Cotton, when they lost their good auto working job. They are looking for opportunities higher on the skill spectrum and they are getting older as a work force. This notion that mobility, that somehow language skill has to do with mobility, u. S. Labor force cant move around in search of jobs, they now own homes at higher rates than before. They have a mortgage in ohio, that prevents them from moving to rural to pursue another job. Those kind of Labor Mobility are real challenges and what we need is real answers to bring jobs to those host the last 30 seconds. Guest this is what donald trump put his finger on and why trump is correct, these elites, you know, upscale elites who look down on bluecollar workers and see decimation of American Workers out of industry after industry after industry and take this condescending attitude, they are taking professional jobs is detached, studied heir of reality. Donald trump is president of the United States and fair is going to support Donald Trumps legislative agenda in 2018. Host we have to end it there. Daniel stein with Immigration Reform, fairus. Org. Ben johnson American Immigration lawyers association. Thanks, come back again, lets do it again. Laura meckler joins us now k about the prospect of prospects for 2018 and lets start with where republicans are on this subject with Trump Administration officials. Closer toicans any finding consensus in what they are going to be pushing for here in the coming weeks and months . Or is so much on the agenda right now, it is hard to say whats going to come to the floor. The urgency is around people brought to the country illegal, rock by their parents, socalled dreamers. Since been in that 2012 and President Trump ended onand said i just called congress to give that answer giving young people a path to legalization and thats the question, if we will be able to do that, but wrapped in that is a range of immigration enforcement. What republicans are saying is we will do that, but we also want enforcement. We want new rules, there are all sorts of things wrapped up. We essentially have an over a wholeebate, bunch of stuff. In terms of what they want for the wall and other provisions, what sort of money are we talking about and what the provisions include . The wall is the most politically difficult subject that we have had all year. President trump obviously ran for election promising this date order wall on the southwest border with mexico. He has backed off of the idea of a full wall, but we dont know what the vision is for a final end product, but hes asking for 1. 6 billion to build about 74 miles of area, which is actually more like it. Fencing already. It would add to that. Go . where was the 72 miles what part of the quarter . Some of it is in the san diego area, some of it is levied wall. Some of it is a levy for the water with essentially a border wall. Hat is what he is requesting the interesting thing is this wall is not that popular with republicans in congress, a lot of republicans in product in congress, particularly those border. Resent the you have an interesting political dynamic, you dont top priority. The president has made it important because its important to voters. Do they have the support of the majority . The first is in tier enforcement, how hard are we going after People Living in the u. S. Illegally today. I could be Something Like group wiring employers to use the everify system to check for the immigration status of people before they hire. That would be a big change requiring all employers to do that. A lot of people what they that , but be too heavy a list that is the kind of thing we are talking about, more detention before hold more people go through things that lead to deportation. You have to keep in mind that election trump ran the not only promising to cut down on illegal immigration, but also legal immigration. He talked about things about getting rid of the diversity lottery, some things that republicans are calling chain migration. Whereas if you are a Family Member or a citizen here in the u. S. , you can sponsor emily members to come to the u. S. So, whether we should make a tighter definition of families. Host phone lines are open if you want to join in the conversation aired we are having a conversation with laura meckler. Were talking about Immigration Reform efforts in 2018. We are talking about Immigration Reform efforts in 2018. Democrats, 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001. Independent collars 202 7488002. Anyone in a state with a border we want to hear from you. 202 7488003. Take us to the Democratic Party strategy. How are they planning to tackle this in the coming weeks . Guest democrats say they are fully committed to trying to get some sort of dream act, the legalization for young people, into law. How could they do this . They are in the minority. Well, what they are trying to use the leverage that they have overspending bills. Republicans need democratic votes in order to pass spending bills. We have another government anding deadline coming up january 19 another one coming up later this month and that is one point of leverage that democrats have. They could say if they wanted to that they would vote for a spending bill it unless they provide a dream or provision but that is risky for democrats because they dont want to be seen as threatening a democratic government shutdown. It would not go well for them, potentially. So it is a tough climate that they are hauling. They do have a range of opportunities and that is one of them. Host here is one line the president is pushing. Yesterday on twitter democrats are doing nothing for daca. They are just interested in politics. They will start falling in love with republicans and their president. Are about results the president tweeted yesterday. Some of the reaction you have gotten . Guest i dont know if anyone takes each and every one of the tweets to be an important moment in u. S. Political history. They come and go on a daily basis. I think that most people read the tweet as a message to his base that he is not going to be capitulating to democrats. As for whether hispanics get frustrated with democrats, yes, there is frustration with democrats. It hasnt gotten done and they believe democrats should be pushing harder to get that done. That being said, its quite a stretch to say hispanics are going to fall in love with the president when he is the one who ended the program to start with. And he could just say that it would not involve any compromises or enforcement provisions, i will sign it then they might like to see that that he hasnt said anything like that. Host taking your calls and questions on the topic of immigration warm. Lets go to the special line for the border state residents. Josie is in albuquerque, new mexico. A republican in albuquerque. Go ahead. Caller we have a lot of people here in new mexico that are not children. We have one that just came out in the newspaper, 20 years old. Shes on daca, she just got on before they ended it. We have a lot of people who are not working. Even if you are half mexican, they will not give you a job here in new mexico. It is a border state and they need to stop the migration. Thank you. Host what is the age breakdown of those who are on daca. Guest you cant even get daca until you are 16 years old. This is not meant for children. Most of the people who have daca are adults. It is just that they are people who came to the u. S. When they were children. So i think there are people as old as 30 who have the daca protections. The years are written into the legislation around the program and i cant recall exactly where the cutoff is. But there are definitely people in the 20s who benefit from the daca program. No question. Host remind us of the cutoff of the daca program if congress does nothing . Guest he said starting march 5 that if your daca expires on march 5, you could not renew it. If you essentially he announced on september 5 that the program was ending and if you had daca expiring between september 5 and march 5, there was an opportunity to renew. Not everybody did renew and some of those people have already lost that protection. More lose it every day. Come march 5, if youre daca expires after that, there is no chance to renew it so starting then, every day we will have people coming off the program. And not only will they be here without authorization but they will lose their work permit. Theif they are employed color said she thinks a lot of them are not working, but a lot of them are working and they will be losing their ability to work. Host robert, go ahead. Caller i dont believe that any of this debate is going to touch on what is the driving force behind the socalled immigration. I would recommend that everyone who is listening right now and watching to read a book that was written by a professor, kevin mcdonald. Its called the culture of critique. We need to understand what is at work. This is not happening by accident. It is more than democrat or republican. What is going on not only here in america but immigration even countries directed at taiwan and japan that are just as industrialized as countries like belgium, you dont see this kind of immigration being directed towards these countries but you do see this being directed towards countries like australia, countries in europe, america, canada, countries with a dwindling majority of people of european background and dissent. White people. It isnt immigration. It is a demographic war. And when you have in britain, a few years ago, a person came out as a whistleblower and talked about how labor in britain had purposely put it as part of the platform to flood the country purposely with noneuropean and nonwhite immigrants to purposely host we get your point. Laura, talk through the magnet for immigration in the United States. What is it in terms of the folks who have studied issue that you report on . Guest the magnet of course as Many Americans will tell you, its a great country. People want to come here for economic opportunity, believe in what the country stands for. I think that is the magnet. And our laws allow it through a certain channel. A lot of the country come you can come to the country legally. Obviously a lot of people come to the country illegally. I think that the profound caller was getting at a undercurrent of the debate which is, there are two different visions of the country. One is that we are country founded by immigrants and built by immigrants and it is a part of who we are. It in riches the more people come from parts of the world it enriches who we are. And there is another view that says no, what we really are is a white, european country and that is important in our culture and it is being eroded. And a lot of people who support the president feel that and they feel threatened by immigrants who come in and take their jobs, in their view. Whether it is true or not could be debated. They feel like they are essentially losing. It isnt that everybody wins, it is a winlose and they feel like they are on the losing side. Host clyde, go ahead. Caller i dont understand about how none of the congressman bring up the fact that donald trump basically only hires mexicans and immigrants to work for him. How can our congressmen do not have a backbone and wont stand up for anything . What happened to our Democratic Society . What happened . Host all right. Your reporting on the Trump Organization and their hires . Guest they definitely do hire immigrants. Fromhire temporary workers the h two b program, which allows people to come for seasonal job so there are many people who are immigrants living in this country who they hire as well. Yes, they do hire immigrants. And in terms of why democrats havent gone after him for that point, number one, i think there have been charges of hypocrisy along those lines but i also think democrats dont necessarily think it is a bad thing for employers to be hiring people all types of people who live in the country so i dont think they are interested interested in attacking the use of immigrant labor. We have talked through a couple of different pieces of legislation moving through congress way or another, one that we havent is the legislation aimed at h one visas. Can you explain what that would do . Guest it deals with high skilled immigrants who are coming to this country for jobs often and technology. And there are a couple of major different uses of the program. One of them is outsourcing. Where typically indian firms and indian workers will come and a company will hire an outsourcing firms to come in to do tax work for them. And there have been instances where, essentially, American Workers get laid off and Foreign Workers do essentially take their job and people have been angry about that. This bill attempts to essentially attack that by changing the way this program can be used. And it puts tough new rules on h1b employers. But only certain types. H1the employers who are b dependent. Where a certain amount of the workforce are using the visas. So it goes after the higher use programs. There are a couple of other companies that do outsourcing not based in india and they do not meet the definition so they would still be allowed to do what they are doing. But the indian outsourcing would be hit very hard. They would have to pay much higher wages and promise they were not laying off any workers, American Workers during this during the course of the visa. John on the line for republicans, go ahead. Caller i met a few of the dreamers at a latin festival in the park over here when they held it. And they are serving in the United States army. Now i am a vietnam veteran. , im going to tell you something. I am for veterans first. Anybody who is a veteran, they should get the job first. And as far as the dreamers who serve . They are United States citizens to me. And Puerto Ricans are a part of the country. People should look at the Latin Community different when they have uniforms on and theyre willing to bleed for this country. They should have preferential treatment. They shouldnt have to go through this. Now, i beg to differ with republicans in congress. They should have passed the daca bill a long time ago. And i dont see why they dont do it. I think theyre lazy. That is what it is. They are lazy. They are letting the Latin Community carry their load and that is my comment. Host thats john in new jersey. How many dreamers do serve in the military . Do we have the numbers . Guest i dont have the exact numbers. The original act did have a path to citizenship or going to college or serving in the military, which has been talked about in conjunction with this. That i dont have the exact numbers but there are definitely dreamers in the military. Minnesota, paul is waiting on the line for independence. Go ahead. Caller i was wondering, the immigration thing, there is a lot less of it coming in now, right . From what was coming in . They had to lower it down to so much of a percentage. But what im wondering is, when were the melting pot, how come they come here and do the work that white people, like me, they do the work that we wont. Because it doesnt pay enough. But theyre willing to work for it. 1. 65 when i at started working at it didnt bother me but now it seems like a job needs to be 10 to 20 an hour to go to work. Guest that is the argument that employers use for why they need immigrant labor. They will say nobody else wants these jobs. We cant find people to work the crops or in chicken plant factories. They essentially say that is why we need more immigrant labor. A counterargument would be, well, you would find americans to do this if you would pay more so raise wages. , so i think that how they would reply that is they would say, well, economics are economics. Pay what the market requires. Host when the caller was talking about the numbers being down i believe he was referring to undocumented immigrant. Put these numbers in perspective for us. Our viewers will remember these to from early december from the department of Homeland Security in the fiscal year 2017, customs plusted 310,000 apprehensions nationwide, many of which along the southwest border. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement conducted arrests. Lets take those individually tiered border crossings are very low. They went off a cliff when trump was taking office. They have been falling for a while. They have been inching back up over the last few months but overall, they are at a historically low number. That is the context there. At the same time in terms of the , second set of numbers, it has to do with interior enforcement. Dealing with people people who are already living in the u. S. Illegally. The arrests are up from what they were at the end of the obama administration, for sure. Deportations have not risen. That is partly because some of the deportations stemmed from border crossers. If you have fewer border crossers, you have fewer deportations. Some of it has to do with the fact that the Immigration Courts are severely backlogged and in order to deport someone who has been living here you have to take them through the court first. Host from pittsburgh, james, independent. Go ahead. Caller hello, cspan. God bless you. Are you seriously thinking about building a wall when we are building drones . People are going to fly soon. The mexican people are hard workers. And they are human beings. We would liberate iran and pakistan, why wouldnt we liberate mexico . They are connected to us. Why do they want to come over here and work so hard and be such good people but we dont want to liberate their government . We want to liberate iran and pakistan. Im trying to get into politics, because i hope to be in 2020 and that we will be done with the stupidity. Host we got your point. How much would a wall cost if it were fully built to what the Trump Administration wants . Guest we dont really know, that is the short answer. And that is the problem. The administration has never come out with saying here is our big picture plan. Estimates are absolutely in the billions of dollars. Over 20 billion, maybe over 30 billion. If you were going to build an entire border. Very few people think that makes sense. I dont know if anybody even wants it at this point. Although, that was the campaign rhetoric. Host what about the static images that we have seen of the prototypes of the walls that we have seen being built outside diego . Nia in san what is happened with them . Have we picked one that works the best . Guest no, they havent chosen one. Prototypes were built to see which one seems to be the best. And in some cases, they are laying the groundwork for this project but that was the easy thing to do. The harder thing to do is what i just said. Laying out a vision for the entire project and actually getting congressional support for it, which they have failed to do so far. So in a way, it it like spending a lot of time picking out your dress for prom but you dont have a date. Or you dont know where the dance is. Host from grand junction, colorado, bob is an independent. Good morning. Caller i went to a fiveyear Immigration Court with my girlfriend because she filed for citizenship and 12 years before that she got host you are going in and out. We will go to leroy in north carolina. The line for democrats. Go ahead. Caller i am calling about wages for immigrants. That is the main problem. If all the poor people who work on the farms got paid a decent wane then they would work. I grew up on a farm as a black child. Worked tobacco and all that stuff. And the wages never grew in a way you could live off of it. And all around you, wages were going up. So now, when the mexican people come over here, they keep the wages down low on them. They dont mind. Host are you talking about legal immigrants . Or undocumented . Caller legal immigrants and undocumented. They still are paid getting paid lower than what the american poor would want to work for. Guest thats the argument. One of the things we have to think about as a country, is if we really dont want immigrant labor working in the fields, are we willing to pay a lot more . Are we willing to have those prices go up . So if we did, in fact, pay people higher wages, you probably could get americans out there picking crops but it would have to be a lot more. At least that is the economic argument from the immigration restrictionist side. That there is a wage that somebody will do that job for. Host just a couple of minutes left from laura meckler. You can follow her on twitter. Charles has been waiting. Buffalo, new york. Republican. Charles, go ahead. Caller good morning. A question, twofold. Six callers ago, a guy or ained, very narrowly very shortsightedly, or maybe not educated he addressed the flow of the immigration and you fail to tie it to going to various countries and starting various wars and being involved in installing Democratic Institutions while looking for new minerals to enhance our countrys ability to grow and continue forward. What happens generally is that we have a lot of wars and conflicts and we support rebel groups and host were running out of time with laura meckler. So whats your questions . Caller from those types of wars, we bomb peoples countries and they come to the place where the heroes or liberators have come from. Host charles was referring to refugees, as well. Which is part of the system that we havent talked much about. Guest im not sure thats what hes talking about but im happy to talk about refugees. That is another area with the immigration system where the president has decreased the number of people dramatically. 45,000. Host margaret from florida. Line for independents. Subpoenago ahead. Caller your true liberal colors are showing. A few minutes ago you indicated the undercurrent in america of the people who object to illegal immigration with somehow this fear of losing our white european i am so fed up with listening to liberals decide i am married to an immigrant. He came to this country. We met when we worked in a restaurant. We got married and he never thought let alone was it his right to live here. And i tell you now ill work with people with disabilities in this country and they are being ushed out of jobs. Im going to go to work today in a store where not one Single Person in the back room speaks english. The difference between 30 years ago and now and the reason they flood in greater numbers is that 30 years ago, my husband had to get up to speed in america. He had to learn the language and make an attempt to assimilate. He had to work hard. Now, if you speak a different language and you work a low page ob, not only are you noble and better than we are but an american who wishes he could communicate with you is a bigot. Guest i was responding to what the caller was referring to which is why it went in those terms. Itches responding to the callers framing of the issue. D thats one way to frame it the point that you make is a point that i have heard from other people as well. That people it came to the country illegally and followed the rules and are sometimes among people who resent illegal immigration the most. They say i came here and i waited in line and i waited my turn and i learned english and why shouldnt other people have to do that also . So i think it is a powerful argument. Host are the assimilation requirements any less stringent now than they were 30 years ago . Guest i dont think they are but i dont think thats what she was getting at. I think she was less getting at the rules and more getting at the attitudes. Are we essentially kowtowling to undocumented immigrants saying we need to pass laws for them and help them when they are not doing what they need to do to assimilate into our country. I think that was the argument she was making. Host laura meckler, thank you for your time. Come back again. Guest thanks for having me. [captions Copyright National able satellite corp. 2018] states and Infrastructure Spending with frederick wright. D rand corporations deborah knotman will talk about how to make federal infrastructure more efficient. Watch washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Thursday morning. Join the discussion. Up next on cspan, well hear from former Hillary Clinton advise other Philippe Reines, who talks about the 2016 president ial election. Then White House Press secretary Sarah Sanders takes questions from reporters and later, Governor Andrew Cuomo delivers the new york state of the state address. In the afternoon, a discussion on the future of air warfare with two top u. S. Air force officials. The mitchell institutes for Aerospace Studies hosts this forum on cspan 2 and the vermont governor thrives his state of the state address to lawmakers at the capital in mopt pellier. Live coverage begins at 1 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3. You can follow all of these events live online at cspan. Org and with the free cspan radio a. M. Next, Hillary Clinton advisor Philippe Reines talks about the 2018 president ial campaign, the Trump Presidency and 2018 directions. He spoke at the Washington Center for san bernardinoships and academic seminars. All right, friends, we are reconvening. We have a speaker. Get going. A quick reminder. We are going to be on television. When you have a question, go up to the mike, say your name and school and keep your question concise. Its my distinct pleasure to get to introduce Philippe Reines, who is an american political consultant, a senior advisor