important issues, issues that are important not just objectively, but to voters, that are kept out of the party debates. at least out of the presidential level. time for may be passed by now, but during obama's first term, there were two noble prizes in economics. a former cabinet member who said, we need to stop worrying about the deficit and spend more money. we are the stimulus twice as big s what we had heard a lot of

people agreed with that and wanted to do it. it was limited after the stimulus passed. interesting debate. it left out a whole side of it. it is easy to understand why you would leave that out if you are trying to get a majority. it is having to educate people with that view is correct why a deficit is good is always much harder. national security -- you just mentioned drones. drones only made it into the presidential debate because it was an online petition that about 100,000 or so people signed and sent saying, please ask about drones. romney said, they are great. a lot of people are horrified by rones. the whole national security thing, spying on people, assassinations. that's not so much the drones is what they are doing. climate. we are seeing how serious it is every day.

one of the debates that -- spent a significant part of time with both candidates talking about how much they were in favor of clean coal. we are here in ohio where they mine coal. it is a swing state. you can see in the two-party system why you might do that. it does mean that we have a phenomenon going on that might destroy civilization and is not entering in any significant way into presidential debate. globalization -- the free-trade debate has been going on a long time. that is the debate that splits the parties. both parties are dominated by pro-free trade, pro-globalization people. hat a rethink of the merits of those issues, they are issues where a lot of people are not well represented by the major parties. in the past what you would expect to see is maybe a realignment or something like that, some kind of change in the party system. it has not happened. i don't want to say anything about the reform party with rapoport here because i would probably make a mistake.

they had a run. they didn't really manage create a debate about free trade. they created a debate about the deficit which was solved by economic growth. it collapsed, which kind of proves that history repeats. it was farcical enough to make up for it. the green party made a smaller run. didn't make a difference in the 2000 election. didn't get any leverage out of that at all.

they might have in past cycles, but this time it was led to a determination to destroy them. this is the context of what i want to say. i will be quick about it. there are lots of theoretical attempts to say why. it doesn't really work for this case because it doesn't seem to apply to anyone in canada or india. also, it can explain may be long-term why we don't have a multi-party system but he can explain, given that the republicans came out of nowhere to become dominant, the people's party became strong, it cannot explain why you don't get a short term disruptive upsurge of inor party activity. i think there are multiple causes. it gets harder and harder as ime goes on. there is an interesting argument that with the adoption of the ustralian ballot at the end of

the 19th century, we got to a situation where the government had to decide who the candidates were, who would be printed on the ballot. when checked in decide that you get to exclude people. for the next hundred years, the major parties got better and better at creating obstacles. nader after 2000, or 2004, the spent years battling this lawsuit in pennsylvania. it did not have much merit but it served the function of the state. it made hard to go on. that role has kind of been blocked. that has reinforced the ballot laws that control be presidential debates. it has become reinforced by the media and our political culture. the bulk of this paper is meant to be about what happens now. i think one reason -- i want to look at three mass protest

movements. i think bt party develop the way it did is because -- i agree with you guys -- they see there is not much potential as an independent party and they have ore potential as a non-party force. i want to look at occupy wall street as reactions to the situation. i argue that they are. i think people are fairly familiar with the way each of those movements developed. i will not dwell a lot on that. i want to sort of compare them in several, dimensions. one is jack walker's idea that you can overcome the irrationality of forming an organization if you have a

patron. with the tea party, i think that is pretty clearly -- i have to be careful. there is a book out there that says the tea party never existed. it certainly existed. it is a real thing. it really did come out of grassroots unhappiness and protest. that originally health care. originally, the stimulus and bailout. kelly character's protest in washington was focused on what you call the "porkulus bill." it was cut by freedom works, which i guess is a tea party group. it is funded by the koch brothers. they saw the rant on tv as it happened in a couple people said it was big and they put it on their website and it created a

whole apparatus were groups could write in and tell them where the nearest group was. it really added to it. and then fox news, which may campaign, a crusade about reporting on the tea party all the time and help it get going. the wisconsin protest -- i think people are familiar with that, too. it sort of started with democratic senators leaving the state so that would not be a quorum but also the graduate students union at the university of wisconsin marching into the middle of the state house and sitting down. it went on for quite a

while. clearly, their patron was the fcio. they got control of the. it turned from a mass protest to a long, drawn-out series of electoral campaigns. first over a judicial election and then attempts to recall various state senators and ultimately governor walker. none of them responded by trying to call state democratic senators. they did not recall any democrats. they recalled some republicans but not enough to change the majority. they also recalled walker. a lot of the original activists were unhappy about that direction because they thought

they were more interested in the protest. secondly, because once it was an electoral campaign, it looked just like any other electoral campaign. they lost the ideological hrust. they started looking for scandals. a lot of people really not happy. some people were very not happy about the idea that you are going to elect a supreme court judge on the basis of how you expected that person to vote on a particular case. whichever way she votes it is going to be terrible. t would destroy her. she did not win. a lot of people said in the campaign -- i am told that, especially for walker, they did not think

you should recall someone if he hadn't of done something illegal. they might not agree with what he did but he should be able to serve out his term and beat him in the next election. the moment kind of still exists. there are still organizations and people gearing up for the next election. it is no longer what it was. goals. the goal of the tea party -- this is not quite right -- but it is summed up by winning primaries. it is a primary goal. they want to win elections, but they care more about winning primaries and get their candidates in. or at least getting candidates they don't like out. the first was to undermine a candidate. none of the tea party people i ever saw expressed any regret about that at all. they were delighted.

there was getting rid of immoderate and, in her case, probably a liberal republican. the goal of the wisconsin movement -- the immediate goal was to reverse the budget repair act and restore the right to organize labor unions as it had existed. the strategy for getting that goal became winning elections with the democratic party. i would say that was somewhat of a blunting of the original thrust because the candidates that they are supporting for governor were not the most ro-labor candidates. the advertising themes were not really about the real issues that everyone was voting on. you could say they didn't have to talk about, but it probably hurt them somewhat. the goal of occupy wall street -- they did not have any goals -- they did not have any demands. the goal was to win the war of ideas. for everybody participating, i

think it was that. for the court, the goal was to model a new society by running these things with a general assembly. i think outside of occupy wall street that was not understood very much. people were tremendously proud that they have libraries in the encampments, that they had medical clinics. they thought it was just terrible when the police raided the library and threw away the books. this was a major thing. n boston, they had major campaigns around the cities that you are serving food and it is

not meeting sanitary standards. they went out and bought an industrial sink that met standards and tried to bring it in. they had a major confrontation with the police over whether they can bring the sink in or not. as long as they stayed there, every time they had a demonstration they would be holding a card will models that cardboard models of the sink to show the ridiculousness of it to the police. it was all about modeling a new way of running society. that is why they were able to move into occupy standing so quickly. when sandy hit, they said this is what we do and did a pretty much the same way. the red cross eventually swamp them with the resources. they were the first on the scene, almost. ok, so, where does this -- i think i got into my next point. i asked point is where is his goal leading to? the tea party are more ideological than the republican party. the wisconsin movement was democratic victory a

majority. for occupy wall street, a new form of society. let me go back to how you evaluate the potential for these were kind of shaking up the party system, making it more responsive to the issues i was talking about. the tea party has had some effect. if the tea party was able to take over the republican party even more thoroughly, i think we would see some kind of realignment, probably to their disadvantage. we would see things falling out differently and some other ssues being addressed. where that is going is another question. it looks to me -- i interested in that last paper, but it looks like they're pulling back a bit. there is talk that we may be need not to knock off everyone

in these primaries. i am not sure about that. where the wisconsin movement is is pretty much diluted and defeated. it has set an example and it will come back but i think the momentum is lost. maybe they will be able to defeat walker the next time through. or not. occupy wall street was dispersed. i can say was an organization because it was not, but it was dispersed as a phenomenon. you still have the activists. i think there are still some general assemblies in the cities where it was that continue to meet and might decide to do something else. on the other hand, i saw someone that said obama would not have won without them. that is hard to establish but you can make a case for. they really injected the idea of inequality as an issue. the one percent sp 1% versus the 99%. romney was not being ttacked. he was projecting himself as a successful businessman rather as

an exploitative venture capitalist. that really hurt him. a guy in indiana whose company had been bought out by bain capital and lost their jobs, hey have done the same thing when romney ran against ted kennedy for the senate about 10 years earlier. it was not a secret that they were around. it is just the impact of occupy made it more relevant for them to come out and give it more bite. i think we are going to be stuck in the same kind of stalemate situation for some time yet. i think these things are percolating. it is not really biting enough to make a change for one final thing -- someone mentioned that earlier today -- earlier today, someone said that there might be a tea party developing on the left. i think there is a big difference. the tea party was government to do less.

it doesn't really care about what happens to the government doing for people about health care or for poor people. for them to shut down the government to block action is not painful. actually, it is getting a little bit of what they want. the democrats are really -- the wisconsin unions -- protesters in wisconsin were members of nions. there were teachers and health-care workers and believed in what they were doing. they wanted to protect their own working conditions. more generally, democrats are people who want to provide social services. that is why they end up supporting moderate democrats because they have a better chance of winning. the prospects of a -- for the tea party, the prospects of obama being president -- they hate him, but they can keep fighting him. they are not losing a whole lot right now.

the democrats are prospects of losing control the government is oo horrible to think of. >> thank you very much. we'll move into the part of the talk where we are going to involve the audience. i thought i would start out with the question of my own for our esteemed panel. a couple of you mentioned that you don't envision a situation in which the tea party could split and become its own party.

i talked to some tea party activists here in ohio that have mentioned the idea of possibly joining with another minor party, like the constitution party, for example. i wonder if any of you foresee that as a possibility or if you think it is more likely that the tea party will continue working on within the republican party. >> i think it is very likely they will continue working in the republican party. think it has a lot more influence there. as we heard this morning, it really hates the democratic party. the choice is between a mitt omney or even a chris christie and then hillary clinton -- i don't think that is a real challenge to them. think their goal is to take over the republican party. the head of freedom works, the name of his book is "hostile takeover." i think that is the goal and that is why they are willing to

support candidates who are not necessarily the strongest in the general election because they think that is the strategy, sort of ridding the party of the rhinos that they don't approve f. i really don't see that. i think you may get a few rogue individuals doing that, but i think they have been fairly successful. i think -- i would be very surprised. we did ask a question about how you see the tea party and one of the choices was as a third-party. the only group that really bought into that were the ron paul supporters. of course, ron paul has run as a libertarian. maybe a tad, but very unlikely. >> i think that they would obviously stay in the republican party. it is a suicidal strategy to break apart. they would a cop was nothing more than splitting the republican vote and electing democrats. i'm going to quote david campbell in one of the earlier papers today. he talked about a deepening reserve of negativity and it captures what a lot of findings were on this panel. tea party activists are animated

by their dislike of the democratic party. at the end of the day there is a motivation to see democrats ose. the most viable strategy out there would be continued to do what they are doing. after all, we are talking about the tea party right now. they had a major seat at the table during the whole government shutdown. it was all about satisfying the tea party. what they're doing right now by getting involved in the primaries has arguably been a pretty effective strategy. they may not be getting everything that they want, but, you know, i would imagine that there are enough smart people there who would understand that staying the course makes a whole lot more sense than trying to

jump off and form a third-party. >> i agree. at the same time david was making his point this morning, it was also said that it is not that we also love our parties or e our candidates, but hate for the other side can be a powerful, unifying force. if you look at mitt romney, the person who was the author of romney care in massachusetts and was a moderate and had been referred to a four years as a rino, 93 plus percent of tea party supporters turned out to vote for him. there is your answer. >> one thing. agree they do not want to start another party at all. they made a big deal that they were against the republicans and

democrats both as far as party establishment. we don't like george w. bush at all. hat's what they were saying. i think they know their strength is that they are willing to lose, to see the republicans lose. think this is true. there will to put a tea party candidate in a moderate district even if it is harder to win for that candidate. that is where their unlike the democratic left. it is much more concerned with winning the general election. >> thank you. there's a gentleman with a bowtie. we will start with him for our questions. >> for rapoport, i am curious if you have any data about the tea party and turnout. we just had data drop on us but overall we know that turnout was down in 2012. was or any evidence that the tea party supporters stayed home and i could've hurt romney and republicans? for francia and morris, to what extent is the drive behind the tea party movement race? >> am i on? one of the things that we just mentioned the paper is there was n enthusiasm gap that we heard

about in 2010. it turns it -- out that if you run the data among non-tea party republicans show exactly, to the decimal point, almost, the same level of enthusiasm as democrats. he entire enthusiasm gap was tea party republicans. that is 2010. what we do find and are able to look at is -- over time, we have data. this is not a mass sampling. the impact of tea party activity controlling for 2010 activity, 008 activity, is quite strong. what we find is that the tea party people -- i see them -- in one sense, this is the right wing of the republican party but i think it is a super-energized right wing of the republican

party. i think it is more active than what was there before. i see the tea party based on our data as tea party identification among the activists leads to higher levels of activity. among the mass groups, we can look at it in 2010 we find the same thing. that is a little different. i don't think you have this, i will take my marbles and go home. i think it is a group that is committed and i think it is not a diminishing turnout. i don't think the decline in white turnout was tea party people. don't have real evidence on the mass sampling. allen may have looked at this more. >> to david's question, we put up the numbers for government assistance to blacks but that could arguably be about government assistance. the table before shows that tea arty members were the most hostile towards the government iving away anything.

i think we have to be careful there in attributing that to race. it could be, but in light of the other number of we have to be somewhat careful. some people say it is a good -- >> >> there was one thing i do want to say to be a little more cautious here. we looked at the thermometer question on the feeling from honor towards blacks. the numbers were 64 tea party republicans, 61 for establishment republicans, 4. dependence, six d 84 moderate

democrats, 72 for liberal democrats. not huge differences. social desirability effects may be in play, here. people do not want to say they re cool towards a minority group, perhaps. i did not look at all the racial resentment questions for this particular paper. there was only so much we could percent, after all. on the feeling thermometer we did not really see it. with hispanics, similar numbers. 61 versus 60 versus 59, 65, 71. ort of on that same range. from the numbers we ran i cannot really give you a clear answer to that. >> ok, thank you. let's take another question from the audience. >> hello. following up, it seems like we

have kind of established that hating obama, hating democratic principles really drives the tea party. i am wondering, now that it is possible or plausible because of their actions or their leaders' actions that they might lose the house in 2014. it is tough, but possible. it would keep the senate but everything they hate would be remanded by the american eople. i wonder, would they have a true sense of expanding if everything they hate just got eaffirmed?

wouldn't this small movement fall to pieces like a lot of them do, reform in another way, but in this together fashion, it seems the hate of obama and the eta democrats now really keeps them together. wouldn't a re-mandate really be a true ending blow? >> all future events we are going to guess that. if we look at this week, the results in virginia have members of the tea party doubling own.

if only the mainstreamers had backed this up, we would have won this. there is a strong sense in that the end of days may be more religious. that might be a parallel in which the way defeat is seen. there are -- if you ask a tough question, they have an answer. they have a libertarian tradition. they have a moral conservative tradition that will provide answers for why it is that you are defeated. so the next up is to defeat those forces that defeated you last time to stay in the game. in the american system we have two parties for some fairly strong structural reasons. in a winner take all election, if you take your toys and go home, home is a lonely place. he desire to stay within the party versus the desire to not lose your principles but to continue working harder. i think it will be pretty intense. >> i think, to answer your question from a media perspective, the leaders, the media personalities that you can really look at and really say, these are the leaders of the tea party movement, they are not -- they don't rally the troops from a strategic perspective. how they might be able to influence the election to get more republicans in. they think they are right and they are claiming moral authority to rally the roops.

i don't think that is going to change under any circumstance of more of a mandate to the democrats or anything like hat. those leaders are in place. they have their following. i don't think that will change anytime soon. as long as there is a democrat in the white house. >> ok. we have a question on the ide. >> from ohio state university. i am interested in having you comment on the internal dynamics within the tea party movement.

we know there are a whole bunch of moments out there under different names with different leadership. some of them are not agreeing with each other. we also know that the movement started out in 2009 as a moment that had two targets -- one was government, the other was wall street. that wall street target has a long history in american politics. that has kind of evidence where the anti-government part has expanded over time. you see groups like freedom works that is more like a beltway group. the leadership is their driving the movement in some ways. it is applying a lot of the financing for it. please comment on that. how do we sort all that out? >> i think part of what we spoke to at the constitutional liberty argument hits on that, where they found the least common denominator thread so you can have multiple groups that are aking somewhat diverging views on similar issues but still tie it back to some broader peace where they say i may not us

earlier grew the policy statement being made, but i sympathize with the logic behind it. it ties back in some way, shape, or form to liberty. they have been able to successfully use that. >> as we talked about the occupied movement, i think a erious case can be made that the occupied movement not only was not funded but it prided itself on an utter lack of central ideology. so, if you have -- there are no occupied movement panels at this conference. for a good reason. once it got cold, it is time go home. we had an occupied movement, and no one seemed to occupy their tents. every time we were there no one seemed to be there. the reason for that is that you do not have a central unifying idea. it is difficult to rally people around that. if you do have ideas that can reinforce one another, to quote from ron paul, if you cannot defend life, and that you cannot defend liberty. it strongly speaks to the fact that they are finding ways that an outsider might not think can

reconcile different views. n the one hand, libertarianism might tend towards anarchy board traditionalism might trend toward autarchy. they have a unified you ideology that i don't think we passing on nytime soon. >> there was an ongoing discussion in occupying tenants after a while, we have been doing this a while and we are losing news value. t is time to move onto

something else. in boston, the proposal was to stay there until the first day of spring. primarily because a lot of homeless people had joined them and they did not want to leave them out in the cold. he felt a responsibility. they were dispersed not because it was cold but the police rated them and destroy the encampment. i will make a production about the wall street bankers i think is the health-care debate goes on, now we are starting to hear about some elements of business who are making money off of it. i think that the tea party is going to latch onto that. that is generally what they said about wall street. they went for dodd-frank, but they argued that a lot of government programs that are supposed to help ordinary people are really pumping our tax dollars and giving them to big business and wall street. >> let me give one thing a response. this is something i've been concerned about based on our data. the one thing was in the cces,

we found that you have an awful lot of people -- to say you are a subscriber does not mean you are anything but on the mailing list. we had a very large sample, over 12,000. i was able to sort out people on the list who had done nothing for freedom works but had worked for other groups. i found very, very little difference there. that shouldn't be totally convincing. i would love to have multiple groups. i think that is a very good question. was not able to find a lot of difference and that gave me more confidence in it. on the other thing, i would say hat the occupy wall street movement kind of misunderstood the fact -- they were inspired by arab spring -- they did not understand that it was arab spring and not arab winter. that probably would not have een as successful, either.

>> what are most about the occupied movement is saying, what are they protesting? we were not getting a clear answer. it seemed like the entire time -- we have a question in the middle. >> one comment and one uestion. the comment is about the opinions of big business. there is a feeling thermometer but -- to monitor question about big business in the nes. tea party supporters like big is this better than other republicans, way better than democrats. >> we also find -- >> they are pro-big business, not anti-big business. they might be against government subsidy to business. >> according to the way we coded tea party supporters, there were 63 for the tea party and, --

> my question is about looking forward on based on what you have seen looking at the tea party supporters. how are they going to respond to a chris christie candidacy for president? in the republican primaries and looking -- will they rally behind a chris christie candidacy for president if he becomes the republican nominee the way they rally behind mitt romney? >> christie is better from their point of view, isn't he? he is more conservative. romney was governor of massachusetts at times. he was for gay rights, he was pro-abortion. christie does not have to do as much transformation. this time they will try to put up their own candidate, but if they lose, i think they will be just as enthusiastic. >> >> one thing is that among people who in december 2011 rated -- not only did they not support romney, but they rated him below average --2/3 were

active in this campaign. i think it is that last slide, kind of. >> labor unions. on the thermometer, tea party is really not like labor unions. chris christie has made a reputation for being very anti-labor. that's an indication he does not love the guy. is numbers have gotten worse with the party republican since he embraced obama after the hurricane. if he ends up being the nominee, i am not sure that it's going to happen, but if he were, there are these things there that they can convince themselves they ike. in the general election, they will come around. >> i want to add to that. the one thing for chrstie that romney did not possess is that there is one thing they can point to and say, we really like this. that was not there with omney. i think the chris christie video here he was going off on

teachers and teachers unions is something. they played at me very happy. with romney, there was nothing they could point to. >> the democrats have to nominate somebody. hillary clinton will generate a similar amount of dislike. we will have the same thing. whether it is hillary or -- wait, for now.

>> we're going live to an event on immigration reform. live coverage now here on c-span. >> find a way to make the case for that particular issue or against that issue. another way we use and one that is most prominently associated with our institute is bringing in experts from around washington, d.c. that have experience either in some aspect of advocacy and some of the tules that are necessary to be an effective advocate or expertise in the area that the case study is focused on. in this case this afternoon, our next lecturer mr. jack martin is going to speak a little bit to

both. he is involved in an organization called fair. it's been around for over 35 years working on immigration matters. it has a position on immigration ha is more interested in having we form that might limit the amount of immigration that would happen in the future as opposed to some of the other organizations that we've listened to which are looking at immigration we form measures that would exand if opportunity for immigration to happen. we are -- since our group is divided into the proand con. we really need to be very aware and tuned into the thouthful consideration that goes to both side of that debate and there may be more than two sides. mr. martin has been with fair since 1995. works on these issues and i will let him describe exactly at his

suggestion what that means for him at fair. thank you mr. martin. [applause] >> good afternoon. i'm previoused to see all of you made it through the snow today. let me first of all give you a little background, personal background and a little bit of background on my organization before we get started. i am a retired foreign service officer. i had 28 years in the u.s. department of state as the u.s. diplomat. i've served in england. i've served in morocco and in served inmexico, i've nick waga and as part of that i was trained in immigration law

because as an officer which i did during part of that service s a foreign service officer, that's involved in issuing visas,s the involved in u.s. citizenship issues, things of that nature. i have issued immigrant visas. i have issued and rejected non-immigrant visas for people to come to the united states. i've worked on getting border crossing cards for mexicans to travel to the united states. this was some of my black ground from my professional career as a government employee before i ever got involved in the immigration issue in a non-profit. after retiring from the state years ent, a couple of after retiring i got involved in the immigration issue.

as a research director for immigration studies. that is a small non-profit organization in washington, d.c. that works basically entirely on research studies. as immigration was reaching sort terms y shen do point in of legislative change in 1996 i shifted from the center of immigration studies to federation for immigration reform which is an activist organization because i wanted to be involved on the activist side of trying to influence that congressional debate and to try to get legislation adopted in 1996 that i thought was important for the future of the country. that is a little bit of my background. with regard to the organization fair, fair was founded by a

fwrupe of people that were nvolved very much in the environmental movement in terms of trying to stabilize u.s. population, trying to limit u.s. population growth because they felt that was in the national interest in terms of natural resources, in terms of crowding, in terms of asimulation, things of that nature. ands the true to that purpose today, that is in effect our roots. at the present time however we're not dealing that much with the roots issue per southeast because so much of the debate about immigration at the present time is centered on the movement in the united states to try to don't comprehensive immigration reform which i believe you have been informed about is a

combination of issues. s the often described as a three-legged stool in terms of one leg being enforcement, another being amnesty for the illegal immigrant population and the third stool being an increase in immigration. are in favor of greater measures to try to deter illegal immigration to the country but we are also opposed to any increase in immigration and actually think it ought to be reduced. we think that those measures are very well understood. they are well understood in congress. there is general agreement on both sides of the aisle in congress that we need to do more to effectively deny job opportunities to people who come into the country illegally. that is something that was recommended in 1996 and i worked

for. it was included in that legislation. congress told the immigration authorities that they had to set up a system for controlling against illegal immigration by in effect allowing employers to be able to tell the difference between somebody who was legally in the country and a person who was not on the basis of the documents that they present when ad they applied for a job. earlier than thatted the been required since 1965 that all employees, new employees had to complete an i-9 document with the employer in which they identified their social security number. they had to identify their date and place of birth. and in that way, in theory in 1965 that would have presented

illegal immigrants from getting work in the united states. but it didn't work because there was no way for plorse to verify that documentation. as a result there was a widespread -- well, as a result of the 1969 reform that said that employers have to verify these documents -- i'm sorry, it was a voluntary system that allowed them to verify these documents but because it was voluntary most employers didn't bother to sign up for it. and as a result the illegal immigrant population in the country continued to use fake social security numbers, fake drivers licenses, fake immigration documents in order to continue to satisfy employers requirement to not knowingly hire illegal workers.

that continues to be agenda item of making that verification system a national mandatory system. as i said, there is general support for that on both sides of the aisle in congress buts the not passing. separate bills have been introduced to make that a national mandatory system but it has been opposed by those in favor of a comprehensive approach which includes amnesty for those illegally in the country at the present time. they said they will go along with that if that amnesty was adopted and that was one of the -744 which passed the senate last year. that basically talks a little bit about the agenda of my organization at the present time. but let me go back again to the

starting point of why we are concerned about immigration at the present time and what the idea of immigration limitation is all about. my t of all, where is computer? right here. first of all, i just want to show you the fact that the united states has a very large growing population. up until the last few years when we had the economic down tourn, the population was growing by about 1% per year, by about 3 million a year as our population neared 300 million residents in the united states. if any of you remember your math, 1% per year population growth rate implies a doubling of the population in 70 years. so in effect, had we continued

to keep up a rate of 1% per year, we would have been looking toadding another 300 million the population in your life times. that to look at what would mean in terms of traffic, of need to build more highways and land resources. but that is a very high rate of population growth ands the the highest rate of population growth of any developed country in the world. let me turn for a second to the foreign born population share of that population increase. it is a much population in growth. as a result of the immigration reform don'ted in 1965, we have

had increasing immigration every year since then. in theory, the 1965 limits were set and continued to apply, but those limits are not comprehensive. a major portion of our immigration intake system is for immediate relatives of u.s. citizens and there is no limit to that category of immigration and therefore every year it has continued to increase. a t that means in terms of foreign born population that is increasing in the united states and one that is generally younger than the overall u.s. population is that that population also tends to have a much higher birth rate than native born americans. part of that is because of the

fact that many immigrants are coming from cultures in which larger families are a norm and part of that is because of the demographics the immigration population tend to be a younger population in child bearing years. in any case we have this growing population of as a result of births through the immigrant population in the united states. as a result while this is also -- this is also the issue of immigrant admissions that i referred to in terms of being increasing. the blue line, the spike there is the amnesty provision that was don'ted in 1965 that led to the legal status given to about 2.8 million illegal immigrant who were in the country at the. as you can see, absent that we have had a steadily growing

immigrant population. -- we take the births and let me take the next point. when we take the births and admissions we get a much higher share of the population growth being due to immigration every year. this is temporary worker admissions. is is immigrant admissions projected if the senate bill were adopted. this is in accordance with information that was provided by the congressional research service analyzing what that legislation would do. it would increase legal immigration. it would give legal status to the illegal immigrant population currently in the united states.

and as i noted in this chart it would also increase the number of temporary worker admissions coming into the united states. so we have at the present time more than a million legal immigrants being admitted into the country for permanent residents every year. now that is a very large number. as a result of the immigrant admissions, the births to the immigrant population, immigration today is responsible for about 75% of our annual population growth. and the pew hispanic center has estimated that if the current trend continues, that over this decade that immigration will be responsible for 82% of the nation's population growth over that decade.

so if you would be interested in trying to stabilize population, it seems very clear that there would be no way to do that without reducing immigration simply because it is by far the major component in population increase every year in the united states. now let me just shift for a moment also. there are basically two ways of looking at the immigration issue. i've talked a lot about the numbers associated with immigration, the number of immigrants coming into the country, their share of population growth, their share of births in the united states. the other way of looking at immigration is the way that i think that probably most of you have tended to look at immigration and that is thinking termsms of immigration in

of perhaps yourself or perhaps your parents or perhaps friends or relatives or neighbors or maybe thinking in terms of the valedictorian of a high school whose parents were immigrants and never had more than a high school education or perhaps thinking in terms of refugees who we admit to the united states in keeping with our tradition as a nation of immigrants. in fact, we admit more refugees for permanent residence in the united states than the rest of the world combined. the issues looking at of immigration from the personal, from the individual perspective. and i was thinking about how to characterize the difference between these two perspectives,

between the numbers and the individuals and looking at the individuals. so i did a little research this morning and i found a nice wiki quote that sort of summarizes this situation. it said one should not lose sight of the forest for the trees. what does this mean? a forest is full of beautiful trees for the beholder, but one become so engrossed in looking at the individual trees that they may forget that each tree is merely one of thousands in the forest and lose sight of the big picture. that is basically the difference between those two different perspectives. most of the people who are on the side of the comprehensive immigration reform debate are looking at the immigration issue from the perspective of the trees, of the individuals. they are looking