transit system to have ads using community ethnic media contacts. we saw a several hundred percent increase around daca as a result of some of that increase. i think thinking about that experience and using it for executive action will be one strategy. and then of course we can be an advocate where there are a lot of negative voices that will emerge when the president announces something when immigration reform has been on the horizon. as a city we can stand up and say this is not only a good idea for the country, but this is how it concretely helps new york city and it's not a bad thing. the last thing i'll say is, you know, i agree completely with what steve said about most of these policies are really common sense. some of them we probably shouldn't even have to do and it's not really revolutionary work, but i do think that one of the other things that's made possible at least in new york city, what is happening very

rapidly right now is an amazing community organizing infrastructure that got my boss elected, that got an incredible city council elected and that's been really savvy about moving the politics in a way where we can move things a lot more quickly than we have even in the past. and i think something like executive action where you have community organizations with memberships that are going to be interacting with people about this, it's an opportunity to capitalize on that for membership growth, for, again, building the legal key political power to then move for a larger scale immigration reform and really strengthening that. that's unfortunately not my job anymore but i do think it's a critical part of this whole equation is how we take the service delivery and move it into organizing and power building. >> steve? >> i just want to build on that. i hope that as we move whether it's administrative reform or congressional action, that the country has gotten more sophisticated about integration. i know that certainly as bad as things are today, probably better than they were when my grandfather came from eastern europe.

and that we don't just look at the legal changes that need to be effectuated which are important, but we talk about the integration that happens. that happens in a myriad of levels. i think that some of the insights just mentioned like the distrust of government and even sometimes distrust in the nonprofit sector. so, you know, we're delivering our largest initiative as a micro enterprise initiative. for immigrant and african-american owned businesses and entrepreneurs and we've had to, you know, partner with churches and with frankly parents' groups at charter schools and so we've got to be more sophisticated rather than a one size fits all. i think we've got to look at what has really impact and what does integration look like. that's not only from social justice imperative from helping new immigrants and refugees but it's in the quality of life and economic interests of the receiving communities and the majority populations. when that integration is sped up and delivered more effectively, we all benefit. >> can i just say also that whatever reform happens it has

to lead to citizenship. it can't be a permanent resident, at least that's what we're pushing for in california. that whatever immigration reform happens, that it has to have a clear, non-expensive path towards citizenship. >> go ahead. >> i was going to say when you look at a common sense approach, right, and you ask what's in the interest of our local economies, it's statistically proven that when people become citizens their earnings go up, they create more job openings and they invest more in our communities. it makes no sense to me for people who want to be here and are economic contributors, why we would not do something in our own self-interest and grow our economy and create better communities. >> senator lara, when you're pushing this notion that there has to be a path to citizenship and all of you are filling these gaps of lack of federal immigration action, are you getting feedback from entities within the federal government,

from i.c.e., uscis, the president's office, congress? >> the conversations we had last year with our congressional folks was there was a push to have a permanent resident status that wouldn't include a pathway to citizenship. that isn't an option for us. for us we need to ensure that folks if they're going to invest time and energy, that they see a clear pathway and that, you know, that every immigrant has access to be able to become a citizen. we're seeing, yes, we have the model immigrants that everybody talks about but in california we have people from all gamuts of society. we have to ensure that they have equal access to become citizens. as steve was saying, it helps with upward mobility. i'll tell you, it's proven time and time again, in california and in the legislature immigration tends not to be a hot topic anymore.

the conservatives have lost that battle time and time again in california and so what you're seeing is now a republican party that's much more moderate when it comes to this issue. quite frankly, our work with us in the bipartisan fashion to create policy that really makes sense on immigration. and so we just want to make sure that whatever gets agreed to, that we have a clear path to citizenship and, again, that we take into consideration the cost and the time that it's going to take. we don't want to dissuade people from becoming citizens. and one of those big factors is obviously an economic factor because not everybody who's an immigrant is an engineer. you have janitors, you have nannies, you have folks that are going to work three, four, five jobs to be able to become citizens just like my parents had to do. >> nisha.

>> in some respects we have good partnerships with federal agencies. we work closely with u.s. cis and with phyllis and her team in new york on our citizenship initiatives as one example. in other cases, if i had to express sort of a frustration with one area where we don't get as much information, it's not that we're hearing from the federal government but we're not getting enough is on data. so when the child migrant issue was initially breaking we were really interested in knowing new york city specific numbers if we could. we eventually did get county level data which were enormously helpful. before that it felt like we were in the dark just in understanding how to respond at the local level. i think being able to get some information along those lines more quickly is really something that we're really eager to do. and then otherwise, i think we often reach out to the federal government to kind of engage them in some of our initiatives that implicate their work and have totally sort of -- largely, i should say, open conversations about that. but the main area i think that i've been frustrated around has

been data. >> i think it's a real mixed bag so there are a lot of individuals, i think, that are really open to having a conversation about how immigration, how services can be delivered in a more proactive manner and at the same time we're home. i live literally about 100 yards from the most valuable international border crossing in this country in terms of the value of trade and goods going across the ambassador bridge between detroit and windsor. we've had a lot of issues with i.c.e. and border patrol in terms of raids and those types of things where local agents have violated national policy, and the follow-up and relations with the community have been completely botched and so we -- it's, i would say, you know, it's a medium grade at best. it depends on the agency, the day, the issue. there is certainly no coordinated i would say pro active long-term thinking focus on what and how the federal government can work with our immigrant and refugee communities in a way that will tackle what's most important to michiganders and detroiters which is how do we grow our economy.

>> we kind of forget that we have that northern border. i think you're representing the midwest as well as the northern border for us here today. you're all phenomenal, the work that you're doing, and leaders in your sectors, and i'm just wondering, do you interact with other like entities around the country. nisha, are you working with other cities? senator lara, other legislators must be so envious. steve, i know you talked about other programs. i'd love to hear about that. >> yeah. we work with our sister moiyas across the country. most recently we launched with chicago and l.a. in an initiative called cities for citizenship. the idea is to both lift up the work that we've been doing in each of our cities to invest in naturalization programs in collaboration with our local community partners but also to encourage other cities to do the

same thing. i hope that very soon you'll be hearing from a number of other cities around the country that have sort of signed on. their mayors really wanting to invest in citizenship. i think we could probably do better even in having more frequent conversations among the different cities because many of us are dealing with the exact same issues. we're coming up with different -- slightly different strategies in each of our jurisdictions and could really learn a lot from having more frequent conversations around that. i think the sort of up surge in local activity around immigration in the last few years has meant that there are just -- there's that much more infrastructure for us to be able to work with one another and then hopefully be coordinated and able to push up a narrative to the national level. >> absolutely i think coordination is key especially with other states. for us in california, we're also coordinating with other countries. we look at what different models they have. we've gone to israel several different times. we're looking at australia. we're looking at different countries given how vast our population is and how diverse it

is, there's not really apples to apples comparison. rest assured, california's coming to a neighborhood near you. so it behooves you to look at what we're trying to accomplish in california. we also like to partner with other countries to see what other models are happening. but, again, you can never collaborate enough, i think. it's imperative for us to continue to do so. >> i think that's a great question, and the answer is i think we're at a critical point where this infrastructure is just being built. this kind of legislative that's pro active, mayor's office of immigrant affairs is looking at immigrants as an economic development opportunity is really a focus on integration. we understandably, those who work with immigrants, have been very focused on the immigrants rights and comprehensive immigration reform without really the opportunity to look beyond that at these other questions of integration and so

i think that the infrastructure is rapidly developing. if i didn't mention, you know, that we spearheaded global detroit. we staff in conjunction with welcoming america a ten-state regional global great lakes network that has about 20 metros who have either launched an economic development initiative or in the process of launching. i mentioned many of those programs that were four years old. some of them, we have two or three organizations that are older than that, like the welcoming center for new pennsylvanians in philadelphia and michael coleman has a new initiative ten years old. so the global great lakes network has recently formed. we've done two convenings. we'll do a thirteenth -- third one in dayton. we're writing a playbook around economic development issues. we're doing city-to-city visits where they're visiting each other and trying to learn from each other. we're using social media and

trying to learn from each other. i can't tell you how many times i passed out the new york city blueprint for cities. unfortunately for cities like detroit and dayton, there's a lot in there that doesn't translate real well. nonetheless, it is one of the first tools we have and we need to see more of those types of tools. i remember i served in the state legislature from 2003 through 2008. we had, you know, in-state tuition issues, we had dreamers act issues, we had driver's license issues. i passed some legislation cracking down on notarios and immigration fraud. we didn't at that point have a single statewide advocacy voice to talk with the immigrant community and while there was some great work that happened nationally, very little that focused on the states and the kind of issues we were dealing with. so, there's all kinds of new infrastructure. the immigration policy institute

has done policy research as has the policy center to help. the pew center and the work that adam is doing we're hoping will fill the void and we're seeing a little more funders look at these kinds of issues but, frankly, there's a lot more that needs to be done. it's not just a question of sort of coordinating and energizing the immigrant community to advocate for immigration reform but a lot has to be invested in these kind of quality of life immigration issues. frankly as i said, i consider this to be an important part of our national interests. what really will make this country great for the coming century is our great universities, a good education system and frankly being able to attract the world's talent. i include the people who may have not had the opportunity to get the kind of education that we strive for. those three things i think are the corner stone of our economic success and quality of life. it's amazing that we've allowed our understandable obsession

with immigration reform to get in the way of the other elements we need to make our country and our communities great. >> thank you. before we go to questions from the audience, is there anything that any of you would like to add that you hoped to mention and didn't get a chance yet? >> i'd like to talk about the educational obstacles that exist for immigrants and how as steve was talking about the great equalizer is an education and there's a reason why i'm actually sitting before you guys today. as the son of two undocumented immigrants from mexico. and so also as we talk about immigration reform we have to look at what educational obstacles remain not only in our state legislature but are in our federal policies to also incorporate our immigrants. one of the big things that we're working on in california. remember prop 227 which limited the education to english only, and what it did, it decimated language immersion programs in california. but we see this resurgence now of -- from all californians regardless of inner city or social income of wanting their

children to learn multiple languages. we know the pedagogy has changed. if you teach a child multiple languages at an early age, you're going to confuse a child. we know that's completely the opposite. this was common sense and common knowledge in the '90s in california and that's why the past is kind of anti-bilingual education, language immersion initiative. what we did this year in the legislature was to repeal sections of that proposition and actually included a lot of the language dealing with the fact that if we want to continue to be a global economy, we're going to have to ensure that our global work force understands and communicates with each other and that means that californians have to speak more than just

english. in a couple hours if not already, you know, thousands of children in california woke up speaking another language other than english. so we have this natural reserve already that makes us competitive globally. why not exploit that? why not allow them to learn two, three languages like what they're doing in asia and scandinavia leading economies? so we're changing the dynamic. we're changing the rhetoric. and this proposition will now go before the voters in 2016 to eliminate sections of prop 227 and actually include more language that allows for the creation establishment of not only dual language programs but multi-language immersion programs that continue to be popular and hopefully i'm crossing my fingers that we'll get that passed and that we once again tell our young immigrant children that it's okay to learn multiple languages, it's okay to learn spanish and, you know, the world's languages because that's what's going to make you competitive and in turn going to make california competitive as

well. >> thank you. >> i think i just echo all of that. i think that the biodiversity that was created in california, is adopted in new york and six other states and 150 local communities, some of that common sense approach that just to recognize students who either grew up speaking english in their household and went on to learn another language or others who are fluent in a native tongue and have graduated from an english speaking high school and to acknowledge their skill is a no-cost implementation but very forward looking and it adds absolute strength to our global economy for those students and it recognizes what they have achieved. we need more policies like that. i really thank california for coming up with that brilliant idea. i'm hoping some day the state of michigan adopts something similar. i know dearborn and metro have but it's something that should be in all 50 states in all local communities. >> nisha?

>> the only thing i would add building on what steve said, some of the integration issue, it's interesting to look at the olympics of i.d. around the count country, right? on the one hand voter i.d., the other people i.d. english on one hand, voter rights on the other. we're in this conversation to put it i guess sort of euphemistically around the country about integration issues in addition to the kind of larger question of who comes in and who goes out. and i think new york sees itself as a player in that dialogue, and it's going to be ongoing. i think it's going to get worse before it gets better, but that's where the states and the cities are really playing is being able to kind of put their stake in the ground in terms of what makes sense for our country moving forward. >> thank you. we have time for questions. we do have staff who would be happy to move the microphones down the rows so that if you're in the middle, we don't want you

excluded from asking questions. >> catholic charities from raleigh, north carolina. did i hear you correctly to say in order to get a new york -- >> you need a photo i.d. to get the i.d.? >> right. >> therein lies the problem with immigrants. most of the time they don't have a photo i.d. i'm saying most of the time. a lot of the time they don't have a photo i.d. you have to start someplace. how do you get a new york city i.d. card if you don't have a photo i.d.? >> the number of i.d.s that you can show are pretty broad so that includes foreign passports, foreign driver's licenses, matriculas, employer i.d. cards, school i.d. cards, a range of different things. we're going to have special rules where different community based organizations or social service organizations can help establish identity and residency

for individuals as well. so this is sort of something that's part of our current rule making process and lots of groups have been engaged making exactly those claims saying that it's important to ensure that this is as inclusive as possible. we also have to establish that the person is who they say they are. being able to find that balance i think has been one of the trickier operational issues. we'll go back and forth. >> good morning. my question is for you, senator lara. i am a native los angeles resident. i'm very proud of what our state has done. i'm also an immigration officer with uscis. i'd like to ask a question regarding how california is taking into consideration and vetting these individuals as it pertains to national security and public safety concerns. i'm just -- if you could expand a little bit on --

>> under which -- under which program? >> we could -- we'll say, for example, the california driver's license laws. so you had said that, you know, you're not collaborating with the federal government, however, there are national security concerns in this country and california is not exempt from that. if you could explain the screening and vetting individuals for national security concerns. >> good question. just as the city i.d., we went through this rule making process in terms of how do we identify the person? how do we know that that's the actual person that's applying for the license? so we went through a long rule-making process and -- but we are operating under, you know, the i think rightful assumption that not every immigrant is a terrorist. and so we -- >> they're not all innocent either though.

>> correct. correct. but the majority of folks here are not, you know -- nothing that i think would have stopped what has happened september 11th. but, i mean, understanding that is that i think we in our departments are doing everything we can to ensure that we identify the person, we know who this person is and it is kind of a challenge of that balancing act, right? how do we encourage folks to actually -- and also understanding that if a person is coming seeking a driver's license, they want to be part of the system. they want to identify themselves. they want to be an active member of society and be able to take their kids to school without the fear of getting their car impounded. they want to be able to go to work. they want to be able to continue to contribute to our economy without that constant fear of just driving. and so we're very cognizant of the fact and obviously we're not our own country. if the federal government needs

to, you know, do what they have to do to be able to identify a person, well, you know, we -- we have -- we'll be able to provide that and so it's i think for the safety of all of us that we get people registered, that people get a license so we know who's driving on our streets and who's, you know, living in our community. and so the beauty about living in such a diverse state is that, you know, we -- we're comfortable with being different. we're comfortable with seeing people from different parts of the country but, again, national security is definitely a problem and an issue that we need to address, but our kind of frame of mind is the more folks that are obtaining these driver's license, then we know who these folks are. >> thank you. >> i worked on these issues in the michigan legislature when we had real i.d. that came into effect post 9/11.

the reality is that driving 11 million people underground and operating without identification and insurance is actually the wrong strategy to be able to find the people who might harm us and terrorize us, that the reality is having policies in which law enforcement and police are -- and identifications are open and usable by even those who are undocumented creates a better system for law enforcement for national security to be able to find the bad operators and root them out. and so you can go to the -- by the way, on the local -- i would highly recommend going to the police foundation. a national organization that's done a lot of work on this about how to work with undocumented communities in order to help solve crimes and is more respectful of undocumented communities. >> thank you. >> good morning, michael cooper. i'm a member of the new york city bar association's committee on nationality law. hello, nisha. this has been a great panel. we've heard a lot of what cities and states are doing, have doing, may do in the future. i wanted to probe the issue of

what we can refuse to do. i'll point this question to you if i may, commissioner. i'm specifically interested in the state of play, our committee in new york has recently testified before the city council regarding noncompliance with ice detainers. there's one example of what can be done. i'd be interested to hear you talk about state of play in new york. if other panelists have ideas of what states and cities can be sure to do. >> sure. so the current state of play is that the council leader has introduced legislation with the extent to which that the city complies with ice detainers. specifically the law would require judicial warrant for any honoring of a detainer as an initial matter and then even then would require a serious or violent felony conviction within the last five years.

this is very different from what was possible in the prior administration where even some misdemeanor charges were causing people to have their detainers be honored. there's also -- i.c.e. has been operating a trailer on like rikers island. nobody at department of corrections knows how that happened. that's troubling. the local law would also remove i.c.e.'s facility at rikers island. at that same hearing i testified that the mayor and the administration are in support of the legislation as it currently stands. we have to go through final negotiations but sincerely believe it's on the margins and hopefully very soon we will have a bill that will be passed by the city council and will be signed by mayor and that will virtually eliminate compliance with i.c.e. detainers. >> what we did, one of the big things that we decided not to comply with was with the federal law that would require our local law enforcement to collaborate with federal agents and that was

a bill that we did called secured communities. the discussion nationally of trying to detain these bad guys wasn't translating in california. what was happening is you would get somebody selling you palettas on the corner somehow get arrested for not having a permit to be able to sell on the street. next thing you know they're being deported, tearing families apart. we saw that time and time again. we saw people intimidating home care workers saying we're not going to pay you and we're going to tell the law enforcement that you're here illegally. we're not going to follow federal law. that was a big tremendous victory. changing the paradigm shift and the discussion from kind of a gotcha mentality where the vast

majority are good, hard working people. why did our parents come here? why did your ancestors come here? because this is the most amazing country in the world. so people, that's not news -- let's not lose that fact. people will continue to come here because this is a great place to be. we have to change the dialogue and we have to lessen your fear of being a productive member of society. >> thank you. >> good morning. my name is martha sardinas.

i'm retired from the state department. i'm a former visa officer. i just moved to california from maryland and fortunately did not need a visa to move there. so i went to a conference last week in san diego and they were talking about specifically the mexican immigration. they were overjoyed by the new law about the driver's licenses. what i found so interesting, they referred to los angeles as a sanctuary city and as certain suburbs of san diego as not sanctuary cities. the immigrants can't leave those cities because they are less expensive, they're easier to live in, but the local city councils, we could have a totally different panel here of local city councils that are doing everything they can to

make sure that the immigration laws are enforced. they're kind of the reflection of what you're doing. what my concern would be, and of course i hope that some day the federal government takes the action it needs to take, would be that we start to have pockets of sanctuaries and cities that are, you know, working with law enforcement to -- like along maybe the texas border, they're going to go and enforce the law if the federal government can't do it. i wondered if you'd comment on that and how we can bridge this divide. i mean, my interest is in conflict resolution of these issues and not to divide our country even further on this issue. >> all right. you're absolutely right. we have a group of folks who visit my office quite often who are at the california border with mexico and, you know, you're absolutely right. it's not a -- i'm painting a picture here that, you know, california, we're progressive and we're leading immigration issues, but that has taken time and we still have pockets of --

you've seen them, murietta issue where the children were turned away and begged for us and the legislature, you know, if there were a bunch of brown people or people of color stopping federal agents, what would happen to us? we would have been arrested. and so the dynamic is still kind of very vitriolic in california especially when you go inland. people tend to divide california north and south. i think we're more, you know, west coast to inland empire we say in california. but, again, i think as immigrants continue to incorporate themselves in society, i equate it as a gay man as you meet somebody who's

lgbt, there are parts of your society that become part of your family. it changes the rhetoric. it changes the tone. and i think i'll tell you in 2001 when i was working on 8540 and when we were talking about how do we get students to out themselves as undocumented, it was difficult. people didn't -- people were really scared, especially if you lived your entire life thinking you were a citizen until it was time for you to fill out your fafsa to go to college when your parents had that conversation with you. so we see now these dream act students taking their lives and taking charge of their own lives. they are -- you know, they're active, open members of our society and immigrants are beginning to get -- you know, as we introduce more policies that help them, you see them kind of coming out of the shadows. so i think that helps. and, again, seeing immigrants as our neighbors, as our co-workers, it helps. i think that's kind of what has helped every kind of social movement is the incorporation of these communities into our mainstream society. >> i just want to let those struggling south californians know that detroit is a very

low-cost option, very low cost. incredible value for your dollar. we are a so-called sanctuary city, something we passed about ten years ago. i don't like that terminology. i don't know who created it because, frankly, as i -- going back to the policing remarks, the reality is that we want to create a safe environment in which police are forthcoming to our local police for law enforcement. we have a lot of violent crime in the city of detroit relative to other communities. we need people who are willing to work with the police and that requires us to focus on -- not on immigration issues when we're solving crimes, burglaries but focus on policing issues. it's documented. the police foundation again shows that having a policing policy that only asks about immigration status when it's critical to solving the policing issue at hand is a better policing policy for safety and for what we want our police to do. so to me it's a smart policing policy.

it's not about being a sanctuary city and getting involved in the federal immigration debates. it's about having good policing in our immigration communities in the city of detroit. you can get a house for about $35,000. you can open a business for less than $100,000. we're a welcoming city, we have micro enterprise training. welcome mat. whatever you need, we welcome you. >> we're about at time, but i know that you all have been standing there to wait to ask your questions. so we'll try to be brief and get you out of here in a couple minutes. >> sure. thank you so much. my name is analee. i'm with the national reproductive institute for health. i want to thank you all for your help. it's something here in washington d.c. we have been very, very excited about. as an organization that works in places like texas, florida, even on a national level, we hear devastating stories of immigrant women dying of preventible diseases because of the restrictions on the federal and state level but the decimation of the safety net in many of these states. we know this is a long-term fight but i was wondering -- also i wanted to add that the u.n. has recognized this this summer that these restrictions do violate international

obligations. we're very interested in moving the needle in some of these states and in the federal -- on the federal level where the political climate isn't as friendly. so i'd be interested in hearing some lessons learned in california that maybe could be, you know, applicable to other states or maybe some more shorter term strategies in states and on the federal level where, again, the political climate isn't as responsive. what are some lessons learned we could apply to more hostile situations? >> quickly, lessons learned. every immigrant group and every immigrant rights organization has their own opinion on how to fund health care for all. some of them want it completely paid by the government through our general fund and those of us that are more pragmatic are trying to come up with ways of how to fund this program.

if we're going to -- we've already increased i think it was 3 million people our health care rolls now with medical given the aca. now the work is how do we justify and further expand it to include this vulnerable population? how are we going to pay for it? so the variety of opinions of how that gets done i underestimated. i thought it was going to be a lot easier to get people together to figure out so now we know. we have more of a clear strategy moving forward next year. >> thank you. >> good morning. my name is courtney lee and i'm a third year law student at georgetown. thank you for coming. my question is for commissioner agarwal. we've heard about the family unity project and the justice corps. what are the other programs that the city has supported and what major challenges in progress have you seen? >> sure. so quick the new york immigrant unity program is universal deportation defense funded by

the city, by the city council dollars. the immigrant justice corps is privately funded expansion of immigration legal assistance through fellowships that was spearheaded by judge katzman of the court of appeals. the city has funded something called the ioi. that started as sort of discretionary city council funding and be now it's been baselined which means it's part of the administration's budget time and again. that's exactly the piece of the funding that we're looking at to figure out how can we further bolster immigration legal services and do it in a way to have community based partners and doing lots of work connected to the legal services. that's the process we're in right now. i think there will be a question of family unity program and other things, will they continue year after year. will that be base lined? i think all of those questions are up for grabs. i think being able to establish that these legal services programs actually saved the system money in the long term is very important.

i know some research has been done on that but also the argument we're trying to make and will be doing a study on is that it's important from a poverty fighting statement. mayor de blasio has emphasized the importance of challenging inequality in our city. lack of immigration status but even just not being a u.s. citizen keeps pack back economically. and so i think making that connection between immigration/legal services as poverty fighting is central to what we want to do. >> stick around this afternoon for the session on models. >> okay. i'll make it quick or i'll try. i'm kate hibbs. i work with the national community reinvestment coalition. we're interested in immigrant banking. you talk about access to health care, access to education, those kinds of things. what about access to financial services, especially when immigration costs, legal costs will be thousands of dollars over someone's lifetime. how do we help -- how are you guys working with financial

institutions, or better yet nonprofit lenders, finance. fraud, helping against that. how are you guys working with financial institutions to bring them into the financial mainstream and help people finance shifting their immigration status amongst other things? >> i think you're absolutely right. financial empowerment is essential. under the framework that we're working with in terms of the office of new americans, there has to be a financial empowerment component. we can talk here until we're blue in the face about poverty, financial equity and so forth, but what we do see especially in california, our immigrants come with a very strong entrepreneurial spirit. and i think it's a matter of survival as well.

my mom would sell you anything. she would sell you avon, jewelry, shoes. how do we capture that entrepreneurial spirit? how do we give people like my mom at that time some sort of pathway to allow herself to build her own business? or if you're selling tamales on the corner and you have, you know, 100 customers, how do you build that to make that into the best tamale maker in california and you become, you know, world renowned for your tamales, right? so we're working with a lot of the financial institutions, the big banks in california and nationally because it behooves them as well. they see this as a new market in california. they're part of the discussion. when we look at the smaller banks as well, the community banks, they're all in the table with us having these discussions of how do we encourage them even just to bank on and we talk about the bank on san francisco, bank on california, bank on movements all over, again, incorporating our immigrants into financial institutions. not only that but allowing them and helping them built wealth and say that it's okay to build wealth. you want to leave something for the next generation and you shouldn't feel bad about that.

we're changing that discussion as well. in california it's a big component of our office of new americans. it's a great point you brought up. >> thank you. >> i'll be very brief. first of all, we could have given your mom a loan through given your mom a loan through our prosperous micro loan program. this will help us. detroit, toledo, some of these cities have land banked properties that we're trying to use for redevelopment and we're having problems because undocumented people who have a history of buying vacant property, moving in, creating great new homeownership in urban neighborhoods post 9/11, some of the security things we've put in place can no longer get home mortgages. we have a huge problem of financing that. we have to figure out what those solutions are and we're trying to do that every day on the ground right now. >> thank you. last question.

my name is ellen street, and i work with dsf consulting. we do professional development for teachers who work with esl students. oftentimes when we're trying to empathize with esl families and trying to get them involved and connected, they're afraid whenever we send anything home, especially when it's in english, but just in general, why am i being called in. parent/teacher conferences, they're afraid of deportation or that type of thing. how do you suggest that we begin that conversation to bridge to esl families? >> wow. i mean, as somebody who lived that firsthand, you know, i think we need to have a conversation with our immigrant communities. the level of respect that immigrants have towards education authority figures like a teacher, very, very well respected. so whatever the teacher says is kind of law, right, in my family at least it was. and so -- but with that said, there is -- there is this issue

of immigrants and my own experience i can speak of is like you get dropped off at school and they go to work. parents go to work two, three jobs and they assume that you're educating their child. so there's an organization that i belong to called p.k. that integrates a lot of the immigrants to let them understand what a school board is, what a principal, what your rights are as a parent. how to read your child's report card. and so we need more investment in these organizations about integrate the parents more into their educational system because they're very different depending on what part of the world you come from. so we need more of the resources to help transition the parents to understand our own educational system which varies from state to state, city to city. so it's a very complex issue but very important for us to continue dialoguing. >> let's give a round of applause for our fabulous speakers. [ applause ]

our next panel begins at 11:30. thank you, everybody. we'll bring you more from this georgetown law school discussion in just a moment. the president making news on immigration this morning at a news conference in rangoon, burma, also known as myanmar, with "the washington post" writing, "president obama on friday refused to change his plans to overhaul the immigration system through executive action even if the move sets up a showdown with newly empowered congressional republicans who have vowed to fight him. they have the ability to fix the system. what they don't have the ability to do is expect me to stand by with a broken system in perpetuity." obama said after he met with the burmese opposition leader midway through his week-long asia trip, "this is something that needs to be done.

it's way overdue. we've been talking act it for ten years now and it's been consistently stalled," said the president. again, that from "the washington post" today. now, another panel at this georgetown university conference examines what that executive action may entail as well as future immigration policy. norm orenstein of the american enterprise institute, simon rosenberg of the new democrat network and anna navarro, cnn commentator, share their views. okay. thank you very much, and welcome now to our second session of the conference, which is on executive action, policy and political implications for the future. my name is doris meissner, senior fellow at the migration policy institute, and i'm very pleased to welcome an outstanding panel here today. we have anna navarro, a republican contributor to cnn,

cnn in espanol, abc news, lots of other places you will see anna popping up. and i owe her particular thanks this morning because she's had a hugely rugged travel schedule getting here. so thank you very, very much. >> i woke up at 5:00 in the morning so if i'm incoherent, let's blame it on that. >> in advance. and then norm orenstein, who is resident scholar at the american enterprise institute, simon rosenberg, the founder and president of the new democratic network, and my colleague mark rosenblum, who's the deputy director of the uls immigration policy program at mpi. now, executive action, of course, is a very, very broad topic, but the context for the topic today is the very specific issue of what the current administration and president might be doing to take further executive action building on

other actions that have already been taken in this administration. the immediate backdrop really began in the spring when the president called upon dhs to review its deportation policies in order to determine whether more could be done to create a more humane set of policies consistent with the responsibility of course to enforce the law. this came in the face of record high levels of deportations for which he has drawn very, very strong criticism, from particularly latino constituency groups, including protest marches and other forms of political action, and that's of course a core constituency for the president and for the democratic party, so it's been an important political issue. but that dhs review soon became pretty much sidelined by a real effort to give political space to republicans in the house, in

the hope that there would be one more chance to move on some form of immigration legislation until the spring and in the summer. that came to a halt in late june, when speaker boehner went to the president and told the president that indeed there would not be any further immigration action in this congress. reportedly, the president was extremely frustrated and angry and made very clear very quickly after that that he was prepared to take executive action in the face of congressional inaction. and at that time announced that there would be an announcement with all suggestion that it would be a broad kind of relief that would be provided by the end of the summer. well, the end of the summer came and in the meanwhile there had been a lot going on in

immigration focused on issues at the southwest border and issues of people fleeing violence in central america and joining family members in the united states. the president had lost a pretty big appropriations effort with the congress by that time. and so the announcement then was made in september that the end of summer would be postponed until the end of the year. well, of course, we're now in that period between almost an election and nearly the end of the year with a lot of speculation and continued discussion about the withers, weathers, of executive action. and so that's what we're going to be talking about in this panel, the ins and outs of that, substantive as well as political. the format will be questions.

i'm going to put questions to -- opening questions to each of our panelists and ask each of them to make some opening remarks. and then hopefully that will put enough issues on the table for us to us to begin to do some crosstalk among us as well as any follow-ups that occur. and then during the final section of the panel, the last half hour or so, we will open the floor to q&a from the floor. so, i'd like to begin with marc and ask him to give us a rundown of the possible actions that the president might take, what seemed to be the actions that are under consideration. outline for us, if you would, the different measures and approaches that seem possible, and the numbers and the groups of people who might be affected by them. >> thanks, doris. i'm going to go up to the podium so i can use the slide.

maybe i'll -- well, whatever, i'm here. so, thank you, doris, and thanks to the organizers for including me. so, i'm going to jump right in because i'm going to try to cover a lot of ground. i think that was mine that was up, wasn't it? oh, i didn't notice. thank you. okay. so i'm going to start by talking just for a moment about what we mean by executive action in general and in the context of immigration policy, and then i'll briefly review how president obama and his predecessors have already shaped immigration policy through their and then i'll -- as doris asked, i'll describe some potential scenarios for what executive action might look like and say something about how many people would be affected and what some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches might be.

so i'm a political scientist and when i used to teach my intro to american government classes, there was no section on the syllabus called "executive action." so what do we mean by this term? and the answer is that in a separate power system in which congress writes the laws and the president implements the laws, a lot of policy gets made in the second half of that sentence. and on a general level, executive action describes any policy made by the executive branch outside the legislative process. so that includes formal presidential powers like executive orders and regulatory rule making, and it also includes implementation authority that gets delegated to the president through the statutory process, through laws, and then also less formal policy tools like signing statements, statements of policy, agency guidelines. so this term, you know, encompasses a lot of different things. one point i want to emphasize is that these types of executive actions, everything i just rattled off, have been very important on immigration policy

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

long history, as you can see on this slide, of presidents paroling whole groups of people into the united states on humanitarian and foreign policy grounds. humanitarian parole permits is admission of people outside the visa process. presidents have also granted relief from removal to unauthorized immigrants in the united states. prior to 1990, the main tool for granting this type of relief on a categorical basis was extended voluntary departure. lots of cases where evd has been granted. extended voluntary departure was not explicitly authorized by the ina and some members of congress objected to how it was used, seeing it as being sort of politicized. so in 1990, congress eliminated evd and established a new procedure called temporary protective status, tps, and tps lays out more clearly-defined

conditions under which dhs can, acting alone, suspend deportations for groups of unauthorized immigrants categorically in response to an armed conflict, a natural disaster, other extraordinary and temporary conditions. so examples of tps, despite the fact that congress got rid of evd and created tps, presidents have continued to grant categorical relief outside of tps under a procedure called deferred enforced departure. ded looks a lot like extended voluntary departure with the difference being that, you know, after congress got rid of ebd, presidents have continued to assume the authority to grant deferred enforced departure generally by issuing executive orders to create ded categories. and then the fifth thing i'll mention is that every modern president has also assumed a

more general authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion on a case by cases by us outside of all these programs. prosecutorial discretion refers to the power of a law enforcement agency or law enforcement official, rather, to decide whether or not to commence or proceed with official action against a possible law violator. in the immigration context, one form of discretion is to defer deportation or defer action to suspend deportation proceedings against an individual. so when we talk about deferred actions, that's a form of prosecutorial discretion that the executive branch takes. one reason law enforcement agencies exercise discretion generally and in the immigration context is to ensure they're using reforces efficiently to pursue their top enforcement priorities. but it bears emphasis that ins and dhs have also emphasized discretion by identifying groups

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

and administratively close some cases as a form of discretion because they weren't -- cases that are not consistent with the administration's enforcement priorities. and then in june 2012, secretary napolitano, then secretary napolitano announced a policy to defer enforcement in cases involving certain unauthorized immigrants who had arrived in the united states as children and who met certain education and background checks requirements, the doca, deferred action for childhood arrivals. so i want to say a little bit more about how these programs could be expanded consistent with the president's pledge to consider additional executive actions. so, first with respect to dhs's enforcement prioritiless, one point i want to make generally is that the morton memos shouldn't have been particularly controversial because they didn't represent a major shift in how dhs already did immigration enforcement. npi published a report last week showing that 93% of removals under the bush administration

were consistent with the obama enforcement priorities. so this was not a radical change. overall, 95% of all removals since 2003 have fallen within dhs' current formal enforcement priorities, and this includes 99% of removals in fy-2013. so one way to interpret those findings is that the obama administration has been successful at implementing its priorities, and i think that that's an accurate interpretation. but we can also look at those data and it suggests that the morton memos, the current enforcement priorities, define priorities pretty broadly in a way that lots of unauthorized immigrants fall into the priority categories. wand that in mind, one strategy for executive action that the administration could pursue would be to change dhs' enforcement priorities to make them more narrowly defined so

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

i just want to tell you that the bottom line is that when you look at interior enforcement, playing with the enforcement priorities in the ways that i just described would not have a huge impact on the number of people removed. i would say 30,000 is an optimistic -- you know, that's a very far-reaching change to the enforcement priorities. the likely impact on current removals from the interior would be much smaller. and the reason is, is that most people who would potentially benefit from such changes, unauthorized immigrants who are settled in the united states and who aren't committing crimes, already have a low probability of being apprehended and deported. that's not who the system is focusing on. there's a popular image of ice agents rounding people up and detaining them or finding people who have been pulled over for a traffic crime and putting them

in deportation proceedings. the data suggests that these are pretty unusual cases, particularly in the last few years. by far, the largest category of removals today is people apprehended at the border. some of these border crossers are returning immigrants. many border crossers have limited ties to the united states. reducing border removals have -- reducing the proportion of people apprehended at the boarder who are formally removed would have the largest impact on reducing removal numbers, but that would be a fundamental challenge to how cbp does business. so a second possible approach would be to expand the existing daca program, the childhood arrivals program, to cover a larger number of unauthorized youth. it's currently limited to how old people were when they entered, how old they were in 2012 and their education requirements. in a report we issued last month, a different report, we found that about 1.2 million people potentially meet the daca criteria, are potentially eligible for the current version

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

been promoted in part based on the idea that daca youth have overcome their status to become high-education achievers, and that's a description that applies to some unauthorized youth but definitely not to all of them, so it's a challenge with using doca as the major tool for a large executive action. a third approach would be to create a new doca-style program, so to defer action for a new group of unauthorized immigrants other than those who qualify for doca, such as parents or spouses of u.s. citizens or lprs. so the report that we published, again, the same report from last month estimates the size of several different population groups, several different scenarios and we control for different periods of u.s. residency, how long do people -- would people have to have been here in order to qualify. so there's about 3.6 million unauthorized immigrants who don't qualify for daca, who fall

into one of these parent categories and about 1.5 million spouses who don't qualify for daca, unauthorized immigrants who are spouses who are citizens or lprs. those categories overlap so there's about 4.2 million people who are either a spouse or parent. the numbers go down pretty substantially when you started aing on long residency requirements. so if you're only extending the program to people who have been here five or 10 or 15 years. so a few quick comments about this approach. you know, here again long-time residents with u.s.-based families have important equities that are generally recognized by our immigration system so we can certainly make humanitarian and normative arguments about why people like this should have an opportunity to apply for legal status. it's less obvious that a program like this would be an especially effective tool or an easy tool to prioritize dhs resources as compared to a policy of

exercising discretion during the enforcement process. and i say that because an application-based program to cover a large share of the current unauthorized population will be difficult to stand up and difficult to implement and difficult for immigrants to navigate. and that's likely to be more true for unauthorized adults than it was for unauthorized children because they're going to -- it's harder for them to document their presence because they don't have school transcripts and they be more risk averse, especially they're already in the work force. sol to the extent that people who could qualify for a daca-style program could also benefit from enforcement during discretion, especially, you know, if the enforcement priorities were further fine tuned to try to find this population, that's arguably a more efficient way for dhs to structure an executive action, but it's also a much lower profile approach and it would offer a much less concrete benefit because it wouldn't come

with work authorization and you wouldn't know whether or not you benefit unless you happen to enter the enforcement system. so it -- this would be arguably a more -- sort of an easier way to provide releave the that kind of population but the politics of doing it, exercising enforcement -- exercising discretion during the enforcement process, because it's low profile and less concrete are quite different than the politics of an affirmative application-based program. on both sides of this debate. and in the final scenario i want to mention focuses on people that the ina already defines as immediate relatives of u.s. citizens. so spouses and parents of adult u.s. citizens. this group has an even stronger sort of normative claim for relief because the ina generally makes green cards available for this group of people without regard to numerical limits or country of origin. so people who are married to a u.s. citizen or the parent of an adult citizen can usually get a

green card right away. but we estimate -- npi estimates about 1.2 million unauthorized immigrants fall into one or both of these immediate relative categories but may be unable to apply for a green card because their history of unlawful presence in the united states makes them subject to the three and ten-year bars, and so if they leave the united states to pick up a visa, they'll be ineligible and inadmissible to return. so these unauthorized immigrants could benefit to being paroled in the united states under the parole authority and the parole would count as a temporary admission that would permit people with qualifying relationships to receive their green card without leaving the country and without triggering the three and 10-year bars. so that's an obvious advantage to this approach, is that beneficiaries would receive a green card, which is a permanent fix that wouldn't end at the end two years. and it's sort of an easier

process to defend procedurally since dhs has the explicit parole authority as a statutory delegation. having said that, parole authority has never been used for this large a group of currently unauthorized immigrants within the u.s. and the political pushback for putting people in line for green cards instead of just deferring enforcement could be greater than putting them in line for temporary relief. so i will stop there and we can talk in more detail later. >> thanks, mark. >> 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 marc outlined. it's the action that was taken by the president in 2012 before

the re-election. and deferreded 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 a whole set of other considerations. this is obviously as much a matter of politics as it is a policy. what's the benefit for democrats and for the president of a large after-election action? would the election outcome in any way affect what the administration is likely to do on executive action? particularly on something like an expanded deferred action? and do you think it will actually happen or do you think we might be looking at another postponement? >> those are all easy questions. [ laughter ] thanks, doris. thanks, marc.

and it's really an honor to be on this panel. these are all folks i admire tremendously. and it's really an honor to be here and to be with all of you. all of you doing the lord's work every day and i appreciate you taking the time to be here. so, 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. i think tlvls there was a pragmatic recognition that -- and we can all 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. we all in this room are well read. i think that was a legitimate and pragmatic read of the landscape. we saw that there was a senate vote, as all of you know, that happened before we all broke and it went 50-50. and that's with a significant democratic senate. we're going to have at least four, five, six, seven more republicans next year. we will not have a majority of support in the senate next year for what the president is about to do. and so i think that the president made a pragmatic decision that having a very public and significant democratic opposition to something that's so important to immigration community was not something that he felt was going to be good in the long haul and he made a tough call. that's what presidents do. it was not an easy decision. i think it was the right one, personally, and certainly i advised the white house that that's what they should do and

so you can blame me and not the president. but i think he's going to do in the december and once we get through -- i think they know they have to do it in some ways. but i also just want to counsel that part of where i think -- let me just sort of project forward, doris, in 2015 a little bit. i think what mark laid out is there's no low-hanging fruit here. there's no simple easy thing. in many ways, the very significant thing that's happened which is essentially the ending of the deportation of people in the interior without criminal records which is by far and away the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in the united states, that's already happened. and i think that the immigration community has frankly given the democrats and the president far less credit than they deserve for how much the president has fundamentally altered the system to essentially have removed the threat of deportation over virtually every undocumented

immigrant in the country already. that's already happened. as mark said, we only had 10,000 people from the interior of the country without criminal records deported last year. that's down from hundreds of thousands in previous years. the number of people that were removed and returned from the united states last year were almost a million people less than in the first year of the bush administration. so one of the great falsehoods of the current debate is that somehow the administration is actually ratcheting up enforcement regime. it's, in fact, the exact opposite that's taking place. we're removing and returning far fewer people than we were a decade ago and long-settled families in the interior of the country are no longer a priority for deportation and, frankly, the numbers have plummeted very rapidly. so first of all i think that the community is -- some of the low-hanging fruit has already been taken by the administration. and, in fact, if you look at the central argument that the republicans are making against the democrats and why they

walked away from cir, it was over these steps. this is the central critique the republicans have made, that the president violated the law. so move, forward to 2015, there will be executive action. i don't know how significant it. it's taking so long because it's not easy. i also think we have to recognize that there's going to be significant organized opposition to this on a scale that is not true for probably any of the other executive actions that were taken in all the proceeding years. it's going to meet pragmatically there will be far fewer people that apply for the executive action whatever it is in the process because it will be so controversial and if you're an undocumented immigrant, you want to be doing something that's permanent like a green card, not something that's temporary that could be taken away that's tremendously controversial. and we have to recognize that the republicans in 2013 and 2014 in the house passed two

immigration bills one was to revoke the authority of the president to do prosecutor discretion at all. and why? because he had actually stopped deports people from the interior of the country, which he didn't like because the basic republican strategy in the house, not all republicans, not ana, not john mccain republicans, but the conservatives. they want the imminent threat of deportation over every undocumented immigrant to be re-established as part of the -- as part of their political strategy and they're angry that that's been removed. the second point i'll make is, look, we could have a majority republican senate and i think it's very likely we'll see a bill passed in the house and a bill passed in the senate, could pass in the senate, that revokes executive action and tries to repeal -- challenges all the executive action measures that are taken, and again reinforces that they want to revoke the prosecutorial discretion authority that's removed the

undocumented immigrants in the interior. we should expect that, right? we should expect we may see the most hostile anti-immigrant legislation we've seen in the last 20 or 30 years take place over the next 12 months -- you know, 6 months, 12 months. it's already the position of the house republicans because the two things they voted on in 2013-2014 -- i'm sorry if i'm being a little pessimistic but i'm not exactly enthusiastic about what's going to happen here, and i've been working on this every day of my life in washington with the white house and congress for nine years. so i have some experience in this. the second thing is that the republican primary campaign for president is not going to be pretty. i hope jeb runs. >> for the love of god, do not enforce 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 in the modern air -- era of politics. he'll be the lieutenant governor, which is a more powerful position than the governor in texas starting in january. his number one issue border security, all this anti-immigrant rhetoric. so he's dragging the texas republican party to the right. that's going to drag cruz and perry to the right. you know, we saw yesterday the first republican to introduce a travel ban for west africa was marco rubio, right? 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, frankly, i think,

going to demonstrate, doris concluded, by showing a lot of courage, that in the fay of all of this, he's still going to take action. but we have to recognize that all of us in this room, who think this is the right thing better be spending time and energy defending what gets done, reaffirming the need to fix the broken -- the overall broken immigration system and to recognize that this could end up becoming a very consequential and significant and ugly part of the national debate. i don't think it's -- i'll conclude by saying there are many advocates who are my friends who argue that this is simple and easy there is nothing simple and easy about what's to happen with executive action. it's going to be deeply unpopular. it's one thing with kids who came here on no fault of their own. it's fundamentally different when it's the immigrants themselves who snuck into the country and where people who may feel they're undeserving for getting special treatment.

and i think from a public opinion standpoint, you know, this is probably going to poll at 35%, 40%, is my guess, at best. and it will be one of the most unpopular things the president will have done during his entire presidency. that's my prediction. however he's still going do it because it's the right thing to do. and i hope the immigration community is far more supportive of him and what he's done than what's happened over the last couple of years. >> okay. there are some good issues there 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 very loud and clear that anything the president does on executive action at this point will poison the well for future legislation. of course they also stopped dealing with future legislation in this congress so it's a bit of a -- both sides. do you -- 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 patient of its authority, try to litd gate, use the appropriate operations process to stop? any of the tools that 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 light-hearted optimistic presentation that simon just made. you know, i think a lot of it is going to depend, frankly, on the election results and it's going to depend on the politics of the time. i have been surprised.

and, you know, 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 altar, 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 minor 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 allisi ail -- al lund gran grimes in kentucky who even ran -- was running adless 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 la toon notices 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's 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 boeper? >> 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 that -- it could be. it could not be. i don't know. you know, i've been making immigration predictions for so long and i've 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 downstream 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. legislators don't like it, but 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 that -- >> 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 really is -- i mean, look, 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 that 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. so, unless -- >> well, i think you've criticized rand, you've criticized rubio. christie? >> i don't think christie is running. so i'm not going to use my time. i hope jeb runs. i want jeb. >> christie wanted to bring all of the different communities in new jersey together just by

pushing them into one lane. [ laughter ] >> appropriations. i'm wondering if we're going to -- >> but what does this do to the >> what does this do to the 2016 election? i mean, the prevailing view is that he will do something. and it will be controversial and polarizing but it's part of the legacy that the president wants to leave. he does not want to be deporter in chief. he wants to have some something to say about the effort to improve the circumstances of a large population in the country. is this more about a political announcement and being able to take credit for that as compared with actually providing an improvement in the living

conditions of lots of people in this country? is it about setting up even clearer lines in 2016 that give an advantage to one party and disadvantage to another? look at the way in which the immigration issue played out in the republican primaries in 2012. 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 caught in this is a cynical strategy. is that what we are 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 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 have been going, it's a disaster for republicans. they're basically going to be left with older white men as their core. as my wife tells me ever day, older white men are not a group you want to trust. >> make that by the -- narrow it down, straight older white men. and they ain't what they used to be. >> you know, that doesn't necessarily play out that way in 2016. of course, the state of the economy will matter in this instance as well, the nature of what the president does and what the reactions are on all of that. some will depend on how the

republican nominating process goes. 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 win the nomination and unites the party, then you have a 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. he has a really crappy opponent. but a large part of it is because he's governed in a different way than scott walker or tom corbett or even rick snyder. it will tell you something about the nature of the party, that yesterday john kasich said not only for get about repealing obamacare, but he also said, it's not just because politically it's infeasible,

it's because we are talking about flesh and blood and real people who have benefitted from this, which was completely against the party message. today what does he say? i desperately want to repeal obamacare. it's horrible. we really need to do it. and he backed away from that. so i think the idea that kasich would take a position on immigration, even though he has basically put healthcare 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. i think we're likely to see stark differences between the d motivate white voters in the south. 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 it for the lifetime moving

in a different direction. i would say following on what simon said, if you look at greg abbott and patrick, you are moving radically away from the kind of governance we saw with george w. bush and even rick perry up until now. and 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. >> i can jump in? doris, it's an interesting question. i know there are people who are arguing that for the democrats this is great leading up to the 2016. but let me -- i think the differences between the two parties on latinos are starker today than they have been since any time that i began all of this. i mean, the democrats gave -- passed the aca, which will affect far more people than immigration -- more latino families than the immigration

reform bill will. the latino community has seen at least about -- based on some data, one-third drop in the uninsured rate in the first year of the aca. it's a dramatic thing. it's having a real impact on families. democrats want to make sure it's easier for everybody to vote. the republicans are denying the ability for people to vote all over the country. democrats are defending social security and medicare. the republicans are trying to cut it. democrats are trying to advance and put more spending on education. republicans want to cut it. democrats want to invest in urban transportation, which will create more labor mobility. republicans won't grant additional transportation authority. democrats passed daca which allowed 600,000 young people to get legal -- >> i feel like at this point i should say, unpaid political ad. >> i think the point is, the republican response in congress has been not just to be against but actually to take action to

strip legal authority from existing communities. first the daca kids which was the focus of the republican house in 2012 which was to take status away, which is something they aren't tried to do before and the rights of the kids on the border, which was also an effort to try to take away legal status that they already had. there was an escalation of attack in the republican house on immigrants. so part of my own view is that the way that a lot of democrats feel right now is that there's been a starker contrast between the two parties today than there has ever been. the atakz tacks by the immigrat community have escalated. why do anything else? if we're going to punish for having stood up and fought hard for community we care about and attacks and not getting credit, including ending the deportation of families from the interior of the country, then taking an executive action -- the expectation should be is that we're going to get attacked more in 2015 and 2016, not less.

we are not going to make anybody happy. i think that idea that somehow this is going to reinforce the difference is a bad reason to do this. i want to reinforce what ana. the president should do it because he thinks it's the right thing to do. i don't think anybody i have spoken to thinks there's an ounce of political benefit for the democrats in doing it if we're not getting credit for all the things we have done. i will put on -- i will say it right now. this is the -- obama has done more for latinos than any president in history. and we are getting attacks. so i don't think there's a lot of generosity of good will, frankly, towards many of the latino immigrant groups because of what's happened over the last 18 months. >> okay. i'm going to turn to the audience. >> 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, not be deported, was president obama. the potential presumed democrat nominee, hillary clinton, also came out strongly and quickly to say, send those kids back. so again, i go back to saying, folks, let's stop whitewashing, let's stop with half truth and spinning, let's stop being political pawns when it comes to immigration. we have to be smarter and demand truth and action from both parties. >> okay. i'm going to open the floor for questions. you can use the mikes in either aisle. we will go from one side to the other. please tell us who you are. start over here. >> i'm virginia. my question is for mr.

rosenberg. you mentioned the obama administration all but eliminated deportation in the interior. speaking as someone who works with 20 direct social services around the country, that's not the message that's in the communities. i get asked when i service clients if i'm immigration. i'm like, really, do i look like immigration? they come a catholic charity location, places of safety in the community that are pillars of support and strength for the latinos. i just am curious -- this is the first time i have heard that deportations interior are not happening. i talk to families who have family members who are deported in the interior. so i'm just really -- it's great to hear. but my experience with my partners and my colleagues can say the same thing. >> listen, this is