Transcripts For CSPAN2 Yea Nay 20150105

Let me mention the 1986 bill and the fact that subsequent legislative proposals have had basically a similar formula legalization, empyer sanctions and forth. And weve seen these bills passed i one passed the senate 2006, the socalled comprehensive thing. 2007 the icoming and now allows Outgoing Senate majority leader harry reid screwed up the villa managed and not pass it in the senate in 07. Similar legislation passed in 2013. All this legislation was concoctein response to suations that occurred at tt time. Attended to support those bills. I tend not to support them now. Ive changed my views. Been accused of changing is views, when facts change i change my mind. What do you do sir . I have changed my views. When we are concocting what i will call for a greater purpose is comprehensive bills the assumption was that the surge was going to continue, nothing was going to stop it and that would be a continued demand or need for market for low skill labor in the United States, and mexicans people for mexican origin, emigrants from mexican origin both legal and and illegal local can have the lowest skill levels on average, lowest levels of education and so forth of ny grip. Gnificant or the other latin sources of immigration but proximity of the border is one factor. Its easier for low skilled mexicans to get to this country than other people. And in the backgrnd thought that as george said we arent going to deport 12 million people, e illegal population peaked at about 12 million in 2007. So i wasnt worried abot. I was hoping that technology such as mark mentioned, could improve enforcement in both borders andworkplaces. It seems to me now that when youve got a credit card that you can buy 50,000 car with your credit card and that whole system works, is it possible that the government could create an Electronic System that works, theres been some evidence to the contrary in recent years. But it seemed to me that was possible. And it seemed to me i tended to go along with this which i can lead a whole series of lobbies but they have a hispanic lobby supporting the legalization provisions. You have a hightech lobby supporting h1b visas which bring people to their specific companies, and that was you have farm provisions that the farm lobby day. One of the reasons we get these comprehensive bills is they will bring them all together in one package and passed wh the force of the lobbies. The other procedure as george said is disaggregate the bills and do it stephen a. Douglas is way. What he didnt add is that stephen a. Douglas who would ner have favored prohibition if you live that long after he passed five different bills, went on a three day bender, so there was there was some cost of having things that way. But i think, i think its time to disaggregate. I think these ings have changed, that facts have changed. Weve seen from the in russias Central Americans to the border this summer that in the Current Situation the surge is over. Net migration from mexico to the United States between 20072012 was zero. The surge ended as suddenly as these earlier searches. Suddenly its the surge of internal migration, a southern black, rural southern black to the urban north which went up in 193065 and it did suddenly when the north stop being like such a dream with the rights and think the the south because the passage of the sub rights act. The south stop being such a nightmare. When those things changed, a surge the seem likely to go on for ever suddenly stop. I think we saw the same thing with mexicans. Has been some resumption of mexicans. We now get more asans than latin migrants. Thats a big shift in change from the situation in which this legislation was put together. I think i agree with mark that we should move me from lowskilled to high skilled immigration, that weve gone too far in family unification which is greater a sort of often does unintended consequences. I would wish about something in the nature of the canadian or australian high skilled systems where the have point systems to admit immigrants. This is not alice i alexs favoritea all. Better than what we have now nk it etr an ate haveow. Wt t nd th. Ecipies stin s unyortogockwh el in sni it t at f cdaabo this th sa t me please please do not about our immigration system. We want these people in vancouver and calgary and toronto and montreal. We dont want them in the United States. I think its a pretty good argument for us to add. It seems to me that in a situation now where in the short and medium erm the need for lowskilled immigrants, the market for them is much weaker than it was before 1200 before 2007. I think we want to move towards the high skilled immigration. I think that the h1b visas which up in a proxy for this, they tend to tie people to particular company. I dont think thats a maximal you know that reeks of indentured servitude. Why not let them take the chances that something that we still have to some extent which is callethe American Free enterprise system . We always need more high skilled people i think. And have high skilled wages are slightly inclined downward by bringing in more high skilled people which alex, dont we will happen, but if it is i think they can grin and bear it for the national need. I think weve seen on legalization weve seen president obamas dreamers campai in 2012. Most americans favor it. The practical effects of their its not going to be revsed. I think that some of the president obamas more recent and less popular quasilegalition thing, but iinfluenced by the recent writings of peter on this one makes the point that awful lot of Illegal Immigrants want legal status not necessary interested in ciizenship to the 1986 legalization provision only about half of those eligible naturalized and chose to become american citizens despite the efforts of the Clinton Administration to get them to naturalize that were registered democratic. Many illegals and illegals are like their 19, early 20s century, sojourners, they intend to go back to honduras or jalisco. They are not necessarily there. And finally i would just say that in support of my proposition to go towards the canadian and australian system, canada and australia, have higher percentage of immigrants in the population than we do. They admit higher percentages as a percentage of preexisting population than we do. They also more Economic Growth in recent years. They have higher pis a scores on tests and we have. And for those concerns and republicans who are worried that america will tell towards demoatic party come both australia and canada currently have conservative governments. They approve to be robustly competitive. I thin we had to break up the lobby, disaggregate the legislation and try to adapt to the Current Situation, to the fact that the surge latin migratioin my view that we saw one generation, 8207 is not going to return in current form and lets shape our immigration in a way that will shape our nation better. [applause] thanks for inviting me here. Theres been so much said and written here to agree with and admire, and i dont think feeling that way is a function necessarily of cognitive dissidents. I think its more, it does more to the notion that this is a complicated human problem here and most of those kinds of problems, i come at this not as a historian or an analyst of immigration in any way. My perspective is from the perspective of the law and Law Enforcement in particar. And i think most complicated societal problems dont get solved because theyre too dynamic. They get managed and if theres cognitive dissidents here is because uusual on the other side of that argument but im usually the terrorism guy. In fact, this is a welcome respite. This is my torture week so i think its delightful to be able to speak about ilegal immigration instead today. What often went to look at in National Security is whether the normal means that we have to manage problems fit a threat that in some ways can be an existential threat. And where i usually am in these arguments is focused on the folly of trying to use for example, the criminal Justice System as the point of the counterterrorismfear,when the mechanism of the cruelustice system are not designed to deal with a threat like that. In this instance i think the opposite is true and i guess i want to shout out three cheers for mitt romney. Not mitt romney in his more recent incarnation as an advisor on these matter but mitt romney the candidate in 2012. Because i think he really got a raw deal on this particular issue. For saying what i think is the only sensible and humane immigration policy. And he referred to it as voluntary deportation. And i think by labeling it that way he didnt get a fair hearing. But i think what he simply meant is we have a fnite amount of Law Enforcement resources and in classical prosecutorial discretion, not prosutorial discretion the way that i think president obama has warped that doctrine over the last six years into sort of a license to me let the law, prosecutorial discretion is just resource allocation doctrine that is peculiar to criminal Law Enforcement. And what it holds is that we have a finite number of resources and a much wider amount of crime and criminals so we tried to sensibly target the resources to the worst of the problem so that we get the best bang for our buck. And romneys position on this, i think, was target your enforcement resources to the worst of the problem, and that would be on te one hand illal immigrants who aren our country and to violatenot just the immigration laws but to widely violate the criminal laws of the states. We have enough criminals. We dont need to have the criminals of the rest of the world he. To the extent that you deportation resources taeted at them. The magnet for illegal immigration is the hiring of illegals. So if youre going to make that if were going to financial position that that is lawless then you have to enforce that against the businesses that hire in rder to suppress the incentives to come. And, therefore, you have to worry about the fact that you 11 or 12 million illegal aliens. For the most part those people are productive and theyre not a problem and they will be eft alone. And if they decide to leave because the conditions of finding viable employment are not fruitful, then they will leave on their own. They will voluntarily depart. In that way you reduce the illegal immigrant population to sothing that is more manageable. And at that point when the problem gets significantly below 11 or 12 the people come if you want to talk about amnesty, then youre having a more sensible conversation about amnesty. Then try to do their ciumstances well youre not only giving amnesty to 12 million people, you havent demonstrated any intention to enforce the border. Youre really inviting more to come and youre making a problem that is currently mangeable much more this manageable. I think at the core of that and i must confess i am puzzled by this, the core of thergument seems toe there is an obligation on our part to do something to relieve the conditions of the illegal immigrant. And i frankly just dont understandhat. Has a number of analysts have pointed out illegal immigration is a voluntary act. And if you comeere, not talking about the dreamers. Therare categories of people who you can say its not their fault that theyre in the status they are in. But a person who comes here illegally and chooses to live in a outlaw status has created that siation on his own. And i just dont understand why we thk we have some kindf an obligation to fix that. It seems to me that the sensible way to do with this, again, is to go after the people who really violate our laws,target the magnet and try to reduce the population by giving people an incentive to leave. And then once we get down to something that makes more sense, then we can talk about whether we are to have amnesty or not. So i think its unfortunate tha romney got routed on that particular issue, because it was bad labeling more than anything else. I think it was good olicy. What i would like to make a pitch for its states rights, and state sovereignty. Where i think the immigration problem really goes off the rails is the notion that it is a federal issue primarily. Justice roberts in a 2011 case, one of the litigations that involve illgal immigration and arizonas exercise of power to try to regulate it begin the opinion by saying the power to regulate immigration is unquestionly a federal power. Well, it may at this poit unquestionably be a federal power, but for the First Century plus of constitutional governance it was exclusively a state problem. That i Immigration Enforcement. The constitution only gives the congress the power to set the terms of naturalization. And, in fact, we didnt even have a Justice Department for almost a third of the center for constitutional governed. The ingress and egress of people into the pores of the states was an issue for the states, that the policing of matters within the states was something that was going to be a matter for the exercise of state power and that included how hospitable or not hospitable tbe the people who werent american citizens and didnt have a right to be there. Just to give an example in 1837 in the case called new york versus milne, the state of new york dispelling the arrival of new aids the state of, the state had the power to return her citizens from being oppressed by the support of multitudes of poor person to come here from Foreign Countries without possessing the means of supporting themselves. And the court goes on to indicate that there couldnt be a more appropriate exercise of the States Police power. So for a long time we operate under the understanding that this is really a states rights issue your eventually the courts rationalized a federal regulatory role. They found it implicit in certain parts of the constitution come implicit in the power to patrol borders which is a core ingredient of sovereignty. So they found the federal role. But this i think and i would argue is where our jurisprudence really has gone awry particularly in the last century. Its one thing to have a federal role. Its quite another thing to go find a federal role and then decide it basically vanquishes the power of every other actor in the system. The Supreme Court does this by means of the preemption doctrine. So they identify a federal and th as a so in the arizona cases, what they say is if the state passes laws or regulations that contravene the federal come rst it was federal statutes. They argued it was federal policy. Nor did it matter what Congress Statute said the equipment was obamas licy of nonenforcement of immigration law. So you have these crazy situation of communist state laws that had been passed which acally bolstered congressional statutes regulating illegal immigration. And the federal government, the obama decision the Justice Department comes into court and says to the state, no no, no. You dont have to comply with federal law or to have to comply withederal policy. Weve now gone from the point of states supreme on immration enforcement two, you have a federal role and the federal role somehow become supreme come in unto the point where i guess im going down like obamas policies. But not to the aurd situation we have a president who says i dont need to enforce the federal law because i have prosecutorial discreon come and you, the states cant do anything to defend yourselves from whatever the problems are that you get from illegal immigration because that contravenes my policies, even if its consistent with federal law. Inthe arizona case the more recent one Justice Scalia posed a hypothetical. He said if ingress into constitution of the framers had attempted to grant congress the power, and this is a quote, to establish limitations upon immigration that would be exclusive and that will be enforced only to the extent the president deems appropriate, what wouldve happened . And, of course, what wouldve happened is they would have been no constitution. There wouldve been no trendy. There wouldve been no adoption of our foundational law. It simply wouldnt have happened. I think to the extent we have an immigration problem, and again i dont think, i really dont think its a crisis. I think its something that we fabricated into a crisis. I think its something that we are equipped to manage. I would prefer to manage it by federalism but i take we are equipped to measure through the criminal Justice System. I think to the extent you can call a big problem or a crisis its due to the federalization of enforcement and the folly of imposing one immigration policy on 50 states with an infinite number of cultural frameworks and economic ones. If i had my druthers i would have on the federal side a humanitarian enforcement policy prosecutorial discretion targeted against at real lawbreakers. And, obviously, make it clear that the federal government is responsible for Border Security which is again a core ingredient of sovereignty. And then i would say the federal government ought to be deferential to state sovereignty in terms of granting legal status, or not, the people who are in their territory which goes to the point michael was thinking a few months ago about whether people really want citizenship as opposed to legal status. The states obviously dont have the ability to grant citizenship citizenship, but i think we should be deferential to thein terms of their decisionmaking about who is welcome in their territory or not provided that they are not permitted to sociale the cost of havina hospitable immigration polic if they want to have a lavish welfare state and lavish benefits for illegal alien and they welcomed us to illegal aliens that may have a suppressing effect on employment forlowwage peopl on their own border, i think they can have it, and they should be able to have it but they shouldnt be able to pass the cost along t everyone else. So if we insist on having this crazy Central Planning, human, george wills 1197 pages i would go back to voluntary deportation as the model. Im persuaded by the Milton Friedman argument that you cant have both free immigration and the welfare state. I respectfully disagree with george wills comments on the. I mean i take his point that the welfare state is not necessily what motivates people to come here but i dont think what motivates them is relevant to the fact is once they get there they are exploding the welfare system and we have to bear the cost of the. Reading their minds is not what im all that interested in. I agree with mark that the modern welfare state complements lowwage work with welfare. We no longer in a paradigm where itsits work or welfare. Were not in that kind of framework. So if we have to have this remain a fedral issue, i am more in the Mark Krikorian camp. I would love to see the welfare state reformed, too. And if i had to make a choice, i would have free and open immigration with a limited welfare state, or a least a welfare state transferred back to the stateswhere its closest to the conditions that people actually listen. But since we are not, we are not anytime soon i think going to do any real reform of the welfare state, and we are stuck it appears, with this federal supremacy in immigration enfoement, i think we are much better off with zero bae immigration as mark proposes then free d open immigration. Thank you very much. [applause] well, thanks to everyone. I would ke first to give alex and mark a chance to respond to one another, and the panelists to respond to each ther, and then we can have a few questions. Alex, do you have anhing to say . Thank you very much. I guess i will just look at the end and work myself more back to me. Milton friedman was brought up quite a bit. You said you can have open borders for free immigration and welfare state. The second rt of the code is thats what he support illegal immigration. He support illegal immigration because they cant get welfare budgets to get the economic benefits of it. So everybody who supports immigration restrictions seems you forget that part of the code afterwards. When it comes to government whether governments have the right to impose immigration restrictions are put these barriers on there, i think, and i think andrew think it probably, power. Its not right. Governments dont have rights. No government has rushed to cover tht powers under our constitutional system. Thats how we understand the system going or. Individuals in the volunteer organizations they form have rights. So governments do not have the right to restrict immigration. They by definition have the power to do so under what is now. Now heard a lot about sort of the american early immigration attitude towards immigration. Almost everything that was mentioned in deb by john has to do with naturalization of which is a separate issue. I think it is perfectly compatible for somebody to say we should have free and open immigration but naturalization should be very difficult or should only be birthright citizenship, or some other issue like that. Its also important distinct between encouragements which is a subsidy, and free and open which is not a subsidy. I do not favor the subsidization of immigration but i do think that government policy should give immigration. Give them cash dnt want to get a or giving them other preferential treatment, but they should be free to make the decisions based on what the market are the situations are you. I also want to agree with andrew on something abig he support 50 different immigration policies. The federal government adulation. I gave about 300 million individual immigration policies in the United States in the same way that i favored 300 million different individual policies on which kind of toothpaste to buy or any other sort of economic transaction, who do engage in a voluntary commerce way. So i would go further than him on terms of the scale. Fundamentally i just didnt have the confidence that government will be able to choose which immigrants in the fure of good for us or which are not. I think this feeds into reless to what michael barones comments are. The government and society experts, all of us the people who preceded us who were supposed expert on immigration were not able to predt the start or end of any of these. They were not able to predict what the needs of the economy would be presentlylet alone in the future. So i dont know why since were all skeptical of government control over other portions of the economy that we should therefore somehow assume that they have the power to make the right choices in terms of what immigration will be needed Going Forward into the future. I think thats one being fairly open and flexible system guided by supply and demand, politicians or experts think supply and demand should be is or will be in the future. And this goes to another quote by laura kane whom other big fan of, his quotations, not his economics, but he wrote a book in the 30s basically about the economics of his grandchildren could what would occur when his grandchildren pashtun she assumed eerything would be so mechanized and so automated that nobody would have to work that his grandchildren would basically sit down and read poetry and beat obsessed with valley. As somebody who i guess would be the great grandchild if ar directly related, thats not the case yet. It may be in the future that technology will supplant the need for low skilled migrants in the u. S. Economy but we should again let the economy make the decision of when that occurs. We should let the economy do. I thnk that is far better. In terms of the patriotic assimilation argument a lot is bandied about about the movement in the 1920s but their surprising little evidence to support any of the notions that assimilation increased after that point. In fact, recent work and trendline support shows the pace of assimilation in terms of economics, family size, religion Political Parties support all this stuff basicallits an uninterrupted train. And nationalizion movement the Americanization Movement did not have those effects. Strangers in the land agreat book, all chapter about immigrants who are really turned off the idea of a bunch of angry nationalists telling them that they need to be more american and they are unamerican. Theres a lot of quotes by polish immigrant who came your particularly prussianism. They came here to play a militaristic society and then they are very turned off by getting basically the same ideas being spoken back to the. You could make an argument we dont have the data to really say it but you could make the argument that some individual cases it might slow down the paceof patriotic assimilation. But all these comparisons between immigrants themselves and fourth, fih, sixth generation americas arsenal to you cant compare the immigrants themselves. Just compare their kids and grandkids over time and compare the cohorts to the cohorts. We cant comparetodays immigrants to six generation americas. We have to compare todays the second immigration immigrants to the Second Generation immigrants from one of years ago. Is there a difference in terms of asimilation. We heard a bunch of Paul Research from the 20th and early 21st century. Did anything from the system 100 years ago in terms of polling data. We had nice quote by Woodrow Wilson but i dont really think quote by Woodrow Wilson are worth very much. In terms of measuring the pace of assimilation into the United States over time. I can i think a lot of my opponents exaggerate the effects in the United States. But i think about public schooling is a teachour kids and not suspect a good is our kids arent learning anything. Its also true that when you do a lot of these polls were to ask about hispanics in the United States by generation, how you doing, how are you ssimilating . Those polls are generally do not capture the number of people who are the sins of immigrants but who do not simply cannot as hispanic. If youre asking in april i have middleaged grandparents do you self identify as a middle eastern or whats ive never selfidentified as that in opal or otherwise. Youre basically by definition having a poll that is skewed towardstowards those people if it should generation who are the least of simply, the people who identified as hispanic, not the people of internet and who do not identify as hispanic. I think theres also some very fuzzy stuff going on but if you take a look at immigrant support for republicans and basically equate that tothe support for limited government. Lets not make that mistake going for. People whoant to take a look at is the policy both on the state level and the federal level and what happens to the policies over time. Can you draw a correlation to the idea that immigrants support bigger welfare or bigger policies and see an actual effect . No, you cant see an effect. You see the opposite effect the when iigration was close to saw a massive growth in government not long afterwards and continued until by the time it was reopened. You have a lot to explain if your goal is that. As a californian who escaped serfdom apparently california to make it out to Virginia Tech look at California Political history, you were never a conservative. They have always had a large welfare state in caifornia. Always had a gun restrictions. Faith that more gun restrictions than almost any state in the United States, and thankso govern Ronald Reagan supporting of the can restrictions, my folks live there have a very hard time owning firearms. Southern ocean the california was suddenly aboutface changed it to immigration is not true. A wonderful effect of turning people off to a Political Party especially wih growing demographics. I dont think, its very difficult for a politicaparty to gain longterm come it seems very difficult but then they build broad support by the proimmigration but it seems very easy for them to hurt themselves quite a bit by being very opposed to immigration. I think i saw that, one of the many things that occurred in california, about the positive immigration in the 1920s jumpstarting assimilation theres no evidence of that. The evidences trendlines continued. So thats what the equivalent of conservative political correctness. I dont see any evidence for it anywhere in terms of that. And i guess i will and on the skills of curre immigrants right now. Its true that immigrants today are far less skill on average than the average average american to be about as good as the average american was in 1965. In terms of that so theyre not a bunch of illiterate, the chances of them having n a High School Degree is similar to americans in 1965 which isnt all that bad. In terms of that level. So the notion that the governor should be able to play in which workers will come here what our economy demands i think its absurd. I think we had too rosy a view of the american past when it comes to assimilation but i think it worked ell in the past. Trends are it is working well right now, and i will let mark tell me what he thinks im wrong. Good, thank you, alex. I will. By just want to touch on a few points. First i want to sort of underlying trend is critique of andys georges idea that we can support all 12 million illegal in the wee one of the line of buses 3000 miles on or whatever it is but that is a silly rhetorical device. What we can do what they do when your bathtub is overflowing . You turn the tap off before you start mopping up the floor. The first thing we need to do is put in place the enforcement systems that are necessary to limit future illegal immigration but when you get universal use of the everify system. So when you hire somebody, a new person, you do all the paperwork anywhere for social sturdy and the irs that you verify that they are not likely. This is something that is not required now. We put in place visa tracking. We have a pretty good checkin system for foreign visitors, at least airports. We dont have a very good checkout system and we dont really much we dont even have a good checkin system at land borders. If you dont know who leaves, then spit it how feasible is that technolically in your view . At airport it is actually very easy. At land borders its becoming easier to do facial recognition and what have you. Its not the moon shot let me put that we. We will not be doing that tomorrow, the land border exit tracking but it is in fact a doable. My point here is your turn off the tap. And arrest all Illegal Immigrants to get arrested and deported because we have a system called secure communities. Some people thoug that order people thought we have always had this, but it only was flly implement it last year where when youre arrested her fingerprints are scanned and they go to the fbi. This has been going on for a long time. The fbi sees there is a workout foyour rest in a different state. [inaudible] only last year d we implement the system were those fingerprints also g to Homeland Security to see if youre an ilgal immigrant and has been deported before i would have you. Thats what president obama announced the discontinuation of. He is pulling the plug on what i wod describe as one of the most kind of elementary Immigration Enforcement measures measures but what do we do is lead to significant attrition. I dont knw how many of maybe one, two, 3 million fewer Illegal Immigrants. Once all of that is working and in place and overcomes the courtroom jihad that were launched againstit by the alliance, the sort of axis of the aclu, the chamber of commerce and the aflcio, then you can, in fact, and i am in fact in favor of amnesty and a lot of people who are still there. I thought michaels insight that these flows sort of start and can start and stop in unexpected ways but in unpredictable ways is, in fact, an important insight. We require certain humility i think it requires a humility in thinking about this. This id of Central Planning, of sort of planning the the immigration flows isnt that absurd. Weekend really gain the immigration flows effectively. George was talk by the idiotic provisions in the gang of eight bills that set out to the penny over a perd of seven years how much in immigrants would would make as opposed to something else. Its just ridiculous. This is why you need is is simple, neutral yardsticks, things like the husband and wife, minor child abuse is committed to coming. If youre not you dont. Theres no Central Planning. Theres no sort of bureaucrats gain nything to go be a lot of immigrants gaining it, lying to the our but thats the way it is with any program. But even with regard tothe skilled or employmentbased i think employmentbased immigration shouldnt exist. Skillsbased immigration is different. In other words use at a bar somehow. I woul set it a much higher maybe than others, and then you just let everybody in and they make their own weight in the labor market. Is your let in someone with 140 iq score and he ends up making guitars on a commune in vermont well, thats the way it is the the point is you let this more people and they do whatever the going to do. The question is where do you set the bar. And then the other point on relating to michaels point about the unpredictability of these flows, i would actually disagree to some degree that the 1920s immigration cutoffs had no effect. Because what you d. C. With mass flows, whether its not just blacks blacks and whites from thsouth moving to the induction cities of the north, people moving to california from the south or immigrants move into the United States is that they can become a kind of be kind of a herd mentality. In other words, they can be kind of, hysteria really isnt the word but if you take a momentum of a life of its own law changes in the law can, in fact, stop at and interrupt those social processes in a way that changing the law not implementing the law would now. So my point is the lockin effect of a significant effect i think on these admittedly unpredictable flows to the other point about the predictability of the flows is that we cant predict what the next was good to come from but we can be pretty sure that given the 5 billion people in the world who are poor than the average mexican, that theyre going to come from somewhere. I dont know whether the next largescale flow low skill immigrants is going to come from haiti or congo or albania or south india. But i can be pretty sure its going to come from somewhere. This is why we have to continue to in place a tight immigration system. And i briefly just want to touch on the side of skilled immigration but i wrote a piece recently titled i think something effective skilled immigration isnt all its cracked up to be. There are two claims people often make in arguing for more skilled immigration if one is that is economically beneficial to the other is the more likely to a similar. And both of those are true to a degree but theres a nuance to it. On the economic part yes, no question that you let in a lot of College Graduates, theyre much less likely to be a welfare. It still has similar effects. George moorhouse in his book have in store look at this issue investment if you took in a million coege graduates a year, in other words integrationimmigration of today which is 1 million a year, completely made up of College Graduates you would end up reducing the wages after a decade and have updated College Graduates by 15 . And in the long run what is probably more insidious and harmful is that you by reducing the returns to college education, you would see a 1530 drop in Native College enrollment. Now, that 1530 drop is not all going to become from people majoring in basket weaving. Because the people, people were talking of taking in our supposedly people in tech fields and what have you and thats what a significant reduction in atrophying of our ability to great homegrown talent in technical and scientific fields actually is a series of economic and National Security problem. And my last point i want to bring up isomething that was kind of implicit before, but alex made it explicit now, was that he is saying its okay to open immigration, unlimited immigration because thats were talking about. Its numerically unlimited immigration. That its okay to have that in combination with a very tough and demanding means of becoming a citizen. In other words, you let in lots of people but very few of them can become americans. And i would submit that that kind of saudirabian immigration policy is fundamentally contrary to the idea of republican government, that the only reason we should be en permitting immigration is with the goal, not necessary the requirement, but with the goal that everyone who moves here to live among us permanently is at some point, after a certain time of preparation, intended to become one of us. That immigrants will marry america and not just shack up with her. And the idea of replicating at the United Arab Emirates and saudi arabiaand qatar and bahrain have which is a small populati of citizens ruling over a large polation of foreigners is fundamentally contrary to the american idea. Well, we dont have a huge amount of time left, but id like to see if anyone else on the panel would like to say a few words and then we can take some questions. Questions, comments . Desser. Yes, wait for the mic. Peter jester smith of the National Catholic register. One of the things that i am looking at is, first of all i wod like to say that part of my family comes from the other part coms from 1840s ish escaping the family. We still have our parade here, so we are still here. And everybody joins us which is wonderful. Buthe question i have really here is alex and i and about 35 years will do with a world a lot of people in here arent, and its a world that is going to be funded no different from the ones my grandparents had with them was 40 to one workers supporting retirees. Were going to be dealing with to workers for every one retiree. And the question is, how is a small government going to be possible with the type of restrictive immigration that we are lookingat . Because what the other eonomic and demographers are telling us is that government, that taxes are going to go up theres going to be a huge burden, and a lot of the solutions to making sure we dont have immigrants massively involved government expansion and the power of the police stae. How is this going to lead o more stable country when we cant replace her own birth rates at 1. 8 now . Just for the longterm, how does it can you address that . Ialways thought it was kind of interesting when supporters of limited government say that immigrants are going to beef up the size of the state therefore we need to beat the good and beef up the size of the state stop the bleeding and hurt ourselves in the process i national id card everify or any other such a scheme which doesnt achieve the goal that even they want to achieve. Fundamentally the entire system is bankrupt by ny normal a county standards, john accepted accountingrinciples they are present back to the cache folder so negative that is somewhat terrifying whats going to happen. The only question is when are they going to get reform in a catastrophic with a bankruptcy be, and how able are we to recover from it . Every actuariastudy of Social Security that estimates an increase in immigration, even low skilled immigration assumes a put off a bit of reckoning a little bit. Does the same thing for medicare right now. Medicare part a is about to go bankrupt in 2000 with a which is optimistic 2024. Immigrants are supposed put into it. Thats not a fix but it is way to hold off that one day of reckoning for it. In terms of future population growth i would like to know im trained as an economist. I would like to know the economic model assist you people or fewer workers is good forhe econy and good for growth. The fact of the matter is if we do have the immigration policies, so the more restrictive ones, well see a shrinking u. S. Population in the future, and i know thats not good or it. We actually have no idea whats going to happen with a population in the future because the demographic projections beyond 20 or 30 years are meaningless. If immigration were zero tomorrow, zero which im not sure anybody is r, im not our population will continue to grow, the projections are that continue to grow for generations. So the idea that we are omehow in the same position as say russia or italy or south korea is first of all incorrect. Nativeborn americans simply have higher fertility than nativeborn people in lower speed is slightly since the recession. We dont know exactly what happened spent a lot of the growth is on the other side. But the point i think, the broader point is that every country in the world is going through a demographic transition like thiwith the drop in fertility. Irans total fertility rate, the number of babies in the fictional average woman at any one time well have during her lifetime, total fertility rate iniran is lower than the training. And china is lowe than in the United States. In tunisia is lower than in the United States. Everyplace except yemen, chad and afghanistan i think are seeing dramatic drop in fertility so the idea that we are going to somehowfx this as though its a problem, fix this by importing people from other countries where fertility is also dropping, is missing the point. The fact that thiss a fuamental aspect of human development. Part of our evolution as human beings. Well,ark, there been a few instances, have the not come up countries in europe rebound at least a little of the birth rate . Theres going to be sme rebounding but we dont know that human beings may not respond to the problems he is talking about by among other things higher birthrate. Those things have happened notably the baby boom of the 1940s speed at which the light artillery rather than increase it. It. I dont think thats right. The overall point that fertility you know, seven children per woman coming down to to jump or woman is going to be reversed itself a not, its never going to happen. That is nevegoing well, hes making argument for free immigration for mormons. There you go. Let me finish my point because the premise here, theres also a kind that premise ou is that americans are somehow defectiv or broken, and that we need to import better people who are less effective than americans because americans are not having the right number of kids that the elites think they should be having. I think americans american moms and dad should be decide how Many Americans are going to be in the future, and if we have antinihilist policies, we do in fact have tax policies nd others that discourage people from have been of kids they would nt to have, we should be getting rid of those. But the idea that the way we fix america is by importing people who are bett than us because they make better decisions the humming kids they have is offensive. They are better in one respect which is that they are younger. No, no. Thats no the point spectator to aboutyounger women are more likely of the big winner 25 and when theyre 60 okay speak with thats not the point. The point is admitting people with higher fertility that americans. Thats the argment. You know, americakids i would have fertility they want but its not the states business to decide that your fertility as an american, that our fertility isnt high enough and so were going to change government policy in order to increase it. Is at t states business speed is absolutely spent just because i think there ould be trade in oil doesnt mn i think american oil is effectively to the good think there should be Free Movement across border doesnt mean that the people here are defective. This is the best most productive country in the world was some the best institutions. People want to join these institutions but they are essential to Human Flourishing and freedom to the point abou demographics, theres a wellknown wellknown ushaped curve. Theres not some destiny where were going to have lower birth rates forever. There is a ushaped curve past a certain point in the phone of income people start of kidso assist sm an income ffect rather than a sutitution effect but we said at the end of low birth the utility in european countries. Amongst the natives, not amongst the natives. Its complicated but i dont think the Central Planning government should be ablto figure it out but i dont think we should trt it. Mitromney could make couldnt get away with [talking over each other] i think its obvious the case because you point out theres lots of people may want to move into a country witout becoming a citizen of that country. At the same time im really kind of struck by marks metaphor you want people to marry america rather than simply shacking up with her. I would like to some sort of an extrapolation about the differences, because i think we alknow the differences between marrying a wman and shacking up with her but the differences between marrying a country and jacking up with her. What are those differences . What are the consequences of merely shacking up with or yes. This is where i think kind of patriotic assimilation plays a role. Take a hypothetical say a koreanamerican student a girl in the seventh grade, when she studies merican history, and that she think of this as its my history . And she studies of the washington, hamilton and jefferson and madison, does she think that those Founding Fathers as my ancestors, even though i came from korea and theyre not directed my ancestors, ive adopted the big island doctor this or of america, the good and the bad. Adopted the civil war nd revotion and everything else. Ive adopted it as my story so patriotically a similar. I think thats what alex sid we dont have any data. Its true we dont ave data on while assimilation works but think of plenty of anecdotal evidence that americanization did help and every family property in this room went through ellis island. Theres a story about and the new data shows that this type of deep patriotic assimilation is no occurring today. Whether occurred in the past we think it did we dont have data to prove it but it is not ocrring today. Its not occurring because us almost all of us at this table discussed, thats not what american schools areeaching but they are not teaching this korean girl in the eighth grade the washington enabled and jefferson were your ancestors, is like anybody who says they were mne my parents coming from italy. We adopted. Thats the type of pitcher i assimilation we should be promoting. I agreed with john about patriotic assimilation. Im not troubled by people coming here behaving legally but not becoming citizens. Their children under prevailing interpretation of the 14th amendment are entitled to citizenship, born in the United States and the questions about assimilation comes in where i think were deficient these days, but i would go back to George Washingtons letter to the synagogue in 1791 people want to come your comp comport with our laws and live under their own vine and victory can we welcome them as equals, but i dont think thes an application found out that jeff to take up citizenship but i think you have to behave like a good residentat leat, but you know, we dont necessarily want them. If you are troubled, as ma maybe by the idea of dual loyalties, if theres some ambiguity about that in the residence mine, maybe you might not want them to take up citizenship if he is ambalent about it. I would like to thank t Hudson Institute and the panelists, alex and mark to come for the stimulating morning to start a conversation got hope you all will stick around to continue it. Thank you very much. [applause] you are watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Host well, the 114th congress is about to begin, and 2015 is shaping up to potentially be a busy year in telecommunications issues, so this week on the communicators weve invited three technogy reporters to join us to preview the ye look at what the congress may do, the fcc may do what the Administration May do. Brian fung of the Washington Post and Brendan Sasso of the washington journal. Mr. Sasso, when we asked all three of yu what were the issues you wanted to talk about all three of you put n neutrality first. Whats going to happen with Net Neutrality in 2015 . Uest right. Thats the big issue of, i think, 2014, and i think is going to coinue to be the big issue for 2015. Fcc cirman tom wheeler said he wanted rules on the books by the end of this year. Thats not going to happen obviously. In the first few month im expecting some final rules on Net Neutrality. President obama, of course, came out in support of reclassifying Broadband Service under title ii of the Communications Act which would, essentially, make it treated like a utility. Of course the broband Industry Groups are fiercely opposed to this. Theres a lot of pressure on chairman wheeler to go that route. So well see in theirst few months what happens there. And then even once the rus are on the books, this fights not necessarily over. Then theres going to be lawsuits almost certainly from the Industry Groups like verizon and comcast, especially if chairman wheeler does what the president wants and uses title ii. And then the republicans in congress will probably also have aresponse. Will they try to repeal it, put forward their own proposal . This is going to be a fight that goes on for a long time i think. Host mr. Fong . Guest well, i think all thats absolutely right, and theres going to be a lot more to come when it comes to congress, i think. You know, the chairman isnt expected to unveil his proposal until february or march at the earliest which give withs an opening for republicans in congress to introduce a bill