same. i just ant to say that -- want to say that this isn't about the senate bill. we can draft one here in the house of representatives. we have the skill and knowledge and fortitude to get us through those debates and discussions. and so it not about amnesty. i look at the senate bill and i say we really want it. 20, 25 ying 10, 15, years. every scent that an undocument t person like your mother has spent and sent to thes is trust fund gone, confiscated in the senate bill, 10, 25 years. i came to congress to have comprehensive healthcare for everybody. gone. 10 years you want to get

legalized, don't expect a scent subsidy and pay every tax imaginable. and in ten years forget about bringing your brothers or sisters because those are gone. then if that wasn't enough 20,000 more border patrol agents. but it's worth it what you're doing. what we're doing is worth it. i want to extend another hand to the other side of the aisle to say all of those things i don't like them, but i'm ready to accept them because the alternative is the kind of pain that you hear that young lady. and you have to multiply what they said here millions of times. i want you to think of those millions of tears every day, the pain and devastation that exist in our community. thank you for the personal testimony and for humanizing this issue for all of us.

that's going to help inform this committee better than any statistics ever can. >> i thank the gentleman from illinois. the chair recognizes the gentleman from idaho. >> thank you mr. chairman. mentally greed veem with one thing and that is my mom is the best. i just have a few questions for you. i appreciate both of you testifying today. i want to talk about the realities of immigration, the immigration that we're currently living under. are you familiar with the immigration system back in columbia what it's like? >> i'm not. >> do you know what would happen if i entered the country illegally today in columbia? >> no, sir. >> do you know what happened to my kids that i would bring into columbia illegally? >> i would submit to you the treatment would be vastly

different than the treatment you and your family received here in the united states. now since you came before us and i don't like to ask personal questions but you've testified about personal issues. you said you're a u.s. citizen correct. and your mom can't come here. how is that possible? >> my mom when i was a sophomore in college she was pulled over for a minor traffic and ion, was then arrested she was then arrested and at some point ice got involved. she was taken to a detention center. unfortunate for us at the time i was not aware of all the different things -- >> i want to clarify something.

she was arrested, she was returned to columbia is that correct? >> she was taken to a detention center and then a couple months later she was. >> you're over the age of 21? >> not at the time. >> but today you are. >> why can't you apply for her? >> i have. >> her visa was approved in the u.s. and then she was denied. >> do you know why she was denied. >> she said for leaving the country there is a ten-year ban. >> did you file a waiver? >> my father -- >> he has. >> and they haven't approved that yet? >> no. >> but there say way for your mom to come if you file a waiver and all those things. and the only point i'm trying to make i'm not trying to embarrass you is one of the things we're talking about doing here in the house of

representatives is removing some of these wavers that are preventing people who have been removed from the united states from coming back legally. and that's something if we could pass in some legislation that would actually help you and your family and it's one of the things i'm trying to accomplish. now in your testimony you said some things that i found frankly a little bit hard to understand. you said if congress were to adopt an incomplete solution that would provide a path to citizenship but something less for our parents it's like saying i can be one of you but my parents can never be. and you said do we want to give our parents a seat at the back of the bus type of legalization? it's highly inaccurate and a little dismissive of our current immigration system.

are you familiar with the hb-1 at all? >> no. h-1 i came legally as an b workers in the high-tech industry or requires a college degree and i had children in the yilets, they would become citizens but i would not be necessarily -- i don't have a right to become a citizen of the united states. i could apply for citizenship but there is nothing that technically says i have to become a citizen. there are millions of people who come to the united states who have children and they still have to leave even though they came here legally. are you aware of that? >> i did not know that. >> it would not be treating your family different than millions of people who come legally to the united states and they don't have a right to stay in the united states. i want to find a way to help

the 11 million. i don't have a problem with that. but to come here to congress and say that we're putting your parents in the back of the bus when we're treating -- we would treat them the same as anybody else who came here legally who doesn't have a right to citizenship, i think you need to rethink your rhetoric. because there are people here legally that don't become citizens of the united states and they have children here and have the same values and beliefs and everything that you have. but the law does not allow them to become citizens but yet they can stay here as guest workers in many many industries. i want to find a solution for this problem. i want us to treat everybody fairly. like i said in my opening statement the most important thing for me is the rule of law. making sure we prevent having this problem again 10 or 20 years from now. that's not fair to either one

of you. if we continue to have these problems then there will be another both of you who is going to be coming here to congress and telling us about their families and how their families need to have a new legal status. i want to help you and help your families but most importantly i want to fix the problems we have so we don't have to have this conversation again. thank you very much for being here today. >> the chair will recognize the gentle lady from texas. >> let me thank the chairman. and i join with the idea that whenever we make steps toward improving lives and act as legislators we are really doing the right thing because that is the challenge and the charge we've been given in this congress is to fix america's problems. i want to acknowledge my

appreciation for all of the witnesses. but i do want to thank in the two ladies because along with your knowledge there are personal stories that are being told. and i can't thank you enough for discussing something so personal. and i think if we can all appreciate each other's humanity that what we're talking about is not the nuts and bolts of moving checkers on a board or which he is on a which he is board but we're talking about human lives. and i believe that we have held human lives in the balance too long. this has been going on too long. d the key to this is not esupposing or predicting

disaster and devastation but to look at the senate bill as a marker in terms of attempting to frame the relief this time so that we don't have the idea of someone being able to say this will happen again. dr. duke, i want to suppose this question to you. we thank you for representing the southern baptist this morning. we were with the evangelicals who have made a commitment and emembraced people of different faith and they believe it's time to move on the human aspect of it. as you listened to them you know there say comprehensive pathway to citizenship. there is a crack in the armor

when you suggest that you'll take the children. i know some years back the ranking member and myself worked on the idea of what kind of facilities children are in, young people in r in under the age of majority previously in detention centers, it wasn't a pretty scene. it wasn't a pretty scene when you had to separate families. so the human question rose. the idea of human trafficking which i know the church has worked on is vast. ere is a huge problem of human trafficking. do you see the value in taking the comprehensive approach and regular liesing family members, agriculture workers, tech workers, other skill workers that really reigning in what i

think our friends have bven speaking of in this hearing? >> yes, we believe we do need to address the entire 11 million or so undocumented immigrants here that the family unification is an important aspect of immigration reform. the question for our with this particular question on these particular children to us is a little different than their parents simply because the children didn't break any laws. so i don't see how you can address the parents who did break laws of that group differently than you address the other parents of who broke the law. hat needs to be addressed in a package that you are working on and we're hopeful you continue to work on. these particular children just become one part of the entire

package that does ultimately ensure us a family unit. >> so you can support comprehensive immigration reform? >> yes, we support a full immigration reform. >> can you talk to me both about the pain of separation from parents or the pain that young people have? we'll start with you, the pain that you're experiencing of not having your mother here? ? assume she's in columbia >> yes, ma'am. it's very difficult. it's the little things that add up, birth days, celebrations, graduations, weddings, all sorts of things that become harder and harder. it's having to see my sister who is unable to visit her suffer and see that the only

way that she can interact with my mom is through a computer camera. so it's incredibly difficult. as i said in my testimony it affected me while i was in school. i had to reach out to my college of liberal arts to my counselors and let them know what was going on because i could not concentrate. i was a college undergrad student trying to understand immigration law which is just about impossible, filing paperwork. it's very difficult. >> i can only imagine what it would be to not have my parents with me. my younger brothers -- yeah, it would be devastating. and the pain in the community exists. we have several families in the state of arkansas that are battling that. and i can only imagine what parents would feel like leaving

their u.s. sid children and going back to a place they haven't been to in a long time. we have another case where there are two uzz citizen and their parent is in a detention center waiting to be deported. i can see the pain in her eyes that she has whenever she talks to me about her dad and how much she misses him. so the thought of not being there is terrifying to me. >> thank you. >> i'm yielding back and saying that congress' duty is to fix these problems even if they are pretty tough. >> the chair will recognize the gent from california. >> i would ask unanimous con stheant we make a part of the record statements from the

congressional asian pacific caucus, the campaign for children, the american civil liberties union, the asian americans advancing justice, he anti-defamation league. a poll from last week from the fwal lop organization on immigration as even by americans. >> without objection. >> the gentleman from nevada. >> thank you mr. chairman. i want to associate myself with the remarks of my colleague from texas although i wish mr. guter rass was still here. i wanted to talk to him about teaching people to drive. since he's not we'll skip that part. during the course of this hearing we've heard i don't

want my parent left behind, so this doesn't happen again. the package comprehensive and everybody has concentrated on what the problem is now and rightfully so. but we don't have that luxury of just concentrating on that. your circumstances have been well represented and i'll tell you quite frankly i personally believe the hardest thing for anybody to do is go back to the people they represent and say we did nothing. does anybody on the panel think that what is going on now is okay and nothing status quo is okay? record should reflect nobody answered in the affirmative. so let me ask you this: i want to ask you to branch out beyond your personal circumstances, wanting your parents together and all that stuff which is understandable and human nature. what was -- do you have any knowledge of what the thought

process was when your mom said you know what, i'm going there and i'm staying and i'm taking my two-year-old -- the age doesn't really matter. and i'm asking the question in the context of because one of e toughest things is justify in 1986 they dealt with it. in 2013 we're going to deal with it hopefully. so now we're 10 or 15 years down the road. how do you make sure nobody comes here 10 or 15 years from now and has to silt where you are. what is the piece and with all due respect the border is in texas to california. there is a gulf and a few coasts. what is your thought of how do you make sure this doesn't happen again once we deal with this group? any suggests?

>> i think that's your responsibility. you all hold the answer to what we're going through. >> when you come and say i want a comprehensive thing but you can't say i have nothing to give you on the other part. i mean you can but then you risk whatever we come up with which i think would scare the heck out of you. >> to answer the first part of that question, columbia in the 1980's and 1990's was a very scary place to be so my parents did what i think any parent would do is they tried to give us every opportunity and they wanted to get us out of there because it was just so dangerous. so to now address the second part of your question, it's very difficult to say how you ix this problem.

but i know that you guys are incredibly talented and you may think that say copout but i think that sitting down and talking this out you can figure it out. >> thank you for acknowledging that and the folks on the south side of the building should have a shot at that as well as the folks from the north side of the building. >> any thoughts? what have other countries done? what do you do so you don't keep turning the wheel and having new groups that are disenfranchised because our current system obviously isn't working? >> i'm not involved in a lot of these different areas of work in my organization but you may be aware we've published extenive analysis of border systems. we have done work looking at how other countries are handling these issues also. we've done a great deal of analysis.

>> briefly can you summarize. >> you know there are no answers -- >> thank you unanimous so far. >> thanks for your question. it is a great question how do we never come back here again. there will probably always be some people here illegally. we will probably never get 100% security. the workplace is a draw. if you can put in some sort of e verify that certainly will deal with a lot of it. we need a better way to track visas as well so folks aren't overstaying their visas. it's offensive folks who gave their word they would only be here a certain amount of time have overstayed their visas so you should address that as well and of course border security would help as well. >> thank you very much. > the chair will now recognize

myself. i never even thought about trying to take new testament but several colleagues have made reference to the bible and a couple named joseph and mary immigrated to egypt when herod was looking for their son. in the gospel of matthew. i want to ask you this because this vexes me from an equity or fairness standpoint. i never understood why god preferred e saw over jacob or why they killed the fatted calf for the prodigal son when the other did it exactly right. he didn't squander his fortune. he did exactly what his father asked him to do. imagine a couple in columbia with a daughter as bright and beautiful as this young lady.

and they did it the way we asked them to do it. what are the equities of jumping anyone ahead of them in line? >> thanks for the question. it is a tough question and your question is about how to understand those particular situations in the bible are still being debated and will be until the lord returns i'm sure. so you're not alone in trying to sort through some of those things. i think the really tiss is we have a situation nobody wants but it's a real situation we're dealing with. we have 11 million people here. we cannot continue them to live in the circumstances they are living in. it's not right for them or in our country's best interest so we theed to address that. if we're going to secure the border we're going to trap 11 million people here. we need to not consign them to

lives of poverty and their children and their children after them. so it's more of a tract cal question then what you do with folks in line trying to get here when you already have 11 million here. you could say you have 11 million here and those other folks at least they are making a living wherever they are. at least they have some degree of support wherever they are rather than us trying to drive these other folks out of here. we have to address this situation. we can't ignore it and act as though it doesn't exist. when we talk about getting permanent legal status or citizenship they should get at the end of the line for everybody who already has their paperwork in. it should go in and be active after all of these other folk who is have already applied in that process. some folks will be a long time in that pro says unless you want to speed up how quickly we can process people for

citizenship. >> i think all of the witnesses have made tronchese 11 million. i hear it everywhere i go as if it's a homm genius group and we know it's not. you made reference several times to the 11 million. would you agree with me that those members of the 11 million who can't pass a background check shouldn't be on a path to anything other than deportation? >> maybe the people that don't pass a background check but i believe there should be a pathway for the majority of the 11 million. >> that's different than what you said earlier. >> my point is all 11 million can't pass any background check. all 11 million from peachers to members of congress can't pass a background check so why persist with a talking point of 11 million when we know that's disingenuous. all 11 million don't want to be u.s. citizens.

all 11 million can't pass a background check. if you son seed that then we get to the details of what the background check is going to look like. for instance if you have a conviction for domestic violence should you be on a path to citizenship or deportation? >> i can only argue for my sake and my parents' sake -- >> no. you advocated on behalf of 11 million. you are not a difficult fact pattern so the talking point of 11 million ashiring americans. i'm not interested in that. i'm down in the details of what does a background check look like. do you think a conviction of domestic violence should disqualify them from a path to citizenship? >> that's up to you all to decide. >> if it's up to us then why do

icons standly here 11 million if it's one group. why? why not say what you said which is there are subgroups which warrant different levels of scrute 234i. for instance children who were brought here with no criminal intent. that levels one scrutiny. the parents who brought them here levels another level of scrutiny. those who have misdemeanor convictions have a different level, those who have felony convictions have a different level of scrutiny. why is that not the more honest response than to talk about 11 million? >> i'm not in a position to talk about who deserves what. how would you decide one person decuves one thing another person doesn't? >> it's not hard for me.

i spent 12 years prosecuting domestic violence. the devil is in the details. the bright line people don't have any trouble with that. the devil is in the details. i'm out of time. i'll say this on behalf of all four of you were very good persuasive witnesses. even if i don't agree necessarily with everything that is said. i think you are here in good faith. you've contributed to the debate. when i see quotes like i did today from someone named dan who apparently works for the president, i think it's the same dan that said the law is irrelevant. and he tweeted out today that our plan is to allow some kid to stay but deport their parents. he summarized this entire debate with that tweet. so i want to compliment you and ank you for not being adom

godge i can self-serving political hack who can't be elected to a parent advisory committee much less congress which is what he is. i want to thank you for not being that and understand these are complex issues where reasonable minds can perhaps differ. and with that, on behalf of all of us, i thank you for contributing to this issue. does the ranking member wish to say something in conclusion? >> no, i would just say that i do thank once again the witnesses for their testimony and i think that it has advanced the cause of justice forward. and you're right, these are complicated questions but i think you're also right they are not so complicated that we can't figure them out. so i would like to pledge once again my interest in working with the chairman to reform the

laws. they are a mess from top to bottom and hopefully we can fix them from top to bottom. i yield back. >> i thank the gentle lady. >> we've had this hearing and we appreciate it. do you know whether there will be a series of hearings or will we move to full committee? what can we perceive to be the next steps? >> i appreciate the i will be happy to chat with the chairman and give you an answer. >> i yield back. >> thank you for the witnesses and with our indulgences, i would like to come down and thank you in person. with that, we are adjourned. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

if you missed any of this house judiciary committee meeting, we are showing it again sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. eastern or you can watch at any time at c-span.org. >> the treatment of hunger strikers at guantánamo compromises the core ethical values of our medical profession. endorsed theong principle that every competent the right to refuse medical intervention. the world medical association and the international red cross have determined that were speeding through the use of restraints is not only an ethical violation but it contravenes article three of the geneva conventions. concern is that we should set aside the numbers that you might

or might not feel you can safely push out. are an unknown number, the president says 46, but you can never try. do you honestly think the people behind me and the people .ppellate in this hearingwww release ofor thewwwwuuw those prisoners because they are yucca-wwwwwwwwwwww- states?nitedwwwwwww understand.oó toooooog it broughtwwwwwwñ pros, incarceration, or medical treatment. they pose no threat. the 86 menu have been cleared for transfer should be transferred. we must find lawful dispositions war detainees as we haveççl done in every conflict. span,is weekend on c-

looking at the implications of closing the guantanamo bay at 10:00 a.m.y eastern. on book tv, live coverage of the roosevelt reading festival from , newmuseum in hyde park york. life on c-span 3 american history tv, president obama and defense secretary chuck hagel commemorate the 60th anniversary of the korean war armistice also saturday morning at 10:00. >> next, a discussion about immigration with a panel of economists from the cato institute arguing that immigrants provide a boost to the economy and reducing growth and jobs. this is an hour and a half. >> good app or noon. thank you for coming today. policyex and i am the analyst at the cato institute. talkis exciting time to

about economics and the impact of immigration. recently, the senate passed an immigration reform bill and you have representatives currently debating similar proposals in their chamber right now. this is an important time or you can bring in some of the experts and main academics to work on this topic and hear what they have to say about immigration in general and to share some of the insights of their research with us today. i want to say that it's a pleasure for me to be appear to introduce these three economists who i have cited extensively in my own work on this issue. since you did not come here to hear me talk about it, i will begin right away with an introduction. our first presenter will be professor madelin zavodny, the chair the economics department of agnes scott college in atlanta. she is a fellow at the american enterprise institute. her interests include economics

of the family and immigration. she has published in dozens of academic journals, my favorite being "beside the golden door." our second presenter ethan lewis, a research fellow at the national bureau of economic research. previously he worked at the federal reserve bank of philadelphia. his research interest includes the interplay of different economic factors of production, the impact of technology and education on labor markets, and immigration. professor lewis has written almost a dozen pieces that have appeared in journals as well as numerous book chapters and other publications, most notably "analyzing how immigrants and american workers work together

in the american labor market." our final presenter will be michael clemens, who leads migration and development initiative at the center of global development. he has served as professor of public policy at georgetown, as well as a consultant for numerous aid organizations. his research interests include the effects of foreign aid on economic development and trying to judge techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of projects. he is trying to identify the determinants of capital flows and, in recent years, with immigration, on immigration, with focus on global implications of loosening

immigration restrictions. his papers have been published in numerous outlets, including academic journals. his 2011 paper in the journal of economic perspectives catapulted him overnight into the who's who of economics. without further ado, i will begin with our first presenter, professor zavodny. [applause] >> many thanks to cato for organizing this event. it could not be more timely. i will talk about the case for highly skilled immigrants. this is incredibly easy to make, and if you do not believe me, hopefully you will in 20 minutes. let me start with the caveat when i say highly skilled, i mean highly educated. this is not to denigrate or not give credit to the talents less

educated workers have. it is the shorthand you hear when talking about education is to call it skilled. it is important to recognize that workers throughout the distribution do have skills. i will talk about the highly educated. what will i talk about? i will give you an overview of immigrant skill levels and how they compare to those of the u.s. natives, and i will talk about highly skilled immigrants in the labor market, and what economic research tells us about their contributions to the economy and about policies, since that is what is on the agenda these days in congress. what this figure shows you is the educational distribution of the foreign born workforce.

if you took all immigrants, defined as anyone who is not a u.s. citizen at birth, and look at the distribution across educational categories for most recent data available, this is what it would look like. what do you see? it looks like immigrants are relatively low education, that the preponderance of the most common group is not having a high school diploma or ged. when you look at u.s. natives in contrast, they look like this. what is interesting to take away from this is u.s. natives are relatively unlikely to be in the no high school degree category, the one on the far left. why? we have compulsory education laws that requires everyone to go to school in the united states until 16 or 18. most people end up getting their diploma. they recognize there is a high return to getting a ged, so they go on and get it.

most of u.s. natives are in the high school diploma or ged, some college, or bachelor's degree category, and small percentages are in the masters or professional degrees or in the ph.d. category. what you should walk away from this with is the comparison of immigrants to natives. what this figure shows is the relative share of immigrants to the share of natives. it is taking the first figure and dividing by the second figure. it is comparing the two. immigrants are disproportionately at the extreme. they are particularly likely to be at the no high school degree level, not a surprise when you think about the fact that almost 1/3 of immigrants are from

mexico, latin america, or other relatively poor countries. look what happens when you look at the other side of the educational distribution. the percent of ph.d.'s, immigrants are twice as likely as u.s. natives to have a ph.d. and just as likely to have a master's or professional degree. then you look at immigrants, they are at the ends of the labor market. this is where the economic contributions come in him a these comparative advantages that immigrants have, that they are different from u.s. natives. let's think about highly skilled immigrants in the labor market. one of the concerns u.s. natives have is they compete with natives were jobs, and natives are either less likely to have a job or when they have a job they earn lower wages. this seems like common sense, and you hear anecdotes -- my brother lost a job because competition from immigrants. when you go through and

systematically look at the data, there is surprisingly little evidence of negative effects on competing or similar u.s. workers. when you look at highly skilled immigrants, the only research that finds a significant negative effect on wages among highly skilled workers, those who have beyond a college degree, is published in the quarterly journal of economics. when you look at the preponderance of the evidence, article after article finds lots of evidence of zeros, and some evidence of positive effects that has went out in a paper published in labor economics that looks like immigrants are complementary to higher skilled natives. when you look at low skilled immigrants, those who are at the

bottom of the educational distribution, there is more evidence of negative effects, things are still very mixed here, it would be very difficult to walk away from the economics literature with the conclusion that immigrants hurt impeding natives in the labor market. i want to talk about h-1b visas. h-1b visas are these temporary visas for specialized workers. what the research in this area shows clearly there is no compelling evidence by economic research that h-1b holders harm similar natives. research shows that h-1b workers actually earn more than similar natives, that they are not undercutting u.s. natives in the market.

my research for the federal reserve bank in atlanta shows these workers have no negative effects on unemployment or on wages in the i.t. sector, where most workers work. there is research done published in the review of economic statistics in 2012 that shows h- 1b workers reduce wages among college graduate u.s. natives. my research for the american enterprise institute shows the number of h-1b workers is possibly related to total employment when you look at everyone, you see positive job effects from having more h-1b workers. when you talk to people in the high-tech industry, and they are

concerned about h-1b workers, it looks more like an age story than an immigrants story. people who are having difficulty getting jobs are older workers. some of them are foreign-born as well as native-born. the idea that we will attribute what is going on in the industry does not hold up in the data. why don't we see more negative effects? there is a lot of possibilities. one is that u.s. natives might move into different jobs as a result of immigration, and this is what research showed, that u.s. natives moved into the comparative advantage as result of immigration by the low skilled and high skilled immigrants. it is possible u.s. natives move across areas, and this is what other research shows, that u.s. natives move to different places when immigrants are moving into their local area. there is research that suggests the competition from highly skilled immigrants comes when they speak english very well.

the fact that a lot of high skilled immigrants in high-tech fields are not fluent in english reduces how substitutable they are for u.s.-born workers. another possibility and the most important one here is highly skilled workers do not harm competing or other u.s. native job opportunities because highly skilled immigrants create jobs, via other innovative activities. what is the research? if we turn to job creation, my report for the partnership for the new american economy shows if you increase the number of foreign-born advanced degree holders in the united states, for every 100 more of them, total u.s. employment increases by 44. if those foreign-born holders happen to work instead and have a degree from a u.s. university, from 100 more of them, you get 262 more u.s. jobs from u.s. natives. there's job creation going on, not just for the immigrants, but for u.s. natives as result of having more highly skilled immigrants. business creation.

what research by others show here is about 1/4 of high-tech startups and half of the high- tech startups in silicon valley have at least one key immigrant founder, that immigrants are playing an important role in the high-tech industry. what other research shows is that immigrants are more likely to have started a firm with at least 10 employees than u.s. natives are when we look at college graduates. so they are creating jobs, creating businesses. they are innovating as well. research shows immigrants are twice as likely to patent as a college graduate u.s. natives are.

they work in stem and are in innovative fields. other research shows not only are immigrants more likely to patent and innovate then natives, but there is no crowd out or negative effects going on among u.s. natives. if anything, it looks like there's positive spillovers among u.s. natives. research shows that when you have more h-1b workers you have higher productivity growth, that if you look at foreign-born stem workers they can account for 1/4 of the increase in productivity growth in the 1990's and during the early 2000/s. highly immigrants are net fiscal contributors, that they are paying more in taxes than receiving and government benefits. in this era when we are worried about social security and medicare and outsized government deficits, it is important to

have them. when we think about policy implications from this, they are clear, that we would want more highly skilled immigrants, creating jobs, creating businesses, patenting, innovating. one thing that is important recognize is the foreign students, the graduate level, and the h-1b program are critical entry points for this population, that most of them are not coming over as green cards. they are not coming as unauthorized immigrants. these programs ensuring that there are ways for foreign students to enter and get visas, and then stay in united states is very important if we want to get the jobs and business creation benefits of highly skilled immigrants. when you think what are the problemsnt policy

that with the senate legislation addressed, there are very long waits for green cards, hundreds of thousands of highly skilled immigrants waiting, mostly in the united states on h-1b visas to get a green card, and they are waiting for many years, particularly if they are from china, india, the philippines, or mexico, because of the country cap said no one country can receive more than 7% of green cards right now. the senate bill would change that since that is a very good thing to get rid of these country caps and end the queues that stretch for years and years. what i tell my students is if you want to remain in the united states, how should they remain, they should marry a u.s. native, and it is sad i have to tell them that, not consistent with the type of visas they are on, but our immigration policy is messed up when your best way to stay in the united states is to marry a u.s. native. i would like to say low skilled and less educated immigrants play an important role in our economy as well. we should not forget about their

economic contributions. please to not take any of this as not saying that low skilled immigrants matter as well. thank you. [applause] >> hi. i'm ethan lewis. thank you. thank you for having me here. it is great to talk here. what i want to talk about his benefits and costs of immigration on low skilled immigration, so the benefits and costs of immigration is a big topic. i will not discuss all the benefits and costs. i will focus on two pieces of my own research and what they contribute. i want to start with a broad overview, and i will copy some of madelin's facts on this in order to set the stage for

understanding my contribution to this topic. the first thing we know, for a while that the gains to immigrants themselves from migrating are huge. if you think about the average wage of a mexican living in mexico compared to what they earn in the u.s., there is an enormous gap that incentivizes them to come here. that is one of the things that michael will talk about. the world would be better off if there were fewer restrictions. a lot of people would be better off if there were fewer restrictions on where you could live in the world. in addition, as it turns out, there are gains to the receiving country, which are also positive. i will use the terms native born, u.s.-born, and natives interchangeably, so there is gains for us as well, and they

are also positive, but smaller than the gains to the immigrants themselves. today when i talk about benefits of immigration, i am really talking about second thing, the gains to us, and we should not forget the first, and i may come back to that, but today i'm talking about benefits to natives born. there is a theoretical model in the economics literature which says we get gains from immigration by pushing up the wages of native born workers. with economists there is always a trade-off, never a free lunch, so the cost is there is some winners and some losers. immigration pushes down the wages of some workers and up for some workers, but on average we benefit. how does this work? the optimal immigration system is one in which what we do is we admit immigrants who have skills that would otherwise be scarce in the existing population,

skills that would be hard to come by in the existing population. if we do that, it pushes down the wages of those who have skills, but for the rest of us, by having access to this pool of workers who have scarce skills, that makes us more productive. our wages as a result go up and we are better off. another words, the average native born worker benefits, but at the expense of lower wages for some types of workers. a corollary of this is that if we just pick immigrants that look like us, if they have the same mix of skills as us, there would be no benefit in this model, just the expanding the population. ok. to make this more concrete, let's look at the skill mix of immigrants and natives as it

actually occurs. this is the division into very broad skill categories. immigrants who are over the past decade, the percentage of the black bars, and the natives who are shown in the gray bars, among college and non-college status. this is a broad distinction. there are skill differences within these broad categories, but a lot of economics research has shown this is like the most basic key skill measure that divides workers in the labor market. college and non-college workers do very different things, and the labor market treats them as different types of workers. what this shows is a majority of u.s. workers, almost 60%, are college educated. in the standard model, it says

we benefit from importing this scarce skills, the non-college workers, the less educated workers, and our immigration policy pushes in that direction. most immigrants are non-college educated. however, it does not push very strongly in that direction and as it turns out. if these bars were the same height, in this theory we would get no benefit from immigration, and we are not far from being there. in addition, inside this black bar are all or most of the illegal immigrants who are not a part of the official immigration policy. if you take them out, our policy is less tilted toward producing benefits for the u.s. how does it work? to remind you, in theory, bringing in the -- bringing in these non-college workers, it will push down the wages of non-

college workers, but push up the wages of everybody else, and since most of us are college educated in the u.s., the average native benefits. is that what actually happens in practice? do you see empirical support for this model? is that what actually happens? first you need to know two other things. it matters not just that the skill mix, but how many come. if they were all unskilled, they would not have much impact on the wage structure so there will not be benefit or cost. second, immigrants are not geographically uniformly spread. immigrants are a lot more concentrated in some markets than others, and that is what we can use and economists often used to assess these models empirically. let's try that. the first thing we should see, if this is the way i am describing is correct, placed hat got more immigration to see for slower increases in college

immigration pushes down the skill mix and makes us less college educated. indeed we see that. what i am showing is a circle in this data plot is a metropolitan area, the labor market, and on the x axis is the change in the share of foreign born over the last 10 years, the amount of immigration relative to the population. the y axis is the change in the share of college educated. placed that got more immigrants saw faster declines in college share or lower increases in college share, and places that got less immigrants saw faster increases in college share. immigration is pushing down the average college education. immigrants are less educated. ok. unless you think that is a bad thing, i remind you in the standard model this produces benefits and indeed you see

that. more foreign-born workers and increases in college share also saw faster wage growth for foreign born workers. native born workers who happen to live in cities who have bigger inflows of immigrants in the 2000's saw faster wage growth. that is the benefit of immigration in the standard model. what about the cost? the people that are supposed to be hurt by this are the non- college worker, we are pushing down their wages as we add more non-college workers. when you write this up to the growth of wages of college and non-college, you do not see that negative effect. if you look at the left-hand bar, wage growth for non-college workers and the right-hand graph is for college workers, which

are upward sloping, as the model predicts. you are not seeing that cost side of the equation, the non- college wages are not going down in the 2000's. i do not want to overstate this. you can work hard and rule out that immigrants are picking places that have faster wage growth using historical patterns of immigration and economists have tried to rule these things out. sometimes if you look another decades, you can find negative effects, but they tend to be muted is the way i will summarize. what is going on? my view is that standard model is too simple, leaving out ways the labor market adapts. one of those ways is that firms can respond to immigration by changing the way they produce, they change their production technology. another thing that leaves out is immigrants and natives may not compete so head to head as we

might imagine. he worked in different occupations, and even immigrants and natives who looked the same. their production technology. the idea of this is that in response to an influx of low skilled workers, firms might develop more adopt reduction technologies which are more intensive in unskilled labor. if you think about this, this will diminish the negative wage impact. firms find productive uses for more low skilled workers when there are more low skilled workers available. that is not as hard as you might think, because we live in a world where over time technology is becoming increasing skill

demanding. i look at automation and the big thing that is going on -- at manufacturing, and the main thing that is going on in manufacturing is that over time firms are automating their production, they are adopting things like industrial robots, which essentially are replacing tasks previously by low skilled workers. in response to immigration, what i found is that firms simply adopt less of this new expensive machinery and employ people instead. ok, and so in particular i used the strategy that i told you about, i compared firms who were located in areas that saw big influxes of low skilled workers due to immigration to firms in areas who did not, and i found that this depressed their adoption of automation technologies, and instead gave

more job opportunities to low skilled workers. unless you think this has something to do with the kinds of firms that are located in high immigration areas, i have information on what these firms were planning to do in terms of adoption of automation technologies are to the arrival of the immigrant. if you ask them what -- it is not retrospective, they interviewed the firms prior to this wave of immigration in the late 1980's, and their plans look the same for adoption of automation technology prior to the wave of immigration, but when the immigrants came in they shifted their plans, they shifted down their use of automation technology. another thing that is going on is that maybe immigrants and natives, even ones that look the same on paper to us, that have the same education, same work

experience, they're not working in the same jobs. they are competing in different labor markets in some sense. if this is the case, and there is some evidence for it, the cost of immigration is going to be disproportionately borne by the immigrants themselves. if immigrants compete with other immigrants and less so with natives, what immigration will do is it will push down the wages of other immigrants, not relative to similarly skilled natives, and you actually see this. what this is, the x axis is increasing the amount of immigration in a transformed version for theoretical reasons, basically to the right is more immigrants, and the y axis is now the growth in immigrants wages relative to similarly skilled natives. what this shows you his place as they got more, the wages of immigrants rob relative to similar skilled natives, and that tells you immigrants are the ones who are disproportionately hit by immigration relative to natives.

what i found in my own research is this has something to do with the language skills of immigrants. when you break it up into immigrants with strong english and poor english, it is driven by the immigrants with poor english. this is shown here. immigrants who are poor at english, you do not see a downward trending relationship, and with no english skills, that is where you see the downward trend. to drive this point home, i looked at a special case, which is puerto rico, and a lot of people do not know that puerto rico gets a lot of immigration, too, from latin america, and particular and what the difference in puerto rico, everybody speaks spanish,

natives and immigrants. if you do the same graph, you do not see that downward sloping relationship. ok. there is other evidence that immigrants and natives do different things. it was mentioned work, where immigrants specialize in jobs which require less communication skills, essentially. that is consistent with that language story i told you. there is direct evidence where there is a lot of immigrants, the price of low skill services, which would be jobs that do not require a lot of communication, are significantly lower, so this is another way the benefits of low skilled immigration. low skilled services are cheaper in markets where there is a lot of immigration. ok. there is a variety of other things that immigration does. we talked about the productivity spillover from other types of immigration. there are other impacts. i want to drive home the idea that we benefit from bringing in

low skilled workers. there is this potential cost and maybe we are raising inequality, and that is a big concern, so we might want to couple this with transfer policies. it is a lot like international trade. maybe you can compensate the losers. in the u.s. you do not see much of this supposedly cost side of the equation. there's good reason to think it is small. there's the possibility that immigrants and natives work in different kinds of jobs and that firms are very adaptable in how they react to low skilled immigration. finally, alex asked me to talk about my thoughts on policy, and all the heat and the noise seemed to be about illegal immigration, like what are we going to do about border

enforcement, what are we going to do, are we going to have an amnesty? that feels like we are too late when we have that debate. you need to take a step back and say, why are they coming here despite the fact that is not legal to do so? the answer is they have this enormous incentive, they want to come here, they have the big economic gains from coming here, and on top of that, we want them to come here. we benefit from them coming. we demand their labor which is why they want to come. maybe the problem really is not illegal immigration, it is why don't we have more low skilled visas, why don't we have more legal ways for immigrants to come? you may be concerned about other impacts of admitting a lot of low skilled workers, and my answer to that is look, they have this enormous benefit for coming here, if you're worried about the costs of admitting low

skilled immigrants, why don't we capture that with visa fees or other things to capture those benefits for ourselves? maybe in an era of budget deficits, maybe that is something to give thought to. [applause] >> this is it? great. thank you very much for your time. i hope to give you something for it. i do not mean to alarm you, but i just met you and i know roughly how much money you make. almost all of you, and not exactly of course, but i have a good idea, and the reason i have a good idea is because of a remarkable calculation that was done at the world bank recently by an economist, which is a great book of his called "the haves and the have nots." he is assembled the data of real income of people all over the world, stuck them into a single

harmonized database, and asked this question -- if you take some random person from that database and you want to predict their real income, adjusted for prices across countries, how far can he get toward a perfect prediction of that person's real income knowing nothing else about them except what country they live in, one fact only? and the stunning fact is 60% -- he can predict 60% of the real living standards based on only where you live and work. i want to let that sink in for a second because to me this is one of the most stunning facts about the economy or the world.

we're talking about something important, that your real living standard and all that means for your ability to realize your dreams and the health and survival of your children, etc. and the calculation does not just suggest that where you live is more important than anything else about you, this number means where you live is more important than everything else about you combined, whether you are hard-working, lazy, black, white, female, male, your parents were rich, your parents were poor, hot, ugly, everything else about you explains a lot, but not as much as your country of residence. that is a remarkable situation that suggests there is an enormous inequality of opportunity in the world. you can notice it in places like this. here is the border between the

u.s. state of california and the mexican state of baja california. the minimum wage on one side of that border is it 57 cents an hour and a minimum wage on the other is an order of magnitude higher. another way to look at the fascinating results is to think for a second, you have the same person doing the same task in two different places, and that is an arbitrage opportunity, the same thing is being sold to different markets for hundreds of percent differences, and it is an opportunity to add value. all arbitrage opportunities are an opportunity to create value in the world, to generate wealth. and it is common in the world to

have the same person, to have a person who does a task for $250 a month in one place, be able to move, come to washington, d.c., other richer parts of the world to do exactly the same thing for 10 times as much. alex mentioned my paper that summarizes -- let's say nascent economic literature on what is the size of this arbitrage opportunity, how much value could be added to the world economy by exploiting this opportunity. there are all kinds of calculation that amounts to saying how many people are you going to assume can move and what is the gain to each one of them. when you add them up, in sophisticated ways, you get to be really big numbers in the trillions. the global gdp gain to even modest increases in labor mobility rivals and exceeds the global economic gain from any

other kind of relaxation of the international economic barriers you can think of. what i talk about in the paper is that if you add up economists' best calculations of the global gain from dropping all policy barriers to trade, so total elimination of tariff on earth, licensing restriction, and add to that the economic gain estimated by others of total elimination of every barrier, policy and otherwise, to the movement of capital, so perfectly allocate capital across the entire globe, eliminate all informational asymmetry, add those together and you cannot get to more than $3 trillion every year in global gain. compare that to a modest increase in labor mobility, and i mean take one in 20 of people now residing him what the world bank defin a

countries, allow them to work in richer countries, just one in 20 of them, and you get above $4 trillion, conservatively, and larger amounts of mobility would result in even larger gains. so really just titanic gains. i want to push back gently on the brilliant presentation by ethan, this is a gain that is primarily realized instantaneously by migrants, but these kind of population shifts occur over generations. if you were to say in 1900, ok, 80 million immigrants are coming to the united states and they are going to experience an economic gain over the next hundred years, but that gain would go to the immigrants? now they are us. they were them then, but we are them now. now i am us.

these movements occur over a time scale where we should -- i am not sure it is meaningful to talk about us and them. this is a gain to the country because the immigrants become the country. what kind of doubts could you have about these numbers? there are not a lot of papers about this issue, an issue that needs to be studied a lot more. a lot of what i read about in the paper is how we could challenge numbers like these. what are people doing in papers like this? a very simple calculation of there's a bunch of people at a low income level, and what if we move a certain amount of them to a higher income level and multiply the amount of people moving by the income gained. you can think of four ways you can critique this that are pretty obvious. you might wonder maybe migrants

are not as productive as natives at the destination. something about their productivity is less when they arrive. you could say maybe there is some kind of bad economic effect on people who did not move at the origin, and that offsetting cost should be taken into it accounts in a global calculus. maybe there is a offsetting negative economic harm at the destination which other the panelists have talked about, and fourth, you might have a non- economic concern about all these economic gains, but how many of these people could feasibly move in any realistic political scenario, so why don't we leave this hypothetical stuff on the table and talk about things that really matter. i want to take the rest of the time to surf lightly over the literature on these different subjects. first, let's talk about the gains to migrants.

you could ask what is the productivity of a migrant who moves or the reverse of the question, if somebody had not moved, what would be their economic productivity? if you took one of them many ethiopian cabdrivers in washington and transported them to ethiopia, a what would be their productivity, and how would that differ from the average economic differences between americans and ethiopians? in a paper called the police premium, my co-authors try to estimate for the gains to immigrating the united states, and we tried to account for as many observable and unobservable differences between migrants and non-migrants as we can. we got micro data from the world bank, from the u.s., and from 42 other countries, stacked them

all together and asked the question, how about an observably identical person from each of 42 countries and in that country and in the united states, what is their real income after adjusting for price differences, after adjusting for country of birth, after adjusting for country of education and age and education level and gender. the question we're asking is, take a mexican, born in mexico, educated in mexico, left after age 20, and they are 35 years old and they have nine years of education and they are male, and then make all plausible adjustments based on self- selection on determinants of them, and ask what do you end up with as the gap in economic productivity between that person in united states and that person in mexico. here are the results for all 42 countries we did. the vertical axis is the multiple of that person's real income at home that they get in united states. the red, orange, and yellow

parts are an analysis based on the degree of self-selection on determinants of income after you have left out country of birth, gender, education level, and age. even after all those adjustments, you're still left with hundreds of percent gains. another way to look at this is most of the determinants of poverty in ethiopia do not come with his cabdrivers. to turn shakespeare backwards, dear brutus, the fault is not in ourselves, it is in our stars, mostly in where we are born. how about the second objection about negative externalities at the origin? there's a lot of literature about this, and i want to provoke thought briefly on this subject by taking a local

thought exercise. here is metropolitan washington, d.c., and there are people in the world who believe that skilled migration from developing countries is so harmful that it should be referred to with the pejorative rhyming phrase "brain drain." i do not use that. i just refer to it by the neutral term "skilled migration" because for the following reason let's take a low income part of washington, these parts east of the anacostia river where incomes are relatively low, and ask the question, what is the economic harm that is done by allowing smart young kids to leave those places, allowing them to live elsewhere, allowing them to work elsewhere? conversely, that is that the same logical question of asking what would be the economic benefit to those places of not allowing them to leave, that is, trapping them there, not giving them a decision about whether or

not to leave. let's set aside many ethical problems that you might have a policy like that and say, would it be effective? well, you might wonder how much of the deficit in human capital production in those neighborhoods would be remedied by forcing the skilled people who have grown up there to go there, and the same thing happens between countries. the ocd has estimated by what fraction africa's deficit of physicians would be remedied by the hypothetical relocation of all emigre african physicians back to africa, somehow, by black helicopters, i do not know. and the answer is about 10% of the deficit as estimated by the world health organization would be remedied by even that draconian, forcible relocation of every emigre african doctor,

and that is the reason why doctors are not in africa is primarily due to very complex forces that are not remedied by forcing people to live one place or another. in this anacostia example you might be concerned about whether not allowing smart young people to leave that geographic area would it affect people's education decisions. isn't some of the reason people like people do stay in school and get an education the fact that they can get high incomes elsewhere? the same thing does happen between countries. in my research and the research of others, we have shown that the education decision, the extent and the specialties of education decisions of a lot of young people in developing countries are shaped by the opportunity to migrate, the option to migrate, even if not exercised. the bottom line on this is and this is going to sound like a

strong statement, but i know this literature so i can say definitively, that there is no piece of evidence in the economic literature that any place on earth was ever developed primarily due to restrictions on movement or that any place on earth was ever made healthier by restrictions on movement of health professionals or any of the other effects you might imagine from restricting people's movement. it makes more sense when we contemplate the real effects of a policy like trapping people in a low income neighborhood. now i want to talk briefly about effects on people on the destination. i can cut this pretty short because madelin and ethan have done a fantastic job. i want to point out the long- term discussion is not even worth having. other economists have pointed out the u.s. got a lot bigger between 1900 and 2005, and the u.s. got four times bigger. in 1900 we were a country of 75 million people.

unemployment in those two years happens to be exactly the same. somehow all of that labor force entry, less than half by immigrants and a lot of other labor force entry, especially by women during that time, and to have generated it proportionate terms roughly as many jobs as it took. really this is very intuitive when you think in the long term immigrants and other labor force entrants are not just suppliers of their own labor. they are consumers of the produce of other people's labor. in the long run we are all part of an economy. the only reason we're having this discussion or doing research on it is in the short

term, and the most influential piece of research in this area is by a person at berkeley who studied this episode in a paper in 1990. the mariel boat life, an agreement between carter and castro that allowed about 125,000 cuban refugees to leave cuba and arrive in miami. 100,000 of them stayed there permanently. that means in three months there was this unexpected giant 7% jump in the size of the labor force of miami. he looks for effects on anybody else's employment or wages in the months after relative to other cities that do not experience this gigantic inflow and cannot find anything, nothing, even for blacks and hispanics, isolated, nothing at all. it is fair to say that even 23 years later it is still a subject of active research. how could that be? madelin and ethan have talked a

lot about some of those reasons. it might have to do with labor supply, the labor supply of natives was low in areas where these people ended up working. i have a new paper on that subject, documenting that the u.s. workers supplied to manual farm work jobs in north carolina did not seem to be affected by the great recession when unemployment jumped to from 4% 11%. in economic terms, for just some jobs that immigrants are doing, the native supply seems to be locally inelastic. it could have to do with labor demands, that there is something about large inflows immigrants that stimulate demand, and not just driving other workers down the labor demand curve by competing with them, but shifting outward labor demand curve. ethan talked about all kinds of mechanisms for this. firms adjust their technology choices in response to the availability of labor. ethan's research has been very

influential there. jenny hunt has a fascinating new paper showing that natives adjust their educational choices based on the presence of low skill migrants. another at boston university has some innovative work showing that skilled women's labor force participation are influenced by the availability of low skill migrants. all kinds of things that stimulate economic activity, and therefore the demand for other people's labor, including natives and including low skill natives, lots of things going on here. the mental model of one labor demand curve and is it downward sloping or not, the title of a 2003 paper, is much simpler than the actual economy. i want to talk finally about feasibility, and then i will finish. this is where this economist departs from economics. even people agree entirely with every word i have just said and

just pat me on the back and say would luck with that. that is impossible. i want to point out in america lots of things are impossible until they are possible and then they are possible. one of the most inspiring documents in all of u.s. history is this letter from ben franklin to congress in february 1790, and you might know that franklin died in april of 1790, so this is the last public act of his life. he dashed off a letter representing a quaker association, saying how about you guys abolish slavery right now and 1790, not just end the slave trade, but make it illegal for other human beings to own human beings today? you know it was generations before that happened or was even discussed in congress again, but it was debated for two days, and they did not keep full transcripts in those days, but

there are steno notes of the discussion, and they gave all sorts of practical objections to this. who is going to compensate the property owners for all the expropriation, go back to the greeks and romans, slaves have always been with us, etc., etc. there are hilarious parts where they say franklin is getting old and he is a little loopy. they were right at that time. now today they seem crazy, and franklin turns out to be right. it took a while, but things can change massively. and there is a vast opportunity out there that i think slowly the world is finding ways to realize and it deserves a lot more research. thanks. [applause] >> thank you very much for much for all the presenters and their fantastic presentations. now we will begin the q&a session where you will get a chance to ask questions.

i want to give you a few reminders. wait to be called on. wait for the microphone to arrive to you so that everybody in the room can hear you and can hear you on c-span. and that's your name and affiliation. cato is a libertarian think tank, but i will heavily regulate the question and answer session. please ask a relevant question and refrain from making an extended statement, please. with that, let's have some questions from the audience. yes, man right here in the front row. >> good afternoon. quick question, i did not see images of military applications for immigrant labor, and did you think about that or take that into consideration given all the ways in which we are spreading out our military across the world? >> for me? i am very ignorant of that. i've never seen any work on that, i never done any work on that.

i'm interested in it, but i do not know. >> there is a representative who has introduced a bill to deal with that issue in terms of a modified dream act, so that is one application, but it is fairly small compared to the entire aspect. other questions? yes, right here. >> hi, i am a commentator. i wanted to ask and hear about what happens with unemployment in the low skilled labor, native labors, when immigrant laborers can occupy that, those jobs? what happens as a result of that with income inequality? i will give an example. the person that hires foreign skilled laborers and play them $20 per day, instead of paying them the minimum salary. this person is making a lot of

money, the person who is hiring, because her or she is having slavery salaries. that increases income inequality, and we have seen that. and we see the native labor, the low skilled laborer, that becomes unemployed, and we have seen that impact in african- american and native people that have unemployment right now. i did not hear anything about that and do you have any comment? >> sure. so, i did not talk about unemployment, i talked about wages, but the same research that says the wage impacts of immigration is also looked systematically at the unemployment impact, and they have also looked specifically at these groups, about other minorities in the u.s. you might think they might be

harmed by immigration more than other groups. you can sometimes -- and as i pointed out, you can sometimes find effects. we ought to be concerned about that. but it's just these effects, when you look at it systematically the patterns are it's not a huge impact. these are people at the bottom of the economic ladder in some cases so you want to be concerned about it. but immigration is not responsible for the 14% unemployment rate in the black population. at most it contributed a tiny part of that. so yes, i think you have concern about it. it is not a major driver of unemployment in minority and disadvantaged populations farce we know. >> to address the inequality point because it doesn't receive enough public attention and it's wonderful president obama has been talking about it this week. let's hope we continue talking about it. but immigration has played a tiny role in the tremendous increase in inequality in the

united states that most of the inequality has happened at the upper end. it's a winner take all society. and that's really not due to immigration. at the lower end where you might think that what is going on with the wage distribution, research by david card who has gone through and looked very carefully at this and they find that very little of that increase in inequality at the bottom send due to immigration. instead most of it is due to changing labor market institutions in the u.s., the decline in minute -- minimum wage but not due to immigration. >> doug brooks, my question would be we talked about the

boat lift from cuba. has there been any studies related to other groups, say the iranians or now the afghans or iraqis who have been coming to the united states, have there been studies on them and the impact on the places they've ended up? >> i don't know off the top of my head. >> the only studies i'm aware of for the united states is one looking at the entry of russian scientists and engineers when the soviet union allowed juice to come to the united states. it's looking at mathematicians. and what they find is it looks like the russian mathematicians didn't play well with the u.s. born. they didn't speak the same language.

there is also some research that goes back and looks at when the nazis came to power and they came to the united states and the benefits the u.s. received as a result of that. these other groups would be very interesting to look at, i don't believe anyone has systematically. >> david card's work has been incredibly seminal. there is a stack of papers looking at every mass movement that has occurred. we're almost running out of them as economists to study them. there is a paper about the return of french who were living in algeria at the time of algerian independence. a huge number of portuguese people are returning to europe when angola became independent. russians coming to israel at the time of the fall of the soviet union.

600,000 polish people arriving in the u.k. again and again all of these find almost no net effects. if you control for the other effects that these guys have been talking about, the fact that the labor demand curve is shifting right and left, that is the overall demand for everybody's labor is being stimulated by my grants then you find there is some competition. there is competition in all labor markets. there's a fascinating paper about women moving into the labor market showing they were competing with men and there was a downward sloping supply curve. there was a study of movement of blacks out of the south into northern cities and there is a slightly sloping labor demand curve.

all of these things are abstracting away from the fact this serve also shifts and that's why nobody has been able to find in any of these studies of all kind of flows of people from all kind of organize gins into all kinds of destinations any of these effects. alex just mentioned the most extreme one i know of that i don't think has been studied in detail is the liberalization of movement of people in south africa that occurred in the 1990's. this is an international situation in that large amounts of south africa were not recognized as being part of south africa -- africa. they had many of the attributes including judiciary and stamps and military. then one day they said actually that population which is six times larger than the population of the white areas and about 1/7 as wealthy can move freely and

there is no restriction about what jobs they can take and what time of day in the white areas. now it's 20 years later. we ran the experiment. what happened to the wages and employment of all those white people? well, it improved and there are numerous studies. there is one i know of from the university of cape town that track as cross the income distribution what happened to the employment conditions and wages of white people even with this titanic movement of hundreds of% of the population and at a vastly different skill level they ended up complimenting workers in white areas and not substituting for them at all. that's what i want to convey here is the consensus the uniformity of decades of findings on these issues. >> i'll add one thing to that.

americans value ethnic diversity. so places people are willing to pay more in places that are more it tends to drive up willingness to live in an area where there is more ethnic diversity. it's hard to have that in restaurants if you adopt have it in your population. someone from rural new hampshire knows it's hard to get those benefits without the immigrants. >> daniel keen from american university. i would think that the trillion dollar bill on the sidewalk argument would provide justification for eliminating

restrictions on work visas and letting nick come on a work visa that would be interested in that. >> people often ask me if i'm in favor of open borders and i told someone recently i'm agnostic on open borders. that is that the question is ill posed.and that anybody can take any job in any place they want without any regulation. that's not true for me. i can't go practice as a physician, i can't go practice as a lawyer whenever i feel like it. there are all kinds of regulations or spatial regulations on w

alex could have me thrown out of here by the police if he felt like it. >> you don't have to worry about that. >> well we'll see about that. i'm talking a lot. but we don't have a situation now where movement or the taking of jobs is completely unregulated. i would need to see evidence that a total deregulation of all movement by my grant or their occupational choices. absolutely no regulation on any of their choices at all, i would need to see evidence on that. i don't know what the evidence on that would be domestically. regulation that make sure that the quality of foreign physicians is observable makes andsense. i'm not sure if repeating their

entire residency which is what they have to do now, you have to become a resident again and walk around making coffee for the attending physician. i think that's a little extreme. but should there be no regulation at all? if i were on the surgery table i would want there to be some regulation to make sure the quality is good enough. i'm not sure about no regulation but we could argue about the level of regulation that is right. >> we want markets to regulate to the greatest extent possible. occupational licenses where there are good reasons to have licenses. but it's very difficult for regulators to determine how many people should enter and in what occupation. and when you look at some of the details in the bill that was pass bid the senate, you have this huge bureaucratic commission that determines how many points people get for

certain occupations and measure wages at a detailed level. it would be wonderful to get better data on labor markets but i'm leery of whether it's going to happen. ethan's final point is we should sell off more visas or auction them off and let markets determine who enters and certainly have more visas than we have now. >> this book that was mentioned earlier, i can't think of a more sensible proposal on immigration reform. it's really worth a look.

>> i'm a private citizen. i have two questions. during the 1980's when our immigrant population increase that co-ins sided with our prison population increasing, is that related? if we are seen as a recipient country receiving immigrants, has any donor country like india that sends us highly skilled immigrants or philippines which sends medium skilled, have they looked at what they are doing wrong to keep their citizens to make their countries more opportunity rich? >> do you know the crime literature? >> my understanding of the findings on immigration and crime are that basically if

anything immigration reduces crime rates. i know people find that very hard to believe but immigrants tend to be very low have very low crime propensity in markets that get a lot of immigration tend to see crime go down. there is work on the rise in prison population and i don't know that -- as far as i know there is no causal association between those two. maybe somebody can comment on your second question. >> it's a very complex question. let's talk about nurses in the philippines. philippines is the number one sending country of nurses to the u.s. 54% of nurses in the u.s. are just from philippines. and the philippines has i don't want to say too many because i don't know what the right number of nurses is.

the philippines has way more nurses than per person than any country on earth. i saw this number cited and i wanted to know if it was true. i went in and counted how many practicing registered nurses there were in the philippines. and it's more in the philippines than in the u.k. it's a pretty poor country. it's like peru and they have huge numbers of nurses. one of the reasons for that is that there is a well developed private and public sector machinery for pepping fill pin nurses migrate. they work here, canada, israel, they work everywhere. and one of the reasons that lots philipino people mostly women become nurses is the ability to migrate even if they never exercise it.

there are large numbers of unemployed nurses in the philippines now. the problem is not to keep nurses at home but to generate jobs for people including overseas. there are other countries in completely different situation like jamaica is interested in attracting more of its nurses to stay rather than immigrate and there are experiments on how to do that, paying them two or three times as much is something that is not in the realm of possibility for other countries. but there are other things they have experimented with like task shiftings, letting them do more of the things doctors do like prescribe medicine or practice independently. have more choice in where work. some just assign you to an area and say that's where you're going to work for the next five years, good luck. allowing them more choice in

where they work. but it's it is different by country and even over time and i think a very interesting area. >> i can answer about the crime data. something has been said about immigrants for generation is they are more likely to commit crimes. we see going back in time that has never been the case. immigrants have always been less likely to commit crimes on average than native born americans. even in the earliest 20th century which there was a commission to study that, they came to negative conclusions about immigrants in every single category. they claimed they are racially inferior, predisposed to lowering american wages.

everything you can think of they found or manipulated data that immigrants are bad for the u.s. except in the area of crime. there is a hilarious segment that says your daily experience might seem otherwise. they are less likely to commit crimes. what you see heavily in immigrant cities with the exception of miami, it is the exception that proves the rule that cities with large immigrant populations have lower crime rate. and they choose places that are a bit more peaceful and once they go in there, the crime rate drops more once they settle.

>> i've been to several things here on immigration. i wonder if each of the panelists could state what is your view of the concept of the nation's state and sovereignty. mr. clemens hit on it a little bit but i'm very curious about what is your actual view of the nation's state? >> do you guys want to address that? that doesn't have much to do with your research. >> my husband is a philosopher. so i here some about

cosmopolitanism which is this view that you think about the welfare of your own citizens or people within your own country. i think we all most of us tend to succumb to that. one of the things i appreciate about michael's work is it does think globally. i'm not a philosopher or political scientists to know what a nation's state is as an economist but i think immigration really is best viewed from a global perspective instead of from within your own country and the gains to u.s. natives or the cost to u.s. natives. and when you think about it globally you get answers sometimes that are unambiguously in favor of greater immigration. >> the only thing i'll add to that is i sure wish there was a way we could -- there is so much

gains to be had as michaeland himtalked about, fl allowing more people to immigrate to the u.s. and to other developed countries. i wish there was a way to coordinate that better. because there are gains for them and some opportunities for bargaining on that. so i mean, obviously, the kind of governments are an impediment to that but i don't want to make any more views about my views of the existence of governments. >> i want to separate questions of whether institutions should exist from whether they should be open. when this country was founded huge parts of the population weren't citizens. so women couldn't vote, lacked basic citizenship rights. you could look at that and say

abolish citizenship or say maybe it's an institution that should be more open to people entering it and leaving it. two very different solutions. when i look at the world and i see the calculation of how much your place of birth matters, one response to that which i wouldn't share is okay let's abolish states and governments and pretend like they don't serve a function. another would be to say what are ways that the institutions involved in the nation states could become more open to people changing the nation state that they are affiliated with. i'm often told by people that look you are in favor of some sort of global veil of ignorance and if you read john recalls he will tell that you nation states are the basic unit of analysis where there is a veil of

ignorance and nation states is where it's defined and outside of it ethics don't mean anything. i disagree with that. the fact that the republican of south africa declared that was not part of south africa would mean we can't say that act was ethical or unethical because that's a separate country. what is or isn't a country is something people decide every day. in the 1990's south africa made a decision about who was in the in group. i don't accept that ethics can't be defined across borders but i'm also hesitant to declare that government serves no function. a greater openness of the institutions of the nation state could be beneficial for andrybody.

>> i had a two part question. the first part being you talked a little bit about what the fiscal burden a little bit of immigration and the different groups what their fiscal burden is. the concern for many americans is half americans don't pay taxes. they are concerned that the immigrants coming in are going to fall into that group that don't pay as opposed to the group that does pay. is there any research if they come in the low end, do they end up moving up? and the second part is panelists were talking about how high skill immigration would be a big benefit and low scale immigration would be a big

benefit. is there a relationship percentage that is optimal for our country? if 10% of immigrants coming in should be high skill or 80% should be low skill. has there been research on what would be an optimal infusion for our country? >> i'll tackle the first part because that's easier i think. much like low skilled or less educated natives. less immigration receive less than they pay. that's true of natives and immigrants. it's a problem if you viewed it a problem. it's a problem with the tax structure not with immigration. you would want to change your tax structure or transfer programs are designed. that is where i think the changes should occur first.

the second part of that question is that wages do increase for the average immigrant over time that they assimilate. so their tax payments would increase over time. now for immigrants who have not graduated high school which is the predominant group, right now over their own life times they are net fiscal cost. once you get to high school and higher immigrants are net fiscal contributor. this is from the report that is the best evidence from 1996 which is old now. when you look at descendants of immigrants, they become us, they become the country. when you look at the descendants of immigrants which all of us really are that over time they do pay back if you will if their immigrating ancestor was low andeducation, they pay that

back. so it depends on what your time horizon is what you think about the cost is. >> that was a good answer. all we have is that model that i talked about, that very simple model that says you ought to admit immigrants whose skills are rare in the existing population. there is a lot of problems with that model. further more, i have some doubts about our ability to fine tune exactly who we get. so that's another issue. if you look back at the various major policy shifts, the immigrants we actually got compared to what we said we wanted differs wildly. and so maybe we ought to think more about what kind of policy we want to have for other reasons as well, not just this kind of optimal kind of

calculation. >> i don't -- i'm not a specialist in the study of immigrant simulation but i know one fascinating fact chi looked up that is now online, you can get the whole thing on lines. fraction of white foreign born in 1940 with a high school degree is 12%, 12%. and now over 50% of the unauthorized population of the u.s. adult population has a high school degree. remarkable. so there might be some level of immigration that assimilation doesn't happen, kids are just incredibly poor and uneducated, whatever that is it would have to be vastly greater than what we saw in the 20th century. on the right level of immigration we talked about proposals for more market driven

mechanisms for regulating immigration. richard freeman at harvard has an article talking about this. economists have been talking about these mechanisms for a long time. that's one of the reasons i like the book is because it talks ability mechanisms for regulating because go around washington and ask what is the optimal size of the u.s. labor force and optimal composition of it? does anybody know the optimum allocation of capital in wall street? no human being knows that and any composition is going to be imperfect and maybe wildly flawed. and mechanisms for gathering information from the real world about what the right mix of the

labor force is which is what these mechanisms are might be something that the world could explore. >> we have time for one more question. >> thank you very much for this presentation. the emphasis has been on the benefits for the receiving country, in particular the u.s. the standard model is we receive the immigrants, the wages go down and other groups see the wages go up and everybody will gain. i suppose the capital is assumed to be the same. on the sending country i suppose the reverse is true. michael alluded to global benefits but the model says the sending country loses.

what is your view on that and is there a case for policy intervention, transfers between governments? >> the research -- i don't know the research on brain drain that well but yeah, there is mirror image labor supply impacts in the receiving -- sendinghim countries. the sending countries, the people they tend to send varies by country, they tend to send their high skill workers. and i'm not sure you should call this a cost for them either. the sending countries tend to have high inequality so this

would tend to push down inequality in the sending countries if the model is right. and if the model is not right, they'll adjust in other ways. >> i have never seen any evidence in the literature that the limitation on the physical movement of skilled workers per southeast has caused any -- per say has caused any. empirically the possibility of figuring out who would have been aa good leader and forcing them to stay in either open i can't much less creating the conditions for that person to be an effective leader or effective entrepreneur, i've never even

any evidence that has successfully been done. there are many countries that have made the transition from huge outflows of skilled labor to inflows of skilled labor, korea in the 20th century went from losing huge numbers of skilled people to attracting them back on net. but that was because of much broader change that is occurred in the economy and not because of their movement. the movement as the driver of the change i've never seen any evidence on. >> thank you very much. and please give a warm round of applause to our panel.[applause] andlunch will be served on the second floor. and rest rooms are on the second floor right along the yellow wall. thank you again for coming.

new [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] and what is coming in, director of national intelligence, james nationals below the university. a house hearing on the immigration status of children brought into the u.s. illegally. an economist at the cato institute talk about the economic benefits of immigration. >> of the next washington journal, what is and the defense spending bill. with the military turned congressional editor rick maze. in the discussion of goldman sachs. we'll talk to bloomberg news

reporter. and historian will be on the program to talk about the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended the korean war. watches to journal begins live at 7:00. >> this a website. it is the history of popular culture. it is a collection of stories of popular culture. culture is quite more than that. what i have been trying to do with the site is go inside more detail with how popular culture sports the politics and and other arenas. it is not just about pop- culture. what we have on the site or stories about popular music, sports biography and history of the media entities and

newspapers. there are a range of things. site, iormulate the cast a wider net to see what would work. founderwith top history jack doyle. sunday at 8:00. i was the director of national intelligence, james clapper spoke at the commencement of the national intelligence university. it's a federally chartered university. it is celebrating its 50th anniversary. before us remarks, he is introduced by michael flynn. [applause] >> there is a lot of people out here that will receive bachelor's and master's degrees today, but i would want to re-

emphasize what was just said, and i would say she has got a doctorate in the national anthem, and that was one of the most beautiful renditions of our national anthem. i would just like to give her another round of applause. [applause] i do not know where she is at. thanks very much to -- that is crying]l right.[baby they usually start out like that every time i talk. for everybody that has got kids or families, there is everybody on the stage and all of us has gone through these ceremonies. do not worry about kids one bit. we appreciate them being here today. i wanted to say good morning to the graduates. i think what dr. ellison just said was right on the money about where you will be in the future. as you all reach a major milestone in your careers and in

the history of niu, it is my honor to congratulate you. in the presence of your families and honored guests and our great staff and faculty that we have, that really makes this institution what it is, you are all graduates as has been already said of the national intelligence university's 50th anniversary class. that is an extraordinary feat for where we are today, and i would like on behalf of everybody here to give you a round of applause for achieving this milestone.[applause] as dr. ellison's mentioned, the institution has grown in size and impact during the first 50 years, from humble origins at the defense intelligence school, housed in world war ii barracks in and the naval station, to an accredited university that

offers degrees and represents the entire community. this is a university that is expanding the literature of intelligence every day with publication of books and research from the national intelligence press. it is a university that engages leaders in common dialogue. it is a university that continues to produce the future leaders of our profession and our nation. this year we mark the occasion of our 50th anniversary by being recognized by the nation's most senior leadership for not only the high quality of the education offered, but for the joint nature of that education. this past october, general dempsey named niu a joint official military education phase one accreditation program, the first to receive such approval since before september 11. completion of military education

is important for some our military officers and necessary for future promotions and assignments into our joint force. this past february, as the impact was highlighting to director clapper, he took similar action by designating those that are attending the full-time master's program as joint duty and joint duty qualifying for civilians. this is a big deal. it is a tremendous opportunity for the workforce as they advance through their careers. without that accreditation, about the joint duty assignment, you cannot make it into the senior executive service of our intelligence profession. that is a huge shift and another moniker for this university as it continues to some day have people sitting in the position

of director clapper or the director of our fbi calling of each other as past classmates, trying to solve complex problems. these milestone achievements highlight the fact that this university is doing exactly what it should be doing, integrating intelligence for a more secure nation one student at a time, while graduating leaders who will lead within our armed forces, the intelligence community, and across government for many years to come. director clapper, i can assure you that this institution has both very deep roots and very bright futures. niu is on its way to achieving your vision of becoming the center of academic life for the united states intelligence community. to the class of 2013, congratulations, and very well done for choosing what you will walk across the stage to receive today, and i would like to give them another round of applause.

[applause] you should be proud of yourselves, you have tackled a challenging field of immense proportion and immense importance to our nation. quickly reviewing a list of the thesis topics you can tell how this class has covered almost every corner of the globe, from china, iran, north korea, the middle east, india, africa, philippines, latin america, to here in the united states covering some of the most vital issues that we wrestle with in the intelligence community every day, issues such as terrorism, cyber threats, counterintelligence, space, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and general instability, and so many others. it is a complex world. as our nation will face daunting security challenges ahead, i have full confidence that you are ready to assume the mantels

of leadership in your organizations. the common bonds you have formed throughout your joint study here are crucial. remember each of you is a force multiplier for integration and collaboration, which are the keys to avoiding strategic surprise and providing our national leaders that vital decision advantage and confidence they require. i challenge each of you to carry forward niu's culture of integration as you moved your next station. i challenge you to mold the intelligence community and to the organization that in each to be for our nation is the future. it is fitting that on this event of the 50th anniversary of this fine institution we're joined by some of the most distinguished members of our profession, including director clapper and our former international security assistance force and u.s. forces in afghanistan commander general john allen, a graduate of the class of 1984, and i would like to give them

both a round of applause. [applause] it is an honor to introduce our commencement speaker, the honorable james clapper, the fourth director of national intelligence. he has a long track record of support for intelligence education and is a special friend to this university, as has been highlighted. as both director of dia and the national spatial intelligence agency as well as the undersecretary of defense and now serving as the fourth director of national intelligence, there's no one that has served our nation and continues to serve our nation during so many trying times that director clapper has done. from his first serving our nation as the united states marine, during his time as a young airman in vietnam, throughout all the difficult

times our nation has faced over the past five decades of peace, war, and conflict, what many do not know is that in the mid- 1990's he served as an instructor teaching a course, knowing he would go on to shape this great institution. that is very true, amazing, little knowing that he would go on to shape this great institution that the community has become and to lead that tens of thousands of women and men who make up our tremendous workforce. director clapper was awarded an honorary doctorate by niu in 1995, and it was through his leadership that this institution became the national university. on behalf of all the men and women in the united states intelligence community, all of you that are here, i would like

to thank you, and i would like to present to you, to the audience here, as he gets up here and provides the commencement speech, ladies and gentlemen, director clapper. [applause] >> thank you very much. i could not be reminded of the screaming child that was escorted out, and i am mindful of the fact that the younger members of the audience are unimpressed with this whole thing. [laughter] i recall a long time ago when i was the old air force security headquarters in texas, the time i was there every quarter we would run a big parade for retirements. and a bunch of lieutenants, one of whom was me, got together and said why don't we run this thing

because we are closer to marching than these field grade officers. when the lieutenant took care of the parade over, i got to be the perpetual adjutant. i was having one of these parades and the point where the adjutant comes up to the commander and said, the parade is formed, and my daughter was sitting on my wife's lap, and she said, hi, daddy, at the top of her lungs, and the crowd broke up, and i am trying to stand here and act very military. i will never forget that. thanks very much for that very kind, gracious introduction. usually when we speak together, we are testifying in front of congress. [laughter]

that is quality bonding time. ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2013, staff and faculty of the university, and let me mention also the particular hero of mine is general john allen, and at the risk of doing it, i ask for a round of applause for john. [applause] it is a pleasure to be here, and to have the family members here, even the ones that are not too impressed. they do not often get to participate in something in what we do. i was privileged to address the classes of 1992 through 1995 when i had the honor of serving as director, and the class of 2007 i was the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, but this is my first time.

this is the best part of my job, getting a chance to congratulate members of the intelligence community for their competence. add on to that i get to welcome you back into your jobs after your vacation here. we have been waiting for you, to put your new superior knowledge to use for a safer america and a more secure world. this month, as was indicated, marks the 50th anniversary of my commissioning as an air force second lieutenant, almost coincidental with the first class of the brand-new defense class graduating. both our titles have changed over the years. dis became the defense intelligence college, where i taught as an adjunct professor, and the national defense intelligence college, and now it is most appropriate the national

intelligence university. i am referred to as director, at least in polite company, and had been called general, colonel, etc., and back when the marine corps asic training, i was called several things there which i cannot repeat in mixed company. [laughter] as we developed over the last 50 years, i like to think we have gotten wiser with those name changes, at least niu has. i want to take a moment to commend president ellison and the current staff and faculty for all they have done, and particularly for president ellison's passion and leadership. so i ask for a round of applause for david ellison. [applause] niu is becoming worldwide respected institution with a dynamic and visionary plan.

it is not all pie in the sky. you are integrating intelligence, which is a big thing to me, one student at a time, and that is what the i.c. needs from you as graduates. i salute you for that. as they say -- this is an exciting time to be in the intelligence community. most of us would prefer a more boring time, i know i would, but that is not an option. we live with threats from terrorism, nuclear proliferation, cyber, and competition over natural resources. i would go so far to say that as a nation we face more diverse threats now than at any time during my 50-year career in intelligence. shrinking budgets have added to the danger, because it is not realistic to think we can ever do more with less. we are going to do less with less.

we will just have to identify and manage risks were closely than before. there have been challenges throughout my career. in my first combat experience was in vietnam, and i will go be going back there next month for the first time since i left in 1966. i'm looking forward to that. intelligence automation in the day was map, a grease pencil, and two corporals. even when moving quickly and headed to desert shield and desert storm, we have come light-years since then, even with all the improvements we made then, particularly in imagery, and 9/11 changed everything. the prevention act was a growth of 9/11 called for greater integration. i felt that was a natural thing for me to take on in this job --

the sum is greater than the parts -- to produce better products for our policy, our decision-makers, whether sitting in a foxhole or the white house. i think that calls for integration, horizontally across the so-called -- and vertically now, the added responsibility we have for attending to state and local and tribal partners. a couple words on budgets. we had a decade of growth after 9/11 in the intelligence community. every year we got more money. now we are in a different mode. we have been through this before. this happened in my time as director and hopefully we can profit from that experience and apply those lessons learned, and as we constrict ourselves, we will do it smarter than we did in the 1990's.

we have still important priorities. i have about five, but i will mention the most important one, which are represented here today, and that is our people, which is our most valuable asset. it is the people who will have the ingenuity, the drive, and the innovation to figure out ways to get around and obviate, mitigate these reductions. other challenges, i will not go into detail, but the recent nsa leaks drama crystallizes some conflicting demands on us as intel professionals, a need to safeguard our citizens lives, a duty to share intelligence information, our responsibility to protect sensitive sources and methods, and an imperative to protect american civil liberties and privacy. we must synchronize and meld all

these competing forces simultaneously. and we should preferably do it out of the limelight. we serve our nation, and for us that is satisfaction enough. now we are at the part of any graduation speech that always makes me cringe, which is giving advice for the future. this will be really short. i realize once you achieve geezerdom, as i have, people expect some pearls of wisdom. i do not know if this qualifies, but here are five rules of thumb i try to subscribe to. now that you have made all these great connections with classmates from every part of the i.c. and government, it is time to think beyond your organization. you need to build those strong partnerships, as the president alluded to the phone call

between the phone call of the director of the cia and fbi, and that works, so i need you, the most recently educated, to understand the concept of intelligence integration. do not confuse integration across agencies with making every agency and organization into the same bland oatmeal. integrate across organizational lines to take advantage of the diversity as represented in this class and the strength of different organizations with their unique capabilities. there are things about stovepipes, cultures, and tradecraft that are worth preserving. that is a term used pejoratively, but also an important capability for us. do not gloss over problems. meet them early and head on. bad news does not good get better with age, but the key part of leadership is recognizing when a mistake is made you need to correct the situation as quickly and thoroughly as possible. try to stay calm under pressure.

it is right there on the cover of "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy." do not panic. be kind. it goes a long way, much further than you realize. do not neglect your work-life balance. family and friends help you get there. you want them to be there for the rest of your career when you retire. take care of yourself physically take care of yourself. a strong body and the clearheaded are essential. 60 six years ago today president truman signed the national security act which created the dod, department of the air force, the security council, the joint chiefs of staff. the cned this document on 54 which instead of being called air force one was called the sacred cow.

it is something treated with so much reverence that it's immune to criticism and everyone is reluctant to change because that's way it's always been. we cannot think that way in our business. with one stroke of a pen, president truman changed how it was organized. there will be many more changes in the next half-century as there has been since he signed the document in name, title, organization, otherwise. my hope is that the national intelligence agency and each of you will continue to improve with age, like a fine wine. another great president reportedly said old age is like everything else. to make a success of it, you've got to start young. i think about these kinds of philosophical musings. best of luck to all of you and many congratulations. it's a proud day for you and your families.

i'm proud to serve with you as we work together to keep this country and our allies safe. god bless all of you and god bless america. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] democratic senator ron wyden ," hisregon on "newsmakers views on the patriot act. here is a preview of what senator wyden had to say. >> are you working on a similar proposal with democrats and republicans in the senate? i'm definitely working with democrats and and republicans to overhaul this program genetically. there have been a number of already from senators on both sides of the aisle and the discussions have

accelerated since that extraordinary houseboat. we already have a corridor in the senate on record saying that they are very interested in certainly the issues that are central to this debate and that's the reason why we insisted on finally getting some answers. the answer to your question is yes. you're going to see a strong and bipartisan effort to pick up on the work of the house and to fix a problem that i think needlessly intrudes on the privacy and liberties of millions of law-abiding americans. watch all of his speech on our website, c- span.org. he will be our guest this week on "newsmakers," this sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> the first lady was -- reflects the schism about what

americans are supposed to be today. are we supposed to be mom and chief? first mate? navigate if the president is supposed to be head of state and government, is the first lady the idealo be fashionista? is a she's supposed to be mom and chief, first mate, but at the same time, if she's going to be first mate, that means she really has to understand what's going on in the administration and she has to understand what's going on in the country and she has to understand her husband's political agenda. you cannot really separate, i think somehow the first lady and the herself thelicting expectation that country still has four working wives and working mothers.

>> as we continue our ladies,tion on first historians talk about the role of the first lady and its move from traditional home and family to back of his him on behalf of important issues in transitioning from public back to private life monday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> this week, the house adiciary subcommittee held hearing on the status of young people who grew up in the united states after being brought here illegally by their parents. congress is considering changing legislation to provide them with a path to legal citizenship. numbers of congress testify in support of these changes. the hearing is chaired by south carolina congressman trey gowdy. >> good afternoon. the subcommittee will come to order without objection. the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time. this is a hearing entitled "addressing immigration status

of illegal immigrants rot to the united states as children. we welcome our witnesses. we will get to our witnesses momentarily. when sherman goodlatte had the first immigration hearing months ago, i said we were looking for a remedy that would last a lifetime. a real remedy, not a political remedy but a real remedy that is best for our country. i said that we could find a synthesis or harmony between the passion that defines us as a people and the respect for the rule of law that defines us as a republic.

the judiciary committee has held nearly a dozen hearings on aspects of our system and passed bills including legislation to strengthen enforcement. we know border security and interior enforcement are the only guarantee that we will not recently -- repeat the mistakes of the past. the issue of bringing children to this country is not new. congress has considered it since 2001 but it is a new issue for this congress and several members of this subcommittee. we all view children as a special protected class. we have all witnessed acts of heroism where total strangers risk and sacrifice their lives for other people's children. we admire teachers and other professionals who dedicate their lives to helping other people's

children. children and the issues that impact their lives unite us like nothing else. because children are a special class, the law treats children differently in almost every regard. when children wander in a neighborhood, we don't call that trespassing. when children cry at restaurants or on airplanes, we don't call that a violation of the noise ordinance. when children eat a grape at the grocery store or eat a piece of candy waiting in line, we don't call that petty larceny. children can sign contracts, can't vote, can't purchase certain items, cap work in certain instances because the law treats children differently. even when they do get in trouble legally, the system is completely separate. even the purpose of the system is different. the purpose of the system is to punish. the purpose of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate and restore.

the law treats children differently for a variety of reasons, including the fact that children can't form the intent necessary to violate the law. intent is a necessary element of every criminal offense. children who were brought here have not committed a crime. the ultimate have, but -- the adults may have. the children have not. that is not an expression of passion. that is the law. there are an estimated one point three 5 million undocumented children under the age of 18. in recent months, i have heard from organizations aimed at granting legal status for this subset of undocumented immigrants. children from south carolina and as far as california. my good friend jeff denham was

gracious enough to let me visit him. i remember a young lady at your town hall who for all of her life grew up thinking she was an american citizen. she never knew any different. she lead a virtuous life, good grades, hard work, community involvement, active in church. exactly the kind of person you and i would want to be, a fellow citizen. she was polite, persuasive, she had one question. what country am i supposed to go back to? this is the only country i have ever known. while there is an obvious hope, those same equities do not apply in the same regard to the remainder of the 11 million undocumented immigrants. they may or may not have other equities to argue. let me say this as plainly as i

can. attempts to group the entire of 11 million into one homogeneous group will only wind up hurting the most vulnerable. to earn the respect of our fellow citizens we must ensure there are sufficient screening mechanisms so those who seek the benefit without a factual basis are identified. in conclusion, we are a nation of laws because law provides order and structure and predictability and peace and equality and justice. compassion is good, but it can add and flow with the perspective of the individual. the law remains sturdy and strong as the foundation upon which we live. i will support and defend the constitution and laws of the u.s. against all enemies. i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. i will bear arms on behalf of the u.s. when required by law. i will perform service in the armed forces as required by the law. i will work when required by the law. that is not an oath for congress.

that is the oath of citizenship. that is the pledge and promise each makes hand on heart to their soon to be fellow citizens. five distinct references to the law and just a single paragraph of the oath. if we expect people to support and live by the law after they become citizens, what possible explanation can exist for not applying the law to the process of becoming a citizen? the equities are all decided. the law is also on the side of these children. the law stands above equity and opinion. america is different. we are compassionate and free, but most of all we are a nation of laws.

that is one reason people so desperately want to come here in the first place. with that, i recognize the general lady from california, ms. lofgren.>> ts is an importan our system, the treatment of undocumented young people who are brought to the u.s. as children. these are kids who have grown up in this country, attended american high schools, who often know no other country as him. this subcommittee last held a hearing about them in 2007 when three young women testified about their lives. one witness grew up in california, graduated in garden grove california, from ucla and a bachelors program with honors. she was in the phd program in

american civilization at brown university. she was serving as a leading voice in support of the dream act which she and a close friend died in a car crash on may 15, 2010. i wanted to recognize her as we begin this hearing because i am mindful of what martin luther king junior referred to. right now, we have an opportunity to fix our broken immigration system and it would be a national shame if we were unable to do that. one part of that fix, an important and compelling part of that fix, is to ensure that dreamers have an opportunity to become just as american on paper as they already are in their hearts. i believe that a strong bipartisan -- there is a strong bipartisan support for that, and i am encouraged by what i have heard on this issue from republican members including those in leadership over the past few months. in some ways, this is not new. the dream act was first introduced as bipartisan legislation in 2001 and has had bipartisan support ever since. the breath of support in

congress -- i am extremely pleased that this will be reflected by the witnesses testifying today. it is -- as encouraged as i am, i must also say that i have concerns about some of what i have read in the press leading up to this hearing. i understand that the majority leader and chairman goodlatte are working on a proposal that is rumored to be called the kids act. their desire to become champions for this issue is positive development. it is a testament to the hard work that dreamers themselves have done to build a coalition by telling their stories and advocating for change. like the bills that this committee markup in june, we have not yet seen the language of the kids act and we have not been asked to contribute to the effort. while i am looking forward to reviewing the act, i know that this is a sharp archer or the history of the dream act. legislation was always drafted and introduced with bipartisan

support. i am even more concerned about reports that some republican members may be working on legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants other than the dreamers to obtain temporary lawful status without a specific path to legal residency. i recognize that this represents progress and i welcome that. i believe it shows a growing appreciation that we cannot fix our broken immigration system without addressing the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are part of our communities. i believe it would be a grave mistake to allow millions of people to come out of the shadows, obtain immigration status only to leave them in a second-class status for the rest of their lives. partial legalization is a dangerous path. we need only to look at france and germany to see how unwise it is to create a permanent underclass.

what makes america special is that people come here. they assimilate, they become fully american with all of the rights and responsibilities that citizenship bestows. american people agree. in a recent poll, americans were asked the following questions, would you favor or oppose each of the following as part of legislation to address the issue of illegal immigration? they were provided various components of top to bottom reform, mandatory verifying, border security, visas for skilled workers, and "allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens." 88% said they favored a path to citizenship for the undocumented. support was overwhelmingly strong across all ethnic groups. among conservative non-hispanic white respondents, 83% favored a

path to citizenship and only 17% opposed. we have an opportunity to do something that will help strengthen america's economy, an opportunity to keep families together, and for everyone who agrees with the rule of law, we have an opportunity to design an immigration system that promotes law-abiding behavior instead of our current one that depends upon lawbreaking. this opportunity is not coming off. my entire time in congress, 18 years, has been spent looking for an opening to fix our broken immigration system. this is that time. the senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill and i am doing everything i can to make sure the house is able to do the

same. if we work together, i think we can make that happen and i think our country will be better as a result. we know that our history as a country, america was formed by immigrants and we will not serve our country well unless we ensure that our future also welcomes the immigrants that will help tilt a stronger america. i thank you, mr. chairman, and yield back. >> thank you. the chair will next recognize the chairman from virginia. >> thank you, chairman gaudi. thank you for your compelling opening statement. when most americans think about illegal immigration's, they picture of adults crossing the desert of the southwest u.s. border. not every immigrant can be placed in the same category.

some did come here by paying a coyote to smuggle them across the border. some came here legally on a visa and didn't leave when their time expired so they could work illegally. there is another class of unlawfully present aliens, a class who deserve to be considered from a different perspective. i am talking about aliens brought here as children. they had no input into their parent's decision to bring the family to the u.s. illegally. many of them know no other home than the u.s. having grown up as americans since they were toddlers. they don't share the culpability of their parents. i have spoken about the fact that as part of the step-by-step approach, we should look at whether we as a nation should allow this group of young people

to stay in the u.s. legally. while this is an important piece of immigration reform, it too must be accomplished effectively and responsibly to ensure that several years from now, congress is not once again being asked to pass more legislation dealing with the immigration status of a new group of young people. to that end, i do not believe that parents who made the decision to illegally enter the u.s. while forcing their

children to do them should be afforded the same treatment as the kids. let's be clear. parents bringing kids to the u.s. illegally is not something we want to encourage. not only because it leads to continued illegal immigration, but because illegally crossing the border is dangerous. we have seen the pictures and video of children who are dehydrated and lethargic from an arduous trek across the desert with their parents or with smugglers paid by their parents. these border crossings include everything from handling a child over to a coyote in hopes of getting the child to the u.s., to placing the child in the back of a semi truck in hopes that customs officers wouldn't detect the human presence in the trailer, to bringing a child down into a tunnel built between mexico and the u.s. knowing that at any moment it could collapse.

these are all kinds of things that immigration reform must ensure come to an end. enforcement at the border is crucial to ending these kinds of situations. this committee has passed legislation to strengthen the enforcement of our immigration laws. however, successful immigration reform must also look at how to address the significant population of illegal immigrants who are already here and who are brought here as young children by their parents. i am pleased that the chairman is taking the time to look at this issue today. i look forward to hearing the testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you, chairman goodlatte. there have been other requests for opening statements. we will get to you as quickly as we can. i recognize mr. garcia, the gentleman from florida. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i wish to thank the chairman. he and many on the other side are trying to find a solution for this problem. the right solution. a just, american solution. that said, when members of this committee, members of this house use inflammatory language, use offensive language, it does not help the process. in my district, i have multiple schools who produce valedictorians on a regular basis.

they are undocumented. when members of this house used language such as, for everyone that is a valedictorian, there is another 100 who weigh 130 pounds and have calves the size of cantaloupes because they have been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert, it is offensive. it is beneath the dignity of this body and this country. my colleagues are trying hard, i know that the ranking member on our side has been working very hard to find a solution, but this is an american problem. we need to work together. we need to stop pointing fingers and finding a pathway forward. i look forward to the goodwill of all this house to try to find a way to solve this american problem.

thank you. >> thanks to the gentleman from florida. the chair recognizes the non- woman from iowa. >> thank you, mr. chairman. my purpose in requesting time here is to help set the tone of little differently. when i see that we have eight witnesses lined up on one side of the agenda and for people lined up to speak as opening statements, and then we hear from the eight witnesses, and then maybe you hear from someone who happens to disagree with this concept called the contact. -- the kids act. we don't have a bill before us. we can't look at the language of a bill and take a position on that language. we are here examining a concept, a potential bill that is not yet before us. this is the opposite order that

we usually conduct is nice with in this congress. i suggest that in the future we turn that around, and have a bill before us that we can have witnesses testified to. we all have sympathy for children brought here without knowledge that they were breaking the law. i do not think that the definition of a child cannot form intent, that doesn't stick when i look at the way people we punish for other crimes. i disagree with the chairman on that particular subject. whose fault is it? it is not the children's fault if they are children. it is not their fault if they are unaware. it is not their fault if there parents brought them to the united states. they are subject to the

application of the law. whose fault is it? is it the parents fault? i think so. are they going to advocate that we punish the parents for bringing their children into a situation where they all find themselves in contradiction of the law? is this being set up as a broader picture of a backdoor amnesty so that all people who are unlawfully in the u.s. which with those exceptions identified, they would be examined. otherwise everybody in america is trying to get legalized by the senate gang of eight, maybe implicitly in an action that may come from this bill. i am concerned about that. if you legalize people in this country unlawfully and wave the application of law on their parents, then who do you enforce the law against if everybody that has committed the felony is now legalized? and everybody that comes after this point, when do you start to enforce the law if we can't enforce it today? on the next one that arrives with a one week old baby? i don't think so. what is on course here advocated

by our witnesses i expect, is we will do this little sliver here because it tugs at our heart. it tugs at my heart to. i listened to the chairman's statement when he said he wants a remedy that will last a lifetime. we have a higher responsibility. we have to preserve the rule of law so that this country can last for many generations into the future. the lifetime of the united states of america. if you exempt the rule of law with regard to immigration, then

what you have done is suspended the law in a category. if you can suspend the law for people that will come here illegally, and those who have been reported in the past and you invite them to come back again? then, what you have done is sacrificed the rule of law on the altar of political expediency and the result will be, american immigration law will not be set by americans. it will be set by the people that can circumvent border security. i promise you, it will not come. it did not come in 1986. this administration is not serious about enforcing the law. they will make promises that they need to in order to do what they want to do. they are willing to sacrifice the rule of law for political power. we have 100 million americans and working age who are not in

the workforce and we are talking about giving a reward for breaking the law. we must take this back to the essential fundamental principle. i appreciate the chairman yielding me sometime and i look forward to the testimony of the witnesses. i am hopeful that i will hear -- will not hear that statement in any testimony. >> the chair now recognizes the lady from texas. >> mr. chairman, this is a good start. we have done this however for those of us who are senior members, for more than a decade. i thank you and congress moment congresswoman lofgren for the testimony today. i believe that it is worthy to hear members of congress and to find that common ground. it is also worthy to hear the opposition, but it is also well to note that we as legislators

are best when we act on behalf of the american people and strike a compromise. the difficulty as i have listened to my good friend is that we will go nowhere if we cannot find a common ground. or we do not have those who can see compromise on the horizon. the one thing that we cannot compromise on, and i said this earlier, in remarks around the dreamers, and i thank them for they have been a spark plug that has drawn interest of our friends on the other side of the aisle, is that we are commemorating and celebrating ramadan but we also have principles and the christian faith. one of them is where this young woman intrigues her mother-in- law not to leave her. she had come close to her mother-in-law. she asked that her mother-in-law not go somewhere else and leave her. we want to tell the dream act children that they can stay, but we don't know about your parents.

what value is it if we tell our dream act children that they can stay but we tell them not to honor their mother and father? we have a format. we have comprehensive immigration reform. we can listen to individual suggestions. i have seen bills that may be advantageous. they maybe didn't -- they may be put into the larger framework that others have been working on over the years. we cannot move forward if we have motions on the floor of the house, for example, voted enthusiastically to on fund the funding that would process dream act children. how can you say that you are interested in moving forward when we have struck a chord of dissension by taking away the dollars that would help move the process forward? even if we are to take this one bill at a time. i will say this as i wrap up. i have spent a number of years. we will hold an immigration hearing that we invite you all to come to in texas on the 29th.

we want people to come far and wide. members of congress are coming in from around our state. we are looking to delineate texas;s interests and commitment as one of the largest states in the union in terms of comprehensive immigration reform. this morning, we heard that it is not only business persons, but it is evangelical or the faith community and business. we hope to strike a chord. that members of congress who believe in business, you can vote for immigration reform. members of congress who believe in the faith community and want to bring people together, you can vote for a comprehensive approach. certainly, if you adhere to law- enforcement who have cried out, you can do that. most importantly, if you believe

in humanity. if you believe in the young people that maybe you don't see, that come into our office with tears in their eyes, yes valedictorians, young men and women, i know there is a bill talking about those who serve in the military. some young man who stopped me while i was shaking his hand on the platform of graduation, he stopped me as we were shaking hands wishing him well, he said, i want to go into the service. he can't go there. he didn't stop me and say he wanted to go on vacation or wanted a big-time job. he wanted to serve his nation, but he had an obstacle. if you see those kinds of children that you know the only approach we can take is comprehensive immigration reform. if you see the tears, that is the approach we should take. i hope mr. chairman, that this committee will see a

comprehensive initiative and we will be voting sooner than later for a better america. >> the chair recognizes now the gentleman from texas. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for holding this hearing as well as the numerous hearings we have had and the step-by-step approach towards immigration reform legislation. i want to make my comments center on the phrase "breaking the law." breaking the law. it is estimated that over 1.3 million children were brought here from foreign countries without their consent by their parents who were under the age of 10. 1.3 million rod here under the age of 10. everywhere in our law that i am aware of, there must be some intent for the act to be committed, either civil intent to form a contract, criminal

intent to commit a crime, in most states at 10 and under, a person cannot form intent to do anything. commit a crime, sign a contract, the law says they are a child. as you have said, mr. chairman, immigration law is the only place i know of where intent is not required to be considered "illegal." i think it is time that we bring the law up to the standard of all laws in the united states, that a child cannot form the intent to commit an act that is illegal in the united states. therefore, we should look at children brought here by their parents, 10 and under, whatever age we use. as not being able to have a legal status because they cannot consent to the act. they did not make that determination mentally.

therefore, they should be treated in a special way. they are children brought here with no intent to have the status that they have. that status was given to them by their parents. breaking the law, i am not so sure that we can say they have broken the law because their status should not be retroactive after they reach a certain age. their age at the time that they were brought here. 1.3 million brought here under the age of 10. nowhere else in our law conecuh merson -- can a person commits a violation of the law under the age of 10. it is time that we deal with these special children in a special way.

bring them in to our society and move forward with rectifying this error in our immigration law and make sure that we, as the chairman has said, have compassion, that we follow the rule of law, and that we move forward with recognizing these children. i have met numerous individuals who were brought here as a child. so, i think this hearing is very important, hearing from several members of congress about this unique, special issue in the entire discussion of immigration legislation, dealing with those

children that were brought here not by their choice and their in tent, but the choice and intent of someone else. i will yield back. >> there was not a request, but i will do with the chairman tells me to do. i think it is important for us as americans that we comply first with the rule of law, second look at what the security of our nation is, and thirdly look at what we need to do to make sure the mistakes we have made in the past with respect to the enforcement of our laws, then they can be corrected. i think this is an important hearing. i like the tone we have set forth so far and i want to make sure we can continue to have this town and conversation about what to do about people that came here as young people, and i want to make something clear

that i have said in public and private. there is no right to citizenship in the united states. it is a privilege provided by the law and our constitution, and it is something that we need to discuss how to do it in the best way so that we can prevent making the same mistakes we made in 1986 and that we have made over the last 30 or so years. i want to say thank you for being here, thank you for your efforts, and i will continue to do something to make sure we can find a way for us to actually resolve the problems that are facing us, which are grave problems affecting the future of the united states. thank you. >> thank you. we are privileged to have two wonderful panels. the first of which are four of our distinguished colleagues

with a distinguished resume. i would invite viewers to look at their resume in more detail. luis gutierrez, we are anxious for you to join the subcommittee. i am not going to read the biographies, but i will recognize representative denman denham, representative gutiérrez, presented kaufman -- representative coffman. with that, representative coffman. you may want to punch the button on -- [indiscernible] i believe the answer to that question is yes. [indiscernible]

we enjoy the freedoms that we have today. [indiscernible] i come from a military family. i am also a combat veteran and served in the united states army separate -- marine corps. first of all, i think we need to remember that the role of the united states military is to defend our nation, and the goal will always be the national security of our country. [indiscernible] many of us -- [indiscernible]

[indiscernible] i think the answer is clearly yes. [indiscernible] first, a military in the aftermath of vietnam that suffered from low morale, poor discipline and a question mark behind its combat rating. since recruiting and retention were difficult, standards

were compromised. there is no comparison between the military of the 1970's and that of today. they had states military -- the united states military of today is smaller in size but it is an elite force. when the civilian job market improves, retaining the quality of the force will become more challenging. a study entitled "ready, willing, and able to serve," found that 75% of young people are not filled for -- fit for military service, because they do not have a high school diploma, are overweight, or have a history of substance abuse. i think this legislation. the enlistment opportunity act provides reforms to our recruiting regulations that would allow certain undocumented

residents of the united states to apply for military service after they have first been vetted by the department of homeland security. the vetting would only mean that the individual is eligible to apply to serve in the military and it would be up to each respective branch of service as to whether or not to accept these applicants. her mid-resident or green card holders allowed to enlist in the military -- permanent residents or green card holders are allowed to enlist today, for they are restricted in what occupation field they can do. only u.s. citizens can hold a security clearance and without a security clearance, an increasing number of occupational fields are off limits.

opening up enlistment opportunities to undocumented residents would only aggregate an additional problem. more and more would require security solutions. my solution is to grant citizenship at the beginning of their enlistment for both permanent residence and for those individuals that were previous on -- previously undocumented and would now be allowed to enter the military, enabling the military to use all of their soldiers, marines and airmen to their best and highest potential because they would no longer be restricted from entering the majority of career fields. however, in doing so, my legislation makes the

citizenship revocable should the servicemember receives a less than honorable discharge within five years. early, it is eight years. servicemembers are still available to be recalled and return to active duty. i strongly believe that by allowing these young people who we are talking about today to serve in our military, it is not just the right thing to do, but it will serve to strengthen the national security of our country. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. representative denham, i want to make sure the microphones are fully functional, so we may need to stand down for 30, 45 seconds. >> chairman trey gowdy. >> it is definitely working, brother. >> i wanted to say thank you for the time you dedicated. it is much appreciated by me and the folks in my district. also, thank you to the members

of this committee for dedicating so much time to fix this problem. and contribute to the greatness of america. on a personal note, i witnessed the trials and the joys of immigration to my own family. my father-in-law is a naturalized citizen from mexico. my wife and her siblings, first- generation americans. i was very proud when my father- in-law, a very proud man, asked me to help them study for his citizenship test. it is a big deal. not everybody wants to become a

citizen, but those that do are willing to work hard to make this country great. i know we are here today to talk about kids that have been brought here through no fault of their own, an important topic, and i look forward to engaging on a variety of other issues, specifically on this topic, one of the bills that is already in an that a number of you have already cosponsored that would be part of the kids at would be the enlist act, and during my 16 years of serving in the united states air force i served along many foreign nationals that were able to learn citizenship through putting their lives on the line for americans in the armed services. our nation has never made citizenship a requirement for service in our armed forces. 50% of enlistees in the 1840's were immigrants. 660,000 military veterans became citizens through naturalization

between 1862 and the most recent numbers of 2000. individuals from the marshall islands, american samoa, they gained citizenship today through military service. the lodge act was passed to allow the military to recruit from europe and other nations overseas to fill critical roles. between 1952 and 1990, 34,620 filipinos, any of which i served with, enlisted in the navy and were granted u.s. citizenship. i introduced the enlist act, which authorizes the enlistment in the armed forces of undocumented inc. -- immigrants that were brought in to the united states as children and are qualified for enlistment. it will provide a way for the undocumented immigrants to be lawfully admitted to the u.s. for permanent residence by reason of their honorable service and sacrifice in the u.s. military. not the only way, but certainly

a way to show their dedication to this great country that we have. the enlist act will only affect a certain population of kids who have been in the united states since the age of 15 and are prohibited from experienced patriotism under current military code. this would provide the military with a talent pool of young men and women come many of whom would have strategically valuable language and cultural competencies. i met with a constituent, gloria sanchez, who was recruited by the marines from modesto high school. one day after completing her social security number, which she did not have because she was

brought here unlawfully. one thing we should all agree on is that we must require those that came here illegally to get back before they can receive any additional benefits. as someone who served, i remember the pride and i felt wearing the uniform and i cannot think of a better way for these young people to earn the right to fully share in the rights and freedoms of america. i would just like to point out one other thing. as we have traveled around this district, the state, and i have even spent time in other districts around the nation -- i have talked to a large number of immigrants, and a lot of kids. [speaking spanish] i get an interesting look -- we do not speak spanish. we speak english.

their entire lives they have gone to our schools with our kids. it is an issue that we have to address. this is a big challenge, addressing the entire immigration system, but i think, specifically on this issue, we have to address this issue and we need to address it now. to me finish by saying that last month i appreciated chairman goodlatte and house democratic caucus chairman becerra when we had a colloquy on the floor dealing with the enlist act, and both said they were willing to work together in making sure this issue becomes a reality. i appreciate your willingness to do that. this is an important part of this package and i hope this committee and the entire house will consider the enlist act as one of the ways -- one of the ways, for undocumented individuals to legalize without providing opportunities to learn a legal status, or a body will not resolve our immigration

status -- there is no better way than putting your life on the line for this country to become an american citizen. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. denham. mr. gardner. >> thank you, mr. chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to testify. my statement has been submitted for the record. this hearing is an important step in addressing immigration reform in a systematic manner. our current system is broken. immigration is an important issue for my district and for everyone on this panel. ignore immigration law for approximately two decades has resulted in million people in the united states without documentation. 42% were once here legally, but overstay their visas. the 1986 bill has proven unworkable. we must have deliberation and

debate surrounding each piece of reform and we must begin with border security and interior enforcement. we cannot simply put reform to the side because it is unworkable or the political will is simply not present to make it work. we have the chance to prove to be american people that the federal government can be trusted to build a long-term and common sense system. it has been signed by many that the united states is a nation of immigrants, and i imagine if i was not blessed to be born in this country i would have done everything i could to be in this country, but we are also a nation of laws. our current immigration laws have proven inadequate and are not being enforced. if a law is not enforced or it is ignored, we no longer remain a nation of laws and the bill is

worth little more than the paper that is worth on. commerce must build the new immigration laws that stand strong and secure but still allow a workable system for people that want to be part of this great nation and help the economy to do so. i urge the house to be guided by law and fairness during this process, fairness as well to those currently waiting in the legal process. any immigration reform must first begin with border security and interior enforcement and i will not support reform that fails to include strong security enforcement measures. not only do the measures need to exist but there must be confirmation from incredible amount outside entity that these measures have been satisfied and implemented. no one should simply choose to not enforce the law or wave it. once we have secured our borders and our enforcing the law and guarantee these measures are

working mainly love to -- may we look to other reforms. the very young, the children and young adults that for all intents and purposes are culturally american -- the children they grew up in the united states and go to school with our children and grandchildren, with my daughter. this is an issue of fairness, law and compassion. many of these children know no other nation except for the united states. their parents made a decision to enter the country illegally and our broken system did nothing to prevent it. they deserve to be afforded some form that organizes they are here through no fault of their own. it was not there decision to not follow the law. i believe members across the aisle can agree that providing them with some sort of immigration relief is the fair thing to do but it must be part of a step-by-step reform

package. the legislation addressing these young individual should not provide them with treatment that is unfair to those already following the legal process. any legislation addressing the in 2005, i had just been appointed to the colorado state legislature and i held one of my first town meetings on the eastern plains in a small farm town. the government teacher of the local high school brought the entire government class to attend the meeting. there were not many of them, but during the question and answer period a young girl introduced herself, proudly stating that she was graduating first in her class, the valedictorian of her senior class, and she had gone to school with those same classmates since her kindergarten year, k-12. she stood up and said she was brought to the country when she was only a few months old, illegally, and she asked this question i will never forget do you support in-state tuition for illegal aliens, she asked. i told her i did not because allowing passage of such a

policy was avoiding the real problem. it was failing to address the overall need for immigration reform and that we can't start with in-state tuition because we have to pursue meaningful immigration reform first to fix the broken nature of our process before anything else could happen. about a month ago i was in the same small town on the eastern plains, and i ran into this young girl once again, same girl, the valedictorian of her high school, waiting tables. eight years later, we talked once again about the need for immigration reform. eight years later, nothing has happened. this time, congress cannot just talk about immigration reform. congress must act. while there will be strong disagreement about what to do, how to proceed and what the end policy will ultimately look like, we simply cannot do nothing. we must act, and i believe we can do so in a way that 30 years

from now, 100 years from now, future generations of this country, both immigrants and non-immigrants can say that back then they did the right thing and it's working. i'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to testify today. >> thank you, mr. gardner. i now recognize our friend and fellow judiciary committee member, mr. gutierrez. >> thank you, chairman gowdy and ranking member lofgren for inviting me to testify today. 12 years ago i introduced the first bill to legalize the status of young people brought to this country by their parents. the immigrant children's educational advantage and dropout prevention act, 2001. since i introduced that first bill, the movement for legal immigration, for immigration reform and legalization has grown broader and deeper. in every community today there are young people, religious people, women, business owners, immigrant moms and dads, and regular civic-minded u.s. citizens organizing to make sure we pass immigration reform this year in the u.s. congress.

over the august recess members of this committee and members of the house of representatives will see firsthand the desire for reform is real and present in their communities across this nation. we have recently heard the speaker of the house and the majority leader and a wide array of republican voices say they are for legalizing the status of children under certain circumstances, including a pathway to citizenship. wow. dreamers and others who support immigration reform must be pretty darn persuasive. after all, look how far we have come in such a short time. just eight months ago the republican party platform said deport them all. neuter the dream act and make everyone pass arizona sb-1070. just a month ago all but six of the republicans in the house voted to kill the funding for the deferred action for childhood arrivals. three weeks ago every single republican on this panel voted to make every undocumented young person a criminal. i am not here to chastise you, rather i am

here to say thank you for taking a step in the right direction of justice today. now, let us find a way to walk forward together tomorrow. those of us who have sat at the immigration reform table for many lonely years are glad you are stepping up and engaging in a conversation with us. we need you. without you, we cannot achieve success. if the public and majority is starting with the dreamers because that is as far as you are willing to go in terms of legal status for undocumented immigrants, i say thank you for coming this far because even a small step in the right direction is the first step in any good faith negotiation. it says compromise may indeed be within reach, but let me be crystal clear and unequivocal -- legalizing only the dreamers is not enough. it would not be enough given the years and decades of hard work

and equity millions of immigrants have built in this country. it would not be enough to satisfy the intent, hunger for legality in the immigrant community, the pride that so many want to say one day i am an american city and it is not enough to restore the rule of law to fix broken immigration. i have met with dreamers, there moms and dads and i want the same thing for their kids that i want for my two wonderful daughters -- i want an indivisible family. i cannot imagine that republicans who i know also honor the sanctity of families want to legalize the children but leave the rest of the family vulnerable to our broken immigration system. after the election i travel to missouri to meet with united we dream another dream activists

and leaders and i was told in no uncertain terms that they would not leave their parents behind. i will let them speak for themselves because they are well and fully capable of doing so, but let me tell you what i saw. i saw a maturity and a level of confidence that i think any politician would be a fool not to consider. they will not settle for what is good for them if they cannot also when what is good for their family. you know what, you know why, because their parents instilled values in them -- good and decent kids are raised by good and decent parents. if we honor the children for being upstanding and "the kinds of immigrants we like" we must honor the parents that helped raise them to be outstanding. i suspect -- no, chairman dowdy chairman trey gowdy, i know, there is more to come. i fully believe this hearing is just the first step.

i am optimistic that once you take the first step toward justice you will take a second and a third, and as many steps as it takes until the first is extinguished. i want all of us to walk there together. once you see that standing up for young and talented immigrants feels good and right, you'll want to stand up also for their parents that raised and nurtured them. the dreamers will remember, the nation will remember forever how this congress and this country treated their parents. we have come such a long way and we need to work together to keep america moving forward. mr. chairman, i would like to ask unanimous consent that the op-ed written by my colleague, smith might -- congressman mike coffman, published this past sunday in "the denver post," be submitted for the record.

i have traveled several places, but the outfit in denver was one of the most welcoming i have ever seen. i would like that to be introduced into the record. mr. chairman, i would like to introduce into the record and editorial from "the bakersfield editorial" the home of a congressman with whom i shared a stage this past saturday in bakersfield. this editorial praises him for his willingness to compromise and engage members on both sides of the aisle on the immigration issue. i am asking that that also included in the record. >> without objection. thank you, mr. gutierrez. on behalf of all of us, i recognize your need on the floor, in committee, and your constituents waiting on you, and the fact that the four of you

would take the time and testify, we are grateful for your perspective and insight. we have another panel, so we will stand down for a moment, while the three of you go about, and mr. gutierrez will hopefully join us. with that, we will be in recess for about five minutes.

>> i want to say thank you to the first panel for their expertise in turn our attention to the second panel and we are

grateful for their presence. we'll begin with nonmember residents and have them rise and take a note -- and over. do you swear the testimony is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. you may be seated. thank you again, and i am going to read all of your biographies at once, and then recognize you individually for your five minute opening statement. we will start with dr. barrett duke, vice president for the ethics and religious liberty commission. he has been with the group since 1997. dr. duke graduated from criswell

college and been received and that -- received a masters in in old testament studies and a ba in theological studies. he also received a degree from the school of theology at the university of denver. then we have ms. margie mchugh, our next witness, codirector where she provides in depth research and policy analysis a broad range of immigrant immigration issues. prior to joining npi, she served as executive director director of the new york immigration coalition and as deputy director of the new york city census project and as an assistant to new york mayor ed koch's chief of staff. ms. pamela rivera is the native of florida and the daughter of

immigrants from colombia. she is a graduate of florida state university and is currently pursuing a master's degree at the university of florida. she has worked for various non- profit causes including the salvation army. although she is an american citizen, her sister is an undocumented immigrant that was brought to the united states as an undocumented immigrant by her parents. we welcome a board member of the arkansas united committee coalition. she was brought to the united states unlawfully which was five years old and is designed in arkansas nearly her entire life. she is at henderson state university where she is pursuing two masters degrees. welcome, ms. rosa velazquez. dr. duke, we will start with you.

you will have light panels and amy with a traditionally mean, green is gold, yellow is slow down, and red is summarized. >> good afternoon. as you heard, i am dr. barrett duke, vice president for public policy and research for the southern baptist ethics and religious liberty commission. i appreciate the opportunity to speak to the subcommittee this afternoon on the subject of children brought here by their parents contrary to our nation's immigration laws. the subcommittee is right to view this group of undocumented immigrants differently from those that came here as adults. these are people that came here and did not make a conscious decision. they were brought here as minors. it is the only life they know. it is likely to identify more with this country and its culture and the country and culture from where their parents brought them. this is their home, in other

words. our country should not hold these children accountable for the choices their parents made. would anyone in this room want to or expect to be held accountable for decisions their parents made? i think not. such distinctions are important to us as -- abhorrent to us as americans. in this land, every person is to be judged by his or her own character and accomplishments, not those of his or her parents. -- own career and the complements, not those of his or her parents. the hebrew skechers, held by me and billions of others as god's will, the prophet declared a father will not suffer punishment for her son's iniquity son will not suffer for a father's iniquity.

if god will not hold children accountable for the sins of their parents, we shouldot as well. i rely heavily on the teachings of the bible, develop thoughts about all aspects of life, my own and my nations. i support the biblical teaching of the divine origin and role of government as laid out in such passages such as romans. the passage does not give government of failing to act in any way it chooses -- it says that god's design for government is to punish bad behavior and to reward good behavior. we would argue this is a fundamental purpose of government. while every person brought to this country illegally as a minor should not qualify for special consideration by the subcommittee, many certainly should. those who are of good, moral

character can demonstrate a desire to make your own way through life should be given a chance to come out of the shadows and come in the -- joining the full life and vitality of our nation and we should, in other words, reward their good behavior. this is a group of people that embody many of the characteristics we embody and americans, the spirit our nation celebrates. we should celebrate that spirit in these young men and women as well and provide a way forward for them. as you consider legislation to assist these children of undocumented immigrants to fully prepare for lies in our nation, here are some things i want you to consider. first, it is difficult to imagine how you can fully address their needs without fully addressing the needs of the other undocumented immigrants in our nation, including their parents. it is my hope and prayer that congress will see this as one piece of a bigger plan that needs the principles of sound immigration reform. we can honor the rule of law, secure our borders, and chart a just and compassionate way forward for the millions of others living peacefully and productively in our midst. second, some parameters are in

order as you chart a way forward for these young people. i suggest this in my full testimony. evidence of prior residence in the country, like you just heard the german speak of in the military, completion of -- gentlemen speak of, possession of a ged. i think the committee for your willingness to tackle this important matter. we are dealing with lives here, not only laws. let justice be blind, but let her be discerning. their character and drive reveal that these young men and women under consideration represent some of the best of what we are looking for in future citizenry. we should welcome them, encourage them and empower them to stand tall. as we honor them and their commitment, we say to a watching world, and likely to a watching

citizenry at this really is a land of opportunity and promise. that concludes my comments. i look forward to attempting to and -- that concludes my comments. i look forward to attending to answer any questions you might have. >> thank you. ms. maggie mccue. >> good afternoon. thank you for the invitation to appear. i've been asked to testify about the broad demographics about the population of young, undocumented immigrants that have been brought here as children and have since established deep roots in this country. since a more generic analysis of the population does not exist i will rely on my testimony on a detailed analysis i co-authored in 2010 of the dream act population that look at the and key social economic aspects who entered and were present in the u.s. for five years. approximately 2.5 million

children in use were potentially immediately eligible for conditional legal status or could become eligible. our study divided the age and date of arrival eligible populations into four subgroups based on their age and level of education and we estimated each group's likelihood of meeting the requirements of legal residence, which included completion of a college degree, or at least two years of post secondary or military service. the groups broke out as follows, largest was school age children that would become eligible in the future or completed secondary education or military service requirements. 43% were in this category, or 934 thousand children under the age of 19. the next largest group, 28%, were those that earned a high school diploma or ged, but would need to pursue college or

military service to earn a green card. next, about 23%, or nearly 500 500,000 were those over 18 and that lacked a high school diploma. they could become eligible if they completed a high school diploma or ged, and subsequently post secondary education or military service had finally, we estimated that about five percent had already obtained at least an associates degree, and that would make them immediately eligible for a green card. you will see in my written testimony that we looked further at key -- written testimony that we looked further at key social economic analysis and the challenges they would face. this included afforded -- affording college tuition and fees, needing to work to support themselves or their families, juggling parenting response abilities were closing gaps in english proficiency. overall, we estimated that only 38% of the 2.1 million that were

potentially eligible based on their age, date of arrival and duration of residency would be able to meet the legislation proposed at that time. since the cost of higher education and access to financial aid are critical factors, based on historical trends, we found that the affordability of college would likely be the most significant factor that would prevent young immigrants from completing a requirement. our profile is consistent with research indicating that young immigrants are more likely to be nontraditional college students, meaning they likely enroll at older ages, attend college part- time, work while going to school, and juggle family responsibilities along with their coursework. all of these factors have been associated with lower rates of college completion, therefore academic support stands a

critical role if their pathway citizenship requires successfully making one's way through post secondary or military service. i would like to point out before closing and more recently the congressional budget office estimated that approximately 1.5 million unauthorized immigrants would meet the age. cbo estimated that approximately 24% of these would be able to achieve permanent residents will be naturalized by 2023. in conclusion, while the npi and cbo estimates are based on different parameters, it does seem clear that approximately 1.5 million meet the residency and age requirements contemplated in recent proposals, but far fewer would

gain residence and citizenship under these proposals. approximately 85,000 individuals in our analysis, and 360 360,000 in the cbo assessment. in light of the reality that the pathway is a narrow one, it provides important considerations for policymakers to allow them to achieve legal status and become fully contributing members of our society. thank you for the opportunity to testify and i would be pleased to answer questions. >> thank you. ms. pamela rivera. >> i want to take this opportunity to thank chairman gowdy and the subcommittee for letting me share my very personal story. my parents moved to the united states in the 1980s, and i was born in 1987 to -- in california. shortly after my birth, they move back to columbia with money they saved working in the u.s.

and tried to pursue a life there. they had my sister evelyn while we were living in colombia and in 1991, when i was four years old, and my sister was three years old, they moved back to provide a better life for us, wanting us to live without the drugs and daily car bombings that defined life in colombia and for us to have a chance at obtaining a world-class education. for many years, i did not know about the status, but as the years passed i began to understand in my family was not like most. we would never be treated the same. my dad worked nights, and my mother worked mornings to make sure that my two sisters and i were never left alone. they understood the meaning of family and how important it was to raise their daughters in a

stable home. my mom learned english quickly by volunteering at her school and working with us on homework. i remember my mom asking my teachers to send home extra homework, even on the bash friday so that my sister and i would catch up to the other students. my youngest sister was born in florida in 1993. we all grew up in the same home, attended the same schools, spoke english, played lacrosse. there was one major difference that would come to dominate our lives. sarah and i were natural born u.s. citizens, while my sister was braun -- brought here on a now expired visa. it was not until high school that i found out for sure about my family's immigration status. there were so many things that would come up or that i had to work twice as hard to figure out because of the situation.

for example, i was not able to get a drivers license when i turned 16 and i cannot tell you how hard it is as a teenager to not be able to drive. as hard as this was for my youngest sister and for me, there was always a light at the end of the tunnel. we were u.s. citizens. evelyn did not have that. she had to go through high school graduation knowing there was no relief in sight, no path to college, no path to a normal job. she had to walk across the stage and into the shadows. in a somewhat normal life that she had gotten to live, he only home she had ever known was over. she also had to walk across the stage without our mom watching. our mom, couple of months before had been pulled over at a traffic stop, arrested, and forced to leave the country. this all occurred as a sophomore in college and i cannot put into words the level of devastation.

it affected my personal training and academic success. my sisters and i worked hard in school. we all earned bright future scholarships, but unlike my younger sister and i, evelyn was unable to claim her scholarship because of her undocumented status. as a citizen of the united states, i have been able to pursue the american dream -- i am a graduate of the florida state university, and am currently pursuing a master's degree at the university of florida. living in a mixed status family i have learned to cherish every moment i have with my family especially since we have lost our mother. we have to protect our families. it has now been over 6 years since eve has seen our mom. it has been 6 years since her

life as she knew it came to a halt. this is the only home she knows, she has been here for 21 years, yet she is punished every day and forced to live in limbo for no reason at all. i have had to watch her be denied opportunities afforded to us in the only country she has ever known in what amounts to be an accident of birth. >> thank you. ms. velasquez. >> i would like to thank chairman gowdy, and the members of this committee for the opportunity to testify. the name is rosa velazquez. i am 30 years old. ever since i was five years old, arkansas has been my home. i am honored to be a member of

the united we dream national coordinating committee. united we dream is the largest immigrant youth-let network in the country made up of 55 affiliates in 21 states. we are committed to winning citizenship for our families and communities. creating an immigration system that treats all americans with dignity, parents like my mother, who was 22 years old when we came to the u.s.. sadly, like so many other parents, her story has been forgotten. she made the courageous decision to travel alone with my four- year-old brother rudy and myself. i was five years old. my mother packed everything in a backpack, and in august we got in a plane in mexico city and arrived in dallas texas -- dallas, texas. my father would join the site year later. throughout my schooling i was involved in every club, organization and to the group i could be part of. i had always had the desire to

be involved but in music i found my true passion. my best performances were at the university why i would later be offered a scholarship. my parents taught me that family values were greater than anything, and where one went, the rest followed. i remember the day i enrolled. my parents went with me. they went with me when i chose my classes, chose my dorm and went to the financial aid office. it was at this office that i found out i was no longer eligible for a scholarship. i was undocumented and i saw my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slipped my fingers because i lacked legal status. to be fully eligible, i had to be a u.s. citizen. it was then that my mother took my hand with tears in her eyes and told me i could do anything i set my mind to. if i wanted to go to college, i was going to go to college and my mother's hard-working hands

are the reason i am here today, and the reason i am currently a graduate student. i am pursuing two masters degrees. one in esl english and one in american literature. she is also the reason my brother is going to the university of arkansas. two years he will achieve a bachelors degree in culinary arts. she is also the reason that my 12-year-old brother, randy, a u.s. citizen, has high hopes and aspirations to attend college in the future. arkansas is the poultry capital of the world. we have several poultry processing plants, and this is where my mother first began her work. her job for the next 10 years was to cut chicken tenders with scissors and arrange them in the yellow trays you are able to purchase today at any grocery store. as i sit here telling you about my achievements and successes.

my mother, who has sacrificed everything for me is now suffering with carpal tunnel syndrome. when members of congress tell me that i deserve the opportunity to earn citizenship and my mother does not, i tell them that if anyone deserves that opportunity it is my mother. my mother did what any mother facing uncertainty would have done, provide a better life for her children. this is a land of opportunity. where we learn with hard work and perseverance we have the opportunity to succeed. if congress were to adopt an incomplete solution that would provide a path to earned citizenship for dreamers like me, but something less for our parents, it would be like saying that i can now be one of you, but my parents can never be. that our hardworking parents are good enough to pick your crops, babysit your children, landscape your yard, and at the same time but they will never be treated as equal members of this society.

this solution that includes only dreamers and people like me will only lead to further separation of families and will in no way provide the answer you seek -- fixing our broken immigration system and recognizing the full humanity of those who have been drawn here by the prospects of work. my mother's hard-working hands are the foundation of which this country were built. i am my mother's daughter. she and i are legal equal -- equal. my name is rosa angela velazquez figueroa, daughter of rosalinda and rodolfo velazquez and sister to rudy and randy velazquez. i am undocumented. i am one of the 11 million and together, we are the american dream.

[applause] >> thank you, ms. velasquez. i'm only going to say this once no response from the audience. we will have order in this. it is fine to express yourself internally. no visible response. with that, i would recognize the gentleman, the chairman of the full committee, chairman good luck -- chairman goodlatte. >> thank you. i would like to start with you, ms. rivera. i appreciate your testimony and that of ms. velasquez. she said she did not think there should be any difference between all of the 11 11 million people between herself and her mother, for example, but you know your parents, probably the parents of other people that have children who are not lawfully present in the united states, and my question for you is when your

parents and do you think other parents would be supportive of legislation that would allow your sister and other young people brought here at a young age to give legal status and ultimately u.s. citizenship, but did not address their situation in other words the parents situation in the same way? >> you know, that is an incredibly difficult question to answer. you know, my parents, like i am sure any other parents, want what is the absolute best for their children. so, you know, it is easy to say that yes, they would be happy with that, but at the same time, i can tell you that the pain of not having my mother with us is something that i really cannot put into words, and it is not something that i feel

comfortable saying i am ok with. >> your mother is not here in the united states. >> yes, sir. >> but if she were here in the united states and got a different status, a legal status, as opposed to a citizenship status, how would she feel about that? >> i know everyone says their mom is the best, and my mom is the best, from the moment they came here, as i said in my testimony, she was at the teachers classroom every day, helping out, making sure we were as involved in our community as possible. at the time, it was extremely annoying, and i can only say that when it comes to my family, knowing my mom, she wants to be part of this country. she still thinks of herself as an american, even though she is in columbia.

so, i feel as though my mom would like a shot at being a citizen, and she wants the opportunity and the responsibility that comes with that. you know, again, we had, up until that happened, lived here with my parents for close to 20 years. my father is now a legal resident. he lives here. this has become their lives. it is the only home we have ever known. it is difficult for me to say we would be ok with that, and frankly, i would not be ok with that. i know the sacrifices my parents made and the long hours my dad worked. i know how hard it was for them to be separated from everything they knew -- their home. i would not want to have to make that decision.

>> i understand you wouldn't want them to make that decision. the congress has to make that decision. that's the hard part. >> let me ask dr. duke if you would comment on the problem that we have here of determining how we proceed to assure that we don't have future children brought here through the desert in the backs of trailers under tunnels and so on into the united states legally. legally.-- illegally. so in order for congress to grant legal status to another 11 million illegal immigrants 20 years from now, what do they support being put into place? >> it is a concern to southern baptists as well we resolve this at this time and not have to come back here as well. i think most southern baptist are saying secure the border and workplace verification. they believe those two

components would have a lot to do with addressing future illegal immigration. if folks can't get work here, it's going to pretty much discourage them from coming. so we do believe those are a couple of components that the committee should consider as well. >> in your testimony you mentioned a commitment to a pursuit of a higher education or military service should be sufficient to show these people have good moral character and commitment to their futures and thus should be afforded a path to legal status. what should happen to young illegal immigrants that do not show such a commitment and are not of good moral character? >> that is a tough question in my opinion. the legislation under consideration here to me requires a certain level of moral character as well as commitment to the future and so i think that is going to be necessary for this special track for these particular young

people. i think the rest are going to have to be considered along with all of the other 10 million or so undocumented immigrants in our country that the committee is going to have to figure out how to address. there are going to be some adults who won't be able to qualify for whatever this committee and congress chooses to do as well. and unfortunately some of those children as well are going to be caught in a situation where they've made wrong choices and made it nearly impossible for themselves to find a way for this country to be able to grant them the kind of legal status we'd like to give them. >> thank you. >> the chair will recognize the gentle laid i did -- lady from california. >> thank you mr. chairman and thanks to all of our witnesses for excellent testimony that informs us and informs people who are watching this hearing

across the country on c-span and other members of congress who are watching it in their office, it is very important that you are here. listening to our two young ladies, very powerful testimony that you've given. and as i was listening to the chairman's question, i was thinking about the relationship between parents and sons and daughters. i have a son and a daughter about your age. i would do anything for them. and i think you're saying the same about your parents. but here is the problem. when you have -- when you are pitting sons and daughters against moms and dads, you've created really a system that is not healthy. and if i'm hearing you right, it's not that your mother

wouldn't do anything for your mother, it's that you would not permit your mother to be thrown to the side of the road for your benefit. is that kind of a good summary of your position? thank you. dr. duke, we worked together in the past and i appreciate very much your testimony and it's interesting there are many issues that you and i don't agree on. what we've learned is we can work on the things that we do agree on and one of those things has been immigration. the ethics and religious table called for immigration reform and said it should provide clear steps to citizenship for those who want it and qualify. and dr. moore sent a letter to

congress saying and i quote a tough yet achievable earned pathway to citizenship is a necessary part of broader reform. is that still your position and the position of the ethics and religious committee of the southern baptist convention? >> thanks for the question. yes, it is still our position, it is my position that we should not be creating second class citizens in this country. we just don't do that here. everyone should have a full opportunity to rise to the full opportunity this country affords them and citizenship is a part of that. we do believe that we do need to create an opportunity for citizenship for those who did qualify by whatever standards this committee and congress choose. but we believe that should be a component that is possible for these folks.

>> thank you very much. i hope the faithful here in the house will listen to our words of advice. when the house last took up the dream act, some members took to the floor and called it the nightmare act. they said that allowing these young people to come out of the shadows and have an opportunity to earn legal permanent residence and possible in the future citizenship would prevent americans from getting jobs and realizing other opportunities. how would you answer that attack? >> well, certainly we're in a situation in the country right now where we don't have enough jobs it would seem. but we also have a lot of jobs that are going unfilled. so clearly we need more workers in certain areas than we have right now. we know that business is looking for more workers currently.

so clearly there are still a need for more workers in this country. the best thing that we can do is create as well qualified and educated work force as we possibly can. we have all of these young folks here now, over a million who can be brought fully into the work force and can meet a lot of the needs that we already have. as we continue to grow our economy we're going to need more workers. and eventually everybody who wants a full time job is going to be able to find one. so i think this country needs more workers, not less workers. >> i'll just close by saying whenever we have a hearing like this i'm so struck by the courage shown by undocumented individuals. i think of them as aspiring americans. and i remember my grandfather who came to this country when he was 16 years old with nothing.

his process then was he got on a boat and sailed to america and he got off the boat. he never saw his parents again but he wanted to be an american just like you want to be an american. and he and generations of aspiring americans came and really built this country. and to think that our future will not be enriched by people who want it, who have enough hope and enough courage and enough ambition to want to be a free american to help build our country, that that future would not be enriched is just a mistake. because through aspiring americans, people who want to come and throw in their lot with us and build a better country, our future will be strengthened and i don't think we need to ration that. we ought to embrace that just as immigrants built our past, they

will help us build a great future for americans. so thank you all for your wonderful testimony today. >> the chair will recognize the gentleman from iowa, mr. king. >> thank you, mr. chairman, i appreciate being recognized. i was gathering my thoughts and trying to digest what has taken place here today. the first question in your testimony i could hear the emotion in your voice. would you characterize the life you've had living here in the united states living in the shadows? >> i'm sorry? >> would you characterize your life here as living in the shad

shadows? >> that wasn't an option for me. some of the kids wanting to go to college came up to me and i had to voice myself to them. >> so you wouldn't characterize your life as living in the shadows here? >> no, sir. >> listening to your testimony and you scythed ezequiel 18:20, i would call it the since of the father section. but i would understand that point the since of the son shall not be punished on to the father and vice versa. i look at that and read through the rest of your testimony and it appears to me that neither would you punish the parent for bringing their children here. you just wouldn't do so in this bill. did i read that correctly? >> no, i'm not saying we shouldn't hold the parents

accountable for the choices they made. there do need to be appropriate forms of penalty. >> but you wouldn't apply current law to them. you would want to write a new law that would be less onerous than current law for the parents? >> yes, i'm asking you to create another set of penalties for the law other than the penalty that currently exists. >> would this be under the concept of mercy? >> mercy at the very least but also in my opinion simply a matter of practicality and humanity. >> can you -- humanity. >> can you cite any place in the bible where mercy is not accompanied by repentance? >> i know that god says i will have mercy on whom i will have mercy.

so he gets the freedom to choose >> he calls for repentance as christians. >> we get to choose the circumstances under which we have mercy. >> we couldn't teach christianity without repentance being a component of it. >> i know matthew for i was a stranger and let me in. >> that was a central theme also which i'm surprised wasn't in this testimony but i suppose you would adhere to that proposal as well? >> yes, sir that's correct. >> and so are you aware when we see that word stranger and when you look back through the greek which is a foundation of the modern day bible i know. xanos is the greek word, that means guest foreigner, an

invited guest rather than someone who came in against the law? >> i understand there are various understandings of how that word is to be interpreted in that passage. >> so you wouldn't interpret that to mean you are commanded by god to welcome anyone that comes into your country or home regardless of whether they are invited or uninvited? >> yes, sir, that's correct, we're not required to invite anyone that comes along into our homes but we are required to express hospitality toward those >> to the invited guest according to the greek interpretation of the word xanos, stranger invited guest. >> st. paul gave a sermon on mars hill in acts 17.

he said, and god made every nation on earth and he decided when and where each nation would be. and he granted that authority to the elected officials within the countries to set the border and to control the border and that is the definition of sovereignty as i understand. would you have a different understanding of that sermon? >> no, sir, i think god does give human beings the freedom to create their own borders and to establish their own laws. >> i appreciate all the witnesses. i yield back. >> the chair will recognize the gentleman from michigan. >> thank you mr. chairman and welcome to all of our witnesses. i am very impressed by the overall direction that all of the witnesses have made. their understanding of how we deal with not only the dreamers,

but with their parents as well. one thing that concerns me is that sometimes we manage to keep the dreamers in and there seems to be a growing tendency in that direction in the congress. but the separation of the children, the dreamers, from their parents is something that still troubles me. and i'd like to just go down the witness list and see if you share any of this unease with me and i always like to start with the vice president of the southern baptist convention. one of these days we're going to get a witness from the northern baptist convention here but it

hasn't happened yet. >> there aren't as many of them. >> that's a good reason. >> thank you, congressman. >> i do share concerns for the parents of these young men and women. they are in a different circumstance, however, because purpose fully violated the law. we can see address the circumstance for these young people and address the parent needs without talking about a full immigration solution. >> comprehensive? >> yes, sir, a complete solution that would address their parents and the parents of children who were born here as well who also need their circumstances to be addressed. >> and might i ask you for your feelings on this part of the discussion? >> our organization is focused on analysis of policy options facing the congress and so it's

not the sort of way that we would approach the issue. >> that means that you wouldn't think of it as a comprehensive or that we could create a path for citizenship even for the parents although they have without doubt violated some of our immigration rules. but we always start off here by saying on both sides of the aisle the immigration system is broken. so it's not a matter of worrying too much about these rules, it's can we construct some others? if you have an idea on that? >> perhaps i was listening to your question with too formal an

ear. i thought you said did i have a feeling of concern about that. i would say for my organization overall that a great deal of our policy analysis over the years has focused on the need for more comprehensive approaches to reform if we are to fix the system. but i would say there is a distinction between that and the question you had asked. >> thank you. >> what say you? >> obviously i am supportive of comprehensive immigration reform, anything that helps families stay together. i think that that is the epitome of at least what my family, what i was raised on. i think it's for the well being of children.

and i just think it's for the well being of america because the family unit is probably the most important unit we have in society. >> so what about the parents? do you think that we keep the dreamers and work out a way for them, a path for citizenship but what bothers me is what do we do with the parents? do we kick them out? do we separate them from their children who were born here in the country? >> no, i don't think that that's a real option. i think that that can cause lasting damage. i can tell you i recently got married. i got married last month. and i had to go through the decision of trying to figure out how to do a wedding because i have my sister who cannot leave

the country and my mother who cannot come into the country. so i've been engaged for two years hoping some type of solution would occur. and at the very least my sister would be able to travel to columbia. so finally we had to give in and we had to get married. and it was wonderful but my mom was there via facetime. >> could i get a response even though my time is expired? >> certainly. >> thank you. at home i was taught that what this country was founded on family values, christian values, and justice. i hope this is addressing a real solution for me and for my parents as well.

>> thank you very much. >> the chair will now recognize the gentleman from ohio. >> thank you. let me thank all of you. it's very compelling emotional testimony. let me go to you obviously support a path to citizenship for dreamers and you would support a path to citizenship for parents as well? >> yes, sir. >> yes, sir. >> how about you? >> i'm sorry. >> a path to citizenship for dreamers is what we're talking about today. would you support a path to citizenship for parents? >> we don't take a position -- >> i'm asking you as a witness what do you think.

can you speak on behalf of yourself? >> what about dr. duke? >> yes, i believe there should be a way for citizenship for these others as well. >> what about the rest of the estimated 11 million illegals here, do you support a path for those as well? >> yes, sir. >> yes, sir. >> yes, sir. >> you guys do? >> the southern baptist is taking a position on that? >> restate your question so i can answer it then. >> we all know you are for the dreamers and for the parents. for the rest of the estimated 11 million a path to citizenship, just want to know whether southern baptist are. >> yes, sir we did call for legal status for the undocumented immigrants here in our presence in this country and in further reflection since then most southern baptist are also asking for a way forward for citizenship for these 11 million

as well and that certainly would be my position. >> it's your position and the position of the southern baptist? >> they have not stated officially that is its position. >> do you support the comprehensive bill passed by the united states senate? >> i support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. >> have you looked at the bill? >> yes, sir. >> are you for it or against it? >> a path to citizenship so i support a path to sid zip? >> are you for the bill? >> yes, i am. >> have you taken a position on the bill? >> no. >> has the baptist convention taken a position. >> no. the baptist organization has not taken a position on the bill. we believe it's a good step forward but it needs some work and we're looking to the house to help address some issues.

>> last question for you dr. duke. the southern baptist convention you said you believe they are there on pathway to citizenship for the 11 million even though you haven't taken a formal position. is there anything in what you perceive as the position of the southern baptist that says border security must happen before there is a pathway to citizenship for those, for the estimated 11 million folks in the country illegally? >> i would say most southern baptist and myself believe we need to make sure the border is secure before citizenship is possible. but we believe we also need to address the circumstances of these 11 million and that it needs to be done as a package in order to make sure all of the

needs of our nation and of these undocumented immigrants are addressed. >> i said last question but i changed my mind. >> do you have any concern -- he talked about in his opening statement that if in fact we pass a dream act for young people, that we're going to have to make sure we do it for parents. are you concerned at all about where it goes tapped logical steps that have been pointed out that it travels that way before we have a chance to secure the border and maintain the border as a sovereign nation.

i wish there was a way to coordinate that better. because there are gains for them and some opportunities for bargaining on that. so i mean, obviously, the kind of governments are an impediment to that but i don't want to make any more views about my views of the existence of governments.

>> i want to separate questions of whether institutions should exist from whether they should be open. when this country was founded huge parts of the population weren't citizens. so women couldn't vote, lacked basic citizenship rights. you could look at that and say abolish citizenship or say maybe it's an institution that should be more open to people entering it and leaving it. two very different solutions. when i look at the world and i see the calculation of how much your place of birth matters, one response to that which i wouldn't share is okay let's

abolish states and governments and pretend like they don't serve a function. another would be to say what are ways that the institutions involved in the nation states could become more open to people changing the nation state that they are affiliated with. i'm often told by people that look you are in favor of some sort of global veil of ignorance and if you read john recalls he will tell that you nation states are the basic unit of analysis where there is a veil of ignorance and nation states is where it's defined and outside of it ethics don't mean anything. i disagree with that. the fact that the republican of south africa declared that was not part of south africa would mean we can't say that act was ethical or unethical because that's a separate country. what is or isn't a country is something people decide every day. in the 1990's south africa made a decision about who was in the

in group. i don't accept that ethics can't be defined across borders but i'm also hesitant to declare that government serves no function. a greater openness of the institutions of the nation state could be beneficial for everybody. >> i had a two part question. the first part being you talked a little bit about what the fiscal burden a little bit of immigration and the different groups what their fiscal burden is.

the concern for many americans is half americans don't pay taxes. they are concerned that the immigrants coming in are going to fall into that group that don't pay as opposed to the group that does pay. is there any research if they come in the low end, do they end up moving up? and the second part is panelists were talking about how high skill immigration would be a big benefit and low scale immigration would be a big benefit. is there a relationship percentage that is optimal for our country? if 10% of immigrants coming in should be high skill or 80% should be low skill. has there been research on what would be an optimal infusion for our country? >> i'll tackle the first part because that's easier i think.

much like low skilled or less educated natives. less immigration receive less than they pay. that's true of natives and immigrants. it's a problem if you viewed it a problem. it's a problem with the tax structure not with immigration. you would want to change your tax structure or transfer programs are designed. that is where i think the changes should occur first. the second part of that question is that wages do increase for the average immigrant over time that they assimilate. so their tax payments would increase over time. now for immigrants who have not graduated high school which is the predominant group, right now over their own life times they are net fiscal cost. once you get to high school and higher immigrants are net fiscal

contributor. this is from the report that is the best evidence from 1996 which is old now. when you look at descendants of immigrants, they become us, they become the country. when you look at the descendants of immigrants which all of us really are that over time they do pay back if you will if their immigrating ancestor was low education, they pay that back. so it depends on what your time horizon is what you think about the cost is. >> that was a good answer. all we have is that model that i talked about, that very simple model that says you ought to admit immigrants whose skills are rare in the existing population. there is a lot of problems with that model. further more, i have some doubts

about our ability to fine tune exactly who we get. so that's another issue. if you look back at the various major policy shifts, the immigrants we actually got compared to what we said we wanted differs wildly. and so maybe we ought to think more about what kind of policy we want to have for other reasons as well, not just this kind of optimal kind of calculation. >> i don't -- i'm not a specialist in the study of immigrant simulation but i know one fascinating fact chi looked up that is now online, you can get the whole thing on lines. fraction of white foreign born in 1940 with a high school degree is 12%, 12%. and now over 50% of the unauthorized population of the

u.s. adult population has a high school degree. remarkable. so there might be some level of immigration that assimilation doesn't happen, kids are just incredibly poor and uneducated, whatever that is it would have to be vastly greater than what we saw in the 20th century. on the right level of immigration we talked about proposals for more market driven mechanisms for regulating immigration. richard freeman at harvard has an article talking about this. economists have been talking about these mechanisms for a long time. that's one of the reasons i like the book is because it talks ability mechanisms for regulating because go around washington and ask what is the optimal size of the u.s. labor force and optimal composition of it?

does anybody know the optimum allocation of capital in wall street? no human being knows that and any composition is going to be imperfect and maybe wildly flawed. and mechanisms for gathering information from the real world about what the right mix of the labor force is which is what these mechanisms are might be something that the world could explore. >> we have time for one more question. >> thank you very much for this presentation. my -- the emphasis has been on the benefits for the receiving country, in particular the u.s. the standard model is we receive

the immigrants, the wages go down and other groups see the wages go up and everybody will gain. i suppose the capital is assumed to be the same. on the sending country i suppose the reverse is true. michael eluded to global benefits but the model says the sending country loses. what is your view on that and is there a case for policy intervention, transfers between governments? >> the research -- i don't know the research on brain drain that well but yeah, there is mirror image labor supply impacts in

the receiving -- sending countries. the sending countries, the people they tend to send varies by country, they tend to send their high skill workers. and i'm not sure you should call this a cost for them either. the sending countries tend to have high inequality so this would tend to push down inequality in the sending countries if the model is right. and if the model is not right, they'll adjust in other ways. >> i have never seen any evidence in the literature that the limitation on the physical movement of skilled workers per southeast has caused any -- per say has caused any.

empirically the possibility of figuring out who would have been a good leader and forcing them to stay in either open i can't much less creating the conditions for that person to be an effective leader or effective entrepreneur, i've never even any evidence that has successfully been done. there are many countries that have made the transition from huge outflows of skilled labor to inflows of skilled labor, korea in the 0th century went-- the late 20th century went from losing huge numbers of skilled people to attracting them back on net. but that was because of much broader change that is occurred in the economy and not because of their movement.

the movement as the driver of the change i've never seen any evidence on. >> thank you very much. and please give a warm round of applause to our panel. lunch will be served on the second floor. [applause] and rest rooms are on the second floor right along the yellow wall. thank you again for coming. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> on the next "washington journal," a look at the defense spending bill that the house asked the suite with military times congressional editor rick maze. and the legal case against

goldman sachs trader the breeze -- fabrice tourre. and history and greg brezinski will be on the program to talk about the 60th anniversary of the armistice ended the korean war. journal" begins live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> the treatment of hunger strikers at guantánamo compromises the core ethical values of our medical profession. the ama has long endorsed the principle that every competent patient has the right to refuse interventionóóóóóó...óó the world medical association and the international red cross have determined that force- feeding through the use of restraints is not only an ethical violation that contravenes common article three and the geneva conventions -- in the geneva conventions. let's set aside the numbers you might or might not feel that you

can safely push out. there are a number, an unknown number, but the president has said it is 46, that you can never try. that thenestly think people behind me and the people who are, in telling this asking forll stopwwwwwww prisonerse of thewwwwwww because now they are in the united states? the fear-based argument toww baywwwwww opens hard to understand. if brought to the u.s.wwwwwr prosecution or medical treatment, the detainees will pose no threat to our national security. the 86 men who have been cleared for transfer should be transferred. we must find lawfulççççççs allççççççççççe done in every conflict. >> this weekend on c-span, the senate judiciary subcommittee on human rights looks at the

implications of closing the guantánamo bay prison, today at 10 :00 a.m. eastern. also at 10:00 on c-span 2's book tv, live coverage of the roosevelt reading festival from andfdr presidential library museum in hyde park, new york. live on c-span 3's american history tv, president obama and defense secretary chuck hagel commemorate the 60th anniversary of the korean war armistice. it is also this morning at 10:00. on thursday, vietnamese president truong tan sang met with president obama for discussion on a variety of issues, including trade and security. this is only the second time vietnam's president has visited the white house since diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1995. it is my pleasure to welcome president truong tan sang to the

white house and to the oval office for his first bilateral meeting with me. represents the study progression and strengthening -- the steady progression and strengthening of the relationship between our two countries. obviously, we all recognize the extraordinarily complex history between united states and vietnam. but step-by-step, what we have been able to establish is a relationship of people trust that has allowed us not to announce a comprehensive partnership between our two countries.

-- now to announce a comprehensive partnership between our two countries. it will allow even greater cooperation on a whole range of issues from trade and commerce to military to military cooperation to multilateral work on issues like disaster relief to scientific and educational exchanges. what we have also discussed is the ways in which, through the transpacific partnership, both united states and vietnam are participating in what would be annexed for nearly ambitious an extraordinarily ambitious effort to increase trade and commerce and

transparency in terms of commercial relationships throughout the asia-pacific region. we are committed to the ambitious goal of completing this agreement before the end of the year because we know that this can create jobs, increase investment across the region, and in both of our countries. we discussed the need for continued efforts to resolve peacefully maritime issues that have surfaced in the south china and other parts of the asia- pacific region.

we very much appreciate the announce commitment -- vietnam's commitment to work with us and the east asia summit in order for us to arrive at codes of conduct that will help to resolve these issues peacefully and fairly. we discussed the challenges that all of us face when it comes to issues of human rights, and we emphasized how the united states continues to believe that all of us have to respect issues like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly

, and we had a very candid conversation about both the progress that vietnam is making and the challenges that remain. we both reaffirmed the efforts that have been made to deal with war legacy issues. we very much appreciate vietnam's continued cooperation as we try to recover our missing in action and those that were lost during the course of the war.

i reaffirmed the united states' to work with vietnam around some of the environmental and health issues that have continued decades later because of the war. finally, we agreed that one of the great sources of strength between our two countries is the vietnamese-american population that is here, but obviously has continued strong ties to vietnam. ultimately, it is the people to people relations that are the

glue that can strengthen the relationship between any two countries. so, i just want to say to president sang how much i appreciate his visit. i think it signifies a maturing and the next stage of development between united states and vietnam. as we increase consultation and increase cooperation, increase trade, and scientific and educational exchanges, ultimately that is going to be good for the prosperity and opportunities of people here in the united states as well as

good for the opportunities and prosperity of the people of vietnam. at the conclusion of the meeting, president sang shared with me a copy of a letter sent by ho chi minh to harry truman. we discussed the fact that ho chi minh was inspired to the u.s. declaration of independence and constitution and the words of thomas jefferson. ho chi minh talked about his

interest in cooperation with the united states. and president sang indicated that even if it is 67 years later, it is good that we are still making progress. thank you very much, and i look forward to continued work together. >> [speaking vietnamese] president obama, ladies and , once ain, i would

like to thank you, president obama, for your kind invitation that you extended to me to visit united states as well as your warm hospitality that you have extended to me over the past couple of days. to be frank, president obama and i had a very candid, open, useful, and constructive discussion. given the progress of our bilateral relationship over the past 18 years, it is time now to form a comprehensive partnership in order to further strengthen

our relations in various areas. we discussed the various merits, including political relations, science and technology, of the warthe legacy issue, the environment, the vietnamese-american community, human rights, as well.

it was in a candid, open, and constructive spirit that we have come to agree on many issues. we will strengthen high-level exchanges between the two .ountries in order toider to upgrade the mechanism of cooperation at a high-level, as well as take the best use of the existing mechanisms of cooperation. particularly, we will continue dialogue at the highest level this is, as we believe

a way in order to build political trust for the further development of our cooperation in all areas. economic and trade relations continue to be important to our relationship. in order to participate in the process of negotiations for the conclusion by the end of the year. we also discussed in detail our cooperation in science and technology, and education and training, as well as security.

we also touched upon the war legacy issues, including human which we still have differences on the issue. i also expressed my appreciation for the care that the u.s. has extended to the vietnamese who came to settle in the united states, and now they have become american citizens, contributing to the overall development of the u.s.