and so it is interesting to see how this will all finish. >> very interesting indeed. thank you so much. we will know tomorrow and we will about it tomorrow. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> we don't want them in. >> we don't want them, some say. illegal immigrants and all their children. >> these are the photographs taking last night. >> but what are we going to do about it? stossel: that is our show tonight. ♪ ♪ ♪ stossel: america's immigration rules used to be simple. in fact, for almost half of the life of america, there were no rules and if you were able to get here, you were in. in the 1800s america put up some

restrictions, mostly racist ones, chinese immigrants were not welcome and congress added that they endanger the good order. and then politicians do what politicians do. they added more rules including importers of prostitutes and polygamy and anarchic. by the time that immigrants came through ellis island, there were more rules. you couldn't be sick or noticeably sick, doctors were supposed to check for 60 symptoms of disease but they had only a few seconds to decide. so they asked children their names to the if they were deaf or dumb. but you can't order limped, you might be turned away or quarantine. 3000 immigrants died on ellis island while they were quarantined. in all, many were sent back. most got in. but racism still prevails. but if you are white and from europe, you probably got in

because my parents got in. germany in 1930. today, we have many more rules. you can come legally only if you're related to someone already here and you have a rare job skill or if you come from the country that spends almost no people to america. there is no rule that allows the 10 million immigrants who are already here illegally now to bring their kids in. and that leads us to the current crisis. thousands of kids pouring across our border. fewer now than it has been at the peak of you will months ago. what should america do about these kids? well, first, government tries to find them a place to sleep. >> these are the photos taken of the kids last night. being monitored by dhs agents. >> that was a holding center near the border. usually the border patrol buses those kids to other parts of

america. >> some americans are furious about that. in one case, the border patrol flew 140 immigrants to california and then they put them on three homeland security buses to take them to a border patrol office in marietta, california. but in the end city, demonstrators blocked the road. so the department of homeland security turn the buses around. >> what should america do about these children? support them? yeses says mark krikorian, head of the center for immigration studies. jacob hornberger says that a solution is open. so what do you mean? i am libertarian, but some of these people want to kill us and someone to freeload. let everyone in? >> yes, open the borders the

same way we do domestically. we don't have immigration control between the respected state despite the fact that there are murders and rapists and terrorists even crossing state lines. and what we want to do is use your law enforcement resources to concentrate on the people that are really doing the bad things. but 99% of people want to work and improve their lives and what is wrong with that? that is what america was built on. stossel: only if it's 2% that want to freeload or 2% that want to murder us, that is huge. >> but if you take your law enforcement resources and diffuse them by letting them control these millions of people that are doing nothingg, why wouldn't it be better to take your law enforcement resources and have it all hone in on him factors.

stossel: what about that? focus on the crooks. >> law enforcement would be an easier process because we were just go and track down the terrorists and that would be be an event. click movie with tom cruise, if they knew a crime you were going to commit, that would be very interesting. any immigration system better busboys ken sneak through is one of the cartel or assassin or terrorists can see. we look at the immigration histories of not just the 9/11 hijackers but the terrorists and about 40 people over the period of the decade. they exploited every aspect of the immigration system. they came in on a visa and some of them never left. >> there is no practical limit to the number of people who would come to the.

>> we have many people getting into the country illegally and he's going to be able to tell me that he can keep out the tiny number of people that want to do us harm? that is ridiculous. you are interdicting vote millions of peaceful people, it's a socialist system, government central planners planning which immigrants should come and which have the best qualifications and why would we expect anything more the planned chaos, as was said reign. stossel: terrorists have been caught at the canadian border, plotting a terrorist attack against the passenger train, support from al qaeda, washington state, they caught a 34 year old algerian that emitted later that he wanted to bomb los angeles airport.

>> you have pointed to examples where it has worked and we have something like 10 to 12 million illegal aliens here who came here and snuck through and came in legally and stayed illegally. it would be 10 times that big of a number if we didn't have control so we do have. there are 4 million potential immigrants on the waiting list already. that number would be dramatically larger. stossel: that but we had a higher percentage of immigrants living in america in 1915 than we do now. >> it's slightly higher, about similar. we are now close to the historic highs in our history. my grandparents came here from the middle east. they came from a country that did not have anything like a welfare state with a large government sector it has to be supported by taxpayers that we do today. those are realities that we have to do and we can't just say immigration would be great if we got rid of the welfare state. get rid of the welfare state and

then we can talk about it. stossel: that would be good, but it's not likely to happen. but the kids, it's not their fault. >> their parents smuggle them in. stossel: but you are flying them back where they will be tortured. >> there are terrible situations all over the world, does every person from congo come to the united states? congo is way worse off than any place in honduras. >> what is the real cause of these crisis is? >> it is the root cause of the violence of mexico and costa rica and let's deal with that. why do people want to do us harm would terrorist attack? we have government intervening overseas with bombs and missiles and supported dictatorships in some of those people would still want to kill us even if we didn't do that. but this is rooted in u.s.

foreign policy. and they came here because as the government we were over there killing them. so let's dismantle that and to see if what you say is right. my experience is that people love americans, foreigners love americans, they just don't want to know what the u.s. government has been doing. but it takes away our freedom. immigration control is an infringement on our freedom. >> close to the border, the supreme court and i've gone through many of those and they are mainly on the mexican border and it's about two thirds of america and the fact is that you say yes, that's the end of it. that's but that's not it. it's frankly a necessary tool because you need to have defense. but as far as jacob's larger

point, saying that if we withdrew from the world and if we ended the drug war and etc., it would be that way. stossel: he said to stop bombing the world. >> even if this law continues, there all these bad guys and part of the function of the state is to protect citizens from bad guys on the outside. one of the important and i would say essential tools of that is immigration controls. >> several years ago we had the snipers that were killing people in washington dc around the washington dc area. and they were killing people. we didn't impose travel restrictions between the two states. they were coming from maryland and virginia and back and forth. law enforcement concentrated on finding these guys and they didn't control everybody else.

>> united states and mexico basically reject the concepts of national sovereignty and it's kind of the core of libertarianism. you can imagine that there are no countries were no borders, that's not the real world. real world is the one we actually have to deal with and what i want is the government of my nation to be doing what it can to protect my children and my fellow citizens from bad guys on the outside. >> protecting you from bad guys is a role for government. but what about these was the key people who want to work out? shouldn't they be easier? stossel: sometimes you have to wait years to get in. >> as he said come you have to be related. stossel: why not let people in that want to start a business?

>> we take over a million people in per year from abroad. and the majority of those people are low skilled workers that compete with the low skilled american workers and we have a responsibility not to torpedo the employment chances and life chances of our own people who have enough difficulty in dealing with the dislocations of globalization. stossel: this is a zero-sum world that we hear from politicians all the time. the immigrant takes a job. >> they produce jobs, they create prosperity. we have seen a historically and it's one of the reasons why the united states surpasses the world in the 19th century in terms of economic prosperity. immigrants are like a gift to a society and we should be embracing them. not ostracizing them. stossel: is the only way that we will pay medicare and social security. thank you for joining this argument. to join the conversation, post on my facebook page or use the

hash tag. we would like to know what you think. coming up next, a simple cure for this problem. and violent crimes. plus, the clinton administration secretary. >> those that are are coming from central america are not coming for no reason. stossel: we will have that reason coming musical chairs. fun, right? welllllllll, not when your travel rewards card makes it so hard to get a seat using your miles. that's their game. the flights you want are blacked out. or they ask for some ridiculous number of miles. honestly, it's time to switch to the venture card from capital one. with venture, use your miles on any airline, any flight, any time. no blackout dates. and with every purchase, you'll earn unlimited double miles. from now on, no one's taking your seat away.

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stossel: america keeps spending more money and sending more border patrol officers to police america's borders. we are building new fences and now we use drones to look for people sneaking into the country. more money and more equipment, but it doesn't work. big money is not making us safer. that is the subtitle of this new book, "border insecurity" by her next guest, sylvia longmire. >> that's right come you have drugs that are illegal, that is making a big challenge for law enforcement to stop drug traffickers from interdicting these drugs.

and sometimes the messages being sent to the immigrants that are in direct conflict with what is happening on the ground. stossel: let's focus on this. used to support the drug laws, right? >> yes. stossel: what changed your mind? >> a lot of experience with this line of work. when i was in law enforcement for several years, you were being anti-drug comes with the program. when i started working on drug war issues and border security issues, i started to learn more about the physical effects of illegal drugs and i learned through my research the people who use illegal drugs will use them no matter what. stossel: these drugs don't stop people from taking. >> a do not. >> you have a black market and anytime you have a black market for whether it is gambling or prostitution or whatever the case might be, you create a world that makes these items

more expensive. so then you have these enormous multi-billion-dollar business moving us from mexico to the united states and they are willing to do anything to make those products in the u.s. stossel: it's not just mexico, a lot of these individuals say that honduras has been living in honduras for a decade. the root cause is that the united states and colombia carried out big operations in the fight against drugs. >> this has been going on over a hundred years or whether you disagree with the policies historically, those interventions, whether it is military or cia, it comes back to bite us decades later. >> the same number of people use the drugs. >> sometimes one i listen to my

president presidency, i think that he's about to do something special, but here his war on drugs is not working. >> frankly no matter how good a job that we are doing, we are going to continue to see not only drug use, but also the violence associated with the drug trade. stossel: in the same speech he said this. >> am i willing to pursue a decriminalization strategy as an approach? no. >> pc that has not worked. he uses the drugs that his administration locks people up for using. it makes border patrol cover and creates horrible vicious crimes in our president says, no, i'm not going to change anything. at least you change your mind and you were flexible enough. >> yes, i was. it took a lot of time and research and i was not in a political situation that was so

sensitive. stossel: there was a media discussion about this, he proposed fixed from "meet the press" people. >> you know, one way to fix all this is if people will stop doing drugs and stop going to drugs at nightclubs every weekend. stossel: yes, people should just stop using drugs. >> that's always an easy one. the two is to stop the drug problem is to make all drugs completely legal or you get americans to stop demanding the drugs in the first place. for better or worse, it's an american thing am i trying to convince an entire country to change their mindset about the use of this is difficult. stossel: even people that strongly support this by now acknowledging that laws make it harder to control the border. here is a republican congressman from illinois. >> now the cartels have figured out that not only can they make money from bringing children appear, but they can use that distraction and the border patrol being distracted by the number of children to put more drugs over the border and

frankly, pollute our youth. stossel: kids are getting horribly abused, they are being used at the drug cartel, but this guy doesn't want to liberalize drugs. it is just too frightening, they did. look at all the americans who would be poisoned. >> and we have that attitude back in the 1920s and 1930s with this prohibition. it's a mindset, and i think that with marijuana, the movement at even the state level has been easier for people to swallow because you have so many years to observe that it's not killing as many people as we thought, it's not dangerously addictive, that's been in the making for a long time. stossel: as a military analyst who has been looking at the border, white in the virtual sense work? i would think that that would have been a big improvement for spending a billion dollars. >> part of the problem was that there was little control in spending. u.s. customs and border protection did not have enough

people to monitor how that mon t was being spent, the cost overruns and the time overruns and it's too big for its britches. stossel: thank you, sylvia longmire. coming up next. hot dogs, hairdryers, and god bless america. ♪ my home sweet home ♪ ♪ stossel: we have songs like this because of immigrants. people say that immigrants will take american jobs and some of them well. but the overall effect, that is good. coming up how much money do you have in your pocket right now?

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stossel: in europe, some kids have a new way of the learning history.

and it sounds good. so why don't we have this in high school to probably because the founder of the company that invented the digital learning program is not allowed to work in america. he is thomas kettle, and he is in belgium now. why are you not allowed to work here? >> unfortunately the h1b visas do not allow entrepreneurs like me due to room, so we are really quite limited as to how we can get into the country. stossel: the h1b the select you come here and visit, but you can't work. for that you need the h1b. and we take applications for that every year on april 1, but this year they are granting

these every year for week. >> is absolutely crazy. there are companies who are coming from europe and all over the world, coming to the u.s., actually, getting their company up and running and getting their product out there and creating jobs for americans. but we actually at the border, we have to keep coming back in three-month stints and we are not actually allowed to physically work. stossel: why do you need to be physically in america? why can't you hire americans from belgium and build your company from belgium? >> the founder has to be there. at least one of the founders, and it's really important to keep the relations up with the investors from the u.s. and also schools and districts. we need one of the founders bear to conduct business in the u.s. stossel: a number of successful entrepreneurs agree with you,

mark zuckerberg, founder of facebook, started an advocacy group trying to persuade politicians who allow more trained immigrants into america and his group makes video featuring applicants like this princeton student. >> a lot of people like me can do brilliant things that are not able to do it because of regulations and legalization. stossel: american billionaire warren buffett, bill gates, they say that it's insanity to train intelligent motivated people in our universities and support them when they graduate. roll out the welcome mat. and in response to that, this clueless republican senator from alabama said this. >> we need to create jobs for americans first before we bring in workers to take those jobs. stossel: thomas, what about that? create jobs for americans. don't bring in few foreigners. >> most of what we are going to make in the u.s., we have done

this. so i find it's pretty silly to think that just because a founding member not from the u.s. is just going to hire non-us employees, that's not going to happen. stossel: a lot of countries are much more welcoming to people. in canada they are all these people if you're going to make an investment like you want to do, they let you in. in canada even ran were put up a billboard in san francisco. if you have a problem getting workers, come to canada. >> i think that canada is actually doing pretty well from that and the problem is that we have to be here and it really doesn't make much sense because we will still have to speak to schools and districts. stossel: thank you so much. maybe someday you will be allowed to work here and you can bring in your good ideas. >> coming up next, the illegals

on welfare. they are a drain on america's wealth. but is that true? i thought the illegals were not eligible for welfare. we will debate the truth coming up

stossel: immigrants are a drain in america. they feed off the welfare state and they take more than they can contribute. our government policies encourage that. >> they are encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for food stamps. the illegal aliens sneak in here and there on a welfare program. >> some of them are. but i also read headlines like this. immigrants are makers and not takers. immigration benefits the united states. so what is the truth? are immigrants makers or are a

bunch of them takers? their detailed studies that come to opposite conclusions. so let's look at two of them. research was done and concluded poor immigrants used far less welfare and poor americans do. but a study by the center for immigration studies found the opposite true. so who is lying here? >> let me say this, the question of whether immigrants use less than americans with the same education, there is a look so bad. high school dropout american use a lot of americans, but it's that's not where the big differences, there are immigrants under so much more likely to be high school dropouts in the first place. but the thing you have to understand about welfare in america is that work and welfare often go together like love and marriage. stossel: they do? i would think that they would fight each other. >> the way that our welfare system has been redesigned of

the last 20 years, it's to help low income workers with children. so you can work full-time, but your kids can get free lunch and you can work and get food stamps. you can work and live in public housing. >> the welfare state has also limited nonstudent access to the program and that was the most successful part of the 1990s excerpt on to build a wall around reform to prevent poor immigrants from getting in these poor rims in the first place. stossel: if your legal, you are not eligible. >> if you're here on guestworker visa, then you are not eligible either. stossel: except for free hospitalization when you're sick, that's a form of welfare. >> in order to count the taxes of that student paying going forward, you talk a lot about the household. that means counting kids who are american citizens were here up until the age of 18, and then you stop counting them and not

counting the taxes they pay for the rest of their life. >> the heritage foundation takes outside, the net during my service is used is $14,000 for it illegal heads of the household, $4000, negative 4000 illegal immigrants. >> the heritage study makes same mistake as a lot of other studies, they do not count the tax benefits. one of the best ways that they help the u.s. government is by having kids that will pay into these programs going forward and that also doesn't count the contributions of social security and medicare. >> a lot of them we turned back to their home countries before they get any benefits. stossel: they pay into it but they don't collect. >> in the really interesting long-term study, immigrants are a net drain on average for the first 22 years and it took 18 years to pay back the drain in

the first 22 years. they start to be a net positive for americans in terms of taxes and that assumes that today's immigrants and their children will do as well as past generations and the evidence suggests that the evidence does not. but they are not closing the gap anywhere near as fast as past generations. but what is interesting is these are the same arguments that we have been hearing for ever. these people are different and what we don't see is that immigrants contribute to the economy in the long run. stossel: the last point, legal immigration. when people have skills, we should be quicker to let people in? >> you would want to make sure that we actually have a need, real wages for stem workers. stossel: government will decide with the needs are? >> i think the american people decide through their elected

representatives. >> the market should decide to what the u.s. economy values in terms of racism what people should come here with and it's e immigrants in a different way. stossel: the department of labor says we know and we will pick what we need to. >> the administration also says that the lender will be future of solar energy technology. every 10 years, they make predictions about what jobs will be created and what industries and where they will be and they are off by a multitiered each and every decade. so the idea that they will design a labor policy is absurd. >> we want the american people to be able to choose. >> because that is how you make a decision as a sovereign state.

>> that is how government makes decisions. that is how sovereign people make decisions. so what is the capacity of our schools? businesses are pushing as many kids in our schools even if they can't take individuals. stossel: it shouldn't be politicians. >> the funding for schools is still going to come from this unless you think that they have nothing to do with funding. >> but that is the america that we live in. >> you have to have an immigration policy. the only way not to is to push it down the throat of the american people. they want limits and they are concerned. and they also have concerns about immigration and all kinds of sensible things. and if you embrace this policy, you have to shut it down the throats of the american people. stossel: shoving down the throats on this tv program, okay, thank you. stephen and alex. and here is what the stossel

research professionals found, immigrants to collect slightly more welfare than nativeborn americans mostly because people that come here more likely to be poor. but they contributed enough to the economy that makes up for what they take in welfare and the typical immigrant and his children contribute about $80,000 to america over their lifetime. but so far they have been a win for america, but let's be wary of our ever-growing welfare and that could wreck everything. coming up, google searches. comfortable jeans and basketball. basketball. what do those things have in check out all these airline seats.

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stossel: i rarely listen to politicians. so much what they say is self-serving pandering for votes. but like a stopped clock, elected officials sometimes say things that really matter. even the intrusive nanny state

types like this one. >> we are pushing people that other countries one away from our shores and when they invent the next best thing. the job creation, the technologies, the drumcree creation, the service, they are going to be doing it in other countries. >> we push inventors away, that's too bad, because we want those people creating things here. on the other hand, we have plenty of american entrepreneurs and won't they fill the gap? probably not. apparently there's something about the an immigrant that makes people think differently and more creatively, and we often benefit from that creativity. it is how he got ebay, radioshack, sara lee, kraft foods and so on, all of those companies were started by immigrants. we like their products and those companies create jobs here.

one company has created more than 100 jobs in america. your company is context media. what do you do a maximus that's right, we partner with physicians to provide educational videos for people living with a chronic condition like diabetes. >> the doctor plays this video in the waiting room. when they are making us wait, we are subjected to propaganda. >> we actually partner with physicians to ask him whether patients would benefit from and these are mostly stories of people overcoming challenges to it. stossel: here is a sample of what people get to watch while waiting to see their doctor. >> having high blood pressure makes you more likely to have a stroke, but drinking low-fat milk and eating low-fat cheese can bring down high blood pressure. stossel: i assume that that's useful for some people and according to your research, the

average wait time is 34 minutes, 62% of the patients did discuss the programming with their doctor. 87% of those found it useful. so that is a good thing. but what did your coming here from india have to do if you are hiring 100 people in america? >> understanding how to solve problems and how to make do with whatever you have, it really serves and learns and integrates the perspective that you are using when you arrive with new people. stossel: you came here when you were 19 years old, you must've been scared to leave your country. >> absolutely. it was a really big step arriving at chicago o'hare with a bag and a visa to study at northwestern. but my mom had brought us up to dream big and work hard to make those dreams a reality.

so fortunately i had the opportunity to come here and learn and contribute. stossel: so why not start this in india? >> we want to foster creativity and entrepreneurship and risk-taking, we want to try new technology and allow entrepreneurs to solve albums that are more future looking. this is part of meritocracy. stossel: in india it's more who you know and who your family is or was. >> yes, here we don't look at where you come from but where you are headed and what you want to do to make a difference. stossel: what you call yourself now? are you an indian or american enact. >> i'm an indian american, i have indian ethnicity, but i have american values that are very similar. stossel: if you had to pick one? >> i would say that i'm an american. that's what's beautiful, you can be an american without letting go of being where you came from.

at everyone from america comes from somewhere else or if the value of hard work in ethics that makes you american. stossel: thank you so much. coming up next, might take. i will solve our immigration problems coming up

stossel: conservatives rightly point out that america is a nation of laws. no one should be exempt from the law. and that is why many people

opposed amnesty and a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants that are here now. if they want to be in america, they are to return to their own country and apply for a visa or work permit legally. america should not reward lawbreaking. that just makes sense. except come out what if the immigrant do that? went to the u.s. embassy and said i would like to work in america legally. he gets paperwork to fill out and he goes home to wait and wait. a forbes investigation found a high school graduate from mexico who wants to be here would have to wait 130 years on average. we are telling workers to it legally, but weigh 130 years? it makes no sense. we should make legal immigration easier. relax the rules, it issued work permits. america needs immigrants. immigrants cofounded most of

silicon valley startups. the patent office says that immigrants inventing twice the rate of nativeborn americans. they are special people, people with the ambition and got to leave their home to pursue an american dream. we ought to let one of them in. and not just phd's, but half of america's agricultural workers are here illegally according to the agriculture department. and without them, the government says that food would cost much more. note would cost you 1% more. some people would say that may be immigrants in the past were a boon to america, they work hard, they try to assimilate. they are less educated today, more likely to collect welfare, less likely to adopt the american work ethic. maybe so. maybe today's immigrants are different. but i doubt it. every new immigrant group has been derided as backward, unclean, criminal. senator henry cabot lodge once

described them as illiterate and immediate in the extreme trait he called italians the lowest type of character and intelligence. irish immigrants had such a bad reputation that businesses posted job notices of no need apply for the irish. today these vilified groups are leaders in america. now the complaint is that immigrants steal our jobs. and yes, they do take some. but they create new jobs as well. lots of them. when people move to another country and encounter a different culture, they become more creative and they pick the best from each culture and create useful things. this includes google searches, cheap ikea furniture, youtube, bicycles, all came from immigrants. what would your life be with outlook dryers?

and we have devices like that because an armenian immigrant to america improved on a french invention. immigrants also gave us basketball, football, the first shopping mall, comfortable jeans, even the american hot dog they came from the german frankfurter. immigration also enriches our language. jewish immigrants gave us the word glitch aiz" came from the irish. and this beautiful song was written by an immigrant. i could go on and on and in fact, i am only able to talk to you at all now because an immigrant from australia saw the need for fox news. america should say yes to immigration. the greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be. if people are allowed to come here legally, fewer will sneak

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