International Affairs Committee and the Bard International Affairs Program will commute to this session. We have had an incredibly interesting conversation about the state of the nation and we are moving into challenging territory which our chair cedric more will take you through. But let me mention something about the choice of today. Today being april first. There were a few chuckles, april fools day, why would you do it . But in fact april fools day is the perfect day for a conversation of this kind because as you know, the role of the full was to speak truth to power. And, it is not just speaking truth to the powerful but the power can reside in conventional ideas and assumptions. We won in to challenge it in a an open and respectful way. I am going to introduce the panel but i want to Say Something about the process. You notice there are two empty chairs. These chairs belong to you in the audience, at least temporarily. Because the process invite you to join me table at some point if you want to ask a question. But not permanently. At a point when our chair invites you, you might want to come up in join the conversation. That is a chance in a them a chronic way to be part of the conversation. I ask you to be mindful of the fact that there are other people who would like their chance. When you have had your say, ask your question, dont hang around. You cansy to do so, just go. If not, someone will tap you on the shoulder. I will not go through all of the biographies. They are in your program. I would like to have you welcome the panel as a whole. Cedric more will be chairing the session. Will you please join with me in joining our panel to the session . Applause] thank you simon and thank you to the Ethics Center for putting on this very important discussion we will have on one of the most polarizing and american issues in politics today, and that is immigration. The title of this is the problem of strangers, which is quite an evocative title. Everyoneeresting that in this panel is a stranger in one way or another to their communities. A Palestinian Refugee who emigrated to the United States. A refugee from syria. A strong progressive working in the notoriously communist institutions such as exxon mobil a muslim who has worked with the trump campaign. I am a gay constitutional conservative so i am both a stepchild on the right, although in appreciate it loved one and an absolute pariah in the gate community. I want to in the gay community. I want to Start Talking about immigration. We estimate around the 11 million undocumented workers in this country. New yorkers. Re are undocumented workers are our friends, neighbors. As someone who spent my 20s working in restaurants, bars, actors, i was a cleaning lady in college. They were also mike coworkers. Coworkers. You would be hardpressed to date to find someone who does not egg knowledge the richness immigrants bring to our culture, innovation to our economy. But what were talking about here is very different. ,he things we like to address mexico and latin america, is how this affects who is the most negatively affected by this, and who benefits . Lets start with the news. This week attorney general Jeff Sessions made an announcement monday saying that sanctuary cities will lose millions of dollars in federal money from the department of justice, saying because of cities and states that refuse to help enforce immigration laws, our nation is less safe. Failure to deport criminal aliens puts whole duties at risk. Also this week in new york we had the first ever meeting conference for politicians and advocates from sanctuary cities who came together to discuss ways to protect Illegal Immigrants from deportation. Or if you are on the right, they came together to strategize. A speaker at that conference said that enforcing immigration iss, and the way the doj planning to is tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Lets start there. Is this racist . Oz, you worked on the trump campaign. Oz that is correct. This is a hot button issue. Is this racist . What is going on . Of whats an issue exactly are you going to do to able labore question supply . We have this gray area of labor in america. You talked about cleaning ladies. I live in harlem. One of the challenges i have is they are people who have come here for a better way of life, for a legal pathway to citizenship. Then there are other folks we have an issue in east harlem, i call it baby hand, where somebody will fly with the baby who has a u. S. Passport done to mexico and some but he else brings the baby back and another illegal worker comes into the country. These folks are just looking for a cash uplift. There has to be a balance between the two. In terms of the sanctuary cities problem, we have done a percentage of the legal immigrants that are tying to gangs like ms13 that have committed heinous acts against american citizens, rape of children, murder of teenagers, domestic assault, violent crime, robbery. There has to be some sort of check and balance process to this. I think the way the Trump Administration is looking to engage this is a little bit kind of the way they have started to engage at first, which is a little wonky, a little cumbersome. I think the policy will find its way through. Chad crime is what sessions mentioned. This keeps coming up with this issue. The would like to respond to that . I am happy to. First of all, the issue is really about what this country is about. The framing, as you started with , there was no one against immigration. Its not about rejecting immigration as a concept. The question is whether this country is truthful to its founding, to the way this country started . Over the years, i dont think the United States has ever been perfect in welcoming immigrants and refugees. We have had dark times where ships were turned around, not accepting people during world war ii, for example, jewish refugees. I think people in the crowd know those stories. The chinese exclusion act. A countryl, this was that was built on immigration a nd was open to people who were facing persecution, looking for safe haven, and also for opportunities. I think the way it is being addressed, particularly during the Political Campaign, and i am not siding with one side or another. , particularly as somebody who has not voted yet the cubs am still a green card holder. Hopefully it will be a citizen in the coming year. Hopefully nothing changes with regards to what i am saying. It is more about fear mongering. It is driven by those people who are coming to take our jobs, or those refugees and if you look at the facts, and that is the challenge today, to stick to the facts. As we are told even by the National Security experts, banning people from those six or noen countries now have basis with regards to making this country more secure. In terms of jobs and safety, if you go to el paso i was in el paso, texas twice. Yearstime in 2006, a few after i immigrated to this country and i was doing human rights work there. El paso, texas is the Safest Community in this country. It is right on the border. If you are thinking that by making the border making the border more militarized, picking up people from the , victims of domestic violence, who was picked up from the courthouse in el paso by i. C. E. Agents and taken into custody, if you think that will make things better, you are wrong. We have to think about how to approach this issue without making people more polarized. I think this approach of saying ice agents will go and turn 12 million undocumented people toward deportation, i think it is just going to make this country much worse off. It is not just about the labor force or the money, it is about how people feel in this country, how they relate to each other. That is the fundamental basis. We all know people, whether they are neighbors, friends, in the community. They are all part of this nation. Look at the dreamers. How can you think about taking out people who were born here or brought here when they were very young and say no, we are going to deport all of them . The crime thing is interesting because this is something the right tows out every time. In maryland we had the case of an 18yearold illegal immigrant raping a young girl. I looked at this, the same way proabortion advocates bring out rape and insist. It is the small exception to validate the larger role. Are going to be criminals in every population. We know the vast majority of people who come here legally are peaceful workers, but i think the argument on the right would be more effective if they focused more on the economy and jobs. I wonder why they dont. Does anybody have any ideas . I will pick up on two the points you made. My perspective is a bit more of an international one. Two of the main points there that i really appreciate is this idea of first and foremost of what is behind some of the rhetoric we are hearing. Especially with the ban from these particular countries. Will selfogressive, i identify as one of the liberals on this panel. Ideology, the idea we should be accepting. We were founded as a country of refugees and immigrants. But my pragmatic side says i want to base everything in fact. When you have a policy that buty major not every, the vast majority of National Security leaders over the past two decades chimed in about every reason why banning people from these particular countries is actually not going to help our National Security, but harm ask,ut then you have to what is the basis behind what you are doing . I want to give another example. The balance between security and humanitarian efforts, privacy and security, all of these will be excessively complicated. The example of the laptop ban that just happened. As soon as i heard that one, i knew based on my past work experience, that is so targeted and a so focused, i have to that is technology that was collected and found on an analysis that that is an actual threat to us and how do we mitigate that . Chad can you talk about that . Yael the ban on bringing laptops from particular countries on airplanes. To bring that back to the point. I see Something Like that and i think, that will make a lot of people angry, but at the end of the day, there is no doubt in my mind that that was based on actual intelligence that said, there is a threat. They are people creating bombs that they know how to put in laptops. That is totally separate from when you have a president say with no actual reasoning or alling to it, im banning immigrants from these particular countries because they are exporters of terrorism, despite every National Security leader from the past giving a litany of reasons why that will actually harm us more than help us. Thats where say, your ideology and your fear mongering and your rhetoric took over, instead of actual policy based on what is helpful for this country. Chad most people dont know that obama banned all immigrants in iraq in 2011 for six months. Yael i am glad you brought that up. That again was in response to an actual incident. You had two gentlemen from iraq. They were found potentially sending money back to al qaeda. They were potentially al qaeda supporters. So, he looked at a very specific threat and said, we are going to put a pause on new refugees from iraq until we sort this out, which by the way, actually refugees did continue to come in during that time. That is my point. That is something that was done in response to something very specific. Whether i agree or disagree with that policy, at least there was a reasoning behind it. As opposed to, i dont like these seven countries. I am putting an all out ban without excluding my intelligence behind it. It is not the same situation. Oz, did you want to jump in . Oz yes. I have my own personal issues with the ban. One, i spoke to green card holders and folks who had already been vetted. That was problematic. On the opposite side of this, we have varying protocols on how we look at people. We have protocols that have not been updated since the 1960s. Six of those countries dont have functioning governments right now. Acan also go overseas and buy syrian passport for 2000 euros and pretend i am an asylum seeker. You top that off with the joint Terrorism Task force, looking at stuff going on in the middle of the United States and running into isis recruiters who are trying to build cells. Part andem i think is parcel the evaluation process. They want to look at how we can potentially stop this. A lot of that goes back to, we need to be sharing better information across different aspects of the security apparatus. But i also think it was basically a four month embargo, after which they were going to reevaluate it and look at additional refugee counts being allowed into the country. And the trump perspective, even from the campaign, has been, how do we make syria save for syrians in syria . Had we build saves some policies . How do we do things in tandem with the government around syria that are now encroached inside of the multitude layer of different conflicts going on to figure out the way forward that necessarily lead to just continual refugee onslaught . That is where i think they started with this. Y the implementation was a little flawed. Yael can i just chad as everyone talks about policy and philosophy at motivation and rhetoric, you are someone who has lived this. What are you thinking as you are hearing this . When we talk about refugees and immigrants now, we are talking about the economy and National Security. These two elements have been used a lot. When we talk about national when you mentioned the specific immigration background, the people who have committed crimes. Numbers,to talk about this is what the judge in maryland was talking about. He said, give me your reasoning. Give me facts that would let me say, these orders are legit. Statistically speaking, immigrants have not committed more terrorist attacks than citizens. And now we suffer in the United States from domestic terrorism. It is something for me when they ask me, how do you feel about the Trump Administration basing their rhetoric on fear . And unfortunately, people here are misinformed. And the geographic location of the United States plays into that. You are very distant from what is going on overseas. And the same overseas, by the way. You are for them, the strangers. And whatever the media streams about you, that is what you believe. I am here to say, no, this is not what is going on overseas. There is some truth to it, but this is not it. We are talking about these specific seven countries, the muslim ban, not even the refugee ban. There is a problem with labeling it as the muslim ban. When you say, these people have no functioning government. If we lets say syria has a functioning government, and this is a debate we can argue. But if i come here, what would my own government has said . They would have said, no. I think going to the assad them, that is how we we are fleeing. But we are fleeing those exact governments. This is not a good methodology to think of vetting refugees. You are an immigrant. I was born here. But your parents are immigrants. My parents were sponsored by a Steel Company. There should be a test for immigration. Forhe screening process immigrations to come to the u. S. , on average, it takes 20 months. The person my 16yearold sister in turkey who has been trying to come to the United States to be with me and my mom has been actually interviewed several times in the resettlement process for nine hours, 15 and 16 years old, nine hours everything will time. What are you trying to find . I dont know. After two and a half years of being under the security screening, the extreme vetting process. The administration already knows that the process is extreme. Unfortunately you have not experienced this. We are vetted a lot. At the end of the day, two weeks ago, my family after going through extreme vetting for two and a half years, my mom and sister were rejected to come to the United States. Regardless that their case was on the same claims as i made my case. I was given asylum. This is a discriminatory order. Say, there areo a lot of other cases. One of them is a man who lives istanbul. He has two boys, one is 12 and the other is younger. The 12yearold boy is very sick. He has a disease that there is no medicine for in turkey. He has been in the process to be resettled to the United States for three years. He has been waiting and waiting to be accepted. The medicine is here. His son died waiting to be resettled here, died in the hospital waiting to be resettled here. Why . Can you answer me why . And what justification . You explained yesterday that actually, maybe the Current Administration has made a political decision. It is something he campaigned for and he had to do it. This is the political reasoning behind it that is not justifying what is happening. The u. S. , and that is what they wanted at the end of the cold war, they wanted to be the leaders of the world. They wanted to be the models of democracy and human rights. This is against everything you claim you are as americans. This is against it. If we want to talk about one must point, one last point, about the american war on terrorism. Such orders provoke extremist groups such as isis and others to recruit people. Imagine someone in syria who has been waiting for five years and living under horrible circumstances because it is the most dangerous place on earth now. They have been waiting to come here and then an order comes out and says no, you are not coming. You are giving him a pathway to go and be recruited by an extremist group. You are contributing to the process of actually creating more terrorists. I really have been trying to find a reasoning. I have been trying to find a good point behind any of these administrations policies on immigration. And i have not found them. Hardcourthe republicans the hardcore republicans and donald trump, their policy on muslims and immigration demonizes, you said this word, demonizes muslims and helps isis. I just dont understand. Oz actually, that was an interview before the election, a year ago where i said that, talking about banning muslims altogether demonizes muslims an d leads to isis. Lets be very specific about what you are talking about. Isis andonly fuels other extremist groups. Christ, when the message was put out in 2016. Correct. You are spinning my words. Lets talk about right now. Right now what we have is an executive order that is a test. When we look at this not just but a terror perspective, these systems are broken inside the United States. They wanted to form a time period to assess this. That is what they started to look at. I cant change that there is a waiting process, that people die in this process. That process has been here for years and years and years. That process has been here since the 1960s. I cant change that process. What i can speak to is that there is an intent to fix the data sharing in between different government organizations so that this can start to move forward, so that we can have better, antiterror insights. There is always going to be tradeoffs if you are talking about National Security and the ability to increase the population of a country by immigration. But there are also challenges. Like i said before. My family could not come here and tell my dad was physically sponsored by a Steel Company and they put up a bond equivalent to his salary for my family to come here. Then my father had to send for a wife visa to bring his wife, my mother, over. We went through that process. That process is the same for every immigrant who has come here from our part of the world. What is going on right now is challenging. But the problem i see is just continuing to say, we are going to demonize this and protest this and not try to figure out how we engage to make this better. Can i bring up a point on that, though . I have seen zero engagement from this administration. I have just seen a crackdown. But as somebody who i was on the joint Terrorism Task force in new york. I have firsthand experience in what this all means. You are right, the datasharing is not perfect. It has improved every year since september 11. Every year it has become better and better. So, the idea that we can just shut down immigration or refugees or immigrants from because weions are broken is a falsehood. Our system is never going to be perfect, but it is not like it just stopped improving. Another argument i would make is it is interesting to hear this idea, we are going to shut down immigration from these countries because it makes our borders safer to do so, but at the same time oz i did not say that. Yael i did not say you did, but they do. At the same time, we are going to cut state funding was responsibilities it is to make sure these refugees are safer and more stable. And the same agencies who are supposed to support refugee camps and other countries, in turkey, we are going to cut that funding, we are going to do less to secure countries overseas while also not allowing people to come here. There is a real cognitive dissonance there. If the argument is, we are making this pause because for National Security reasons. There was a letter from how many sayingtar generals cutting the funding is absolutely antithetical to protecting our National Security. I cant buy one argument while at the same time we are doing this other thing that is hurting us globally. Oz i am not saying the policy is perfect. I am not saying that at all. The usaids decision is a decision the administration made. This administration is looking at everything and saying, we have too much government. They came in with a promise of cutting government and that is what they are doing. What do you think would have happened if ross perot had become president . It would be very similar to what you are looking at now. You are looking at government cuts and changes in policy. You are looking at the fact that maybe america should be partnering with other countries in terms of global policing and leadership. Do, but then we are going to absolutely anger those partners we have worked so hard to have them cooperate with us on counterterrorism issues , including some of the countries we are telling, we dont want to have anything to do with you right now. I think spending on military forces and expanding military defense budgets, that should be ok while other programs that are essential for people here in the United States , that is not essential . Number two, i think the idea that the system is not working you could make the argument in every single area. The system is not working. You have to back it up in fact and sound analysis. We did not see that coming. Particularly in the area of socalled extreme vetting. Because there has been extreme vetting already. The wait time people go through, the robust, rigorous process they go through. People are stranded in refugee camps waiting for that moment to go through. People do ultimately get to the United States. Go and check the people who come. They are the most vulnerable refugees. The Selection Process is so rigid that it is really hard. And besides that, i think the fact we should all keep in mind is how many refugees who came to this country as refugees committed acts of terrorism . Can you answer that question . Tina with the answer is, over the last 20 to 30 years . That question,er over the last 20 to 30 years . [crosstalk] you cannot make the argument seriously that refugees are becoming the number one threat to the United States. We never said that. It seems to skip a generation. We saw this all over europe and in orlando and in somalia. Minneapolis has the secondlargest which is on the travel ban list has the secondlargest population of somalis in the world outside of somalia. There is Something Like 50 young men who are children of refugees who have been identified as security threats. Yael to me that is less about letting refugees into the country and more about what we do with them once they are here. It is debatable whether that number is zero or not. It depends upon how you define it. We did have one somali in minnesota who stabbed someone. But there is no comparison to the amount of white, american, homegrown extremists who have committed acts that have resulted in murders and killings. To me, that is an argument that is based in fear mongering and supporting this case. But i am glad you brought up the smalley a situation. The smalley a situation. Situation. Alia boston also. Yes, but the boston situation is interesting because there is a list of countries who were banned and iraq was interesting because some military advisers who would help their own country got caught up in that. The somalia situation, nobody seems to care about that. There are thousands caught up in this. You have 3000 somalians languishing in the biggest refugee camp in the world in kenya. Kenya is threatening to shut this refugee camp down. Spent years getting vetted to try to come join their families yet we have had children of refugees who have been radicalized and we can discuss ad nauseam what we have not done so great in integrating communities, but to just this Somalian Community has been cut off and they cannot go back to help build because they know they can possibly never come back to the United States. Yes, but they remain the tiny, marginal, small number of immigrants or sons of refugees who came to the country. You have to put it into perspective. That is why, even during the campaign when President Trump brought all the people who are victims of pain as crimes, people murdered by immigrants who committed crimes, that is true. That is true. That is great suffering for the families. That is an issue that should be addressed. But to single out and say, these are the same people, so we have to protect our nation and those families from everybody out there sends the message that it is demonizing and scapegoating immigrants and turning the people who are watching, who are not necessarily experts on the fact into, well, i should really care about that, but the other person who is coming as an immigrant or refugee or whatever. That is making things worse in this country. I think President Trump is turning people against each other in this country and that in and of itself i think were against each other at the turn of the election. I do not think President Trump had much to do with that. If you take the first actions in office, the executive orders he placed on immigration enforcement, whether it is the travel ban, the muslim and refugee ban, whether it is in the other areas, clearly, they are not supported by the facts. They are supported by political fear mongering. Maybe he is responding to Political Campaign promises, but ultimately, he will now be responsible for what will happen at this point. And we are seeing this. People in nations around the world are going to resist this. They see this is not lets see if there is someone in the audience who wants to join the conversation. Is there someone waiting . I just wanted to add that the policy has not just been knocked down in hawaii. It will not be policy anymore. It is tabled. That is probably the point they were getting at. There were political promises made and these political promises are now settled. Promises that are unconstitutional cannot really be again, it is the portions that were unconstitutional that were ruled unconstitutional. That will be ruled by the court. That is what america works. What was the intent . And i will be very brief. The intent of the travel ban in the beginning was and that is what is going to be determining ch egal challenges, whi what has been the intent . The intent has been discriminatory and it violates the constitutions establishment clause. My point is that a lot of these terrorist attacks that were stopped does not come to the public attention. They were also 400 active cases that the fbi is pursuing around the United States of terrorist attacks. It is only when something happens that this attention comes to it. Your point was that when you get into the specifics, you would agree that not bringing a laptop because there were specific intelligence information there. But you dont hear about the other specifics. I am trying to present that. Opinion. Ant your who would come to the United States illegally and time and time again committing felony, was let go in a thank you wary city until the killed somebody. Until heanctuary city killed somebody. I am going to address the first point. I agree with you on the second point. It is awful. The first point, you are right. I mean, someone who worked in these agencies in my life unable to talk about successes, only failures. The point is there were successes. I mean, that is why we have our Law Enforcement and our intelligence community. They are doing the job they are supposed to do. But also by making the entire immigration population feel that they cant actually cooperate with the police or the fbi anymore because they are too scared to do so is going to harm our ability to stop these exact attacks you are talking about. Again, i know this is excessively complicated, although obviously identify as a liberal, i recognize we cannot say it is either this or that. It is extremely complicated. But to make our entire immigrant fearful tooo cooperate with the police or fbi is going to harm our ability to stop these kinds of attacks in the future. That would be the 1. I would want to bring up. Lets go to the audience member and then we can open it up for round two. I had two questions. First, i was actually there during the panarab spring in egypt and turkey, so i know what you have been through. Two questions. One is mostly for oz. , the chief to you is Data Scientist for the country currently is arguing that data fragmentation is a huge issue, collecting data from all parts of the country. You if you look at assad, can say they are smaller, more agile. But why do we throw more money at things like technological resources in the big data realm, versus putting more money towards the military budget . If i could speak to that, there are two sides to that. One, you have worked with alphabet soup. That is a different organizations that are three letter organizations across the government. In between these organizations there are chinese firewalls in terms of the data that can be shared. The organizations of the government are here, but look at it like a layer cake. There is a second layer, federal policing. Stateis a third layer, policing. And there is a bottom layer, local policing. The biggest problem we have right now is outside of things shareoplink, you cannot data effectively up and down and you cannot share data side to side. That is the largest problem we today in terms of the large threat of terrorism , and even the large threat of largescale crime from ms13 and some of these other groups. To the issue of military spending, and this is an obama problem. Let me explain. We had 150,000 troops in afghanistan when obama start of the troop drawdown. Now what do we have . We went from having a base of operations where we could surgically drop, you know, half a battalion, to smaller groups, 3000 special forces, seal team six, another group here. And we are intrinsically intertwined in so many complex right now it is insane. We are up to about nine global conflicts, two of which we have russia on the opposite side of, troops in somalia, maybe pulling troops out of south sudan, troops in syria, troops in iraq. We also have a multitude of additional conflicts coming up with the self china sea. He challenge that you have on the military side of this, and why i am happy kellogg is in place and general masses has been brought in because matthis. But we have to look at this in the way of, when we have got these very small groups that we have to support across a massive distributed area, and just to put this into a cost perspective, to keep one soldier in the theater on a yearly basis is 1 million. How much do you think gas costs when you get the gas over there . Gas might be six dollars and europe, but by the time you get one gallon of gas to afghanistan, it is 150 a gallon. Humvees inove africa, this stuff is expensive. The longer term is figuring out how we balance those global conflicts and than pulled back in a way where we can allow for democracy to be created by groups in those countries. In terms of the big data science portion of this, this is going to be a longerterm challenge. Thei applaud dj for some of stuff he has done, but i really think that until we can get some policies and practices in place to take unclassified data and have that shared with some of and thesified data cooperation across really, almost like a v type cooperation from the alphabet soup agencies, down to local, and up to state and federal, we are still going to have these problems. I just want to comment. This military power, and i am not speaking here for aclu because we do not weigh in on whether war is just or right, or if it is constitutional. If it their human rights issues, we will address them. One thing that is really concerning that we are seeing is rather than looking at ways that are not necessarily engaging militarily all over the world, but looking at soft powers in other ways of engaging the world, we see that this administration is signaling no. We are going to pull out of the u. N. I was at the u. N. Human Rights Council just last month and i was in d. C. , where the United States had two different approaches. To, they did not show up specifically address the issues of the travel ban, immigration, and so on. In geneva, they were saying, we need to revisit our engagement. That is a confusing approach. They are not understanding what is that stake. Similarly with nato and other international organizations, there is a serious concern here isthat the administration going to expand the notion of, we can do it by using force. The fact that there are now reports in the New York Times think this administration might loosen up the rules of engagement with regard to the use of force in places like somalia or yemen, where more civilians will be harmed, will be killed. As a result, more people will join forces that are going to be like isis. Er this could be a whole oth conversation. Thank you all for being here. A lot of the top these days about immigration has bundled down to this sort of idea that donald trump has revived america first, which is ripped off of the antisomatic slogan during world war ii. That is not accurate. [laughter] takee idea is we should care of our own before we take care of others. Thise been grappling with idea a lot because i am from california. We have a lot of legal immigrants in our community. Also, i see these refugees that want to come over. I the myself, who is an american . What is the definition . Refugees whoese come over, i dont see a stranger. I see someone that will be one of us. I would like each of you to answer, if you can, what makes someone an american . I thought you mentioned a great quote. [applause] we were talking last night about all of the reasons why america does not have the same problems with radicalization as europe and what was the quote you said to me . I said because [indiscernible] this is a country more so based on ideas. It is easy for people to assimilate and become americans because we are a nation based on ideas, rather than land. Exactly. I have been here for four years. I would not be here speaking with you. If it was not for the americans who opened their doors for me and let me stay with them as a stranger, if you want to use the terminology, i would not be here. If i was not given the opportunity from bard college to continue my education, i would not even be able to speak this english. How i feel about americans, i feel home is here. I contribute to the community. I worry about domestic issues and i try to be part of it, not only international issues. Actually, america has become my second homeland if you want to call it. This is a feeling we extend, a lot of us as refugees and maybe first generation immigrants. You are a muslim, you are the son of immigrants and you are here because you were given the opportunity your parents were given the opportunity to be here and you are a muslim. So, we are given the opportunity. Once we are given the weunity, we become actually blend and contribute to the community, in different ways, of course. But we still contribute to the community. Anybody else . If anybody wants to give another quick answer . Can i answer that . I would say the greatest thing about being american is that this is the universally, the coolest melting pot in the entire globe. I grew up in pittsburgh. I became a new yorker about 15 years ago. In my Little Community i was the town muslim. Because when i was growing up, we did not have we did not really have muslims there. In the late 1960s there were about 100,000 muslims in the u. S. I was born in the late 1970s. There was no muslim school. There was no population. And my mom was like, close enough. And, you get a hat. I was like, you had me at hat. [laughter] that is what makes america great, the fact that it can be nd pierogies and halushka. Right . It can be all these Different Things together, that it is such an interesting tapestry of life. You grow up learning so much about so many different cultures and helping your neighbor and being part of a community and giving back. I do a tremendous amount of interface work. It is being able to tell all these different stories together as one collective. I think everyone in this room would agree with that. Let me add my two cents here. My way of looking at america is, it is a place where it is opening up. You can be your own person, you can bring your ideas. And it is open to correcting wrongs. That i think is fundamentally important. It has never been perfect. There has never been a perfect union. Particularly, looking at the people who work here before the new settlers became immigrants. The first nations. The native americans, the indigenous people. If we look at them and try to see how the United States can be better, i think that would help much more making this conversation better. I wasnt Standing Rock i was in Standing Rock in january when the order came down from the white house to adapt the Dakota Access pipeline. I learned in just one week so much about the history of the United States and what the United States can do better in terms of making this place better for everybody by learning from the mistakes and the wrongs of the past. Of we should not repeat some those mistakes. And what is happening with the refugees and immigrants and the ban is repeating those terrible mistake. There is no ban anymore. We have a five minute warning. And i want to hear from both of our guests. We have a very tight schedule here. Basically, you have all been talking about how policy is created, presented. This also means this gets into the media. And wording is important. You have the case of the muslim ban. And that gets to the community. And everybody says, this is the muslim ban, we are all going to get banned. In the case of the latino community. Sensationaliste title given by the newspapers. And see, for example, the case of a White American that has been killed in a shooting, or that has somehow reacted violently, you do not get the same titles. How do you seek to actually create a sense of community in people if even the headlines of the newspapers single each group out . This is true. This is something i hear about a lot. All you hear is the white working class. Thanin rages me more anything. If you have ever been to a factory in ohio or anywhere else , it is people of all colors. This is the same line. Sort of racial division, especially in the media, putting people into groups. This is my two cents. There is a whole panel on fa ke news later. Im just saying. I agree with you. I am for open borders and world peace and all that, but considering how much the u. S. Has bombed and manipulated and invaded the middle east since 1945 and provided weaponry for israel to do the same thing, how is it that all middle easterners dont, finally hate the United States . At some point, their extended family has been killed by an american bomber bullet. How can you expect anybody to come here not to have some death and their family caused by the u. S. And therefore, want to inflict terrorism . I could answer. Sure. This is a legitimate point, right . I would say, how could we not expect by not idealizing. This is the same problem in the u. S. When you come and tell me, 60 people or whatever refugees are terrorists in the u. S. They are human beings like any beings. Uman we should stop idealizing. Americans are very successful businessmen . We cannot idealize a whole population. ,ctually, if we went overseas that too is, basically we would or syriaryone in iraq on the ground, they would generalize the americans and say all are killers and murderers and we want to kill any of them we see. So, how is this different . The idea is, we should stop idealizing a population and actually just humanize the population. Sorry, go ahead. I will say very quickly. As long as we continue to stand up as the American People and defend our values. That is exactly the aspiration people cling to when they see the United States. Say there are not legitimate concerns for American Military interventions around the world but i would help the reason people still do want to come here is because of what we represent and that is why i will speak out, i will march. I will say this is not the america i believe in or stand for and i hope you can see that so many americans, and i do believe that is why so many people come here. Were still the land of opportunity. I do not know if that will last forever. But hopefully a while. Let me look at both of your questions. There are archetypes in the media that allow media to demonize latinos, muslims, certain segments of the population, blacks, over and over again because that is what sells newspapers. That is click bait. The reason 30 of latinos and 23 of american muslims voted for trump is we have had 60 years of the same aggressive Foreign Policy that is only focused on it is focused on hegemony. One thing. It is just focused on hegemony. If we look at what donald trump has said and wants to do, we have got sensible leadership coming to bear. We can argue with some of the other guys. We have sensible leadership coming to bear in terms of figuring out how we disentangle ourselves from the married of complex we are in and how we do something that actually leaves a positive footprint of americans moving forward. That is what we voted in. That is what most of america that is what half of america voted in. Majority only the in new york and los angeles. The challenge we have to look at is, what is the new legacy we are going to keep . Look, you are here. There are going to be additional folks coming from different parts of the world. We need a universal standard for immigration. They are trying. Newe can move towards this populism, maybe we will get somewhere. I appreciate that, your candid assessment. But there areup, consequences for that. There are really dangerous messages that impact real life. I dont think we should take it lightly. One thing to go back, i think nrump offers a silver lining, a opportunity to think about all these things we have taken for granted. Taboos, particularly in the area of Foreign Policy. How the u. S. Relates to these countries in the middle east. The fact that we are supporting not only israel with billions of dollars, but also egypt and bahrain, and we are making things easier for peoples rights to be violated with no accountability. We should have a clear and honest conversation about what the United States government is doing on behalf of the people here overseas and how does that impact the ability of the United States to be part of the world that is not based on hegemony, not based on only using military force, but promoting some of those values, values of justice and equality and freedom . If we follow through on that, i think we will have a different kind of conversation in this country. There is an optimistic note on which to end. Thats great. This conversation could go on and on. It is so important. There is going to be a half hour break. If you are inclined to discuss global security, which i think well pick up on some of the issues you were touching on at forend, come back at 3 30 the continuation of this forum. Before you go, would you please not only think the people in the audience who contributed, but also our panel . Thank you very much. Giveseral David Goldfine an update on readiness, modernization, and the air force budget. He is at the Heritage Foundation with live coverage beginning at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. The marine corps issued new social media guidelines last month after explicis pictures of female Service Members were posted online. On wednesday, a discussion on free speech and preserving order in the military. That is hosted by the American Bar Association with live coverage at noon eastern, also on cspan 3. Following both of these events follow both of these events on www. Cspan. Org, or listen on the cspan radio app. Hashe Los Angeles Times in putting on the festival of books for more than 20 years and it has become an institution that is part of the community. Can celebrate we with the readers of the paper and with the city as a whole the very notion of reading. And today, when the idea of there being something called fake news is out there, i think that books help us celebrate the way that words and facts are grounded in storytelling and history. Watched our live coverage of the Los Angeles Times festival of books on april 22 and april 23 on book tv on cspan 2. Afterwards,t on Washington Times Columnist Bill gertz with his book that examines how modern warfare has evolved with new technologies. He is interviewed by the congresswoman from new york, a member of the House Committee on intelligence and chair of the Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities. It is a look at what i feel is the new form o warfaref emerging in the 21st century. I have covered National Security affairs for over 30 years, been all over the world covering these issues. I think it is a reflection of the information age, that we are now looking at this new form of warfare, which i Call Information warfare. I define that as both the seen sol cyber we have much of in terms of Cyber Attacks from the russians and chinese, as well as the content influence type of thing, which really emerged in the last president ial election with the russian what has been called the cyber enabled influence operation. So, these two things will be the dominant form of warfare. Watch afterwards on cspan 2s book tv. Now, a conversation on some of the
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