throughout the period, most of the enforcement efforts were concentrated at the u.s./mexico border. we did pass a law to make it illegal for employers to knowingly higher unauthorized workers but for a variety of reasons, that law has never been strictly enforced or generally enforced at all. leaving in place a key driver of illegal flows because the employment magnet remained in place and limited efforts to deport people from the u.s. the effort was really focused at the border. what emerged as a result was a stable policy regime that was a nonenforcement equilibrium. so we were able to hire illegal forces without being accountable. immigrants were happy because once they got past of the border they were able to work in the u.s. and be with their families here and politician were happy because they were able to avoid

hard questions about how to fix the fundamental drivers of immigration as long as they funded more enforcement agents and build higher senses. this broke down in the 1990s because they immigrants began to increase and dispersed throughout the country instead of concentrated in border states, people began to view the numbers that were emerging as more of a problem, especially after the 9/11 attacks, the equilibrium broke down when immigration control was seen as a national security issue. so since the late 90s and since 9/11 we have seen an additional security measures put at the border and in the u.s. these enforcement measures, i argue, seem to have reached a tipping point where the number of unauthorized immigrants in the u.s. today has been going down. the number peeked in 2007 at 12.4 million. there's been a 10% reduction, almost a million less.

it's a little hard to assess exactly how important the enforcement measures are in driving that decrease because many of the most important enforcement additional enforcement measures have been put in place at the same time that the u.s. has been going through the recession and slow recovery. i will argue that a lot of it is driven by the new enforcement stuff that has really come to have an impact. the biggest impact is that it is preventing new flows. that's a lot easier than establishing population in the u.s. many of these immigrants have been here for many years in the u.s.

it's much more difficult to displace people who have been here for five or ten or 20 or 30 years than it is to discourage a new person from entering illegally. so a lot of the immigration debate for the last decade has focused on proposals to take on all three of these issues at once, reforms to the underlying immigration system to, you know, better match supply and demand or to dedesign visas to prevent future unauthorized immigration. tougher enforcement provisions, also to prevent future unauthorized flows and cause some people to be deported and legalization for most unauthorized immigrants, most existing unauthorized immigrants and recognizing that long settled immigrant deportation is impractical, difficult and for most people inhumane for those who have families here. this is the package that most people are referring to, these three things when they talk

about comprehensive immigration reform or cir. so this history is important, generally and it is important because when president obama says that he has to take executive action because congress has failed to act, what he means is that congress has failed to pass a cir bill and that the president like most americans, believes that trying to solve our immigration problems through more enforcement without broader changes is both expensive and a losing strategy. we've really done a lot of enforcement and there's limited additional gains we can make through enforcement measures although they will be part of a broader package. we can get more bang for that buck. so all of this makes a lot of sense so why is president obama like president bush before him completely failed to pass a cir bill? one answer to this question is sort of the complexity that the doctor was talking about and that i was referring to before is that it's hard to design a good immigration policy or bill that includes certain unauthorized immigrants but excludes others that sequences

legalization with new enforcement mechanisms that we trust that we're doing both things in the right order and, you know, the enforcement people trust the legalization people and vice versa and that creates a visa system that balances all the competing interests who care about how many of this kind of worker or this kind of family member, how those trade offs get managed. just given how deeply intertwine ed immigration is into all of our lives, it's hard to design a policy that works. the hardest obstacles to comprehensive immigration reform are political. i want to mention four political changes that make it different. >> first there's a political economy challenge. what i mean is that the economic interests with the stake in

immigration enforcement, operators of private detention facilities, immigration enforcement bureaucracies who have a real stake in the status quo have a more concentrated interest in the debate than those who benefit from reform. they are better to lobby because they have a immediate economic state in the status quo. there's nobody who has a strong economic stake in reform who can't sort of manage the status quo. there are people like that but the stakes are low for them. there's a rhetorical question that the system is badly designed and the pushes and pulls don't match the number of visas available. but this is kind of a nuanced argument. there's no good guys and bad guys in this argument and there's no one to hold accountable for creating, you know, this sort of badly designed system. there's another story we can tell which is also true about 11 million unauthorized immigrants

who have each individually violated u.s. immigration law by being here out of status by coming here or overstaying their visa out of status. my story has the disadvantage of being complicated and not having easy solutions. this story has the advantage of being simple, unauthorized immigrants are bad and of having clear solutions. they should be held accountable by being deported. it's a much more powerful argument to make. it's also why, you know, when we look at children of unauthorized immigrants who we don't see as responsible and want to hold accountable that the group -- that the debate about dreamers is so different because it doesn't fit into the good guy, bad guy, rhetorical frame.

a third a symmetry relates to the coalition that care about immigration policy. on one side there's a broad group that want comprehensive reform including immigrant right groups, religious organizations, civil libertarians and others. each care about a different slice of cir, they care about legalization or low skilled workers or high skilled workers or what enforcement looks like. when it comes to the actual give-and-take of the legit, legislative process. and then there's this group which is smaller in number and more passionate and concentrated in republican districts. they have strong political incentives to support an enforcement only approach. looming demographic change. the increasing number of hispanic voters in the country will eventually shift the dynamics but because of the way the maps are drawn and low

participation, those demographic drivers are several years away at best. i think the most important a symmetry is procedural. i have described the current system -- i described it as a nonenforcement equilibrium. the reason we have nonauthorized immigrants is because we have failed to deport people who are deportable. what that means is immigration hard liners don't actually need any legislative change to achieve their policy goals. all they need is to enforce the

laws on the book for the president to strictly enforce the laws that are already on the books. for advocates of legalization and visa reform on the other hand, there are no laws on the books that allow a permanent legalization or allow more family members to come to the u.s. so they need legislation to achieve their core goals. so this gives a huge negotiating advantage to immigration hard liners because it's much easier in our divided government to block rather than pass. they can walk away from any deal they don't like and they get the status quo. it's very hard for the advocates to do that. finally, what does all of this tell us about the president's executive action. first, how would the president's announcement affect the broken immigration system? the answer is that the president's announcement will make it easier for some high skilled employers and high skilled workers to navigate the

parts of the employment based system where there's already a degree of flexibility but the announcement fails to address any of the deeper root causes of unauthorized immigration with respect to low skilled workers or family members. the reason is that there's no way to fix those problems outside of legislation. the president can only adjust how he enforced existing laws so he can't address those core issues. it's a limitation of what can be done through executive action. where the announcement is more important is in its legalization provisions and changes to the enforcement system. those are things that the president can do on his own to address the symptoms of brokenness. to address the large unauthorized population in the u.s. so as i mentioned about half of all existing unauthorized immigrants, potentially a little over half are potentially eligible for some form of legalization either through doca or dopa the deferred action parent's program.

or for the two other, the other adjustments to existing policies that the president announced. and you may not have heard, may not realize, that the changes to the enforcement priorities that the president announced will affect at least 80% and probably about 90%, possibly up to about 90% of all existing and authorized immigrants will be afforded protection through the new enforcement priorities. the new priorities are defined much more narrowly in a way that excludes almost all unauthorized immigrants. so, if the executive action is fully implemented, it would leave in place and probably strengthen border enforcement, enforcement at the southwest border but it would basically declare a moratorium on most interior immigration enforcement. this would go a long way toward reversing the ratcheting up of

enforcement policies over the last decade or so, so while exec executive action stops short of what advocates would like to see in terms of a lasting permanent legalization that includes a path to citizenship, it's hard the to overstate the path to citizenship these will have in the lives of most immigrants. so, big deal for you know, in a temporary way for existing and unauthorized immigrants. what about for prospects for an immigration bill? in the short run, these actions likely make immigration legislation harder to pass. because they deepen already profound distrust between congressional republicans and president obama. president obama's willingness to act alone, you know undermines trust and discourages people from from making a deal with them.

but that argument assumes that republican and congressional republicans would consider cir type reforms in the absence of obama's actions, for that argument to mean anything and historical record makes this doubtful given how hard they've worked to block cir bills. if anything the 2014 election makes elections particularly in the house less likely to take on cir because they enjoy a larger majority and especially because the majority of the election said republicans can win elections in states like texas and colorado, even if they take a hard line on immigration, so sort of the political logic of oh, we need to reach out to hispanics, that's a harder argument to make to persuade republicans sitting on the fence at that point. then the last point i want to make about this, which is particularly important, is that in the medium term to the long-term, there's a real possibility that the executive

action can break the congressional gridlock and force house republicans to come to the bargaining table. the reason i say this is because a moritorium would turn the existing legislative dynamics of policy on their head. the huge advantage that opponents of cir have and the legislative debate as i mention is that law already allows for tough enforcement. as long as the status quo involves hundreds of thousands of deportations and leaves immigrants to being deported, obama's executive action changes these bargaining dynamics by shifting what -- would fear the reversion point. if existing immigrant communities are protected, then it's advocates can walk away, they're satisfied with the status quo and hard liners have an incentive to seek a deal.

this has the potential to change the dynamics that have frozen immigration in place for the last decade, so it's still a big if because as dr. bose mentioned, executive action is still subject to a variety of challenges. to lawsuits that are pending. which could you know cause a judge to put a stay on the order and basically freeze it up. it's subject to legal to congress using dhs appropriations bills to try to take away money for it or to attach language that makes it illegal and the other thing that could undermine the executive action is that in enough unauthorized immigrants don't sign up quickly, then the agency will run out of money. it's a fee driven agency which shields it, from congress taking away the money, but makes it dependent on signing up. if people are worried about it,

then that could prevent cis from doing it. we can talk more about that if people are interested. the last point i want to make is what's the impact of this recent announcement on sort of the broader u.s. political system? one answer is that it's i believe, a good thing for democrats for 2016. by restoring waning enthusiasm among hispanic voters, it really helps democratic candidates in 2016 because it's a big deal if it plays out and republicans have their hands tied about how to respond. they can either satisfy their base by pulling out all the stops, but that alienates hispanic voters and moderates. it helps individual republicans in the short run because it helps them with their base but it hurts the party in 2016 and beyond. our republicans can work out some kind of legislative deal,

allow other part of it and sort of negotiation on policy, but anything like that ultimately is a victory for president obama. so it's you know, the move politically probably helps the democrats. a bigger picture answer in my view is ta executive action is also a dangerous escalation of the imperial presidency and of congressional dysfunction. immigrants rights groups have made the case that obama's action is similar to previous anchors taken by both republicans and democrats, president reagan, bush, and while that's try in terms of the legal authority, it's not so true in terms of the context. obama's action is much bigger. affects many more people and comes after a decade of congress debating and choosing not to do it. over congressional objections, the previous actions were much more consistent with things congress was in the midst of

passing and smaller in scale so while a support the president's actions as good for u.s. immigration policy they make me very nervous as being bad for american political institutions. they are also an escalation of an existing trend so i'm not at all confidence that if president obama hadn't taken those actions, the next president wouldn't do similar things on issues i don't care about or feel the other way about. i see it as an escalation of a damaging trend that already exists, but a significant escalation. so sort of a bad development along an existing path way that we're traveling down. i'll stop there and take questions.

i know there was nothing controversial there, so. >> hi, i'm from suffolk university in boston. you mention eded one of the problems was there no pathway to citizenship or work visa for underskilleded workers or low skilled workers in preparation for the talks today the types of visas there are and cape across the -- i thought that in some ways, it could be understood to be a solution to maybe that's the problem you pose. could you discuss if that is a solution? >> yes, a great question. so yes the h2b when i said there are basically none or

essentially none, because that is the exception. the h2a visa is is for agriculture work erers and seasonal agricultural work. that's numerically unlimited, so ago ri agricultural employers can hire as many temporary workers as they want to work in agriculture. and the limitation of that visa is that agricultural employers don't like it very much. because it includes, they're required to pay temporary workers more than they would have to pay u.s. workers and so agricultural employers have found it cumbersome to use and they've just gone around it and hired a lot of unauthorized workers instead. the h2b visa is for low skilled nonagricultural workers.

the reason i don't consider it a fix, it offers less protections than h2a workers. if you have a higher workers who work in your restaurant and factories or you know, your service sector job as a janitor none of those jobs are covered. it has to be time limited and limited to 65000 visas a year. it basically covers people in truly seasonal work. like resort, hotels and crab pickers in maryland. so, it's pretty limited in scope, but you know, a lot of the cir bills have considered ways to expand h2b to cover more workers. but that's the -- on it. >> thank you. >> hi. my name's rochelle, i'm from the

university of arizona. my question for you, i know you talked about ways to improve the system and also knowing that countries not only the u.s., but other countries do struggle with immigration, i was wondering looking at other countries, have you ever come across or found immigration and if not, what to you would be a perfect immigration policy that would work internationally and dmes click in the u.s.? >> so that's a hard question. i mean, actually, the first part is easy. there's no other country has a perfect system. the u.s., one of the ways the u.s. difrfers from the rest of the world, two ways. one is that our system's much more weighted towards family based immigration than it is towards employment based immigration and you know,

whether that's -- a values question. like how much do we care about designing immigration for economics purposes. i think it would be easier if you rolled back the clock and didn't place so much emphasis on family migration. that's going to be difficult to allow to accommodateeelp all of the family based visas without having a lot more immigration. there are people here who don't want a lot more immigration. somebody's going to lose. and i don't think you know for the same reason, there's no sort of ideal immigration policy because it depends on how you value unification and how you value sort of overall economic growth. versus distributive effects. because needing a lot more workers expands the overall u.s.

economy economy, but to some degree, hurts workers at a similar skill level. grows the u.s. economy, but hurts people with similar skills to people coming in and helps employers, so it's, it contributes to wealth. there are some things that i can say, one is that, one thing that we can do is to combine family and employment based ranking systems into a single system that gives family members and people with job offers, so you would have just one cue instead of multiple keys. we've weighted our system more, on the employment side, towards temporary than perscription nant. you can permanent. you could have a hybrid there.

there's a lot of things we could do better, more efficiently on the enforcement side that would cost less and pose less sort of adverse consequences on communities. by focusing on work sights in a way that more reliablely holds employers accountable. >> thank you. >> good morning, i'm from suffolk suffolk university and wanted to say thank you for being here. it's difficult for immigrants -- been illegally living here for 15, 20 years, but don't we want to question why they haven't applyied for citizenship? >> thank you. that's a great question. it takes six to 12 years if you have a sponsor and if you're outside the country.

if you're here illegally already, then you're -- for most unauthorized immigrants who are here, it's illegal for you to adjust to legal status without leaving the country for three to ten years, depending on how long. if you've been here for more than six months, you have to leave the country for ten years before you can apply. so it's asking somebody with a family to leave, then wait for ten or 20 years. that's a problem and assuming you have a qualifying relationship any way. if you came here illegally and then started a family here with another unauthorized immigrant and now, you have u.s. citizen children, they can't sponsor you until you turn 21. you may have to leave for ten years, wait for your kids to grow up, then come back. there is no line for existing unauthorized immigrants to get in. there's no existing system they can take advantage of for the

most part. >> thank you. >> i'm from the university of san diego. i grew up in arizona where the lovely sheriff joe -- i was wondering if obama's executive actions have addressed this issue and what you think needs to be done between not seeming soft on immigration, but still treating people with human respect that they deserve. >> so one thing the executive action does that addresses sheriff joe a little bit, is it redesigns the secured communities program, the way for the most part the way that state and local law enforcement agencies and county sheriffs interact with dhs and it really reigns in the scope of that program. so, that program, that's a program that exists now that automatically checks the immigration backgrounds of anybody being booked into a state or local jail.

then ice can take custody. and put them in proceedings and it's really created some damaging, it's damaged the relationship between immigrant communities and law enforcement because some law enforcement agencies appear apparently have sort of specutively have arrested people. the new changes are designed to prevent that. a lot of what sheriff joe has done is already illegal and he's sort of been called out by the justice department and he is a little bit rogue relative to existing immigration law, so you know, so the executive actions don't address that because it's already sort of addressed. it's a little bit hard to reign in local law enforcement to pass an gent. so, i think that's the best answer i can give you. was there another part of your question that i missed?

>> basically even though it ishe is rogue, there is a hard stance that some of the laws that have been passed are too soft. is there a way to ever find a middle ground through human rights and amnesty? >> i think the answer is, my personal view is that it's much easier to put in place top enforcement measures if you recognize that we sort of collectively for some unauthorized immigrants, so, if we take out the cases that most people agree at the point should be allowed to pass and then put in top measures going forward, you know, i think that's sort of a more fair solution and and the way the new version of secured communities is designed to work and it's not totally different from the way the old version worked is that as people come to the criminal justice system and get identified as having committed a crime in addition to being unauthorized that they're

going to be unauthorized for being deported. so, the great asset of secured communities is it really gives us a reliable bidding to identify criminal aliens who get apprehended. so, the idea behind cir is that we should have a path way to give relief to people who have you know, good humanitarian claims and then tougher enforcement against people who don't. the previous enforcement efforts we've done in the last 20 years have tightened enforcement and the law that was passed in 1996 took away judicial discretion to offer relief from deportation, so we need to restore even in in a categorical way or in a case by case discretion way, give judges the opportunity to shield some people from enforce m. so i think that's the way to balance it. >> thank you very much. >> good morning.

thanks for being here. i think you touched on this briefly, but you had mentioned early on that there are obviously it's a broken system and there are different components that need to be addressed, but what do you personally foresee this new congress perhaps compromising on and why? >> i mean, my read of u.s. politics is that this congress under republican control doesn't really want to make deals on immigration. i think it's likely that we'll see congress sending president obama some tough enforcement bills, border security maybe mandatory e verify bill, which is to strengthen works side enforcement system. it could include some limited changes to employment base, like to facilitate workers. it could include a limited dream act. it would likely not include a path to citizenship.

it would be just making permanent what the president has done without a past to citizenship, but if i had to bet money, i would say less things on that list rather than more. i think we'll see other action not on immigration. >> thank you. >> what do you feel the u.s. should do, if anything, to help quell the violence in central america, possibly stem the tide of immigrants escape that violence? >> great question. my short answer is that yes, are drif p by business mall conditions and that in the long run, the only thing the u.s. can do that's remotely compassionate and humanitarian to address that problem is to address those root causes.

the solution put in place over the summer was mostly to detain families and speed up their hearings. and that's just sending people back to a death sentence in some cases, so, but you know, we also don't want to sort of set a precedent of just opening our doors to people fleeing situations like that, so the only sustainable solution involves combatting the problem at its sourtce, that's a lot easier said than done. it's hard to talk about sending billions to central america when we've got communities here that are underinvested and even if you've got an open checkbook, we don't have a good blueprint for how you fix massively dysfunctional communities where you've got long records of violence and weak governments. we have some ideas and should be trying but that's hard. both politically and policiwise.

>> thank you. >> you mentioned the paper plate type of funding. will people need to migrate legally, be expected to pay for their paper work and how will those costs be managed? >> i think you're asking if with the executive action, are people who are taking advantage of it paying for their benefits? yes. so all of -- immigration benefits agency is defunded and in some cases, there are waivers and don't have to pay for processing. every immigrant has to pay for their services, but there's limited waivers for the -- >> my question has to do with the flow from central america from mexico.

what diplomatic steps have we taken to kind of have them help us ease the flow a little and -- >> mexico has really cracked down on those trends those trance migrants and smugglers and the routes they use, the trains they ride on. mexico has really stepped up its enforcement efforts at several choke points within mexico. that's common in response to u.s. requests and domestic reasons in new mexico but it's been a diplomatic priority for us. that's the reason the numbers came down, not the only reason but the biggest reason after surging all summer so that's a good thing. the conditions people were crossing through it was really bad going to mexico. on the other hand, what we understand is that there's

little humanitarian screen that goes on in mexico, so they're not offering asylum to people escaping conditions that under u.s. law we should be offering them asylum, so you know it just sort of pushes the problem back off our doorstep and makes us a little bit less legally responsible, but you know, from a sort of a moral standpoint it's just as bad to the people of mexico to bad conditions as it is here for people in bad conditions, what you'd want to see is you'd wabt want to get people early in the process because that discourages people from making dangerous changes and people who are going to end up deported but at every step of the process what you want to see is good adjudication, good screening to identify people in need of relief.

>> thank you. >> good morning. i'm from harvard university extension school and i was wondering what obstacles do you see for establishing a separate category for stem grad students. >> left and right everyone likes the idea of supporting stem workers. the biggest obstacle is that it comes within the context of the rest of the immigration debate and you know in the senate, there would be amendments to parent with enforcement things to the right and family members to the left, so it's hard to pull out any little slices of the cir package because the other people want to keep it in. so it's sort of the flip side of what i was describing earlier. >> thank you. >> who's it coming from? all right. >> garrett dawn, university of

san diego. i know we've address eded the issue of immigration from mexico and central america but i wantwhat does the u.s. need to do about the civilian contractors in the middle east, especially in iraq and afghanistan who are promised immigration to the united states in return to further service to the u.s. military there and how they're now being denied access because of too much immigration from central america and mexico. >> yeah that's a -- a terrible situation. i mean, i think part of it is because of immigration from within the hemisphere, i think part of it is because the u.s. has really struggled to do background checks and to reassure itself. with immigrants from certain countries in particular you want to admit people in humanitarian need, but you want to make sure you're screening out people coming here for the wrong reason. people who may be potential

terrorists or whatever, so that slowed it down but generally, this is an example of a case where the u.s. has not lived up to the obligations it made and congress should step up and provide the funds necessary for that screening. you know, there are people whose live lives are in jeopardy because they help the yit so you want to see them given that kind of lead. >> thank you. the$bd5eople who didn't get their questions answered i'm happy to chat with you when we're done. >> thank you very much. very informative. we have some washington center memorabilia for you, some coffee. thank you very much. we are continuing our discussion of immigration policy and our

next speaker is the executive director for the center of immigration studies. he is a nationally recognized expert on immigration issues and served as executive director of cis since 1995. the center is an independent nonpartisan research organization in washington and it was established in 1985. it came out of the the from the fetd ration from american immigration reform and it is a research based organization mr. -- has published numerous articles on immigration policy and is the author of two books on immigration. he has a masters degree from the fletcher school and undergrad yat degree from georgetown. he spent two years at the state university in what was then soviet armenia. he is here today to share his expertise on immigration policy.

pleaseing him a warm welcome. >> good morning. i think i will take this off because if i have this on, i'll be tempted to wander around and the cameras won't like that. i am going to talk more about political dynamics. of immigration. that's what i think will help explain what's going on. i'll be happy to talk about policy side of it. i've written a booklet or half a booklet, dualing positions. i have the nay said and the yay

is from alex of the cato institute, published by encounter books and it's on amazon now. available for purchase. i don't make any money off it. what i want to talk about is the political dynamics that shape what's going on in immigration. there's two parties in congress, obviously. immigration is actually three factions. democrats dominate one. one of represented by the democratic party. the other two duke it out within the republican party and that i think really does explain what we've seen over the past ten years, really. starting in 2005. where there was the first round of debate and wrangling over

reform. the first of the three factions is -- each of these factions has its primary goal they seek in immigration policy and the jostling of those and with others is what drives much of the policymaking. starting with liberals, their chief goal is legal status for the illegal immigrants already here. amnesty. not the only one, but that's the primary one. >> even ooen though it didn't used to be this way, all elected officials, all major interest groups are behind legal status for illegal immigrants and not just that, but prioritized amnesty as the number one goal. the aflcio was one of the leaders leading up to the law in fighting amnesty.

barbara jordan, civil rights pioneer, first black congresswoman was the chairman of the u.s. commission on immigration reform. which released its reports a series of reports during the clinton administration and was actually something of an immigration hawk if you're going to use that description. but now, that's not the case. liberals chief goal is amnesty. republicans are two factions. one is the what i call the corporate/libertarian faction. and their chief goal is unlimited immigration. this doesn't mean a billion people moving here tomorrow. it means the elimination of all governmental limits on who comes to the united states. and anything that leads in that

direction, in other words, anything that increases immigration is their chief goal. however that happens, regular immigration, guest workers the goal of the libertarian faction is more arrivals of foreigners to the united states. and then there's the third faction, which is conservatives. and their chief goal is preventing another 12 million illegal immigrants. in other words, a sufficienty of enforcement mechanisms in place to actually enforce our immigration rules, whatever they happen to be and as a kind of less active, less remarked on priority for conservatives is in fact a more moderate level of future immigration. that part of the debate hasn't been sort of fully flushed out,

but it seems to be pretty clear there. as far as what we've seen over the past several years, liberals want amnesty. corporate/libertarian factions want -- and conservatives want enforcement systems in place to ensure we don't have mass illegal immigration in the future. now, each of these factions has a kind of a mix of motives for their, for these positions. a mix of self-interest and principle. on the liberal side the self-interest is pretty clear. it's a political, importing voters or even more than that, changing political complexion of the country. for instance, elise medina, former top official in the sciu,

top official socialist international, one of the major sort of figures pushing cir over the past few years. has said that with amnesty quote, we will be creating a governing coalition for the long-term. not just for an election cycle. the political aspect, the self-interest aspect of the liberal factions push for amnesty is no secret. it's pretty out there. there is obviously also a genuine issue of principle here. a compassion toward illegal immigrants, the majority of whom were just regular shmos, trying to make it through the day just like everybody else. now, i would add that this compassion was directed mainly toward foreigners who shouldn't

be here as opposed to americans who are harmed by excessive immigration, but none the less this is a genuine, principled rational for their position combining with the self-interest of political ration. the second faction, the corporate/libertarian faction like wise has a combination of self-interest and principle. this faction itself, i don't mean to get too complicated about this but obviously from the way i described it, has two portions within it. the corporate or financial interest and then the idea logical libertarians. they're closely allied, i put them in one faction. the fact it helps two parts of their -- the what i call the corporate side is clearly self-interest. they want more cheap labor. they want unlimited access.

unimpeded access to any worker whether high or low skilled, from anywhere in the world. president bush actually described this quite clearly clearly in 2004, january he gave the sort of major immigration speech relaunching his immigration push which had been derailed by 9/11. and he said his goal this wasn't the legislation didn't fully realize this but his goal was to ensure that any willing worker from anywhere in the world could get a job in the united states with any willing employer at any wage in any occupation in any part of the country. and that is like i said driven both by self interest, cheap labor, but also the libitarian aspect as a principled objection to any form of state limitation on movement of people.

that is what the case he makes in his half of our booklet that the state, that it is unjust for the american people through their democratic processes to limit the arrival of anyone in the world who wants to come here. so the corporate libitarian faction has this. you would think that the libritarian side would have a problem with mechanisms. they seem to think everything even statused measures that result in more immigration is the goal. it really is clearly by any means necessary to increasing the arrival of people into the united states. for instance the schumer-rubio

bill the 2013 senate bill supported by lib raitarians said in statute the salaries for particular occupations and particular years because animal breeders graders and sorters in 2016 were to be paid $9.84 an hour by law according to this 2013 immigration bill you would think some would find comically statused. because it was a provision to increase the number of people arriving in the united states they reconciled themselves to it. my point here is that the corporate libitarian goal has a self interest and principled reason behind it. conservatives likewise have a self interested combination of

self interested and principled reasons. the self interested part is that immigration moves the political center of gravity to the left. this isn't a controversial statement. every survey of immigrant attitudes finds that immigrants, the political views of the ponderance of immigrants are in favor of -- are those that are aspoused by the democratic party. in other words immigrants don't vote democrat because they somehow are sort of emotionally attached to the tradition of jefferson and jackson. they support democrats because they support the policies democrats aspouse. more government and more taxes and more services as opposed to less taxes and fewer services. more environmental regulation more gun control. there is really no sort of

disputing the fact that immigration moves the center of gravity to the left. there are research done by professor at university of maryland. we have published some he has published elsewhere. what he found when he looked at county by county data and election results is that even when you look at it just at the county level the arrival of immigrants moves the vote to the left. so immigration moves the center to the left but moves it from wherever it started. so there is a clear self-interested reason conservatives are opposing amnesty. the other interest the principled interest is support for sovereignty for the rule of law for constitutional government and really for a kind of solidarity with american

workers and prioritizing the interest of american workers over those of foreigners. just as a side point here the self interested part of the conservative position is actually pretty strong in theory and yet it doesn't play out the way you would think. it's not as evident and as up front and as important in driving positions as the self-interested motivations of the corporate libitarians or the liberals are. you can kind of see evidence of that in the spending, lobbying spending on immigration. the sun light foundation researched spending on immigration lobbying from 2007 through 2012. what they found was that the

liberal and corporate libitarian positions combined represented $1.5 billion worth of lobbying. $1.5 billion isn't much in the budget anymore because now we are talking about trillions. when you are talking about lobbying, $1 billion is a lot of money. the amount of money pushing against the cir compromise, most of it basically conservative oriented was minuscule in comparison. something like 97%, 98% of the money spent on immigration lobbying is spent in pursuit of the liberal and the corporate goals. now, the comprehensive part of cir, of comprehensive immigration reform, was an attempt to satisfy each of these three factions in one package.

the problem -- in other words, it was politically comprehensive, presented as the comprehensiveness of cir is often presented as a necessary policy move, in other words that there are various pieces of a policy puzzle that have to be put together for it to work. that is actually not true. it is politically comprehensive. the comprehensiveness was seen as necessary in order to satisfy these three factions and get something passed regardless of how it actually would work out in the policy sense. the problem is that all three chief goals, amnesty for the liberals, increased immigration for the corporate/lib ruitarians and real enforcement for the conservative conservatives, all three of those can't be successfully put into one package in an honest

way. this is why it didn't work. they are not necessarily incompatible goals. i don't agree with the corporate libitarian part of increasing immigration. those chief goals could, in fact, be satisfied politically. the same policy could, in fact promote all of them, but not at the same time. they can't all be the bills first priorities. so what the schumer-rubio bill dill in 2013 was give the liberals and the corporate libritarians their chief goals upfront. what it did was legalize all of the illegal aliens up front within a few months, six months or so of the bill everybody

would get legal status. it wouldn't be a green card yet but everything short of a green card. green card light. the corporate libertarians would get doubling of immigration. the bill doubles legal immigration and almost doubled guest work or temporary work immigration all of which would be permanent but anomaly it was temporary. and it offered increased enforcement tools to ensure that we would not have another 12 million illegals in the same debate down the road. the problem is that the section of that package that was designed to satisfy conservatives was put off into the future after everybody got amnesty, after legal immigration was increased.

and there was no -- it was transparently obvious it was never going to happen anywhere. the idea of amnesty first and enforcement later was the core of the 1986 grand bargain. and at that time conservatives supported it because we hadn't done it before. it seemed plausible. and people figured let's give it a try. the problem is it was obvious trick. the amnesty happened the enforcement didn't. the reason that worked in 1986 and the reason it would be the same thing if the senate bill had passed is a combination of lying on the part of the supporters of the amnesty supporters. in other words, lying about

their future commitment to enforcement as well as a genuine change in the political incentives once the amnesty happened. let me first talk about the lying part. if in any exchange you get what you want first in exchange for a promise that you won't really pay a price for if you renege on in the future you make the promise, get what you want and renege in the future. i don't know how many of you have seen old pop eye cartoons. there is a character called wimpy. there is a hamburger chain named after him in england or there was. he would say i would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today. he always got his hamburger and never paid on tuesday. and the fear that conservatives had because their part of the

cir package was to get paid on tuesday was that they were going to give liberals their hamburger, give the libertarian corporate faction their hamburger and were never going to get paid for it. we saw this work out in 1986. the whole point of the 1986 bill was in exchange for a first ever ban on hiring illegals. the provision was called texas proviso. the 1986 bill repealed that. everybody got the amnesty first and they were going to roll out the enforcement in the future. well within four years of the bill's passage in 1990 by that time virtually all of the illegal immigrants who were going to get amnesty had gotten

amnesty and most had fully gotten green cards really by 1991 is when all the green card processing was completed for the amnesty recipients. in 1990 the national council released a big report calling for the repeal of employer sanctions, the ban on hiring illegals which was the whole point of the grand bargain. in other words, they were -- this was a real attempt to welsh on the bill. they sort of gave an iou for the hamburger they got. the person who wrote that report, the author of it we scanned it in. it is on our website. the author of that report is now in charge of immigration policy for the obama administration

secelia munos. there is clearly no reason to believe that the enforcement promises would have been carried out. it is not even like as i suggested a minute ago. it is not just a matter of bad faith although for a lotf opeopleo of people it is. i think senator schumer was not telling the truth. let's be charitable and assume that everybody was telling the truth. they were genuinely committed to enforcement. milton freeman said he would just take everybody at their word. if they say this is why they want to do something i will believe them and stop looking for ulterior motives. the fact is the political incentives change once the amnesty happens. the liberal as well as frankly the corporate liberatarians

their commitments evaporates once they get what they want. so let's say a democratic politician who genuinely when he looks at himself in the mirror shaving says i'm for e-verify and i want the people here to get their lives in order. i really will be committed to sticking with it in the future. once the amnesty happens and he gets calls from liberal advocacy groups, when he gets calls to comment on a sob story in a newspaper about some new illegal immigrant who just arrived and is sympathetic and cute and is in the paper in his hometown when he gets a call in the future from a business lobbyist saying this enforcement thing is cutting into our employment his reason to be committed to that

enforcement is gone because the amnesty already happened. the fact is that the idea of amnesty first and enforcement later can't work. this is the core reason the house was unable to pass cir because the deal contained within it was not -- conservatives were not going to get their goal. even the liberals and corporate libera arks liber liberitarians got their. the other two factions have now taken to say that in fact you have gotten your enforcement first. because there have been some improvements in enforcement.

genyn improvements in enforcement. it is inadequate in my opinion but it is not nothing. we have better fencing than we used to have. we have the e-verify system which is still voluntary but it wurbs. we have somewhat better tracking of foreign visitors. but the contention that we have completed the enforcement agenda and now we can move on to the next step is imperrically false. the president made clear this perspective that he thinks enforcement is adequate. a few years ago in el paso in 2011 he spoke on immigration and he said all the stuff they asked for we have done. you know, they said we needed to triple the border patrol. now they are going to say we need to quadruple the border patrol. his point opponents of cir are

moving the goal post or they will want a higher fence. maybe they will need a mote. maybe they will want alligators in the mote. the alligator thing was kind of cute. whoever wrote that for him and put it on the display thing was sharp. i got to give the guy kudos. but it does demonstrate that i think the president actually believes that they have done the enforcement stuff that is necessary to prevent future illegal immigration, in other words that the goal that the conservatives want they have already gotten first and now he wants his goal and the corporate libertarians want their goal. this is objectively false. fencing, it is an important tool. and 1% of our border has double fencing, two layers of fencing which is what border patrol says

we need. much of the rest of the fencing on the border is what they call vehicle barriers. they are only about this tall. your grandma could hop over them. i have pictures of myself hopping over them. they are all inside the united states. i wasn't in mexico. the point is the fencing we have some of it is real a lot of it is for show. and political show in other words, not to show illegal immigrants that we are serious. it's a kind of enforcement theater to make it look like conservatives have gotten what they wanted. the border patrol we have doubled in the past decade. we doubled it i think we may have increased it too fast because what you end up with is watering down the standards for screening standards and you end up with some corruption problems. this happened in washington, d.c. under marion barry, ramped up the size of the metropolitan

police department really fast and ended up with lots of bad apples because they cut corners. we have doubled the border patrol. we needed to do that but the border patrol is 50% smaller than the new york police department. there are 50% fewer people in the u.s. border patrol, canadian border, alaska's border with canada. the whole border patrol has fewer officers than the new york police department. so the idea that it is somehow excessive i don't know if it needs to be bigger or not, but the idea that it is self evidently excessive that we have way more agents than we need is absurd. immigration control isn't just the border. the border is important but it is just one piece of it. close to half of the illegal population came in legally and never left. visa overstays is sort of the

shorthand term for those people. tourists come in as students foreign workers, whatever it is they come in in some means that requires them to leave at some point and they just don't do it. well, we don't have a good means of knowing whether you have left or not. in other words, a check in, a fully functional electronic check in check out system for foreign visitors is a prerequisite for any kind of serious immigration system. we didn't have good check in until 9/11 and then people got all frantic and we actually do a better job of checking people on the way in. we still don't do a good job of checking people on the way out. if you don't know who is left you don't know who is still here. in fact i just heard this a week or two ago from senator carper who was until yesterday at noon chairman of the senate homeland security committee. he said they were pushing the

homeland security department just to develop a text system to send texts to the cell phones of foreign visitors. a month before their period of stay the permission to be here expires saying hope you are having a great time. remember you have to leave in a month. just to let you know. and then a week before, two weeks before. in other words, that kind of thing, visa overstays wouldn't have done it if they had the idea that somebody knows somebody is watching. they know my cell number. i better leave. we don't even do that. maybe we will at some point, but the point is that is an area that just hasn't been finished yet. congress eight times eight times has required in the statute a fully functional entry exit tracking system and it is still not there.

finally, e-verify. it is an online system so that when you hire somebody you are doing the paperwork anyway for irs and social security. you check whether names are real and match. you are checking electronically against government's records whether the person you have hired is a liar or not. and this is functioning. it is actually working pretty well. we used it for years. there is something called e-verify self check where you can e-verify yourself and make sure social security has your name right. and they make sure it is you because they have these series of questions. which of these addresses have you lived at? they have one that is real and three that are fake. stuff like that that really it would be really, really hard for an identity thief to know this stuff, basically impossible. and so that is how they know it is you.

then you e-verify yourself. it's a great idea. the problem is e-verify system is still voluntary. a lot of people use it. something like one-third of new hires last year were screened through e-verify. that means two-thirds weren't. until that is universally used so that all businesses are on an even playing field, all new hires are on an even playing field you can't say we have in place the tools we need. unfortunately, in the place of e-verify in particular the corporate libertarians and liberals have held it hostage to their own objectives. they said we will agree to this only when we get what we want first. that is really in some sense that particular fight over e-verify is the core reason cir has still not succeeded. in fact i think that if the administration and the two factions that support it the

corporate libertarians among the republicans republicans pass on its own it was in place and overcame the courtroom jihad that will be launched against it, once it is out of the way and working there is actually a good chance of something like the rest of cir getting through even though there are parts i don't like but politically speaking the argument against it becomes weaker because e-verify can't magically prevent all illegal immigration. the fact that the pro-cir people have refused to consider e-verify on its own as a prerequisite to anything else, in other words they hold it hostage to any other immigration issues suggests to me a real

lack of commitment to future enforcement. so just very quickly before i go to questions what are we going to see in congress? i think what you are going to see is the effects of obama's unilateral amnesty decrees that he announced two years ago for the illegal immigrants who claim to have come as children. in november the amnesty for illegal immigrants who have u.s.-borne u.s. citizen children. what those represent is a liberal attempt to get their chief objectives without quid pro quo, getting their primary political goal without giving the other sides what their goals are. what you are going to see, i think, in the new republican congress is the enforcement or conservative faction both passing measures to get what

they want. so you are going to see enforcement bills. you will see things like mandatory e-verify bill something called safe act revived. enforcement measure separate from e-verify. you will also see i think, push for increased guest worker visas. tech visas. somebody asked about that. i think it is very possible that could pass. that's one thing that i think is still up in the air. it will be interesting to see. that is something you want to look, if congress passes a bill increasing tech workers which i think is stupid thing, but talking about the politics of it, it could pass very easily. it hasn't up until now because the hispanic caucus has held it hostage to amnesty. i know that because he said to a tech lobbyist i was testifying at a hearing on tech visas and

one of the other witnesses and congressman said to him i'm all for what you want this is great but i have to get an amnesty as part of the deal. now that the republicans control both houses it doesn't matter much what he thinks anymore about h 1 b visas. interesting thing will be to see whether the president would veto a bill like that. it is something his pals want that desperately. and would he veto it and stick his veto pen in their eye or sign it? i don't know what the answer to that is. that will be an interesting question to see. let me stop there. i can rant on for hours and hours. i am sure you all have questions. why don't we go to questions? i have to provoke somebody. [ applause ]

>> we have several questions. it sounded like you said you didn't think the tech visa bill would be a good idea. can you tell us why? >> you could buy my booklet and i explain it a little bit in there. basically the way the visa is the worker visa used mainly for tech workers. it's presented as a best and brightest. there are smart computer people in india and we need to take them here otherwise canada would get them and that is terrible because we don't like canada. i don't know why. i like canada. it is a cheap labor reason. all the research shows that people on h 1 b visas have lower than average skills and lower than average pay given their occupations and the fields they work in. this isn't every h 1 b but no question they are less skilled and lower pay than comparable american workers.

the whole point is cheap labor. there are tools for genuine best and brightest immigration. that's not what h 1 b is. that's not why the tech companies want it. they want cheap code writers that they control. because the companies, the employers own h 1 b workers for all intents and purposes. the reason you get the visa is to get a green card eventually. your employer has to sponsor you for the green card. you can leave your employer. in the old days you couldn't. they changed if you find another employer you can switch. but they have to start the green card process from scratch so they own you for the next six or seven or however many years it takes. it is a kind of indentured servitude and it is a mistake. there is broad support for it because a lot of the congressmen don't know how to turn computers on let alone the way the tech

force works. if some lobbyist says c plus plus whatever, what do you want? it's just astonishing the level of kind of ignorance on the part of lawmakers and the gullibility on this particular issue. so let me -- i will start here and then alternate. >> from harvard university extension school. canada is america's leading trading partner and surprisingly difficult to migrate. do you think it will lead to something like a union in europe between america, canada and possibly even mexico eventually? >> the union isn't going to exist in europe much longer in my opinion so the answer is no. it's easier than a lot of other places for canadians to move here especially for work. there is significant canadian permanent legal immigration in the united states. it is always one of the top ten countries. as far as sort of open free

movement of people back and forth certainly not with mexico, not in our lifetime or children's lifetimes. i don't think even with canada. i have to say probably not. >> thank you. you have talked a lot about the differing political dynamics and attitudes on immigration. i'm wondering if you can speak to the general political attitudes of milineal voters. >> i really not qualified to speak on millennials. i will talk about what i think the public at large thinks. obviously millennials are part of that. i don't buy the idea that there is a significant generational change that will work its way through. young people think one way and when they get older and have a

house and a mortgage and kids their views change. i think the public as a whole actually reflects a combination of what i describe as the liberal and conservative perspectives. what i mean is that poll data shows this and cir people wave around results as though they are definitive that the public broadly is open to amnestying a substantial share of illegal immigrants. they have been here a long time, not dope dealers. when the poll results showing that are presented they are including me which there is not evidence of support for s 744. but the basis of public acceptance -- support might be too much but at least resignation to amnesty

legalization for long-term settled nonviolent illegal aliens the premise of that is that it is the last amnesty. and that again as i said, that's the core of the issue. will the supporters the liberal and corporate libertarians, will they support measures to stop tomorrow's illegal immigration? and the answer as far as i can tell is pretty clearly no. until that changes you're going to end up with a continued stalemate. this is why i have suggested something like in the israel palestine conflict they say we want confidence building measures, small steps so they can agree on the shape of the table. well i think there are small steps that can be confidence building measures that would be mini packages, legalize the

amnesty so the people who have 0q cf1 o daka get green cards. their amnesty is permanent. everybody knows that. it is not a green card yet. make that a green card in exchange for mandatory e-verify and maybe even some tech provision that would make it easier for say phd foreign students after they get their phd to stay. most stay anyway. a mini package like that. and then each side can see whether the other is living up to their side of the bargain. and then you can move to the next thing. trying to do a big bang immigration approach where everybody sort of tries to satisfy all the interest all at once can't work and will never work. >> good morning. my question is in regard to enforcement. so you spoke briefly about an improved check in check out system for persons traveling in and out of the country. is there a way like that tech

service that you were talking about that these persons are kept tabs on? they are supposed to be leaving in a week. they are overdue like a library book or something. what is done at that point if they are here past that date? does somebody kick them out of the country? >> nothing is done now. not much. it's not necessarily even -- it doesn't even necessarily cause you problems in getting a visa in the future. if you overstay for a year and go home and apply for another visa it might effect the office's decision but not necessarily. what you would need is when everybody who overstays they are red flagged. obviously you got to give a little wiggle room. flights get cancelled. if you overstay more than say a month then you are red flagged. and then somebody goes and looks for you or if they do not look for you specifically you're redq

flagged so if you get a new job, this guy is a visa overstayer. if you apply for a driver's license this guy is a visa overstayer. if you apply for benefits or open a bank account, in other words you are flagged and will be identified. frankly once we reduce the illegal population and i am for eventually amnestying some share of them then i am for actually going after them. right now this administration has basically stopped even going after fugitives which is to say people who had deportation orders placed against them and ignored them and stayed. there is something like 900,000 people illegal immigrants in the united states with deportation orders that no one is looking for and never left. you would be fine and you would be thrown out of the country.

and you wouldn't be able to come again legally or something like that. you can have sort of various stages of increasingly strict responses. >> thank you. james central michigan university. the previous speaker stated something to the effect that president obama did these executive orders because he wanted to kind of break the grid lock that was happening in congress and it is kind of creating this big distrust within congress. i know you stated that you believe that the conservatives and also the corporate libertarians will try to push their own bills to interact with the president and the executive orders. do you believe this will create more animosity and distrust or do you think it will force congress to reconsider and revisit a more comprehensive cir

bill? >> no. i mean, the president has with his unilateral amnesty decrees sabotaged any possibility for a cir bill during the rest of his term. there is absolutely no reason for somebody who supports enforcement to believe this administration would actually follow through on those commitments. he has poisoned the well. he knows he has poisoned the well. their calculation is we are not going to get anything else anyway so let's get everything we can get away with unilaterally of our chief goal. and see how much of it sticks. so no the president's decrees are almost by definition the opposite of conciliation and compromise that's necessary for anything to get anywhere. he's completely poisoned -- not just poisoned the well.

you poison the well and put a dead animal down there and it rots and poisons the well. president has just stuffed that well with dead animals. there is no chance that anything substantive and significant is going to get through. it is possible. he might sign an h 1 b bill. i don't think that is impossible. i still doubt that. i'm not sure anything beyond that is going to get signed. we will have two years of this sort of animosity until the 2017 -- until the new president comes in and a new congress and it may continue again. we will see. that we don't know. >> thank you very much, sir. hello from the university of san diego. i know with immigration comes a lot of controversies in regards to the absence of a national language and specifically in regards to immigration from mexico and south america. the requirement for many workers to know spanish for the

positions. i was wondering what you thought of this and whether you think the u.s. is on the pathway to becoming a country where it is necessary to know multiple languages. >> i got into the issue because of the bilingual education thing a long time ago. it bothered me. the reason it bothered me, i grew up speaking armenian. i didn't speak english until kindergarten. the idea that a newcomer would come here and we adjust ourselves to him rather than he adjusting to us is just offensive as well as problematic in terms of national unity. a country like ours has greater need of fostering and nourishing a kind of common patriotic solidarity than countries where everybody is related, denmark or korea. they are members of the same

family. they are all related. distantly but all related. we are not. that is not the way our country works. cultivating the elements of commonality that we do have, language in particular as well as historical memory and the rest of it is doubly imperative. the issue of what i concluded though, is that the idea of pushing say for an official language. pushing for english as official language or constitutional amendment to that effect misses the point. english is the official language. we don't have a thing that says english is the official language. that is not going to change anything. that is a paper barrier like giving the scarecrow a diploma in the wizard of oz and somehow he knows how to do mathematics. we can put in something that says english is the official

language if we keep emitting we will end up with bilingualism regardless of the constitution. the issue is not spanish different than other languages. the thing is that today's immigration is less diverse than any immigration flow in american history. this is the least diverse flow in america's history. when i wrote my previous book in the digital remainder bin at amazon, i looked at the 1910 census in the language there. the immigrants identified languages were european languages but were all different. you had people speaking norwegian and german and italian and yiddish. it was real diversity. we have a very kind of mistaken, i ink the, sense of what diversity is.

immigration in the past was much more diverse because people came from many different language groups and ethnic groups. we have an immigration flow where slightly more than half comes from a single language group. there is obviously lots of differences. there are lots of differences between bovaryns and germans. there are differences. the point is that there is the danger if we continue mass immigration, disproportionately from a single ethnic group of creating a kind of parallel mainstream society that immigrants would assimilate into that version of spanish. you see that clearly in miami. what that -- that is a real problem. it's not for ordained.

if you keep letting in a million people a year much less letting in 2 million people a year you are at least teeing up that kind of social biforication that doesn't work very well in the balkans for instance and i would rather avoid it in my own country. >> thank you. my name is robin gotly. my question is if a path to citizenship were to be created for the illegal immigrants already in the country, what steps could be taken to confront the already existing issue of there being too many children in public schools? >> nothing. i mean, nothing retroactively. prospectively the reductions in immigration, future legal immigration. in fact, i wrote a piece in national review last year where

i kind of laid out how i think we can get to a sustainable equilibrium on immigration policy. what that would be is enforcement tools first and then follow on the bargain would be amnesty in exchange for cuts in legal immigration because reductions in future legal immigration are imperative if our various stressed institutions whether schools, whether inner cities, employment for low skilled workers are to be able to catch their breath and we're going to be able to at least amillier ate the problems. immigration isn't the whole reason for any of those problems but it contributes to it and it is the one that we have the greatest control over. legal immigration is just a government policy, federal government policy like farm subsidies or the small business

administration. congress can change it tomorrow if they want to. and the other things that are responsible for a lot of social issues that we are seeing, the problems we see in our schools and elsewhere are things that we don't really have any idea how to fix, if we have any ability to fix them. immigration we do. so turning the heat down on our stressed institutions by reducing future immigration is imperative but if people are already here they are here. they are us and we have to deal with it. i am from the university of arizona. i found a lot of the topics you brought up rang really true. a lot of the fence you can walk through or trip over and border patrolling or ineffective or corrupt. my questions are do you know how much the budget is for the southern border defense? how much do you think we need to get where you want to go?

and with conservative control in the legislative branch and their battle cry of lower taxes do you think we can raise the funds and how do you think we will? >> let me start by saying my comment about bad apples in border patrol is bad apples. i think politically they ended up ramping up the size too fast for political reasons and you ended up with problems like they are facing. another problem and i'm not sure why they do this. i think this was related to ramping up the numbers as fast as possible. they let border patrol agents who grew up in a region stay and work there. in other words, if you are from south texas and the border patrol is about a third hispanic mexican-american. you need to know spanish. it is a requirement of the job for obvious reasons. if you grew up in south texas and joined the border patrol they sent you to arizona. now you can stay in south texas which means you have relatives that can be manipulated blackmailed and can blackmail

you. there are a lot of problems border patrol is facing. i don't want to get in trouble with the border patrol. we have a lot of respect for the border patrol. as far as numbers go i don't have a magic number. we may have an adequate budget now. the first thing we need to do as far as mexican border goes is change policies there as opposed to just matters of m border patrol now, they are handcuffed handcuffed. if they catch a guy who says i'm a dreamer i'm coming back. you caught me at the border but i grew up here and i'm a dreamer. they have to let him go whether he is a dreamer or not. the border patrol works under policy directives that handcuff its work. the first thing which costs nothing is to do that. there is going to be probably extra expenditure required. for instance there need to be operating bases where border

patrol will put together two container units and have a dorm and eating area and have abe right there. sometimes the border patrol office can be 30, 40 miles inland because some of the places there is no town close to the border. things like this, operational changes, some of which will cost money. how do we raise the money? first of all, you expend what it takes to do what is necessary. first job of a national government is to protect its borders. so just random how about we get rid of the small business administration and fund border control instead? that is not a legislative proposal yet. this is way more important than 90% of what the federal government does. so it's entirely possible to come up with the resources. my point there is that increases resources is probably necessary

but is the secondary concern. changing policy the border patrol works under is the first job. >> thank you. we have time for one more question. >> patrick sweeney from the university of new hampshire. the united states has admitted less than 500 syrian refugees since the conflict began whereas sweden admitted 17,000 and germany admitted 40,000. do you think the united states has a greater burden to protect these persecuted minorities on the international stage? >> protecting them through importing them to the united states? no. refugee resettlement has been much too extensively used. refugee resettlement in third countries. it's a mistake for most of the people we take in as refugees. it is a mistake for us to do it. it is not a mistake for them.

it works great. it must be limited to only people who literally have nowhere else to go and don't have anywhere right now to be and never will. the vast majority of people we take even syrians there are thousands of syrians coming into the pipeline of the united states, they have somewhere to go whether it is turkey or jordan or whether it is lebanon. those countries don't like it obviously. they are hard pressed in dealing with it. if we have an interest in this i'm happy to help them deal with their refugee issues, but taking somebody who now is in a temporary situation 25 miles from their home country and moving them to the other side of the planet is not a policy we should be pursuing. in fact, our state department has come to use refugee resettlement as a kind of tool of diplomacy. if there is a minority group

somewhere that is kind of sand in the gears of the politics of that country we volunteer to let them over to the united states. as an example the somali bandtooths ancestors kidnapped and enslaved by the arabs and they are treated like garbage by the somalis. they came from what is now tanzania. tanzania offered to resettle them. they said they are our long lost cousins. we will take them back but the u.s. has to give money to help resettle. state department said we will just move them to the united states instead. it is an absurd mistake even for

them. instead of being resettled in a place where they are already a place that is familiar to them to some degree, actually they are tied to it ethnically we are moving them to the other side of the planet and a society. these are people living on dirt floors and never saw water faucets and light switches into something completely disorienting. it is bad for us and bad for a lot of refugees we end up taking. we need to completely reassess our thinking on refugee resettlement. coming up today here on c-span 3 the air force will hold a press briefing at the pentagon with air force secretary and chief of staff general mark welsh. watch that briefing live at 2:00 p.m. eastern. on c-span we will be live with house speaker john boehner and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell as they speak at the house and senate republican retreat. see that briefing live from

pennsylvania at 2:30 eastern time. with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2 here we compliment the coverage by showing the most relevant congressional hearings and public affairs events. on weekends c-span 3 is the home of american history tv. anniversary, visiting battlefields and key events. american artifacts to discover what artifacts reveal. history book shelf the presidency looking at policies and legacies. lectures in history with top college professors. and our new series real america featuring archival government and educational films from the 1930s through '70s.

funded by your local cable or satellite provider. back now to the washington center for discussion on the federal budget and national debt. we will hear from a former clinton administration budget official and a budget adviser to former senator bill fris. this is an hour and a half. >> so thanks for having us today. i'm going to invite bill to the stage. we are waiting on our other panelist panelist. bill is with me at the bipartisan policy center. we have his bio in front of you. i will be fairly brief but he has served in a number of different government offices ranging from the staff director on the senate budget committee where he served for 17 years i

believe. he was also one of the first employees at the congressional budget office in the 1970s and served as the administrator of the federal food and nutrition services. and now he is senior vice president of the policy center and oversees the economic project and projects on financial regulation and health care and things that have to do with the federal budget and spending. thanks very much. eager to have this conversation with you and hopefully joe will be joining us. >> kind of easy to be bipartisan when there is nobody else here. >> so we will jump around a little bit today. the title of the panel is financing the american dream which is a pretty broad topic. i just wanted to start with overarching statistics which some of you have probably heard before. each year about $3.5 trillion

give or take a little under that. it spends closer to $4 trillion at this point. right now there is a budget deficit of $4 billion to $5 billion which is expected to increase significantly in the coming years. under this about $4 trillion of government spending there are about 15 departments dozens of agencies and bureaus and then under those agencies and bureaus, hundreds of different programs if not thousands. so it's interesting when you sum all these up that about five of those, one of the departments three of the programs and then another line item in the budget constitute more than two-thirds of all of that spending out of those hundreds, maybe thousands of programs. i wanted to give everyone about 30 seconds to jot down what you think that department three programs and one line item are. some of you are probably familiar with it. why don't you write those down

and we will ask a couple of you after that. does anyone want to take a stab? absolutely social security is one of them. that is made up of both disability insurance part and the old age part that is probably more well known. that is a big chunk of the federal budget. medicare and medicaid are actually two programs. those are the three programs. social security, medicare and medicaid. defense is the department. and who can guess the last one, the line item in the budget? that's the toughest one.

it is sort of tricky but the interest payments we make on the debt. even though those are fairly low right now because we have record low interest rates the interest we pay is undernow, i think, in normal times that's up at four, five, maybe higher. once that goes back up, that line-item will get even bigger. it is already one of the five biggest we have in the federal budget. so that just goes to show that out of all of the priorities that we fund through the federal government, a big majority of them is just in those five pieces. and a lot of that goes to retirees, medicare, and social security almost go entirely to the older generations. the interests on the debt goes to the people who own our debt and then you got defense, which goes to protecting the entire country and medicaid which goes to specific well income populations. but, bill, i wanted to start on that and get your thoughts as to when we're prioritizing our spending and thinking about how good a job we do with the $4 trillion that taxpayers largely contribute to funding our

priorities as a nation, what do you see when you think about those five items and the other priorities that we have in the federal budget? >> well, first of all, i think that -- first of all good afternoon, everyone. good to be here. i want to just check something out here real quickly. i was talking to one of your advisers at the beginning. somebody from purdue here a purdue boilermaker? penn state? any penn staters? my gosh, i'm out of luck here completely. i'll go one more, united states merchant marine academy? >> bill only has been to three different schools. >> one of them, okay, good. well, let me just pick up where shai is headed here in terms of those are the major spending programs. in fact, i like to say you can go back and impress your fellow students, your parents, your professors by saying you can put the whole damn federal budget for all practical purposes on one hand.

it is social security, medicare medicaid, defense, and paying interest on the public debt. you add up those five things defense being in there you add up those five things, that's about the total amount, a little off here now, but basically that's the total amount of revenues that we take in just for those five programs. there is something like 2,700 accounts in the federal budget. when people and i'm sure back home most people think, well, i think of the government as transportation, education research, science, national academy of sciences, national institutes of health, the department of commerce, tsa, you think about all of those activities the federal government is involved in and yet almost all of our revenues that come in on an annual basis go just for those five programs. you could do away with the department of agriculture you could do away with the department of commerce, you can do away with congress you can do away with the white house.

you still would not be able to come to closure given the mismatch here between revenues and those five programs. and as i look forward going forward here over the next ten years, decade 85% of the growth in spending will just be in three areas. it will be in -- already identified it social security the health care programs medicare and medicaid and interest on the public debt. that's where the growth in spending goes. those are -- to me, they're what we call entitlements. you heard the term. i personally -- i guess you're the millennials, right? you're the millennials, you consider yourself to be the entitlement generation. i have to tell you i'm a post war baby boomer i'm the entitlement generation. i'm the one that gets the social security. i'm the one that gets the medicare/medicaid. and you don't get it as it is

currently projected. i'm going to guess here, i'm a little off on this, i'm sure i'm going to say about the average -- let's say early 20s most of you in the room here, right? i assume that's close. close enough, okay. i was doing quick calculations. i presume in your studies so far you identified that social security is a -- what we call a trust funded program. i don't like the word trust funded because i don't trust the government and it is not funded. but it is -- but the program itself will exhaust all of its assets by 2033. just doing a quick calculation. if there is anybody that should be concerned, it is you guys, because you're coming right at the time i guess most of you will be in your 40s and mid-40s, that's when the program right

now can only pay out that which comes in in the way of payroll taxes. it will go to a pay as you go, meaning the projected revenues projected benefits that we normally get will be reduced by nearly 20% to 30%. that's you guys. not me. it's you. and so you should be concerned about that particular program as it relates to your retirement. as shai mentioned, filling in here filibustering until my -- by the way, i'm the republican, all cards on the table, i work for republicans. my friend joe minarik is the democratic colleague who has chosen to abandon us right now. but i would simply say that's -- that in terms of going forward we have to find a way, first of all, to address that issue of

how do we -- we're not going to reduce expenditures for those in retirement today or close to retirement. i presume you've been meeting with your -- some of your representatives and some of your senators and your staff. the one thing you -- that i discovered in my years in this town is you don't take away those benefits when they are paid out. that's -- you may try to tweak them but that's pretty politically charged. what it means is it means changing the benefits before they're paid out, and that mean s what you think you would be getting in the future has to be modified, in other words, to make the program solvent going forward. however, in terms of priorities, the question, in terms of

priorities, i will simply say that medicare/medicaid, harvard, harvard people here right? okay. i -- you saw yesterday's "new york times," front page "new york times," about health care, the faculty at harvard who had advised on health care, health care fix -- fixes backed by harvard experts now roil the faculty at harvard, they're all upset about the changes to health care at harvard. my daughter worked for kennedy school, so i have to be careful about this very good zñ what was proposed in health care reform, by harvard professors, now they're mad at it because it is being implemented the biggest problem i see going forward in terms of spending still remains health care.

even with affordable care act. the fastest growing component of expenditures over the next ten years will be in the federal exchanges for the subsidies for those up to 400% of poverty that are in -- that participate. >> so, bill, as you lined out with the health care growing and the baby boomers coming into social security, so that's growing, and potentially the interest payments that we talked about earlier growing, a quote you often give me is that this is all crowding out our seed corn for the future. and so what do you think that means in terms of other investments in education or scientific research or infrastructure? >> that portion of the budget take -- set aside defense, about one-third of the federal budget is in the -- what we call the discretionary component of the budget. about 17 18% of it is in what we call nondefense discretionary. and that is shai says it is what

i consider being a farm boy from indiana, i consider to be the seed corn of the future. that is research. that is education. that is science. that is investment in the infrastructure and growth in transportation and science, technology. and that is capped right now and it will remain capped until those other programs are softened their take on the federal taxpayer. now, listen all this could be handled easily, you could say, by just increasing taxes. i think you're here welcome to washington. not a popular subject. i do think tax reform is necessary. i do think there are ways to make the tax code a lot more efficient. but we're already taking in

about 20% of our gdp in federal taxes, not to speak about state local taxes. it is tough. but at the end of the day, i'll have to say i think it is a -- my democratic colleague here, good, thank you. going to challenge me on this. i'll just say we can't increase taxes. >> what a warmup, bill. >> so, joe, here, just came back from vacation so hewe can't blame him for being late, i threw this on him at the last minute and he agreed to participate. joe i consider my utility man because he is the person you go to when you have a question on the budget and almost definitely has your answer. the only way i paid him for all these favors over the years is with free kupz ofcups of coffee at our office, which i assume he has a mediocre supply of coffee