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 of citizens or bprs. 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 start adding on long residency requirements. so if you're only extending the program to people who have been here 5 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 may be more risk averse, especially if they're already in the workforce. so 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 relief to that kind of population, but the politics of doing it, exercising enforcement -- exercising discretion during the enforcement process because it's low profile and sort of 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. so these unauthorized immigrants could benefit from being paroled into 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 ten-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, marc. 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 re-election and deferred action for dreamers at that time was really viewed as contributing quite positively to his re-election. 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 of 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. and thanks, marc. it's an honor to be on this panel. these all folks i admire tremendously, and so 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. first of all, i think it will happen because the president promised, and he needs to -- 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 it in 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. all of you in this room are well-read and all these things. 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 right 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 the immigration community that 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 it in 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 marc laid out is there's no low-hanging fruit here. there's no sort of 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

imgrameni 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 marc 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. moving ahead to 2015, i think there will be an executive action. how significant it will be, one of the reasons it's taking so long is 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. there is an entire political party and all of their presidential candidates are going to be, you know, railing against this. it's going to mean pragmatically that there will be far fewer people that apply for the executive action, whatever it is, in the process or go through the process because it will be so controversial, and if you're

an undocumented immigrant, you know, you want to be doing something permanent like a green card and not something temporary that can 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 prosecutorial discretion at all. and why? because he had stopped deporting people from the interior of the country, which they didn't like because the basic republican strategy, in the house, not all republicans, not ana, not john mccain republicans, they want the threat of deportation to be deestablished as part of their political strategy. they're angry 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 the threat of deportation over undocumented immigrants in the interior. we should expect that. we should expect we may see the most hostile anti-immigrant legislation we've seen in the last 20 or 30 years take place in the next 6 months, 12 months. the two things they voted on in 2013 -- 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 have been working on this every day of my life in washington with the white house and with congress for nine years, and so i have some experience in this. i think that the second thing is that the republican primary campaign for president is not going to be pretty. let's hope jeb runs. i hope -- let's all -- >> for the love of 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 is border security, all this anti-immigrant rhetoric, right? so he's dragging the texas republican party to the right. that's going to drag cruz and perry to the right. we saw yesterday the first

republican to introduce a travel ban for west africa was marco rubio, who is 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 about to happen with executive action.

it's going to be deeply unpopular in the public. 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 to do it because it's the right thing to do, and i hope that when he does it, that the immigration community is far more supportive of him and what he's done than what's happened over the last couple years. >> there are some good issues to chew on. ana, let's turn to your side of the aisle and start with a couple of them. first of all, the house republican leadership has been loud and clear that anything that the president does on executive action at this point would poison the well for future

legislation. but, of course, they also stopped dealing with future legislation in this congress, so it's a bit of a -- both sides. do you think that if there is an executive action of any scope and scale, that the republican reaction really will be to pull out all the stops, see it as a user pation of its authority, litigate, use the appropriations to stop it, use any of the tools they have, or could it be the other way, that if the president actually finally does something, it forces the hands of the republicans to come forward with something at 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'm so cynical, it takes a lot to surprise me these days, but i have been incredibly surprised by how readily the people responsible have accepted and admitted that the decisions or lack thereof 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 it put red state democrats in danger, and i was equally flabbergasted when in my party the people in charge

and the leadership said, yeah, we have these standards, and a lot of people are in agreement with the standards. it's not that there is great pushback against the standards. what there's pushback against is the timing and bringing it up at a time when it's going to hurt republicans in tough elections. so, i mean, they're not even pretending that these decisions aren't political, and when we look back, hell, yes, you should be giggling at the idea of a president obama promise because we've been waiting for a promise for a hell of a long time. we're getting old waiting to be taken to the aller, but i would say that about both parties. the difference is republicans haven't even made promises, which i wish we had, but if we take a look at how the politics has played into all of this, candidate barack obama promised to do immigration reform in his first year because of politics. he didn't do it in his first year because of politics.

there was a very disillusioned latino community in 2012. he did daca right before the elections because of politics. he promised executive action because of politics, and he's delayed it because of politics. you know, did the children -- the mi nor children at the border have a role? yes. did it affect public opinion? definitely. but what's going on is you have democrat candidates like mary landrieu, like allison lundgren grimes in kentucky who even ran -- was running ads until a couple days ago on the immigration issue being against the immigration issue until latinos and other immigrant groups started protesting. so, you know, let's just be clear-eyed on what we're doing, where we are, and why it's happening, and i would say the same thing on the republican side. there was all this impetus to

get immigration done after 2012 because we got shellacked and then we got shell shocked by the idea that 71% of latinos had voted for the democrats, for president obama. so, you know, yes, that was the big motivator, and, again, it didn't happen this year because of politics. so, you know, it's important that we be honest and clear with this and where we are because it's time that we stop being political pawns in this bigger chess game by both parties. this is an important issue. it's important not just to the latino community, the immigrant community. it's important to the country, to national security, to the economy, to modernizing what is a decrepit immigration system, and it's important in so many aspects and factors. so i think that's, you know, the

first thing. let's be honest and stop trying to whitewash what we all know in this room is true. on the executive action, you know, i happen to not like the idea of executive action because i don't like band aids, and, you know, i wish, i wish that it could be solved legislatively because, you know, i'd like to see a permanent, comprehensive approach and solution and this be addressed responsibly in a bipartisan way. i realize that when i say that, i sound like i have been smoking mushrooms, but that's, you know -- >> medical mushrooms. >> in my ideal world, you know, that's what i would like. i think a lot will depend on the election results. you know, we may not know who

wins the senate until january. there may be a runoff. there's surely going to be a runoff in louisiana. that's not going to happen until december. there may even be a runoff in georgia, which won't happen until january. and if, you know -- i'd be shocked if in the middle of those two very 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. so we don't know because maybe they lose, maybe those decisions get made on november 4th, who knows. what's going to happen if democrats retain the senate? 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. i don't think john boehner and harry reid like each other or work well together. oh, i'm telling you such a secret, i know. frankly, i'm not even sure harry reid and president obama like each other that much either. i'm not sure harry reid likes anybody. but anyways. if the republicans get the senate, there is certainly a much better working relationship, we hope, between john boehner and mitch mcconnell. will that lead -- you don't think there's a better working relationship between mitch mcconnell and john boehner and harry reid and john boehner. >> i'm not sure. >> okay. well then i'm not the only one smoking mushrooms on this panel. could they -- could they be capable of working out a

comprehensive solution, it could be. it could not be. i don't know. i've been making immigration predictions for so long and i'm yet to be right because i tend to be optimistic, so i'm out of that game. i think a lot is going to depend also on if the republicans take the senate, what signals president obama and the administration send to republicans. is it going to be, you know, like when clinton lost the midterms and was able to work with republicans or are we going to be in an even more antagonized political atmosphere than we are now, as hard as that might be to imagine. so i think a lot of those things are yet to be seen. if there is executive action, will republicans like it? hell no. you know, i don't know any legislative body that likes it when the executive takes

unilateral executive action. i don't care what party is in control. do i think they're going to sue? i don't know, but i would suspect not because there is one pending lawsuit on another issue and they have taken a look at some of the immigration issue that is there have been executive action on and judged that that was not one of the better legal challenges. so unless they deem differently, i would say probably no lawsuit, but i think, you know, none of this happens in a vacuum. so i think it will be a very antagonistic time and i don't know if there's not ways of saying, look, we're going to do executive action for "x" amount of time, and in that time we're going to work out a comprehensive, permanent solution, but again forgive me, i'm delving into optimism again. >> okay. all right. norm, take a look at this through a bigger lens, if you would. as marc laid out, we've had

executive action historically down the line in immigration, executive actions, of course, are what presidents do in all kinds of realms. why is it so controversial in the immigration arena? 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 is it pure politics and the polarization in our system right now, and i'd also be interested to know from you whether you see a legitimate separation of powers issue in play here or is the president on firm political ground when he says the congress hasn't acted, i need to act, and then what are the down stream effects? how does this really affect the 2016 elections, afterwards, action or inaction. either would have an effect. >> thanks, doris. first, ana, you don't smoke mushrooms, you eat mushrooms.

>> i'm republican. you know, i don't inhale. >> i just wanted to give you some advice because when your optimism proves unfounded, you may be looking for some outlet. >> fortunately, the legalization of marijuana is on the ballot in florida, which is where i live. >> it's only medical marijuana in florida. so let me address it this way, doris. first, i want to add one other thing reflecting on some of the things that ana said. when republicans swept into power in 1994, they didn't work with bill clinton for a little more than a year. it was only after the disastrous shutdown that we saw a change. but during that first year where you had a republican house and a republican senate, the worst relationship in washington was between the speaker of the house and the senate republican leader because the senate and the house operate on very different

rhythms and in different ways, and newt gingrich was repeatedly frustrated. he had pass bills out of the house and the senate would go nowhere. he referred to bob dole as the tax collector of the welfare state and 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 of them survived. so the belief that john boehner and mitch mcconnell will be lovey-dovey or even have a really good working relationship in a general way i think is kind of shaky, but that's another story. i don't think anybody is going to have a particularly good relationship here. what's also true is that second term presidents in the aftermath of the 22nd amendment and in their final two years always have a rough time of it. there's almost no significant

legislative action. almost always the presidents suffer from that six-year itch. they have fewer of their own adherents. even those who are partisans of the president are looking ahead to the next presidency, and the idea that you're going to 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 just doesn't happen. and, of course, the party out of the white house feels that even more strongly. so the temptation to turn to executive action is always greater, it's 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 have stuck around for six years are exhausted and are ready to go.

two, if you're 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 on 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 is going to 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 political appointees saying, if you're going to leave before it's all over, leave now to try and fill some of those posts. and republicans are going to try to do whatever they can to block

people coming in because the fact is 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. marc and doris, i'm sure, know better than i, but that's a complicating factor. as a more general matter, you can take executive action through regulations, through executive orders and the like. executive orders do tend to stick around a little bit longer because it's still a relatively burdensome process to undo one. you don't just pass an executive order saying never mind. but, it's not the same as legislation, and as marc suggested really, while there are many avenues for executive action and to cumulatively put them together, it's pretty potent, it's not the same as comprehensive reform.

laetiegislators don't like it, if there's no other alternative, the legislators who support the poll at this will be happy with it and what's also true is that in some cases legislators secretly do like it because they don't have to take the responsibility and they can take pot shots afterwards. let me just make a couple of comments that follow some on what simon said. there is a better than even chance that republicans will take the senate. it's no sure thing, but if you look at the roots to majority, thorough bust and variegated for the republicans. they are pretty narrow and constrained for democrats. it is the case that we are very possibly going to have, as ana suggested, runoff elections. december 3rd in louisiana, january 6th in georgia. interestingly, if anybody has a route to 50% in georgia, it's michelle nunn at this point, not

perdue. but action in december i think is unlikely if we get a runoff in georgia. even if the senate majority has already been decided, because if the president took very significant immigration action in december, you would have a lot of republican voters just rushing to the polls for a runoff election. by the way, you can expect a flood of money in december and january into those states that will be just mind boggling. we have passed the $100 million mark in north carolina. you know, the vast majority of it coming from outside groups, but if the senate is in the balance or even if we're talking about the difference between 51 and 52, you're going to see koch brothers money and other money just flooding in, and you will see significant sums on the other side, and those are going to dominate the political process. now, with 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 maybe get him to support a weakened bill. i think that is pie in the sky, and paul is going to be relatively alone out there, and the fact is any kind of weakened bill that you might even negotiate with senators goes nowhere in the house, and keep in mind that the house republican caucus conference is going to be more conservative or radical than the current one. john boehner said the other day, i've got 16 knuckle heads in my conference that i have to deal with. double that next year. you know, you've got people like tim petry who is a free market republican, very conservative, but problem solving oriented. his replacement is sharply to his right and that's what we're seeing with an awful lot of those republican seats. and you're not going to have a

conference that is inclined to do much of anything except an even tougher border security bill, if that. and if you contrast paul with rubio, who has basically shown where the zeitgeist of the party is and where it's going, you're not going to see very much happening, and i think there are a couple of other things as well to keep in mind. one is if republicans take the senate, michael gerson's column in "the washington post" today i think is on point. it's going to fit a narrative, and the narrative is, we've got a mandate, and we're on top, and what we've proven is we can do this with older, whiter, maler voters and that's the electorate we can look forward to the next time. and a race to watch in particular is the senate race in colorado. the polls there show higher proportions of hispanics opting

for cory gardner than we find in other places, and there's a state with a substantial presence. there are questions about the polls. it may be that they're hitting the more affluent hispanic population, and in colorado the polls in the past in midterms especially have been wrong, but if gardner wins, then you're going to see a new narrative, which is we can prevail with hispanic support without doing an immigration bill or without supporting an immigration bill, and that will reinforce things for them as well. the other point to keep in mind is that the driving force of the republican party now, the single largest presence in congress, the place where the republican nomination for president will be achieved is in the south, and in the south the attitude towards immigration reform, not just texas but almost everywhere, is different. in the house you have almost all lily white districts, and they are adamant in their opposition.

so you're not going to move very much in this direction, and that means the impetus for executive action becomes greater, but i would just add one other thing. i was last night with a number of top staffers to republican members in the house and senate, and several of them, very, very conservative people, said they were getting a lot of push from the grassroots now even for impeachment. now, you know, they don't want it. they understand, and the leaders and the rank and file members, even those who are off on the edge of the spectrum with a few exceptions, the steve kings of the world, how ridiculous that is, how catastrophic it is. i can guarantee you if we get an executive action that includes half of the things that marc was talking about, that you're going to see an inflamed portion of the electorate reinforced by talk radio and blogs saying,

whether it goes to the courts or not, this president has basically shattered his oath of office, and it's time to remove him, and the challenge for a john boehner, assuming he doesn't have serious problems actually moving through in january, and i think he will prevail although it's going to be a little tricky for him and for mitch mcconnell if he is the majority leader coming in, is going to be holding those people off, and then i will make one final point politically. let's say that you get a 51-49 republican majority in the senate, and let's just say for argument's sake that one of the new senators coming in is orman in kansas, an independent who hasn't said with whom he will caucus. there are three people to keep an eye on. dean orman, angus king, joe

manchin, because it wouldn't surprise me at all under those circumstances that you will 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 we can do it more than once unless you do what we want to do. and what will be interesting is if any portion of that to-do list is immigration. now, you know, my fondest dream is angus king would go to mitch mcconnell and say, i'll make you majority leader if you do campaign finance reform. mitch mcconnell, will you give up your first born to achieve -- [ laughter ] just seeing mitch squirm would make my year, but that is the one caveat i would have here about a possibility of something happening in the senate along different lines. but whatever happens in the senate other than an incredibly

onerous border security bill goes nowhere in the house. so 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 others -- some among you would like to take up with each other? marc? >> i have a couple of questions for the political people. one is, i have heard the argument made, and i'd be curious your reactions, that in addition to the -- i mean, normally about all the sort of good policy reasons that the president might want to aim big because that's going to be the only way that something good happens for immigrants, but does it help the democrats in 2016 and beyond to aim big and provoke a big backlash and to really clarify that, you know, democrats are the pro-immigration party and

republicans are the anti-immigration party? does he want to provoke a backlash? >> i think, you know, president obama recognizes that if he takes a big step here, i think just as simon said, it's going to hurt more generally politically. it may drive his numbers down a little bit more although there's a floor there -- >> thanks, norm. >> well, and the floor is probably right around the 40% mark where he is. there's another complicating factor here, which is you saw the stock market drop earlier in the week, and there were two reasons for that. one is the fear, a legitimate fear, as we see serious economic problems in europe, that we may hit a global recession and maybe even deflation. and if that happens, then the reaction against something more comprehensive on the immigration front, as it always does with difficult economic times, the hurdle gets higher. i don't see that president obama

can do nothing without not only hurting himself but the democratic party with that core constituency, but he may ratchet back what he does under those circumstances, and he may do this in stages just to see how things go with each of these individual actions. >> ana, do you want to -- >> a lot of it depends on what the executive action looks like. frankly, i think if i were in president obama's shoes, i would say, you know, you're going to get a backlash, and you're going to pay a political price, whether it's small or big, so size matters. go big. >> just two points. one is that, you know, one thing i just want everyone in this room to think about, which is with the temporary part, not the

piece -- the parole in place which leads to a green card, is given that these are temporary actions that can be rescinded by a future republican president, i mean, the moral question of asking undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and identify themselves to the government knowing that may be a temporary thing that could be rescinded and, therefore, the government knows who you are, right? and you've become first in the deportation line, and i think that -- there are many people in this room who have worked more directly with immigrant communities than i have, and so i know that there are probably strong feelings about this, but i still think this is one of the reasons why just personally i fought every day to get comprehensive immigration reform passed in 2014 and did not believe that this was ever something that we should really settle for because of how tenuous it all is and about whether or not there -- only half of the eligible kids have

applied so far on something that was universally praised, right? what do we think the uptick is going to be on any of the temporary programs when you have half the country screaming impeachment over it. do we think a quarter of folks? it becomes very hard for you to go to an immigrant and say, yeah, i think you should do this recognizing you also then have to go to your employer and acknowledge that, hey, by the way, you know, the name i have been using for the last five years really isn't correct and, you know, and go down the whole list of things. these are complicated, real life decisions that i think -- i think the advocates who argue this is simple and easy again have painted an inaccurate picture of how complex this is going to be given the opposition. the second thing is -- i just want to note rand paul voted against the comprehensive immigration reform bill, by the way, so let's not put him in a place of being a constructive actor in this. it's possible that he might be, but there was one other piece of the -- i'm forgetting the other thing i was going to say.

>> i think you've criticized rand, you've criticized rubio. christie? >> i don't think christie is running. 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. [ laughter ] >> appropriations. i'm wondering if we're going to -- >> but what does this do to the 2016 election? you know, the prevailing view is that he will do something, and it will be controversial and it will be polarizing, but at the end of the day it's part of the legacy that the president wants to leave. he does not want to simply 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. but 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 this country? is it about setting up even clearer lines in 2016 that give an advantage to one party and disadvantage another? i mean, look at the way in which the immigration issue played out in the republican primaries in 2012, yeah. i mean, romney probably lost to some extent over just 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 sincynical strategy. is that what we're in? >> cynical strategy, my goodness. >> how new would that be? the minute i said it -- >> my answer to the broader question, doris, is we aren't really sure how this plays out in 2016. over the long run, there's no doubt that if the two parties continue down the paths they've been going, it's a disaster for republicans. they're basically going to be left with older white men as their core, and as my wife tells me every day, older white men are not a group you want to trust. >> and make that, by the way, narrow it down, straight older white men, and they ain't what they used to be.

>> but, you know, that doesn't necessarily play out that way in 2016, and, of course, the state of the economy will matter in this instance as well, the nature of what the president does and what the reactions are and all of that. some of it will depend on how that republican nominating process goes. you know, if you get a jeb bush stepping up and saying this is an act of love and let's move forward and he somehow prevails and wins a nomination and unites a party behind him, then you have a very different dynamic. i think the odds of that happening are small. i'm keeping an eye now on one of the more interesting figures in the republican party, john kasich, who is unlike many of his midwestern republican gubernatorial colleagues, going to win handily. in fact, in a landslide. partly that's because he's got a really crappy opponent, but a large part of it is because he's governored in a different way than scott walker or tom corbett

or even rick snyder, but it will tell you again something about the nature of the party that yesterday john kasich said not only forget about repealing obamacare, but he also said it's not just because politically it's infeasible. it's because we're talking about flesh and blood and real people who benefitted from this which was completely against the party message. so today what does he say? i desperately want to repeal obamacare. it's horrible. we really need to do it and he sort of backed away from that. the idea that kasich would take a position on immigration even though he has basically put health care and the expansion of medicaid, for example, in religious terms. we're trying to help people and the moral question does come up, that makes it a little more difficult. so i think we're likely to see stark differences between the parties and those stark differences between the parties will motivate white voters in

the south much more than they will elsewhere unless it's working class whites because the economy is deep in the ditch again and it's likely to turn generations of latino voters who we know if you vote the same way three times in a row that's pretty much in a life time moving in a different direction and following on what simon said, if you look at greg abbott and patrick you are moving radically away from the kind of governance you saw with george w. bush and 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? >> it's a very interesting question, and i know there are people arguing that for the democrats and this is great leading up to the 2016, but you know, let me, i think the

differences between the two parties on latinos are starker today than they've been since any time i began all of this. the democrats gave past the aca which will affect far more people than the immigration reform bill will. one-third of drop in the uninsured rate in the first year of the aca is a dramatic thing and it's having a real impact on the socioeconomic status of families. democrats want to make sure that it's easier for everybody to vote. the republicans are denying the ability for people to vote all over the country and democrats are defending social security and medicare. democrats are trying to advance and put more spending on education and republicans want to cut it. democrats want to invest in urban transportation which will create more labor mobility and the republicans won't grant additional transportation and dhaka which over -- which

allowed 600,000 young people to get -- >> i feel like at this point i should say unpaid political ad approved -- >> the republican response in congress has been not just to be against, but actually to take action to strip legal authed orit from existing communities. first, the docket kids which was the main focus of the republican house in 2012 which was to take people who had been given status and take it away which was something they hadn't tried to do before and the right of the kids on the border which was also an effort to try to take away legal status that they already had. so there was an escalation of attack on the republican house on immigrants and so part of my own view is that a lot of the way democrats feel right now is that there's been a starker contrast between the two parties today than there's ever been and the attacks by the immigration community have escalated against us, right? why do anything else? if we'll be punished for having

stood up and fought hard for the community that we care about and we're not getting credit for the things that we've done essentially ending the deportation of families in the country, then taking an executive action the expectation is that we'll be attacked more in 2015 and 2016, not less and we'll not ameliorate and make anybody happy and there will be an escalation. that idea that somehow this will reinforce the difference is a bad way to do this. i think the president should do it because he thinks it's the right thing to do, and i don't think that anyone i've spoken to think that there will be an ounce of political benefit for the democrats in doing it if we're not going to get credit for the things we've already done, and i'm say it right now. barack obama has done more for latinos than any president in american history and the house republicans have been more opposed to latinos than any congress in modern history and we're still getting attacked and i don't think there's generosity

or good will to many of the latino or immigrant groups because of what happened in the last 18 months. >> okay. i want to turn to the audience -- >> i want to correct the record for a minute. 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 immediately reported was president barack obama. let's remember that the potential presumed democrat nominee hillary clinton also came out strongly and quickly to say send those kids back. again, i go back to saying, folks. let's stop whitewashing the stuff and with the half-truths and spinning and let's stop being political pawns in the bigger game when it comes on immigration. we have to be smarter and demand truth and action from both parties. >> okay.

i'm going to open the floor for questions and you can use mikes on either aisle. go to one side or the other and please tell us who you are. start over here. >> hi. i'm virginia from lutheran immigration and refugee service. my question is for mr. rosenberg. you mentioned the obama administration has all, but eliminated risk of deportation and the interior. speaking as someone who works with caregivers of the unaccompanied children crossing the border. that's not the message in the communities. i get asked when i service clients if i'm immigration. really? do i look like i'll be immigration. they come to catholic charities location and lutheran service location and places of safety in the community that are pillars of support and strength for latinos in the communities and i am really curious and this is the first time i've actually heard that deportation is not ng

because i've talked to families who have family members who are deported in the interior. it's really great to hear, but my experience and anecdotally with my partners and colleagues can say the same thing. >> this is a really important conversation and, you know, in addition to the reports that my organization has done, several reports that mpi has produced, reports that pugh has put out and the bipartisan center has put out. here is what is true and undeniably true, that last year there were only 10,000 non-border, recent border cro crossers, noncriminals that were deported to the united states. it's a fact, right? you could argue that it is an illegitimate criteria for deportation. i agree with that. we should eliminate the lower end of it, but to deny as i

would argue that many members in the media and many 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 an acceptable number. it's too many and still too many. we've got to do better than this, right? but what is clear and it's on my website and their website and five other organization's web sights. it is the policy of the united states government today to not deport people from the interior of the country who do not have criminal records. is every i.c.e. office acting uniformly? if it's 10 thousand that means it's 400 people per state on an annualized basis. 200 people per state so it means that anecdotally you'll get cases where people were not criminals, right? who came through the system. that's all true. it's incumbent upon everyone in the room is that the government

from the united states do not want to deport people with criminal records. what that is is the deportation, the vast majority means it will get lifted. it doesn't mean that there aren't old court cases that will wind their way through. three years ago, two-thirds of the people deported from the u.s. or from the interior last year dropped and it was half of that, right? mark showed you some of the datas in their report. so part of what i just want to challenge all of you is the fact that you haven't heard it is because there are people in spanish language media and sources in the city that have been misleading the public in terms of the data. it doesn't mean there isn't controversial, anecdotal data. both can be trues that government is trying really, really hard to stop deporting people in the interior of the

country and that there are still too many people that you're coming across in your social service work and they'll be caught up in a system, both of those things can be true at the same time. i would caution the way that the government is portraying that because i think the level of fear that's in these communities is very real. whether that government data is correct and that's great. >> i think some of that fear has been generated by media figures trying to get ratings and other people trying to raise money in organizations that are not actually telling the actual truth about what the government of the united states has done to change the immigration policy of the united states and so part of this is, if i come here a year from now and we're all in the same room and we say mr. rosenberg, you were so full of it and i looked at this data. >> propaganda is for the obama administration. propaganda is the obama administration and none of this is true because we're hearing it in the community, right? that may be the case. all i'm asking you is to accept that what i'm saying might

possibly and could be true. you know who agrees with me on this? >> we think that's great and again, i'm not questioning the validity of your data. i'm questioning the fact that that's not getting into communities. what we do with clinic and usccd, we work directly with the families because i have to go face-to-face with clients who have children who are in our care and it's my job to help them navigate this confusing system and data like that that i haven't seen because i don't have the time. i'm helping to run a network, but i would appreciate those resources if you can make sure they are shared. >> we just did this report last week and all of the data is in here. all of the tables are in here so you should look at it. 95% agree with simon or 99% agree. i think a couple of reasons that there's still a lot of fear in the community or three reasons and the way the enforcement

priorities are now defined and people with long, previous convictions or long ago removals is also seen as priorities and it's not just people who are convicted of a current crime. it could be someone that has a long ago record and especially those reinstatements of removal. people who have been previously removed. we've removed so many people in the last decade or so including border crossers re-entering the united states. there are a lot of unauthorized that make them priorities even though they don't seem like priorities to the xhiefshity and the third reason that there's still so much fear is that a lot of the changes that simon's talking about which i agree that you really see them in the data. it's really just the last two or three years that they've become so -- that the administration has shifted in the interior enforcement so it probably takes

some time for those changes to filter into people's consciousness especially because in the previous three or five years there was this close collaboration between local law enforcement and immigration enforcement that provoked a lot of fear. so i think that there's been a couple of shifts and an increase in the interior enforcement that carried over to the early obama administration and a real pivot since 2011. so i think that we're just starting to see that these changes, you know, i think that it is a very different model that is now going on. >> here. my name is ellen street and i come to you as a recent graduate. i know education in the usa is lacking in comparison to other countries and that a lot of people from other countries are coming in and getting american degrees which i think is great, but if we open the borders and we decide that yeah, sure, everybody come especially those with advanced degrees i'm --

especially someone who has gone through the economic crisis, graduated at that time, how can -- excuse me, how can i -- i haven't yet decided if immigration reform is a good or bad thing. i'm still trying to decide all of that, but how can i not vote against myself and vote for the betterment of man? >> i think one answer is that most economists would say is that high school immigrants come and they also create jobs. i think most economists would say highly skilled americans benefit more from high skilled immigration than they are harmed by it. there are some americans that compete with immigrants for jobs, and i think that this view you're articulating is a real concern for people, you know?

it's probably i think most economists would say that more people -- far more people are helped than harmed and there are people that think that they're harmed who actually aren't harmed because of possible spillover effects and they come and spend money and from an economic perspective you benefit from people that are harmed by it. >> you mentioned something we should have brought up. >> the business community may push the republican house and senate to pass a narrower bill that would expand h 1 b visas and deal with high skilled and they'll get democratic support for that and would send it to the president who would have real issues there about whether you want to take that narrow piece of it legislatively, but that may very well happen?

and there are a large number of democrats that say if we pluck that off, it would be too hard to put on the coalition for the hard ones. >> we also have the problem of an aging population. we're not having as many children. we need to refurbish the workforce in america and there are way too many people like me that want to spend all my money on me than spend it on them. >> the aging issue is a critical part of it, yes. >> thank you all for being here and sharing your thoughts and i wanted to return to this question of the perception of the enforcement operations that we're seeing in the u.s. today. my name is heidi altman and the man's rights coalition and so what we're all about is providing access to legal services, due process and counsel for the folks who were part of those interior immigration enforcement rates

and so i think that the point that mark has made is a significant one that the priorities are crafted in such a way that that 10 those statistic while significant is under inclusive and we are seeing over the past year, a couple of years, an enormous increase in the percentage of folks we see who never have an opportunity to see an immigration judge because they have, perhaps, an inabsentia order because they have an order from years and years ago that something under the complex immigration precludes them from being able to see a judge and those folks are captured in the 10,000 number and they've been here for 10, 20 years and have families. to move on from that i would like to ask a question of the panel for any of you interested in coming because the other piece of this puzzle is even if we accepted assumption that interior enforcement has changed, there's also the enforcement in the border and this summer we saw family

detention again and i'm surprised by that and i would love to hear your thoughts because after years and years and years of struggle by the immigrant advocacy unit by the detention of families and children and we have all of a sudden over the past few months, thousands of beds and pro bono attorneys coming back and reporting on children who are sick and hungry and that is an important perception piece that is not playing out as much in the media if i were expected. i would be interested to hear your thoughts. >> that is the topic of -- that's part of the topic of our after lunch panel and we're doing a whole panel. >> at least on the program of unaccompanied immigrant children which is actually in the care and custody of i.c.e., mothers and children in the custody of i.c.e., as opposed to the parent company of aura. >> i don't know that we have the expertise to answer to it fully.

does anyone want to say anything about the family detention? >> i don't think this is information that you don't know, but i think that one of the things the administration has argued is that it's important to create a deterrent for families that are coming, you know, who don't have a legitimate asylum claim or who aren't -- who aren't going to be able to stay here because if they'll eventually get deported then it's better for people not to come at all. that's the argument in favor of detaining certain families, but obviously, that argument only holds if you have a fair and fast adjudication process that, you know, distinguishes between people who will get relief from people who won't get relief. i think a lot of the conversation on the afternoon panel will talk about how you get adjudication process and

both for children and for families and i've seen the same stories that you have and you're probably working directly with people. we certainly have seen a lot of stories that families in those detention facilities are not getting access to counsel and are not getting a good due process and i don't think there's any good argument about why we would like that. >> there's also a deterrent factor that the administration wanted to push and i think some in congress wanted to push because these kids, these families they break our hearts. i'm from central america. i'm from nicaragua. i know very well what's going on in those countries. i know about the gang, the pab pandillas and in nicaragua, not the countries. these families are being exploited by drug dealers. it's the same path that drugs are smuggled through that it's

now icing on the cake and a few more thousand dollars per head. they have a new source of businessing someling kids and exploiting kids and it's something that we must address. i think the united states needs to do more to help those countries in country because i think part of the pandilla stuff that's that's happening there is there were people deported and those countries were not prepared and they didn't have the institutions and were corrupt and could not deal with that and it's mushroomed to the point where it's out of control and it's coming back to haunt us yet again so for me, this has got to be seen in a very comprehensive way and there is no easy answer to it and it could be a very difficult situation right across our border. it already is. >> simon? >> a couple of quick points. i think we should stipulate that

part of the new challenges that we're all going to have is everyone working in this arena always believed that comprehensive immigration reform would pass and that the volume of undocumented immigrants would decrease. that both has not happened and let's be clear. the republicans control the house of representatives for another decade. the likelihood of us actually passing cir in the next ten years is incredibly remote. we had our shot and we didn't get it done and we now have to start as professionals start contemplating having 5, 6, 7, 8 million people that are undocumented living in the country and the court systems clogged which is creating a whole set of other ridiculous problems that we can't manage and the system was never really built to behave the way it's behaving now because we all wanted to fix it. and so, the question is does there need to be work by mpi and

others, okay, if we don't have cir and some of the legitimate and serious problems that are both in the border and the court system. the court system has become -- it doesn't work anymore, right? i just want to be clear. i'm not defending the immigration system in the united states and i've spent nine years trying to fix it. i think the administration has tried to make things better given that they also believed they would have to deal with the current system and there wasn't a lot of intellectual thinking done about how to mitigate and manage the current system because we didn't think we would have it and we thought we'd have a better system. the final point we want to make that we're running out of time and it's related to this is there's been fun stuff on twitter based on my comments today is that i just want to make this basic point and this is the thought exercise they want to leave with all of you, particularly those of you who work daily with real people,

right? is that if the message coming from the media and the story that we are hearing earlier is that basically both parties are out to get you and that you come to this country to find a better life for your family and that even this guy, barack obama or the democrats who you thought were your friends are turning on you and that everyone is out to get you. you know, that's one set of narratives and stories about acclimation and assimilation to sign up for some of these programs that may come up for relief in the next six months, nine months, but what happens if there's another story. a story that's true which is that there's one political party, in fact, that's gone way out of their way to pass. they've listened to you and they try to pass comprehensive immigration reform had been blocked four times. >> while he goes back to his political ad i'll self-deport with this panel and i'll talk

fast on charlie cristo cnn. >> i'm still standing here. is that the -- you know, so and that one political party has removed the threat of deportation from people in the interior and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. all of the stuff that we covered. to me, if that's possible to be true in telling stories to an immigrant community and not everybody is out to get you. >> i need you to wrap up. >> i'm trying to make it better, right? i of the you to challenge to tell to inspiring immigrant community that would like to believe that america was perhaps more favorable to their presence than is currently being perceived in the media. thank you. >> i'm sorry. i'm going to ask you to come up and ask you a question individually because i'll need to close this panel in order for other people to meet other commitments, but i do think that the new reality point is a real important and sobering takeaway because this has not been an

optimistic picture and it may be the one we are living in. thank you very much. see you at 2:00. [ applause ] a senate committee will be questioning obama administration officials about the u.s. response to the ebola outbreak as lawmakers start evaluating an administrating request for $6 billion in emergency aid to fight that disease in west africa. we'll have live coverage when the senate appropriation committee meets today at 2:00 eastern. >> congress is back on capitol hill today. both the senate and house gavel in at 2:00 eastern. one to update the presidential records at. in the senate votes are expected in the judicial nominations. tomorrow, off the floor, both bodies will hold leadership elections for next year.

see the house live on c-span and the senate live on c-span2. the c-span cities tour takes book tv and american history tv on the road traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life and this weekend we partnered with charter communications for a visit to madison, wisconsin. >> there is work for everyone. it is a glorious service this service for the country, the call comes to every citizen. it is an unending struggle to make and keep government representative. >> bob la fall is the most important political figure in wisconsin history and one of the most important in the history of the 20th century in the united states. he was the reforming governor. he defined what progressivism is

and he was one of the most to self-identify and he was the united states senator who was recognized by his peers in the 1950s as one of the five greatest senators in american history. he was an opponent of world war i. stood his ground advocating for free speech. above all, bob lafall was about the people. in the era after the civil war america changed radically from a nation of small farmers, small producers and small manufacturers and by the late 1870s and 1880s and 1890s we had concentrations of wealth. we had growing inequality and we had concern about the influence of money and government. so he spent the later part of 1890s giving speeches all over wisconsin. if you wanted a speaker for your clb or your group, bob lafall

would give a speech. he went to county fairs and he went to every kind of event that you could imagine and built a reputation for himself. by 1900 he was ready to run for governor advocating on behalf of the people and he had two issues and one, the direct primary, no more selecting candidates and convention. two, stop the interests, specifically, the railroads and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3. >> foreign policy research institute and canon institute held a discussion on u.s. efforts in promoting democracy internationally. in the next hour and 15-minute panel a look at democracy around

the globe. >> hello, everyone. thank you very much for coming. my name is christian carl. i'm the editor of democracy lab which is a joint venture between the foreign policy magazine and we cover transitioning democrat sees, transitioning democracies around the world. because that's my subject i've been asked to moderate the second panel. when i was asked to moderate this panel i found myself thinking about a moment a few weeks ago when i was in rwanda, and i found myself having drinks at a very nice outdoor cafe with a general, one of the members of the ruling party of rwanda who

was very upset with the flack they've been get be onning hu getting on human rights lately. they have a very tough, democratic regime and they're also very good on corruption issues and governance issues and they're a darling of the international donor committee and this general wanted to take you to task. he said, you know, you in the west have your own ideas of democracy. we have our own notions of democracy and just tell us what to do. you can't go on criticizing us forever, but the really fascinating thing was that unlike perhaps a chinese or russian interlocutor in this situation, he was not my enemy and didn't see himself as such. hees of quite proud of his country's record on a number of things. he wanted contact in the west and wanted to see rwandans educated in the west and he wanted westerners in rwanda and it was a very complicated mix of

things and i thought of him when i was asked to moderate this panel which is in some ways the panel about tactics and the last panel was very much a panel about the big picture, about vision and strategy. in this panel we like to talk about how you get it done. so, for example, when i was talking to my rwandan general i found myself wondering how do you go about promoting democratization in a country like that? do you try to cultivate civil society. do you educate and do you train lawyers and promote free media or do you forget about those things and concentrate on economic development and hope at some point you'll reach the magic threshold when you have the middle class and they'll take care of it. it's those sort of questions that we'd like to focus on in this panel and for that reason i don't want to talk anymore. i would rather give the floor to the experts, and so i think the

best thing for me to do is to hand it over to the esteemed sarah bush who will talk about these issues. so thank you very much. let's have a big welcome for her and the other members of the panel. [ applause ] >> so thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this exciting conference. it's an honor to be discussing these issues with an esteemed group of panelists and with all of you. so as our moderator already noted and this panel is contrast to the previous one which was focusing on questions like whether the united states should promote democracy. i will be focusing my remarks along with those sitting beside me on the topic of how the united states should promote democracy, and i think this nuts and bolts question of how the united states should promote democracy is vitally important, although it's one that has often been overlooked in the debates that we've been having about democracy promotion in the big

picture over the last decade or so. but i do think the devil is in the details when it comes to democracy promotion as it does with so many things. if we're not promoting democracy effectively or if we can't promote democracy effectively then we probably need to reassess whether we should promote democracy at all, if democracy promotion works then i think it's hard to argue that it should be part of the foreign policy picture. so i'm going to try to focus my remarks on the question of what we've learned of how to promote democracy in three decades and i'm approaching this question from my% ekt pektive as a university professor and as someone who follows the large and growing body of research on the topic and i'm grateful that other people on the panel with me can speak from their rich, personal experiences working in this field. so from where i stand, the perspective from the research on

democracy assistance's effectiveness is mixed. so i'll start with what i think is the good news. so from what i see, american democracy assistance works, on average, at aiding countries to democrat ties. about two years ago usaid conducted a study conducted by independent scholars led by stephen finkel from the university of pittsburgh to investigate the subject of usaid's program effectiveness and they found both in the report that they were commissioned to write as well as in appear-reviewed study that was published by the journal based at princeton university that on average, usaid democracy in governance programs do have a causal impact. the positive causal impact on democracy, but they also noticed a lot of challenges to identifying this kind of effect. so one of the challenges they noted is that the countries get targeted to receive democracy

aid are not selected at random and they tend to be not like the countries that don't receive aid and that makes it hard to make a good comparison to gauge the effectiveness of the programs and they noted that it can be hard to agree on how to define and measure democracy and although we have a number of indicators from freedom house and from the quality project among others that do give us excellent measures of democracy, we worry that these indicators may be at such a high level of aggregation that it's difficult to assess the impact of programs and the fine grain kind of way that we need to do to know under what conditions they're effective. another problem that was noted by the study is that some of our historical records on the u.s. democracy and governance programs are poor. so there are a lot of challenges to identifying their impact, but no matter how the scholars sliced and diced the data they found good, strong, positive

relationship between democracy aid and democratization. and the news gets better because it wasn't just this group of people that found this kind of relationship. numerous other independent scholars had replicated the findings. people like james scott and kerry steel and brooklyn sadler and not only did they find that democracy aid seems to be associated with democratization. it seems to help countries emerging from civil conflict, maintain a fragile peace by reducing political uncertainy and this speaks to some of the debates from the previous panel about fragility and uncertainty. although there's all this good news, there's also some bad news. from where i sit although the studies seem to demonstrate that democracy promotion works on average, i think we don't have a fully compelling understanding of why it works and under what conditions it works and that's pretty tricky.

without that knowledge it's hard to figure out how to avoid some of the headline-grabbing, worst case scenarios of the past and it's hard to design programs in the future. >> i wanted to offer some tentative ideas here about the conditions under which democracy promotion seems most likely to succeed, and i'm sure others on the panel or maybe some of you can and will disagree with me which is fine, but i would like to propose what i would call the three ds of democracy assistance effectiveness and the first d is donor interests. this is already something that we've talked about in the previous panel that donors' interests matter a lot for democracy aid. one of the emerging consensus findings is that conditionality by which i mean the linking of punishments and rewards to demands for improved democratic conduct. it can really work. an excellent recent book has been published by a woman named

danniella dano on the elections and she found it's rare that criticism alone can influence a leader with a track record of lech ral misconduct. likewise, aid alone is often unsufficient. instead, countries democrat ties when the united states and other western countries bring out the carrots and sticks. and so i think an obvious point is worth repeating here that democracy promotion and activities face a much more uphill battle in the countries where the united states doesn'ted genuinely want democracy and from my point of view, it makes sense for u.s. government agencies to concentrate scarce time and money and other resources in the countries where the u.s. is willing to back up democrat see assistance with pressure and be they conditionality and diplomacy. otherwise, i worry that democracy promotion can end up playing into the hands of

undemocratic leaders, the very people who would want it to be challenging. my second d for democracy assistance effectiveness is delivering. to have a shot at supporting democratic change in countries where the united states has competing interests and initiatives that have insulation from the u.s. government like the national endowment for democracy has to be an essential part of the formula. although and i'm sure many people in the room have experience with this that american ngos that receive government funding although they may have some suspicions that they have to face. i think it's really important to use strategies that are insulated way because doing so prevents competing foreign policies of good intentions of promoting democrat 'em see and funding democracy outside of the u.s. government is often doing

so prevents it from interfering in programming decisions and otherwise and here i return to my first d of donor's interests and it's too easy for donor's interests to swamp democratizing good intentions. the second d important for democracy assistance is democracy and i'll just mention one here although i could go on. in my own research, how difficult it request be for donors to keep track of results overseas and how sometimes this can lead organizations to focus a lot of energy on programs than seem likely to produce quick, quantitative outputs and outcomes which may not be the same programs that are most likely to democratize countries. i think it is in ways that can help donors monitor success oversea so that they don't end up having to encourage organizations in what a former

speaker has turned the democracy bureaucracy to teach to the test instead of innovate and my fellow panelist melinda herring has written persuasively about the important role that competition can play in helping officials keep track of results overseas, and i hope that's something she'll pick up in her remarks. my third d is design. one of the most consistent problems that i've seen bedevilled democracy assistance in the middle east which is a region i'm interested in as well as some regions of the world is that sometimes the u.s. government for conditions at home or conditions in the country where the programs are taking place, u.s. government is simply not in a position to support directly -- directly support activities that are not likely to promote democracy. many of the u.s. government efforts that i've seen in the region are quite tame and they're not very confrontational

to the status quo. they may take on issues like promoting women's inclusion and local governance and democratic environment. i think these types of programs may be good and right and my own research actually in jordan, i find that these programs can have very positive effects. however, i think that these kinds of programs are more questionably democrat tiesing and although it may be the case that they plant the seeds for democratic change in the future. i think the jury is stillity on on whether or not that's the case. so in my view democracy seems more poised to have a positive effect in opposition movements. so to wrap up my comments here, because i think i'm running out of time, you can view the core components from a glass half full or glass half empty perspective and i'm going for glass half full today and i think one of the things that

makes me optimistic about the future of u.s. democrat see promotion is the recent push toward aid transparency and there are a number of initiatives in this realm and one of them that i'll highlight is the recent usaid-funded initiative, aid data which is gathering and geocoding and microlevel data on u.s. government aid projects and aid data along with other initiatives is leading new, detailed case studies of democracy assistance and foreign assistance and many of them are modelled on the research of award-winning economist esther da voe out of the poverty action lab at m.i.t. and i think this movement towards looking at the microlevel trying to have more transparency and allocation and design of foreign aid and really looking at the details of how programs work on the ground overseas. of course, it's not a panacea for any of the political problems identified in the previous panel.

however, if democracy promotion is here to stay and i imagine that it is. i think this kind of detailed knowledge is just what we need to understand the questions under why and under what conditions it will work and until we're finished looking through these detailed case studies i will leave you with my own speculation about the three ds, donor interests, delivery and design. >> thank you very much for that. let's go over to feta for her words. >> thank you very much for including me in this conversation. i think i'm one of the few relative optimists in this room and for that reason, aen go, i am especially grateful to be here because sometimes there are fewer optimists left than some time ago. my own work is on the democracy promotion efforts of the center in eastern european countries, members of the european union so those one poland, czech

republic, slovakia, the baltic countries and this work has provided me with an unintended, but i still think valuable and unique perspective on the effectiveness of iz democracy assistance. so what i would like to do in my presentation today is give you a quick sense on how the certains of eastern european is promoting democrat see and i will move on to briefly reflect on the effectiveness of the center on eastern europeans themselves and then what are the potential cooperation opportunities i see between central and eastern europe in the field of democracy promotion. what i've looked about center and eastern european democracy promotion is that in some countries it started almost their own democratic breakthrough and it was championed by some of those same people who organized those domestic breakthroughs. so given the nature of regime

change in center and eastern europe, civil society has plagued an important and driving role in terms of democracy promotion both as implementers of such support abroad as well as champions and advocates for their states to invest similarly in supporting democratization abroad. the center of eastern european countries have leveraged their bilateral diplomatic channels as well as diplomacy forums to support democratization abroad and they've also leveraged their membership in the e.u. and nato. lastly, a number of the certain of eastern european countries have started providing democracy assistance and standed to be more on the technical than the financial side. so in some, we have several of these countries that have begun supporting democrat see primarily in their neighborhood and they have emphasized

diplomacy and especially in multilateral diplomacy and their efforts have tended to be limited in terms of the number of recipients and the geographic scope of recipients in a few neighboring countries and those are points i'll come back to later in my presentation. so this point, you may wonder, what, if any, role the u.s. has played in encouraging and supporting the center on eastern european democracy promotion, and i've seen two types of impact. the first one is that in a number of the conversations that i had with key civic activists and foreign policymakers of eastern policy europe i kept hearing a common reframe who was to use a quote from one of my interview, we have a debt to be repaid. most of the people i talked to express a belief that they should themselves support a democrat see abroad because they

received such support from a number of countries in the west and especially from the u.s. so what that says to me is u.s. derm democrat see promotion in central and eastern europe has mattered. it has mattered because some of the recipients were still active domestically and those were some of the key ngos working with central and eastern europe and secondly the u.s. democrat see assistance and promotion more broadly has also mattered because its had a multiplier effects. some of the direct recipients of u.s. assistance in central and eastern europe are now providing their own assistance further east and southeast. >> a second way in which i've seen u.s. democracy promotion matter is in the specific activities that they're undertaken by the center and eastern europeans. they have a very political approach by supporting democracy abroad and by that they seek to often times in general seek to

build a reservoir of pro-democratic actors in recipient state institutions and recipient civil societies who would push their country in a more democratic direction and opportune moments. in other words, the center in eastern european approach is very much like the u.s. approach except with less emphasis on elections. so to the extent that the u.s. has built or sought to build actors in central and eastern europe and we have a number of practitioners and academics argued that it has, indeed, done that, weave seen that it has succeeded because the center in eastern europeans who were themselves empowered by the u.s. in part and who are seeking to share the best practices of their own demeanor democratization experience including best practices that were developed by the u.s.

in fact, thinking with the conversations that i had with those individuals they oftentimes shared that it was external and primarily u.s. support that helped develop a whole sector of political actors in central and eastern europe and those are actors that would have probably been underdeveloped or missing because of the nature of their work and its opposition to powerful domestic, political and economic actors. so again, stepping back, what that tells me is that u.s. democracy promotion has mattered, but also the specific activities through which it has been implemented has also mattered because it has produced enduring domestic actors and it has empowered enduring domestic actors and the caveat is that some of those actors are struggling to survive.

they have the withdrawal of the u.s. support and have become somewhat dependent on eu funding, but nonetheless, they're active and an important part of the domestic debates in those countries, which again, i think is a positive sign. so at this point i want to pause a little bit and say i trust these findings primarily because they didn't ask the central and eastern europeans about the u.s. role in supporting democracy in central and eastern europe and thus, they did not give me the opportunity to please u.s. donors. it's evidence that i collected indirectly and that came up in conversations about central and eastern european democracy. it is not to dispute away problems with u.s. democracy promotion or its unintended negative consequences but just to highlight it can and has

mattered and the payoffs go up and down as we saw in the first panel, but it is an important investment. now, in conclusion, allow me to return to the merits and limitations of the center of eastern europeans as democracy promoters. again, to discover those, i talk to the recipients in their neighborhood. those recipients highlighted three important merits. the first one is the firsthand experience of democratization that the central and eastern europeans have. as i said, a lot of the individuals involved in this work were themselves the domestic breakthroughs and so they have this unique experience with democratization as well as with more authority in the eyes of their recipients and they call with what i call recipes or those are sets of steps that could be taken to implement certain reforms that could be again, sets of steps to be taken that could be tailored to the needs of recipients given the

recipients' stage of democratization. the second important local interlocutors which give the central europeans access to important democratizations. stakeholders and allow them to brooch sensitive issues as peers rather than from the pulpit of accomplishments and centuries of democratic experience, and the last merit that was very important to recipients was the sustainability of central and european efforts. a number of those countries have been active in the same res inens for more than two decades and however small their efforts might have been their impact has accumulated over time to produce some effects. >> very sorry, but you'll have to wrap it up. >> okay. so the limitations, i think the

most important limitation that those democracy promoters have had is their limited capacity. the second most important limitation is that their democracy promotion efforts have had a certain geopolitical or political component which has sometimes undermined their consistency and impartiality. with that said, i believe they've helped make some democratization gains through the wave of electoral revolutions through central and eastern europe. to me, what that means is they have helped open windows of democratization opportunity, but unfortunately their efforts have not been enough to ensure or help contribute toward a sustainable long-term impact. so i'll conclude here and sort of the second round of comments and i'll return to talk about the opportunities i see for cooperation between the u.s. and some of the new democracies that have developed around the globe in the last two decades.

>> great. >> thank very much. >> so mihal. >> thank you very much. and first of all, many thanks to ambassador basar for organizing this and for inviting me. it is a great honor, of course. >> i was asked to say a few words about central europe and the united states when it comes to democracy and perhaps offers a view on that issue and i'm afraid i will differ a bit from what she just said, not in the analysis from which i fully agree and my starting point is that central europe has been changing lately in a couple of past years. to state the obvious, the united states were the first natural point of reference for anyone striving for freedom under the communist rule in central and eastern europe and the americans were among the first to come to the transition in 1989 and even

though in terms of quantity the u.s. funding was quickly and by far exceeded by the european for transformation assistance and the u.s. political leadership and commitment and greatly contributed for the information processes. as a result, many even felt that kind of a special kinship has developed over the two sides and after president barack obama took office, as we know, certain bitterness appeared. several prominent political figures from central and eastern europe responded in an alarming mode to the changes that the new administration introduced. to calm things down the u.s. articulated what we can call a new approach to central european democracies. in october 2009 vice president joe biden turned to us and encouraged saying you delivered on the promise of your evolution. you are now in a position to help others to do the same. exercise your leadership.

as we heard, the central europeans mostly accepted the challenge and so started working on that and, however, what we could see on the one hand, we could see the european unions struggling with the formative power in the last two years and on the other hand, we could see that there was -- and there was a lack of political commitment in the united states to the region of eastern europe since 2009 and as a result, the entire region became susceptible to voices and forces that do not wish democracy well. we heard about the development in hun garret and government that might be a surprise for the new one in the future weeks to

come. it works on changing its support of transformation in a way that might undermine the concept of helping democracy to gain ground in authoritarian regimes. for example, the concept of the czech transformation policy will likely include a provision that any future assistance will be based on a consent of the official government that it would seek to support moderate protagonist of the status quo regime and from what i know, all references to the term democracy are likely to be removed. there are populist folks and extreme nationalists in slovakia advancing into regional governments and poland despite its current stable and high standing in europe, it elects a political opposition which is never good for democracy. i could go on and on with this, but i won't. so what i want to say is we're facing a very treacherous mix and it was confirmed by many

speakers here today. as this involved democracy in the eyes of the central europeans seem unable to provide a political leadership. the west increasingly doubts that ideas of democracy can penetrate hearts and minds of people universally. alternative or idea logic ideologies have been gaining around the world and in europe. at the same time, you might find this quite desirable, we have the confronting view that liberal democracy does not have any serious contender in the global market of ideologies. as a consequence of these trends, democracy promotions became technical, nonsensitive, nonpolitical projects.

these projects aid enormously to bolster civil societies and institutions and so on. because they are not political by definition, these projects cannot address the crucial issue. that is the level of thinking at the level of pom particulars -- politics. working democracy requires a mind of practicing and aspiring politicians and we do not have that issue. therefore, any solution to these challenges must be a political one. but the very first step towards democracy must include the rise of singing hearts of and why is democracy using effectiveness in the west. by singing hearts, i don't mean expert thinking, i challenge the politicians to do the thinking. we need to make this political. we have to start at home. even though i agree with the

state department that u.s. is a leader in democratization in third countries, i would like to challenge this view that we now have to see more engagement within the family of democratic countries. because that's where i think we are losing confidence. we have to find a joint way for national, comprehensive and political dialogue and democracy. i'm afraid this cannot take place without a firm commitment and co-leadership of the united states. it's here where i see the central european region can contribute. despite the marked view that i offered moments ago, there are fascinating elements of idealism in central europe. idealism which has a very realistic and immediate understanding of what is at stake right now. where is this ideology coming from everyone must know. but there were times, for example, the west largely accepted division of europe for the sake of european

security and establishability. and this was time when the central europeans had nothing but idealism left. and leaders and others tirelessly argued that stability based on this principle only aids to central europe. and now europe is undivided, and no major war. and no instability occurred. so they're probably right in their assessment. they are probably right trading democracy for gains. what may be one surprising element of central european society that might be worth engaging is a dialogue with small and medium enterprise owners. these are people whose fate is most linked with liberal democracy. these are the people most endangered by making it an open society, not so much open anymore. to conclude, with suggestions

-- we've heard many excellent suggestion regarding new approaches and instruments for democratization this morning. and i'm very happy i was able to be here. my contribution to business, instruments might work only if we're confident about our roles. and i do not see this confidence lately. we somehow see the 1990s as an illusion while we see the current as a reality. at the same time, a free and undivided europe with illusions in the 1980s. and they became a reality in the 1990s. my pragmatic american philosophy of science leads me to believe that in human affairs there's nothing like an illusion or reality. therefore, i'm more afraid about the lack of belief and confidence than illusions. thank you. >> thanks very much. melinda, over to you.

i'm also very grateful for the opportunity to be here this morning and delighted that we're having a serious conversation about reforming democracy in washington. i think it's time. inspired by the legacy of individuals. when i became a program officer a few years ago, i desperately tried to understand the logic behind my $3.5 million program. it was a civil society program in azerbaijan. it was for youth and women, two powerful constituency in azerbaijanan. if we could empower might convince friends to pick up trash and start computer centers. sounds good but hardly the stuff of great change. we would have been far better off by putting those funds in journalism in azerbaijan. courageous journalism in

azerbaijan shoney's a serious problem with elite corruption and his 12-year-old son at the time owns nine waterfront mansions in dubai worth approximately $44 million. these are the kind of stories that will break the fear factor and inspire people to change their own society. i'm very critical of the democracy and bureaucracy. especially asid for implementing cookie cutter programs. let me be clear, democracy promotion is too important an instrument of u.s. foreign policy to do badly. there are many programs we could discontinue today and nothing would change. we can do better. so today, i'd like to offer three recommendations and i'm not claiming these are perfect solutions. i want to start a conversation about how to reform u.s. assistance. i'd like to make a point on structure, strategy and transparency. i'm going to start with structure. like sarah said, not many scholars focus on the actual delivery of u.s. assistance but it's very crucial. there are two main institutional models for delivering assistance in the united states.

we have a field-based model and an independent grant-making model. the field-based model is primarily headquartered -- it's headquartered in washington and has field offices around the world. the independent grant-making model typically has a headquarters office but it works primarily through grants and local partners. the u.s. government overwhelmingly distributes its democracy assistance dollars to a field-based model. a couple of the names that are probably very familiar to everyone here, the international republican institute, national democratic institute, counterpart international. there are dozens of others. and they all operate roughly along the same kind of lines. they have a large office in washington that sets the strategy while field offices are scattered throughout the world in cairo and everywhere else. the programs are actually executed in those countries. but field offices have two main disadvantages, and i'd like to get thinking about this and talking about this today. number one, field-based

organizations are vulnerable to strong arm tactics by repressive regimes. look no further than moscow and baciu. almost everyone has been pushed out of moscow and baku that were operated with field-based organizations. donor organizations without field offices are less vulnerable to pressure because they don't have local offices to shut down. the second obvious disadvantage i see that the field-based model is really inefficient. overhead costs including salaries, rent, and expatriate participation with field offices can reach up to 70%. while overhead of an independent grant making organization like the national endowment for democracy is 16%. 70% versus 16%. when pressed on why they need an in-country presence and not free countries, organizations with field offices will argue their presence will enable them to seize opportunities when there's great political space. if political change comes to a

place like uzbekistan where islam has ruled for two decades without a whiff of democratization, with an -- having a field office will make no difference. if anything, implementing programs with clearly authoritarian leader only tarnishes an organization's credentials. if a democratic awakening occurs in a place like uzbekistan real reformers may refuse to work with an organization that cooperated with the old regime. having relationship with a civil society not maintaining field office puts organizations in the best position to take advantage of newly open space. i want to give you examples so you know -- let me point to a couple of examples azerbaijanan and pakistan. usaid spent $5.6 million from 2007 to 2011 to enhance the overall effectiveness of azerbaijan's parliament.

i'm probably one of two azerbaijan experts. i'm going to cut to the chase and tell you that the parliament has never been elected. every member of parliament is a member of the ruling party. yet u.s. taxpayers paid for an orientation program for these new parliament earns, all of whom won elections that the u.s. embassy in baciu described as not making international standards. it gets worse. the u.s. government rejected these elections and then they trained the winners. usaid even paid for a new website to make this illegitimate parliament more efficient. this is not farce. this is all publicly available in usaid's reports. a final assessment carried out by two outside experts found this parliamentary program, $5.6 million program did not change how parliament functions or how ordinary people in azerbaijan relate to or understand the