wyland, republican and former governor mike rounds and independents gordon howie and larry press ler. here are some of the recent campaign ads. >> hey there. i i'm the middle class. i know. you don't hear from me often. no one much listens to me anyway. until now. you have probably seen rick wyland somewhere south of fulton or north of jefferson. he's out there listening, fighting for me, for medicare and social security and affordable college loans. you know, the things dear to my heart. meaning we don't just have a candidate now. we have a voice. >> i'm rick weiland. i approved this message. >> i'm john thu ne. for years i have fought for the people of south dakota, often in opposition to president obama and his supporters. this november, you can make south dakota's voice in washington even stronger by electing mike rounds to join me the in the united states senate.

with mike we'll have two senators working together to get our country headed back in the right direction. join me in supporting mike rounds for the united states senate. >> i'm mike rounds and i approved this message. >> i'm larry press ler and i approved this message. i'm on the farm i grew up on and have with my brother. the democrats are attacking me for social security votes from 30 years ago. the republicans are attacking me for background checks on guns when they know i supported the bob dole plan. on the keystone the press ler pipeline plan is dedicated to north dakota oil, not canadian tarsands oil. that's south dakota jobs and independence. >> it's the time to do something different on election day you're going to vote for the candidate you really support. not the one other people are saying is supposed to win. you're going to make up your own mind and vote on principle, not

on blind loyalty to politicians who aren't loyal to you. my name is gordon uh howie and i i approved this message. with your support i will be your next senator from south dakota. >> south dakota has an open seat because of the retirement of democrat tim johnson. polls list the race as leans republican. watch the most recent debate online at cspan.org. president obama said he'll issue an executive order on immigration after the november elections. instead of waiting for congress to act on pending legislation. a panel looked at what the executive action could entail and how the elections could impact the president's actions. this discussion was part of a conference held by georgetown university law school. it is an hour and a half.

okay. thank you very much and welcome now to our second session of the conference, which is on executive action, policy and political implications for the future. my name is doris meisner. i'm a senior fellow at the immigration policy institute. i'm very pleased to welcome an outstanding panel here today. we have ana navaro. she's a contributor to cnn. cnn in espanol. abc news, lots of other places you will see ana popping up. and i owe her particular thanks because she's had a rugged schedule getting here. thank you very much. >> i woke up at 5:00 in the morning. if i'm incoherent, let's blame it on that. >> in advance. and then norm orenstein who is a

resident scholar and simon rosenberg, founder and president of the new democratic network and my colleague mark rosen bloom who's the deputy director of the immigration program at npi. executive action is a very, very brood topic but the context for the topic today is the very specific issue of what the current administration and president might be doing to take further executive action building on other actions that have already been taken in this administration. the immediate back drop really began in the spring when the president called upon dhs to review its deportation policies in order to determine whether more could be done to create a

more humane set of policies consistent with the responsibility, of course, to enforce the law. this came in the face of record high levels of deportations for which he has drawn very, very strong criticism from particularly latino constituency groups including protest marches and other forms of political action and that's, of course, a core constituency for the president and the democratic party so it's been an important political issue. that dhs review soon became pretty much side lined by a real effort to give political space to republicans in the house in the hopes that there would be one more chance to move on some form of immigration legislation in the spring and in the summer.

reportedly the president was frustrated and angry and made very clear, very quick ly after that that he was prepared to take executive action in the face of congressional inaction. and at that time, announced that there would be an announcement with all suggestions that it would be a broad kind of relief that would be provided by by the end of the summer. well, the end of the summer came, and in the meanwhile there had been a lot going on in immigration focused on child migrants and issues at the southwest border and issues of people fleeing violence in central america and joining family members in the united states. the president had lost a pretty big appropriations effort with the congress by that time and so

the announcement then was made in september that the end of summer would be postponed until the end of the year. well, of course, we're now in that period between almost an election and nearly the end of the year with a lot of speculation and continued discussion about the withers, the whethers, wuthers, whether an executive action. so that's what we're going to be talking about in this panel, the ins and outs of that, substantive as well as political. the format will be questions. i'm going to put questions to -- opening questions to each of our

panelists and ask each of them to make some opening remarks and then hopefully that will put enough issues on the table for us to begin to do some cross talk among us as well as any follow-ups that occur and then during the final section of the panel, the last half hour or so, we will open the floor to q&a from the floor. so i'd like to begin with mark and ask him to give us 5 rundown of the possible actions that the president might take, what seemed to be the actions that are under consideration. outline for us, if you would, the different measures and approaches that seem possible and the numbers and the groups of people who might be affected by them. >> thanks, doris, i'm going to go up to the podium. maybe i'll -- well, whatever, i'm here. so thank you, doris, and thanks to the organizers for including me. so i'm going to jump right in because i'm going to try to cover a lot of ground.

i think that mic was on, wasn't it? >> no. >> okay, thank you. okay. so i'm going to start by talking just for a moment about what we mean by executive action in general and in the context of immigration policy and then i'll briefly review how president obama and his predecessors have already shaped immigration policy through their executive authority and then i'll -- as doris asked, i'll describe some potential scenarios for what executive action might look like and say something about how many people would be affected and what some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches might be. so i'm a political scientist and when i used to teach my intro to american government classes, there was no section on the syllabus called "executive action." so what do we mean by this term? the answer is that in a separate

power system? which congress writes the laws and the president implements the laws, a lot of policy gets made in the second half of that sentence. and on a general level, executive action describes any policy made by the executive branch outside the legislative process. so that includes formal presidential powers like executive orders and regulatory rule making and it also includes implementation authority that gets delegated to the president through the statutory process, through laws, and then also less formal policy tools like signing statements, statements of policy, agency guidelines so this term, you know, encompasses

a lot of different things. one point i want to emphasize is that these types of executive actions, everything i just rattled off, have been very important on immigration policy forever because the underlying policy debates in immigration are so complex and they encompass both complex domestic issues and foreign policy issues that presidents have weighed in on and also because congress has always struggled to pass immigration laws. so it's often been left to presidents to do things on their own. so i'm going to not go through the details of all these examples, but i do want to mention five different tools that presidents have used over time to set immigration numbers and to shape enforcement policy sort of inside the legislative process. and the first one i'll mention is humanitarian parole. parole is explicitly authorized by the ina, so it's a delegate powder and it refers to the executive branch's authority to permit the temporary admission of someone outside the normal visa process for urgent humanitarian reasons. so people can be paroled individually, and that's also a long history, as you can see on this slide, of presidents paroling whole groups of people

into the united states on humanitarian and foreign policy grounds. humanitarian parole permits is admission of people outside the visa process. presidents have also grant red leaf from removal to unauthorized immigrants in the united states. prior to 1990, the main tool for granting this type of relief on a categorical basis was extended voluntary departure. lots of cases where e.v.d. has been granted. extended voluntary departure was not explicitly authorized by the ina and some members of congress objected to how it was used, seeing it as being sort of politicized. so in 1990, congress eliminated evd and established a new procedure called temporary protective status, tps, and tps lays out more clearly-defined conditions under which dhs can, acting alone, suspend deportations for groups of unauthorized immigrants categorically in response to an armed conflict, a natural disaster, other extraordinary

and temporary conditions. so examples of tps, despite the fact that congress got rid of evd and created tps, presidents have continued to grant categorical relief outside of tps under a procedure called deferred enforced departure. ded looks a lot like extended voluntary departure with the difference being that, you know, after congress got rid of ebd, presidents have continued to assume the authority to grant deferred enforced departure generally by issuing executive orders to create ded categories. and then the fifth thing i'll mention is that every modern president has also assumed a more general authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion on a case by cases by us outside of all these

programs. prosecutorial discretion refers to the power of a law enforcement agency or law enforcement official, rather, to decide whether or not to commence or proceed with official action against a possible law violator. in the immigration context, one form of discretion is to defer deportation or defer action to suspend deportation proceedings against an individual. so when we talk about deferred action, that's a forof prosecutorial discretion that the executive branch takes. one reason law enforcement agencies exercise discretion generally and in the immigration context is to ensure they're using reforces efficiently to pursue their top priorities but it bears emphasis that i.n.s.

and dhs has also emphasized discretion by identifying groups of people who may qualify for deferred action, as in the examples on this slide. and all of these cases, the primary justification for deferred action was humanitarian. either instead of or in addition to sort of practical arguments about the efficient use of resources. so the obama administration has taken -- has already taken a series of actions that follow on this history. the first three bullets on this slide are uncontroversial and i'm not gong to talk about them unless people are want to get into it in q&a. the last three have been somewhat controversial. in 2010 and 2011 then ice director john morton issued a series of mem randa describing when ice officers should exercise discretion and how ice should prioritize its enforcement resources. then the august of 2011 a dhs/doj working group was formed to review cases on the docket and administratively close some cases as a form of discretion

because they weren't -- cases that are not consistent with the administration's enforcement priorities. and then in june, 2012, secretary napolitano, then secretary napolitano announced a policy to defer enforcement in cases involving certain unauthorized immigrants who had arrived in the united states as children and who met certain education and background checks departments. the taca, deferred action for childhood arrivals. so i want to say a little bit more about how these programs

could be expanded consistent with the president's pledge to consider additional executive actions. so first with respect top dhs's enforcement priorities, one point i want to make generally is that the morton memos shouldn't have been particularly controversial because they didn't represent a major shift in how dhs already did immigration enforcement. npi published a report last week showing that 93% of removals under the bush administration were consistent with the obama enforcement priorities. so this was not a radical change. overall, 95% of all removals since 2003 have fallen within dhs' current formal enforcement priorities, and this includes 99% of removals in fy-2013. so one way to interpret those findings is that the obama

administration has been successful at implementing its priorities, and i think that that's an accurate interpretation. but we can also look at those data and it suggests that the morton memos, the current enforcement priorities, define priorities pretty broadly in a way that lots of unauthorized immigrants fall into the priority categories. wand that in mind, one strategy

for executive action that the administration could pursue would be to change dhs' enforcement priorities to make them more narrowly defined so that fewer immigrants fall within the priorities. for example, current priorities include any one ever convicted of any crime. so the administration could instead define its public safety priority or its criminal alien priority to prioritize people who have been convicted of violent crimes or people who have been convicted of felonies or recently been convicted of crimes or felonies. or it could deprioritize people whose only criminal offense was for an immigration crime. the administration could also narrow its definition of its other two enforcement priorities, recent border crossers, which is currently defined as anybody who entered many the last three years, or people to who disregard deportation orders, which currently includes somebody who was deported 20 years ago. so in this report that we issued last week, we go through a lot of detail about different scenarios and i'm not going to go through all the numbers. i just want to tell you that the bottom line is that when you look at interior enforcement, playing with the enforcement

priorities in the ways that i just described would not have a huge impact on the number of people removed. i would say 30,000 is an optimistic -- you know, that's a very far-reaching change to the enforcement priorities. the likely impact on current removals from the interior would be much smaller. and the reason is, is that most people who would potentially benefit from such changes, unauthorized immigrants who are settled in the united states and who aren't committing crimes, already have a low probability of being apprehended and deported. that's not who the system is focusing on. there's a popular image of ice agents rounding people up and detaining them or finding people who have been pulled over for a traffic crime and putting them in deportation proceedings. the data suggests that these are pretty unusual cases, particularly in the last few years. by far, the largest category of removals today is people apprehended at the border. some of these border crossers are returning immigrants. many border crossers have limited ties to the united states. reducing border removals have -- reducing the proportion of people apprehended at the boarder who are formally removed would have the largest impact on reducing removal numbers, but that would be a fundamental challenge to how cbp does business. so a second possible approach would be to expand the existing daca program, the childhood arrivals program, to cover a larger number of unauthorized youth. it's currently limited to how old people were when they entered, how old they were in 2012 and their education requirements. in a report we issued last month, a different report, we found that about 1.2 million people potentially meet the daca criteria, are potentially eligible for the current version of the program and about half of them have successfully applied

and been enrolled in the program. those numbers would go up to about 1.9 million potentially eligible applicants if the administration decided to sort of play with the timing requirements, the age requirements, the age at arrival requirements and they would go up to about 3.1 million if the administration were also to relax the education requirement. you get a big bump for that. an advantage to focusing on the daca population is that there's a basic fairness argument about offering enforcement relief to people who arrived in the united states as children. and daca youth also have strong ties to the united states from having been raised here and in many cases they lack ties to the countries that they originally immigrated from. but a limitation to this approach, as indicated here, is that it's difficult to substantially grow the daca numbers without relaxing the education requirement.

the current version of daca has been promoted in part based on the idea that daca youth have overcome their status to become high-education achievers, and that's a description that applies to some unauthorized youth but definitely not to all of them so it's a challenge with using daca as the major tool for a large executive action. a third approach would be to create a new daca-style program, so to defer action for a new group of unauthorized immigrants other than those who qualify for daca, such as parents or spouses of u.s. citizens or lprs. so the report that we published, again, the same report from last month estimates the size of several different population groups, several different scenarios and we control for different periods of u.s. residency, how long do people -- would people have to have been here in order to qualify.

so there's about 3.6 million unauthorized immigrants who don't qualify for daca who fall into one of these parent categories and about 1.5 million spouses who don't qualify for daca, unauthorized immigrants who are spouses who are citizens or lprs. those categories overlap so there's about 4.2 million people who are either a spouse or parent. the numbers go down pretty substantially when you started aing on long residency requirements. so if you're only extending the program to people who have been here five or 10 or 15 years. so a few quick comments about this approach. you know, here again long-time residents with u.s.-based families have important equities

that are generally recognized by our immigration system so we can certainly make humanitarian and normative arguments about why people like this should have an opportunity to apply for legal status. it's less obvious that a program like this would be an especially effective tool or an easy tool to prioritize dhs resources as compared to a policy of exercising discretion during the enforcement process. and i say that because an application-based program to cover a large share of the current unauthorized population will be difficult to stand up and difficult to implement and difficult for immigrants to navigate. and that's likely to be more true for unauthorized adults than it was for unauthorized children because they're going to -- it's harder for them to document their presence because they don't have school transcripts and they be more risk averse, especially they're already in the work force. sol to the extent that people who could qualify for a daca-style program could also

benefit from enforcement during discretion, especially, you know, if the enforcement priorities were further fine tuned to try to find this population, that's arguably a more efficient way for dhs to structure an executive action, but it's also a much lower profile approach and it would offer a much less concrete benefit because it wouldn't come with work authorization and you wouldn't know whether or not you benefit unless you happen to enter the enforcement system. so it -- this would be arguably a more -- sort of an easier way to provide releave the that kind of population but the politics of doing it, exercising enforcement -- exercising discretion during the enforcement process, because it's low profile and less concrete are quite different than the politics of an affirmative application-based program. on both sides of this debate. and in the final scenario i want to mention focuses on people that the ina already defines as immediate relatives of u.s. citizens. so spouses and parents of adult u.s. citizens. this group has an even stronger sort of normative claim for relief because the ina generally makes green cards available for this group of people without regard to numerical limits or country of origin. so people who are married to a u.s. citizen or the parent of an adult citizen can usually get a green card right away. but we estimate -- npi estimates about 1.2 million unauthorized

immigrants fall into one or both of these immediate relative categories but may be unable to apply for a green card because their history of unlawful presence in the united states makes them subject to the three and ten-year bars and so if they leave the united states to pick up a visa, they'll be ineligible and inadmissible to return. to so these unauthorized immigrants could benefit to being paroled in the united states under the parole authority and the parole would count as a temporary admission that would permit people with qualifying relationships to receive their green card without leaving the country and without triggering the three and 10-year bars. so that's an obvious advantage to this approach is that beneficiaries would receive a green card, which is a permanent fix that wouldn't end at the end of the administration or end in two years and it sort of an easier process to defend procedurally since dhs has the explicit paroled authority as a statutory delegation. having said that, parole authority has never been used for this large a group of currently unauthorized immigrants within the u.s. and the political pushback for putting people in line for green cards instead of just deferring enforcement could be greater

than putting them in line for temporary relief. so i will stop there and we can talk in more detail later. >> thanks, mark. we've now set the table in terms of what the possible considerations are and what some differing degrees of scale might be. simon, let me go to you next on the issue of deferred action because that's one of the opportunities that mark outlined, it's the action that was taken by the president in 2012 before the reelection and deferred action for dreamers at that time was really viewed as contributing quite positively to his reelection. so that if one is talking about some kind of a deferred action now, the question of doing it after the election raises the whole set of other considerations. this is obviously as much a matter of politics as it is a policy.

what's the benefit for democrats and for the president of a large after-election action. would the election outcome in any way affect what the administration is likely to do on executive action? particularly on something like an expanded deferred action? and do you think it will actually happen or do you think we might be looking at another postponement? >> those are all easy questions. [ laughter ] thanks, doris. thanks, mark. it's an honor to be on this panel. these all folks i admire tremendously and it's really an honor to be here and to be with all of you. all of you doing the lord's work every day and i appreciate you taking the time to be here. i think it will happen because

the president promised and -- i don't think people should giggle about that. i think he feels committed to do it. think there was a pragmatic recognition that -- and we can debate this until we are all old folks that doing in the the fall given the way things were playing out after the central american migrant crisis and given the fact that there were a series of democratic senators who said they would not support it that the president didn't want to expose, i think the broad work we've all been doing together for a long time to something that could become a permanent setback for the immigration community. and we all know this is the logic. we all in this room are well read. i think that was a legitimate and pragmatic read of the landscape. we saw that there was a senate vote as all of you know that happened before we all broke and it went 50-50. and that's with a significant democratic senate. we're going to have at least four, five, six, seven more republicans next year.

we will not have a majority of support in the senate next year for what the president is about to do. and so i think that the president made a pragmatic decision that having a very public and significant democratic opposition to something that's so important to immigration community was not something that he felt was going to be good in the long haul and he made a tough call. that's what presidents do. it was not an easy decision. i think it was the right one, personally, and certainly i advised the white house that that's what they should do and so you can blame me and not the president. but i think he's going to do in the december and once we get through -- i think they know they have to do it in some ways. but i also just want to counsel that part of where i think -- let me just sort of project forward, doris, in 2015 a little bit. i think what mark laid out is there's no low-hanging fruit here.

there's no simple easy thing. in many ways, the very significant thing that's happened which is essentially the ending of the deportation of people in the interior without criminal records which is by far and away the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in the united states, that's already happened. and i think that the immigration community has frankly given the democrats and the president far less credit than they deserve for how much the president has fundamentally altered the system to essentially have removed the threat of deportation over virtually every undocumented immigrant in the country already. that's already happened. as mark said, we only had 10,000 people from the interior of the country without criminal records deported last year. that's down from hundreds of thousands in previous years. the number of people that were removed and returned from the united states last year were almost a million people less than in the first year of the bush administration. so one of the great falsehoods of the current debate is that somehow the administration is

actually ratcheting up enforcement regime. it's, in fact, the exact opposite that's taking place. we're removing and returning far fewer people than we were a decade ago and long-settled families in the interior of the country are no longer a priority for deportation and, frankly, the numbers have plummeted very rapidly. so first of all i think that the community is -- some of the low-hanging fruit has already been taken by the administration. and, in fact, if you look at the central argument that the republicans are making against the democrats and why they walked away from cir, it was over these steps. this is the central critique the republicans have made, that the

president violated the law. i don't know how significant it. it's taking so long because it's not easy. i also think we have to recognize that there's going to be significant organized opposition to this on a scale that is not true for probably any of the other executive actions that were taken in all the proceeding years. it's going to meet pragmatically there will be far fewer people that apply for the executive action whatever it is in the process because it will be so controversial and if you're an undocumented immigrant, you want to be doing something that's permanent like a green card, not something that's temporary that could be taken away that's tremendously controversial. and we have to recognize that the republicans in 2013 and 2014 in the house passed two immigration bills one was to revoke the authority of the president to do prosecutor discretion at all. and why because he stopped deporting freedom the interior of the country, which hay didn't like because the basic

republican strategy is in the house, not all republicans, not anna, not john mccain republicans but the conservatives, they want the imminent threat of deportation over every undocumented immigrant to be reestablished as part of the -- as part of their political strategy and they're angry that that's been removed. the second point i'll make is, look, we could have a majority republican senate and i think it's very likely we'll see a bill passed in the house and a bill passed in the senate, could pass in the senate, that revokes executive action and tries to repeal -- challenges all the executive action measures that are taken and reinforces that they want to revoke the prosecutorial discretion authority that's removed over the undocumented immigrants in the interior. we should expect we may see the most hostile anti-immigrant legislation we've seen in the last 20 or 30 years take place over the next 12 months, six months, 12 months. it's already the position of the house republicans because the two things they voted on in 2013/2014 -- i'm sorry if i'm being a little pessimistic but i'm not exactly enthusiastic about what's going to happen here and i've been working on

this every day of my life in washington with the white house and congress for nine years so i have some experience in this. the second something that the republican primary campaign for president is not going to be pretty. let's hope jeb runs. >> for the love of goth god do not endorse him. [ laughter ] i would actually like him to win. >> you're going to -- let's hope -- let's everyone in this room pray that jeb bush runs to create some counterweight to what's happening on the republican side. ted cruz, the texas republicans, ted cruz has now become the leader in the anti-immigrant movement in the united states. he's being dragged to the right by the future lieutenant governor of texas, dan patrick who will be emerging -- if you thought joe arpaio was a bad guy, wait until you get to know dan patrick, the next lieutenant governor of texas. he's going to be the most vicious and effective and powerful anti-immigrant politician we've ever seen and

he'll be the lieutenant governor, which is a more powerful position than the governor in texas starting in january. his number one issue border security, all this anti-immigrant rhetoric. so he's dragging the texas republican party to the right. that's going to drag cruz and perry to the right we saw the first republican to introduce a travel ban for west africa was marco rubio who is now -- has now abandoned his position on immigration reform. so the republican primary won't be a pretty thing in this debate next year and i think the president is going to demonstrate or self-conclude by showing a lot of courage that in the face of all of it he's still going to take action but we have to recognize that all of us in this room who think this is the right thing better be spending time and energy defending what gets done, reaffirming the need to fix the broken -- the overall

broken immigration system and to recognize that this could end up becoming a very consequential and significant and ugly part of the national debate. i don't think it's -- i'll conclude by saying there are many advocates who are my friends who argue that this is simple and easy there is nothing simple and easy about what's to happen. it's going to be deeply unpopular. it's one thing with kids who came here on no fault of their own. it's fundamentally different when it's the immigrants themselves who snuck into the country and where people who may feel they're undeserving for getting special treatment and i think from a public opinion standpoint, you know, this is probably going to poll at 35%, 40% is my guess at best. and it will be one of the most unpopular things the president will have done during his entire presidency. that's my prediction. however he's still going do it because it's the right thing to do and i hope the immigration community is far more supportive of him and what he's done than what's happened over the last couple of years.

>> there are some good issues to chew on. anna, let's turn to your side of the aisle and start with a >> at this point it would poison the well for future legislation. it's a bit of both sides. do you think that if there is an executive action of any scope and scale, it will be to pull out all the stops and see it as a usurpation of authority and try to litigate and use the appropriations process to stop the tools they have? or could it be the other way that if the president finally does something it force the the

hands of the republicans to come for the with something least possibly in the dream act category as part of the lead up to 2016? >> first of all, thank you for inviting me to be here and it's going to be incredibly hard to follow that lighthearted optimistic presentation that simon just made. a lot of it will depend on the election results and depend on the politics of the time. i have been surprised. i have been surprised by how readily the people responsible have accepted and admitted that the decisions or lack there of on immigration in the last few years have been politically motivated.

i was frankly flabbergasted when the white house let it filter into the media that the reason they were not taking executive action before the election was because the red state democrats were in danger. i was equally flabbergasted when in may party the people in charge in the leadership said we have these standards and a lot of people are in agreement. not that there is great push back in the standards, but it's the timing and bringing it up at a time when it's going to hurt republicans in tough elections. they are not presending they are political. hell yes, you should be giggling at the idea of a president obama promise. we have been waiting for a long time. we are getting old waiting to be taken to the altar. i say that about both parties. the difference is republicans

have not even made promises which i wish we have. if we look at how the politics played in, candidate barack obama promised the reform because of politics. he didn't do it in his first year because of politics. there was a disillusioned latino community. he did daca because of politics. he promised executive action because of politics. he has delayed it because of politics. did the minor children on the border have a role? did he affect it? definitely. you have candidates like allison grimes who was running ads until a couple of days ago on the

immigration issue being against the immigration issue until latinos and other groups started protesting. let's be clear on what we are doing and where we are and why it's happening. i would say the same on the republican add. there was impetus to get it done after 2012 because we got shellacked. they had voted for the democrat, president obama. that was the big motivator. it happened because of politics. it's time that we stop being pawns and the bigger chess game by both parties. this is an important issue not

just to the latino and immigrant community, but to the country to national security and the economy. to modernizing what is a decrepid immigration system. it's important in so many aspects and factors. i think that's the first thing. let's be honest and stop trying to white wash what we all know in this room is true. on the executive action, i happened to not like the idea of executive action because i don't like band-aids. i wish that it could be solved legislatively because i like to see a permanent approach and solution and this be addressed responsibly. when i say that i sound like i have been smoking mushrooms,

but -- >> medical mushrooms. >> in my ideal world, that's what i would like. a lot depends on the election results. we may not know who wins the senate until january. it may be a run off and there will be a run off in louisiana. there may be in georgia that won't help until january. i would be shocked if in the middle of the two contested races that might decide the fate of the senate in red states where democrats are having a hard time, president obama will take executive action before those elections. we don't know maybe decisions

get made on november 4th. who knows. i think it's going to be more of the same. i think it's going to be a difficult situation for immigration. i don't think it's going to get worse. i don't think it's going to get better. let's work well together. i amming you such a secret. i am not sure harry reid and president obama like each other that much either. i'm not sure harry reid likes anybody. anyway. if they get the senate, there is a much better working relationship, we hope. there is a better working tleap is a better working relationship

between mitch mcconnell and harry reid and john boehner? >> i'm not sure. >> i'm not the only one spoking mushrooms on this panel. could they be capable of working out a comprehensive solution that it could be or could not be? i am yet to be right because i tend to be optimistic and i am out of that game. if the republicans take the senate, what signals president obama and the administration send to republicans. is it going to be like when clinton lot of the mid-terms and was able to work or will we be in an even more antagonized

political atmosphere than we are now as hard as that might be to imagine. >> a lot of things are yet to be seen. if there is action, will republicans like it? hell no. i don't know any legislative that likes it. i don't care what party is in control. do i think they are going to sue? i don't know. i would suspect not because there is one penting lawsuit on another issue and they have looked at issues that there have been action on and judged that that was not one of the better legal challenges. they probably have no lawsuit, but none of this happens in a vacuum. i think it will be ann tag niftic time. there is not ways of saying we will do x action for this amount of time. at that time we will work out a

comprehensive term nent solution. again, forgive me. i am delving into optimism again. >> norm, take a look at the bigger lens. we had executive action historically down the line and executive actions are what presidents do in all kinds of realms. why is it so controversial in immigration. is it just because of the numbers that might be involved and the fact that it involves population of people that don't have legal status. or pure politics and the polarization in our system right now. i would be interested to know from you, whether you see a legitimate separation of powers issue in play here.

>> i just wanted to give you some advice because when your optimism proves unfounded you may be looking for an outlet. >> the legalization of marijuana is on the ballot where i live. >> it's only medical marijuana in florida. let me address it this way. first, reflecting on the things that anna said. when republicans swept into power in 1994, it was only after

the disastrous shut down that you had a change. the worst relationship was between the speaker of the house and the leader. because the senate and the house operate on different rhythms and different ways and newt gingrich was frustrated. he would pass bills out of the house and the senate would go nowhere. he referred as the tax collector of the welfare state. dole responded with a characteristic dole joke. the good news is that a bus filled with supply siders went off the cliff. the bad news is that three survived. they believe that they will be lovey dovey or have a good working relationship and in in a general way that is shaky. that's another story. i don't think anybody will have a good relationship here.

what's also true is that second term presidents in the aftermath in their final two years always have a rough time of it. there is almost no legislative action. presidents suffer from the six-year itch. even though who are partisans of the president are looking ahead to the next pedestrian and the idea that you will go through difficult times negotiating policies where you make compromises when the next person may come in and give you more of what you want, it doesn't happen. of course the party out of the white house feels that even more strongly. the turn to executive action is always greater in the second term more generally. it gets enhanced in the final two years.

i would add one challenge here is that presidents almost always suffer a major drain of political appointees in those final two years. one, people who stuck around for six years are exhausted. they are ready to go. two, if you are going to leave, and you wait until the bitter end, your opportunities for the next job are reduced compared to what they might be a year and a half or a year before you go. what complicates matters in that front now is that if the republicans take a majority in the senate, the door will slam shut on confirmations. first, if the republicans take a majority in the senate, harry reid will call the senate back as soon as he can after the election and go night and day as much as he can to confirm as many people as he can. judges and executive appointees.

i would be surprised if president obama didn't send a message to all of his a pointes saying if you are going to leave before it's all over, leave now. to try to fill those posts. republicans are going to try to do whatever they can to block people coming in because the fact is that executive actions are less effective when you have acting people or vacancies in those positions. how that will work on the immigration front, i don't know. mark and doris i'm sure know better than i, but that's a complicated factor. as a more general matter, you can take executive action through regulations and through executive orders and the like. executive orders do tend to stick around longer because it's still a relatively burdensome process to undo. you don't just pass an order saying never mind.

it's not the same as legislation and as mark suggested while there many avenues for executive action, it's not the same as comprehensive reform. legislators don't like it, but if there is no other alternative, the legislators who support the policy will be happy with it. it's true that in some cases legislators do like it because they don't have to take the responsibility and they can take shots afterwards. there is a chance republicans

will take the senate. they will have a run off election december 3rd, january 6th in georgia. if anybody has this point, not purdue. if the president took action in december, you would have a lot of republican voters rushing to the polls for a run off election. we have passed the $100 million mark.

even the difference between and 52, you will see koch brothers money and other money flooding in and see signifi cant sums on the other side. those will dominate the process. now, we did have rand paul the other day say that he hoped there would be an immigration bill and he was optimistic because he said president obama will be in his final stages. we can get him to support a weakened bill. keep in mind that the house republican caucus conference will be more conservative or radical. john boehner said the other day i have got 16 knuckle heads in my conference i have to deal

with. >> if you contrast paul with rubio who has basically shown where the party is and where it's going, if they take the senate in the "washington post" that is on point, it's going to fit a narrative. the narrative is we have a mandate and we are on top and what we have proven is we can do

this with older whiter maler voters. the polls show higher proportions of hispanics opting for cory gardner than we find in other places. they have been wrong. if gardner win, you will see a new narrative. we can prevail with hispanic support without doing an immigration bill or supporting an immigration bill. the other point to keep in mind is that the driving force of the party, the single largest presence in congress, the place where the nomination for the president will be achieved in

the south. in the south the attitude towards immigration reform is not just texas, but everywhere is different. in the house you have almost all lily white districts. they are adamant in opposition. you are not going to move much in this direction. that means the impetus becomes greater. i would at one other thing. and they have the republican members in the house and senate. several of them, very, very conservative people said they were getting a lot of push from the grass roots now, even for impeachment. they understand and the leaders and the rank and file members, even those who are off on the edge of the spectrum with the few exceptions, the steve kings of the world, how ridiculous that is and how catastrophic.

i can guarantee if we get an executive action that includes half of the things that mark was talking about, that you are going to see an inflamed portion of the electorate reinforced by talk radio and blogs saying whether it's t goes to the courts or not, this president has basically shattered his oath of office and it's time to remove him. the challenge for a john boehner assuming he doesn't have serious problems moving through in january and think he will prevail although it will be tricky for him and for mitch mcconnell if he is the majority leader coming in. it is going to be holding those people off. final point politically. say you get a 51-49 majority in the senate.

say for argument's sake one of the new senators is orman in kansas. angus king and man shin. it couldn't surprise me at all under those circumstances that you would see an alliance with three guys who basically say to the two parties, we can give you a majority or take away a majority and do it more than once unless you do what we want to do. what will be interesting is if there is a portion that was to do list is immigration. my fondest dream is they would go to mitch mcconnell. i will make you a leader if you do campaign finance reform. will you give up your firstborn?

whatever happens in the senate other than an incredibly onerous border security bill goes nowhere in the house. the only option for policy movement in the next two years comes on the executive front. >> wow. it really is very dire to look across the spectrum in that way. are there any points that have been made that some among you would like to take up with each other? mark? >> i have a couple of questions for the political people. one is i heard the argument made and i would be curious to hear your reactions that in addition to the -- normally all the good

policy reasons that the president might want to aim big because that will be the only way that going good happens. does it help the democrats to aim big and provoke a backlash and clarify that democrats are the pro immigration party? does he want to provoke the backlash? >> i think president obama recognizes that if he takes a big step here, it's going to hurt more generally politically. it may drive his numbers down more and there is a floor there. >> thanks, form. >> it's around the 40% mark where he is. there is another complicating factor here. you saw the stock market drop earlier in the week. there were two reasons for that. one is the fear, a legitimate fear as we see serious economic problems in europe. we may hit a global recession

and maybe even deflation. the reaction against something more comprehensive on the immigration front as it always does with difficult times, the hurdle gets higher. i don't see that president obama can do nothing without the democratic party with that core constit againsty. he may ratchet back under those circumstances. he may do this in stages. just to see how things go with each of these individual actions. >> a lot of it depends on what the executive action looks like. frankly if i were in president obama's shoes, i would say you are going to get a backlash and you are going to pay a political

price. whether it's small or big. so size matters. go big. >> one thing i want everyone to think about, with the temporary part and not the pieces, the pro in place that leans to a green card. in given that these are temporary actions that can be rescinded by a future republican president, the moral question of asking undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and identify themselves to the government, knowing that that may be a temporary thing that could be resipded and the government knows who you are. you have been first in the deportation line. either many people in this room have worked more directly with immigrant communities than i have and there strong feelings about this, but i think this is one of the reason yes personally

i fought every day to get the immigration reform passed and did not believe this was something that we should settle for because of how tenuous it is. only half of the eligible kids have applied on something that was universally praised. what do we think the uptick will be on the temporary programs that you have half the country screaming impeachment over it. a quarter of folks? it's hard for to you go to an immigrant and say you should do this, recognizing you then have to go to your employer and acknowledge that the name i have been using for the last five years is not correct. and go down the list of things. these are complicated real live decisions that i think advocates that argue that this is simple and easy of the picture of how complex this is going to be. the second thing, i want to note

that rand paul voted against the bill. let's put him in a place of being a constructively actor in this. it's possible that he might be. there was one other piece. i'm forgetting. >> i think you criticized rand and you criticized rubio and christie. >> i don't think christie is running so i won't use my time. i hope jeb runs. i want jeb. >> christie wanted to bring all of the different communities in new jersey together just by pushing them into one lane. >> appropriations. caught up. >> what does this do to the 2016 election? the prevailing view is that he will do something. it will be controversial and it will be polarizing.

but at the end of the day, it's pardon of the legacy that the president wants to leave. he does not want to be deporter in chief. he wants to in fact have something to say about the effort to improve the circumstances of a large population in the country. is this more about a political announcement and being able to take credit for that as compared with actually providing an improvement in the living conditions of lots of people in the country? is it about setting up even clearer lines in 2016 that give an advantage to one party and disadvantage to another? look at the way in which the immigration issue played out in the republican primaries in 2012.

romney probably lot of to some extent over the simple phrase of self deportation. so why -- keeping this controversy going in this way and making it even more controversial and making the differences even more stark without actually improving to a large extent the lives of people that are caught in this is a real cynical strategy. is that what we are in? >> cynical strategy. my goodness. >> how new would that be? the minute i said it -- >> to the broader question, doris, we are not sure how it plays out in 2016. over the long run, there is no doubt that if the two parties continued down the paths they have been going, it's a disaster for republicans. they are going to be left with older white men as their core.

as my wife told me older white men are not the group you want to trust. >> make that by the way, narrow is down, straight older white men. and they ain't what they used to be. >> but that doesn't necessarily play out that way in 2016. of course the state of the economy will matter in this instance as well. the nature of what the president does and the reactions are and all of that. some of of will depend on how that process goes. if you get a jeb bush staying this is an act of love and let's move forward, he somehow prevails and wins a nomination and unites a party, you have a different dynamic. i think the odds of that happening are small. i am keeping an eye now on one of the more interesting figures, john casic.

unlike many of the mid-western colleagues going to win handly. in a landslide. partly because he has a crappy opponent. a large part is because he governed in a different way than scott walker or tom corbett or rick snyder. it will tell you about the nature of the party that yesterday john said not only forget about repealing obamacare, but he said it's not just because politically it's infusible, but because we are talking about flesh and blood and people who benefitted from this. that's against the party message. he said i desperately want to repeal obamacare and it's horrible and he backed away from that. i think the idea that casic would take a position on immigration even though he has basically put health care and the expansion of medicaid in

religious terms. we are trying to help people. the moral question comes up, that makes it more difficult. i think we are likely to see the stark differences between the parties that will motivate white voters in the south much more than elsewhere unless it's working class whites because the economy is deep in the ditch again. it's likely to turn generations of latino voters if you vote the same way three times in a row, that's it for a lifetime. moving in a different direction. following on what simon said, if you look at greg abbott and patrick, you are moving away from the governance we saw with george w. bush and even rick perry up until now. that's likely to accelerate the changes in a state like texas and move that in a different direction as well. not in 2016, but further down

the road. >> can i jump in? doris has an interesting question. i know people are arguing that for the democrats. this is great leading up to the 2016. the differences between the two parties are starker than they have been since any time i began all of this. they passed the aca that will affect far more people and they have seen based on some data, 1/3 of the drop. they have the families and the democrats want to see it's easier for people to vote. the republicans are denying the ability for people to vote. the democrats are defending social security and medicare.

democrats are trying to advance and put more spending on education and the republicans want to cut it. democrats want to invest in urban transportation. republicans won't grant transportation authority and democrats passed daca that allowed 600,000 young people to get legal status. >> and then the republican response is not just to be against, but actually to take action to strip legal authority from existing communities. first the focus of the house and people who have been given status and taken it away. on the rights of the kids on the border. it was also an effort to take away legal status that they had. there was an escalation of attack in the republican house on immigrants.

the way that democrats feel is that there has been a starker contrast between the two than there ever have been. the a tasks escalated against us. why do anything else? if we will be punished for the community that we all care know, including ending the deportation of families from the interior of the country, taking an executive action and we will be attacked more and not less. the idea that this will reinforce the difference is a bad reason to do this. the president should do it because it's the right thing to do. no ones there will be an ounce of benefit if we are not getting

there. there will be more until american history. they will be more opposed than any congress in modern history and we are still getting attacked. i don't think there is a lot of generosity of good will fors many of the latino groups because of what happened over the last 18 months. >> okay. >> let's remember that the first person that called for a tweaking of the law that allowed the central american kids to stay and not be deported was president barack obama. let's remember that the potential presumed nominee who came out strongly and quickly to say send those kids back. i say folks, let's stop white washing and stop with the half

truths and the spinning and stop being pawns on the bigger game when it comes to immigration. we have to be smarter and demand truth and action from both parties. >> okay. i open the floor for questions and you can use the mikes and please tell us who you are. >> i'm virginia with the immigration and refugee service. my question is for mr. rosen berg. you mentioned that the obama administration all but eliminated the deportation in the interior. those who work with care givers who are crossing the border, that's not the message in the communities. i get asked when i service clients if i'm immigration.

do i look like immigration? they come to a catholic and lutheran location. these are places of safety and the community that are pillars of support and strength. i am really curious. this is the first time i have heard deportation interiors. i have family members who are deported in the interior. >> in addition to the reports that my organization has done, several reports that they have produced, reports that pew put out and the policy center put out. here is what is true. there were only 10,000 crossers

and it's a fact. level three and a single misdemeanor is an illegitimate. to deny i would argue as members of the media and immigration groups have done of the substantial and significant and undeniable changes that have gone on, i am not telling you that 10,000 is acceptable. still too many. what is clear and it's on my website and five other websites, it's the policy of the government today to not deport people from the answer of the record. is every ice office acting uniformity? it's 400 people per state on an

annualized basis. 200 per state. you will get cases where people are not criminals and came to the system. that's all true and what is also true and it's incouple pent upon people in the room, the government no longer wants the criminal records. the threat of deportation over the vast majority of immigrants in the united states has been lifted. it's the change. three years ago and people were deported from the u.s. and the interior. last year was half of that. part of what i want to challenge all of you. there were people in spanish language media and organizations who have been misleading the

public about what is going on in terms of the government data. it doesn't mean there is not anecdotal data, but both things can be true that the government is trying really, really hard to stop deporting people who don't have criminal records and too many people that you are coming across that are getting caught up in a system that is going through change. both things can be true at the same time. in the communities, it is real whether that data is correct. that's great. >> some of that is trying to get ratings and other people trying to raise moan that are not telling the truth. what they have done to change the policies in the united states. part of this is if i come here a year from now and we are in the same room, you guys can say

mr. rosenburg, you were up there for the obama administration. none of this is true because we are hearing it in the community. that may be the case. all i am asking is to accept that what i am saying could be true. >> the fact that that is not getting into the communities. we work with the families and that the great for us. >> so help us. i have to go face-to-face with them and navigate the confusing system. >> data like that that i don't have the time, i would appreciate the resources if you make sure that is shared.

>> you should look at it. there is still a lot of fear in the community. people with long convictions or long ago removals are seen as priorities. it can be somebody with a long record and especially the inrestatements of removal. including those who are reentering the united states. they have previous removals and convictions and you see them in

t the data that they shifted. it takes time for the changes to filler in because there was this close collaboration between local law enforcement and immigration that provoked a lot of fear. there has been a couple of shifts. a real pivot since 2011. we are starting to see that the changes -- that it is a different mottle that is now going on.

i know that education in the usa is lacking in compare to other countries and a lot of people are coming in and getting american degrees which i think is great. especially someone with the economic crisis and graduated, i haven't decided if immigration reform is a good or bad thing. i'm trying to decide. how can i not vote against myself and vote for the betterment of man? >> i think one answer is that most economists would say if immigrants compete with you for a job, they also create jobs. highly skilled americans benefit

more from high schoolkilled thay are harmed by it. they compete for jobs and i think most would say far more people are helped than harm and people who think they are harmed that are not harmed. because of spill over effects and they create a business and hire people and spend money and that generates jobs. you benefit more than you are harmed by it. >> you brought up something about the business community. that would expand the visas and

deal with high skill and get support for that and they would have weird issues about whether to take that narrow piece of it legislatively. >> a large number of democrats would fight that, but that would be the debate. we need to refurbish the workforce in america. there way too many people like me who would rather spend my money on me than have children and spend it on them. >> that's a critical part of it. are for sharing your thoughts. the question of the enforcement operations that we are seeing in

the u.s. soeds. we provide access to legal services and for those who were a part of the rates. the point that mark made is significant that the prirds are crafted in such a way that the statistic is under inclusive. we are seeing over a couple of years an enormous increase in the folk who is see who never have the opportunity to see an immigration judge. under the immigration laws p precludes them from seeing a judge. to move on from that, i would

like to ask that question. the enforcement changed. there is also the enforcement in the border. i am surprised by that and i would like to per your thoughts. after years and years of struggle by the immigrant kmund to end the detention of families and children, we have all of a sudden thousands of beds and attorneys coming back and reporting on those who are sick and sungry. that is not playing out as much as expected. >> on the immigrant children which is a different question

from family detention which is actually in the care and custody of ice. mothers and children in the care and custody of ice as opposed to unaccompanied children in the custody of orr. >> that are is the case and if anybody wants to answer to it, we can. i don't know if we have the answer fully. >> i don't think this is information that you don't know, but i think that one of the things they argued is it's important to create a deterrent for families that are coming and don't have a legitimate claim and who can't stay here. it's better for people not to come at all. that argument only holes with a

fair and fast fair process and that will talk about how you get the process and that we need a period of time process for both children and families. i have seen the same stories and we have seen a lot of stories that families in those follows are not getting a good access and there is not a good argument. and i think some wanted to push. because these kids and families break our hearts. i'm from nicaragua. i know what is going on in those

countries and the gangs. in the other three countries. the kids are being exploited by drug dealers. it's the same path that is now icing on the take and a few more thousand dollars a head. they have a new business and exploit i exploiting we need to do more to help them because part of this is people deported that had been members of gangs here and they were not prepared & they were corrupt and it's to the point where it's out of control and coming back to this has to be

seen in a comprehensive way and there is no easy answer. it could be a very difficult situation right across the border. it already is. >> part of the new challenges we will have, everyone has been working this this arena and believe that reform would pass and that the volume would decrease. the likely hood of passing that is remote. we had our shot and didn't get it done. we have to contemplate what it will be like to have 5, 6, 7, 9 million people who are undocumented and the system was

never built to behave this way because we wanted to fix it. if we don't mitigate the problems we have, and the court system has become -- it doesn't work anymore. i am not defending the immigration system. the administration is trying to make things better dealing with the surnt system. the final point i was going to

make as i'm running out of time and there has been fun stuff on twitter. this is the basket point and the thought exercise i want to leave with all of you, particularly those of you who work with real people. if the message frlt media is that both parties are out to get you and barack obama and the democrats who we thought were friends are turning on you and everyone is out to get you, that's a set of and signing up for the programs that may come up in the next or nine months.