000 unauthorized immigrants in mar i cope pa county would have bought a few houses or rented them and slowed down the housing price collapse. but they couldn't because they weren't there. 20% of workers in manufacturing are immigrants. manufacturing was hurt by the recession. having the workforce diminished by these restrictive laws added to the loss and in creed the magnitude. leisure, hospitality service, wholesale trade, numerous other industries have an immigrant workforce larger than the foreign-born population and have all suffered more than other industries in the state. arizona's unemployment rate,

unemployment rate has been at or above the national average since mid-2008. not long after the employer sanctions law went in effect. sb1070 like employer sac eer sa is about punishing business force hiring labor they want. for those of you who think highly of free enterprise and the government should be smaller and less intrusive, sb1070 combines the terrible work place of social law with american civil liberties violations all in one compact bill. sb1070 amends sections of the state's mandatory e-verify profession. electronic system run by the federal government. links all data from federal agencies like fbi, immigration services, department of homeland security, social security administration and other agencies, to verify that a worker is eligible for legal employment in the united states.

e-verify is being combined with dmv records think the ride initiative, and which will begin to link up photographs with e-verify results. now what businessmen are supposed to do is take the identity information of new hires and check it against this database. most of the time the system works all right. but too often workers are not approved. if you can't prove that he is really authorized to work in a timely manner the worker is not legally allowed to be employed. we have laws in this country that mandate that workers ask permission from the federal government to get a job. that is not a free market economy if i ever heard of one. most of the time e-verify works fine but in 4% of the time, e-verify produces an inaccurate result. 54% of unauthorized workers who are fed in the system were not caught by e-verify and worse, 1% of legal american workers were wrongly flagged as unauthorized,

sending them off in a longed on desee to fix the records which sometimes requires a privacy act request from the federal government which takes on average 104 days to acquire. when intel corporation in arizona submitted numerous e-verify queer res in 2008, 12% of the workers were not confirmed. these workers were cleared as authorized to work eventually but intel said it was "only after significant investment of time and money, lost productivity and for our affected foreign national staff, many hours of confusion, worry and upset." another arizona firm, mcl enterprises, which owns dozens of burger king restaurants in the state reported that over 14% of the e-verify queries were not confirmed. worse, the non-confirmation rate for legal foreign born workers was 75%. that is because of the holes in federal databases that haven't

been filled. these examples and reasons are why since 2008, when e-verify was mandated in arizona, 30% of new hires in the state are not checked through the program. that number has been remarkably steady since 2008. arizona is forcing good workers and good businesses in the black market, but at least better than dealing with e-verify. at least from the businesses perspective. e-verify makes hiring employees more expensive. a point about basic economics, when making something -- when you make it more expensive to hire people, that means you will get less hiring, and force more of them in the black market. now if you don't want that result i suggest you encourage people or not be a proponent of e-verify. in conclusion, sb1070 harms sesk sectors of arizona's economy. e-verify makes it more costly to hire workers and fewer

immigrations mean fewer entrepreneurs and consumers that consume the american goods services and real estate produced in the state. arizona has been especially hard hit by the housing collapse and subsequent great recession, partly because of the immigration enforcement policies. but arizona could not pass such policies if the terrible federal immigration laws were not on the books. for the vast majority of unauthorized and potential immigrants, there are no visas available. that is a simple fact. federal immigration reform should diminish the role of government in employment decisions and allow employers and employees to make their own arrangements without government intervention even if they happen to be from different countries. thank you. thanks very much. so we've heard a panoply of reasons why we need federal immigration reform. we've heard about the

demographic shifts that are taking place, we heard about the moral imperative of what it means in communities to have the broken laws. we heard about the legally shakey foundations for our current policies and of course not least the economic implications of broken immigration laws. now, i want to open it up to all of you for any questions that you may have, but as you guys are thinking about your questions or -- okay. we'll start right off with you. i thought i might have to go first. >> my name is kimberly, i'm a ph.d candidate, my special ilationism i grags and human trafficking. i wanted to touch on the point the trial lawyer i'm sorry forgot your name. >> darry williams. >> with regard to education is the solution, i dpree with you but my question is for all the

panelists, is there enough evidence to conclusively educate and the reason why i ask that is because my dissertation when i'm finishing up asking the question does 287-g disproportionately affect the number of latino youth brought in the criminal justice system, there is not enough evidence or data sets available to even answer that question on a general level. before you can offer solutions and present possible policies that might actually work, you need to have the evidence as confidently as possible say what's going on, how we can make things better appearnd for that need congress and other research, rigorous research, there is a famous mark twain saying, there is lies, damn lies

and statistics. you can present shoddy evidence to support your position, i would say do you think that evidence exists? >> let me respond to your question here. i, like you, am skeptical when it comes to evidence. i spent any life in a courtroom cross-examining people because i have an expert who says something that is so and my job is to destroy that person and more often than not, i can. because i can show other statistics that counter balance that. the education i'm talking about is not statistics. i think that is misdirection. i think the education i'm talking about is what is this country about? let's start with fundamental principles, what is it that makes the free market work? what type of morality under gers this issue? i never get to talk about that

in the courtroom. because it is the cold sort of facts about what you were talking. and who is right and wrong, and in my view is that none one is right in wrong in the courtroom it's win and lose. on a major issue like this what you need to do is educate people about the underlying principles of humanity and goodness, the good reverend here talked about that. and i think that's the important issue and that's what i talk about, when i talk about our immigration laws with people. i start with the initial naturalization acts, in the 18th century, the early 19th secentu. chinese exclusion act signed by chester arthur in 1882, and had -- we have a history of what really is bigotry in the country. those are here want to erect a

wall. there is a 1928 political cartoon that says keep out, and there is a wall at the border with a gate in it and uncle sam on one side that says no way, and the people on the other side are irish immigrants. and so the refrain has remained the same, it's just the focus has changed over the years. the nativist movement of the 19th century was shocking, is shocking to most people when they hear about that. so the education i'm talking about is the history of this issue in the united states, and then have these people confront what they think ought to be the principles that are guiding a free country like america. that's what i'm talking about. i'm not talking about crime statistics, i know lots of those, i filed a brief in the united states supreme court on this immigration issue a while ago.

go ride it. amicur curiae brief for 5000 businessmen in arizona. replete with kind of statistics that affect the commerce clause, but that is not the education. the education isn't what you're doing the education is who are we and what should we be? >> i'll give you a chance to follow-up real quick. i think daryl -- >> my mother's fault, i'm sorry. >> apologies. darling daryl. >> okay. makes an excellent point about there is a values conversation that is happening here and actually goes back to some degree to what you were quoting from freud, there are conversations about facts and statistics and convincing people on that basis, that's been an uphill challenge although i do think there are loads and loads

of statistics not necessarily on something as focused on 287-g, that is in part with bureaucratic problems with the agencies, we need more data to really arrive at sound analyses and strong policies, but i do think at the economics level, that there is ample evidence that what we're doing at the state level is deeply counter productive if we were to rationalize our immigration policies we would see substantial increases in gdp. the contrary to that is a huge hole in the economy this, goes to the question that eddie was talking about, that you lose population, you lose 11 million people and their family members, and you're talking about 16 million people, that is a huge hole in the economy.

and we've spun that out and looked at what that would be over a ten year period and it's actually very similar to what the cato institute center for american progress left leaning, cato institute came did their own independent analysis and came to the same conclusion, you remove the people, you have a huge hole to the economy, you legalize them, give them the opportunities to compete on an even playing field and the increases across the board are significant. >> i would say thank you for both your responses and i think that one thing that is extremely important to me, if there is ample evidence on the economics of immigration, what it means to the country, i think it's extremely important to disseminate that information to the average joe.

if i read thostudies, if the average joe doesn't understand it, it won't educate the way we want. my response to daryl? >> daryl. >> i agree that type of education is necessary but i think that also the statistics that i'm talking about are also very valuable because if we are seeing a constitutional ish with you violations of the 14th amendment, i know that is not what the conference is about, i think that has to be brought to light. having good rigorous evidencism -- evidence is important in that regard. >> let me respond to that, too, most of the groups i'm talking to are the electorate. i'm talking to the regular guy who goes in the voting booth. and i will tell you that the average american is not real good on standard deviations. they are not real good on confidence factors.

they're not good on reading the scholarly analysis and report. they are not good at parsing if this is a good report or truly objective and academic report. they are not good at that. that is why the people in this room are important, because i expect my representatives and their staff to be good at that sort of stuff. and that's where it's ve i it's. the as the statistics on arizona are stark because these bills have hurt us, not only that, what happens is people flee arizona, and they go to another state. so it's a dormant clause, issue constitutionally what that is. if i start talking about the commerce and constitutional interpretation with people, their eyes glaze over, because

the average person who votes doesn't think at that level. very superficial. >> i'm going to jump in here real quick. looking for hard statistical facts to support the fact that we need sensible immigration reform, i'm going to add what d eddie aldrete said. talk about abortion. go to the cato institute, an absolute fact, not debatable, more american workers are retiring every year that are entering the workforce, especially in the unskilled level. that is a fact. number two is eddie aldrete pointed out to us, our current birth rate is fairly at the level that it takes to for a society to exist, and if they stop coming from south of the

border because it so happens the hispanics are the ones having enough babies to keep us boosted in that regard, then we have a big problem. you tie that to the hard, cold fact that since roe v. wade, 39 years, it's a fact, we are pushing 60 million babies, could have been american born workers, we have legally aborted because it's the law. okay? we're here to talk about immigration, that is part of it. those people are not here. and we have got a real crisis coming in this country if we don't turn our birth rate around, i think you want some cold hard facts for convincing people why we need immigrants? it's there in arithmetic, thank you. thanks a lot. i i would just echo what you said, which is there is an important communication gap that

needs to be filled. and we've tried to do that in some respects by distilling to some kind of basic numbers and it's worked to a certain extend, 141 million in arizona, in lost conference cancellations that is standardized reporting. the 1.5 trillion dollars in cumulative gdp brittany mentioned before, from a report we did a year-and-a-half ago, those numbers i think are important to get out there so it becomes part of the common dialogue and parlance, but we have more work to do, obviously or we wouldn't be here today. did you want to add anything, alex? ready to the next question. >> okay. >> this is a question for alex, you talked about the cost of

e-verify how it it is an expense for businesses. can you talk more about the cost to government and businesses? >> yes, it's part of the entire process, the work place enforcement laws, e-verify is continuation of the i-9, which was started in 1986, part of the irca, immigration reform appeared control act. according to a regulatory review done of the i-9 in krer, em ploilers spend 13.5 million hours dealing with the i-9 form. that is the simple one we fill out when we get employed in any kind of firm. i filled one out not long ago. if youadd up that time that private employers spend on that, employees every year, about 13.5 million hours, that is a lot of hours wasted on a government form that doesn't really add much. when it comes to e-verify, some

of the main costs are the economic costs, specifically dealing with problems in the system. one of the problems the gao discovered when entering names in the system is the system doesn't like hiyphen. if you have a hyphen, that disproportionately affects people in hispanic, a number of their names have hyphens in them. e-verify does not function like a national id system. it's got all the worst aspects and none of the decent ones. i'm not favor of any kind of national id system, but what e-verify is a natural id sis nem a government database somewhere else you don't have a paper that says my name is alex nowrasteh, this is my card, it's a guy behind a screen saying no, sorry

your information doesn't match. this is no good. if you are your information doesn't get you get a tentative non-confirmation you have a certain amount of time to prove to the employer that you are legally allowed to work in the united states. the thing is to correct a lot of errors in the government systems and databases, the government won't release a lot of the information to you without something called a privacy act request because it's personal. it takes a lot of time to get that. the average amount of time is 104 days, you have 120 days maximum to solve a tentative nop-confirmation, that doesn't leave a lot of time or space for somebody running through and e-verify system to solve the problem to make sure they are legal. now, if you're going to look at bu the bureaucratic steps for solving the e-verify problem. the gao documents said in december, 2010 study of e-verify it fills up a whole page of arrows, diagrams with arrows,

people talking to other bureaucrats, other systems, getting information from here and government and going back to the employer. quite frankly when we have an unemployment rate of between 8 and 9%. the economy is suffering, the last thing we want to do is make the system more complicate than it is to hire somebody. so, there are a lot of states now that make it mandatory to use e-verify to hire. and what we will see is what we've seen in arizona, which is more hires going in the black market and just not being checked through the system. instead of having more people hired legally, we'll have a lot of people hired in the black market and a cash-only economy, which is the opposite of intended effects of the law. >> i had a construction worker come to my house some few months ago, and years ago, and he worked on my house, was mill work that i needed, i am preserving the brazilian rain

forest by having 6,000 square feet by having brazilian mahogany in my house on the floor, and he was repairing some of that and he says to me, can you pay me in cash? and i said why? he says well, i have day job, and i pay enough in taxes already. now i'm one of the less than half who pays taxes in america today and so that upset me immensely, i gave him a check and i sent him a 1099, because this guy is on the black market wanting cash. i took a cab over here today i want to pay the guy with a credit card he says no we only take cash. i said why? he said it's easier to keep track of. and i think yeah, right. i took a cab ride from dulles last night guy said can you pay me in cash? i said no i'll give you a credit card. he said well, i have to report it is what he said. i said take my credit card. there is a black market in the

america, and part of this is a lot of employers and i'm an employer, i have lots of employees. we hire them, if we have trouble with e-verify we 1099 them. we don't put them on so we walk around this law. and i wonder how many people do that. am i a criminal for that? i just want the worker. then we work to make sure we can verify, we hired one hispanic lady, 18, didn't have papers. she worked at our offices as receptioni receptionist, we need a bilingual person. i walked in one morning she was crying, got deportation papers. so i walked by her, talked to my office manager, i hired an immigration attorney on my own dime, to solve a problem that was a bureaucratic snafu, and got her her papers. so that she was brought over

when she was 2 years old by her mother. she was an american as much as anybody who was here but didn't have the papers, her mother had a green card, her paperwork was just snafue and they were going to throw her back to mexico where she never lived. and the expenses of this for our firm were in the thousands and thousands of dollars. and i think it's out rain us what the government is doing to me. >> i want to make a point on this we're referring to the black market, whatever. this is the really big issue with the enforcement only legislation which is basically tracks with what russell pearce wanted. when we pass enforcement only laws, i would put e-verify under that category, those laws only apply to employers who admit to having employees. and employers that have followed the law by completing that i-9,

they are deducting and matching taxes in most cases providing workers compensation, some cases health insurance, 401-k, et cetera. when we apply-verify, we have an i-9 audit, what happens is those employees who i-9 records don't match, they don't have -- they have borrowed social security dumpnumber or have a f number made up at fthe flea market, they don't leave the country, they move away from the em ploiler who has been deducting and matching taxes and move to what alex is referring to as the black market. they move to 1099 fraud. they go and work where people will bring them up in a pick up truck, hand them the tool, they are employees by irs rules but

they are treated and paid as i-9. not independent contractors like you were describing an independent contractor remodeling your house, but the typical worker that gets busted off of a job because of enforcement only laws, that is a point i want to make. boom, we shut ourselves in the foot and move them to payrolls where we are no longer collecting payroll taxes. that is the number one reason from a financial standpoint that immigration reform would be a boom to our payroll tax revenue without any new taxes. sorry for the enter rep shun. >> i think we have time for one really quick last question. >> i wanted to see if any of you can touch about the possible fects sb1070 if upheld by the supreme court will have on arizona's neighboring states such as new mexico.

alex, maybe you can touch on the economic effects if you have data on that? >> new mexico fared better than most other states in the union during the great recession for a number of reasons. i think one of the main reasons you have seen a lot of the people who have left arizona as response to the laws have gone to neighboring states. utah, nevada, new mexico, texas, they have better public policies across the board like lower taxes. what you will see is increasing number of consumers, entrepreneurs and workers going to the states. what is interesting is the kaufmann foundation does studies about entrepreneurship. they found immigrants are twice as likely to start a business as native poborn americans. hispanics are more likely to start a bus these than non-hispanic americans. what you see in places where the economy is doing