Mike frank, thank you for pinchhitting for Peter Robinson who was quite ill and couldnt travel, so i hear that was perfect. And then the yoga and the jog this morning actually there were people there and they did a great job. So good. In addition to welcoming you today after yesterdays packed program and i know many of you took note of the fact that we took no breaks, we just went straight through, our intention it is to do the same today. We have a couple of scheduling changes. As you notice our panel here is up. Kellyanne conway, were switching her times. She had a meeting at the white house. I squd them to change it because of our schedule but they said no. But our panel here decided that they would be able to switch their time and come bright and early, so i appreciate that. There will abe couple of other things during the day, possibly where we might have a break. There are a bunch of things happening with the healthcare bill and some of the other people who are coming later in the day that have a day job which is the reason why theyre on our panel. But we will try to accommodate them in the schedule as best we can. So there might abe break hebe a or there but otherwise were going to run right through with the schedule that you have. So enjoy. Thank you. Thanks very much, lindsay. My name is reihan salam and im a fellow at the nation institute. Were here to discuss immigration policy. It hassee merged as one of the most contentious issues in the country at large but also one of the most contentious issues on the political right. And im joined here today by three very distinguished panelists. We have christi de pena who is counsel till. Mark krikorian and Heather Mac Donald the thomas w. Smith fellow at the manhattan institute. So our goal for this panel today is to really within the right on immigration, and also to look ahead to potential federal immigration legislation. What it might look like, what it ought to look like. So first ill just start by talking about the distinction between legal and ilLegal Immigration. Id say for the last 20 to 30 years or so, this has been considered the most important, crucial distinction in immigration policy, and its also been a big source of the controversy around comprehensive Immigration Reform efforts. Yet mark, you have argued the distinction between legal and ilLegal Immigration isnt necessarily the most important immigration policy question. Absolutely. Obviously it matters significantly in that Illegal Immigrants are illegal. Its not that there is no difference. Its almost all the concerns other than the rule of law and kind of basic order issues that we talk about with regard to ilLegal Immigration also apply to Legal Immigration. And there are something three times as many legal immigrants as there are illegal aliens. If there are issues with regard to public service, impact on education, all of that stuff, there is really not that much difference. If you have an illegal immigrant, if you have a legal immigrant without let me put it this way, if you have an illegal immigrant who only has an eighth grade education and you give him a greencard, he still only has an eighth grade immigration. Its not like in the the wizard of oz where you give the scarecrow the diploma and he starts quoting pooe ining pytha. Its an easy way for a loft politicians and frankly regular people to avoid thinking about the broader issues of immigration and focus just on the illegality. Kristie, the gang of eight bill looked as though it was going to pass. People who had been working under comprehensive reform under the Bush Administration and a similar package pushed during the obama years as well. What went wrong from your perspective. I think the part of what went wrong is that while there were a fair number of people, you know, within the middle of both parties willing to work on these reforms, and willing to talk about some of the changes in the bill, the bill ultimately ended up being sort of a bandaid. And it really wasnt a true solution to a lot of the problems that we have in immigration. And this time around, ideally, a good reform bill or a package of bills which is much more likely to happen is going to have the support of not only, you know, the middle portions of each political party, but is also going to have the support of President Trump as well. And thats going to make a big difference. If i could thats basically, i dont disagree. But i think there is an underlying problem that explains why both bushs amnesty push in 06 and 07 failed as well as the gang of eight, and thats a trust gap. I agree. Nobody believes the promises that if we legalize the Illegal Immigrants today, well enforce the law tomorrow. Its old wimpy and popeye where he says ill gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today. And he gets the hamburger and never pace you. Thats what happened in 1986 where we had an amnesty in exchange for enforcement that werent kept. This certainly based on the same idea. Amnesty now in addition to increasing immigration, and we promise to enforce the law down the road. Nobody believes that. Heather, there is there are some early indications that over the short tenure of President Trump, weve seen a marked decrease in the number of unauthorized entries into the United States. Are there any lessons we can take away from that . Yes. Law enforcement works. The rule of law matters. You send signals for better or for worse, you send a signal when youre not enforcing the law that we allow our immigration policy to be determined by people outside of the country in their decisions to come in. And when you announce that in fact you are going to take the rule of law seriously, people respond. This is a message we learned in new york city with policing. That should be understood by every police chief today that whether you decide to enforce the law or not, you do change behavior. And certainly one of the greatest travesties that were experiencing today and that i applaud President Trump for focusing on so relentlessly is the sanctuary city movement. Where you have Big City Police chiefs who should know better betraying everything they understand about law breaking in order to coddle the ilLegal Immigration lobby. So theyre saying it doesnt matter that an illegal alien has committed a low level crime. We are going to prevent i. C. E. From even making an inquiry about that illegal alien criminal. That is a constitutional violation of the highest order for the locals to defy federal authority this way. But it also underminds the public order, the sense of cities being in control, that Big City Police chiefs otherwise understand. Kristie, tell me about your sense about the recent change in priorities, visavis Immigration Enforcement. Do you have a sanguine as view as heather or do you see things differently . I see things slightly differently. Certainly enforcement is a huge part of Immigration Reform. It absolutely has to be. But you also have to consider why people want to come to the United States and address those issues. We are constantly going to see people wanting to violate our sovereign borders to come here to work. If we can Better Change our guest Worker Programs and some of the other reasons that people try to violate our border sovereignty, we can focus more on collecting the criminals that are hiding in our cities, making sure that there is not drug traffickers running across the border. But that has to work hand in hand. And mark, i do want you to respond too, but i have another followup question for kristie. This is a little bit unrelated. But there is a group of mexican former senior government officials and officials, the menarca group which has explicitly talked about talked about coordinating with mex began immigrants inside the United States and encouraging them to essentially try to defy deportation orders and what have you, giving them various kinds of guidance so as to help them work around u. S. Immigration enforcement. I wonder, do you believe that these efforts aid the cost of advocates of increased Legal Immigration or do you think they hinder it . I think anything that violates the rule of law is a hindrance. Whether or not that law needs to be change sad separate discussion. But we should not be advocating for anyone to violate the laws that stands. I wanted to respond to kristies first point, and in effect and im simplifying it here but in effect, we need to let the people who want to come in legally, that way they wont come in illegally. There is no practical limit to the number of people who would want to come to the United States. Obviously in the first year, it wouldnt be 10 million people. But over time, there are hundreds of millions of people abroad who would move here if they could. And its not just dependent on labor market demand because, frankly, living on the street in the United States beats living in a hut in much of the world. My point here is that we can never meet the demand for immigration to the United States simply by increasing the numbers and thereby eliminating ilLegal Immigration. It cant work that way. Were going to have to have limits, and were going to have to enforce those limits. I completely agree. We do need to have limits. And we will probably never meet the demand of all the people that want to enter the United States. 100 agree. But thats where lawmakers come in, to make sure that the limits that we have in place make sense for the United States and for humanitarian reasons abroad as well. And that we set, you know, smart limits on these policies so that, you know, we can set is, you know, an amount of people to come in that makes sense rather than sort of coming up with these arbitrary numbers that havent really served any purpose in the past. Heather, just to pick up on this theme, i wonder, isnt it fair to say that what might make senses for, for example, low wage employers might make sense from the perspective of taxpayers who are concerned about safety net benefits and what have you . If you want to see the future of the country if we retain the immigration status quo now, i invite you to go to my home state of california, because it is on the vanguard of the radical demographic change that has occurred thanks to what is virtually an open borders policy that favors masls lowskilled immigration. California used to be the leader in education from k to 12. In the 50s and 60s, california led the nation in the quality of high school graduates. Today it resembles a southern backwater like mississippi, alabama, or arkansas, with all due respect to those wonderful states, but theyre not necessarily at the top of the educational heap. A third of all california eighth graders lack the most rudimentary math and reading skills. California spends endless amounts of redistribution of tax dollars to try and close the achievement gap between hispanic and white students, and it has not budged since 1990. Hispanics are massive users of Public Health care, Government Health care, and accordingly, the biggest supporter, they were the biggest supporters of obamacare. So the usual discourse about that you hear from the more the pro immigration open borders lobby that there is a benefit, an economic benefit to all types of immigration fails to note the difference between highskilled and lowskilled and fails to take account inevitably of the taxpayer costs of supporting efforts at the education level, criminal justice costs, we are creating a second underclass, the incarceration rate of mexicanamericans jumps eightfold between the first and Second Generation to equal that of blacks, and it ignores the health care costs. So, yes, there is a large welfare component to lowskilled immigration that is rarely taken into account. We you mentioned earlier on, kristie, humanitarian immigration. Generally speak, my understanding is humanitarian immigration is refugee immigration into the United States. I noticed a striking fact from the migration policy institute. Mpi observed that the children of refugee immigrants are somewhat less likely to live in households below the poverty line than nonrefugee immigrants. And yet in principle, nonrefugee immigrants are meant to be held to the standard that theyre supposed to become selfsufficient. What do you think that of . Do you think there emerges some kind of imbalance between religion a refugee and nonrefugee immigration . I think you to consider the differences between refugees and every other immigrant category. Certainly these people are coming from areas where they may have been in refugee camps for the previous decade. You to consider that in many cases exactly. You would expect them to be much, much poorer which is why i find them that nonrefugee immigrants appear to be as poor if not poorer than refugee immigrant. Often, i think some of the difference can be explained because refugees often come over with their families. So they have a strong sense of family. They are initially offered a lot of resettlement and assimilation services that are very beneficial to them, including english as a second language services. That often aids in their ability to kind of work into their communities. They have immediate access to safety net programs where other lawful immigrants have a waiting period for five years. For most visas. And then, you know, you often see that once their children are going to school, they can aid in their Family Learning english, kind of navigating the u. S. Health care system, which is obviously very complex. And, you know, they tend to do very well. They have reenergized a lot of cities in the United States. Mark, just to be clear about this, again, so i guess in principle, in law, and correct me if i am wrong here, there is a distinction between refugee immigrants. Well assume they are helpless. We assume they require humanitarian assistance and nonrefugee immigrants, and yet nonrefugee immigrants appear to be heavily reliant on the safety net. Can you tells us a little bit that . Not to get too much into the weeds here, but what theyre finding is the Adult Children of refugees are not the children of the refugees were getting now. Theyre the children of cubans, vietnamese, and russian jews. In other words, part of this is a function of where the refugees came from and their level of education when they got here. So were looking at the children of an earlier wave of refugees. And todays refugees are dramatically different in their Human Capital and education and what have you. Fill us in a little bit on what we know about safety net reliance for nonrefugee immigrants. There is the a fiveyear limit, yet most lawful immigrants in the country have been in the country for longer than five years. We actually looked at the Census Survey that does the best job at getting at use of welfare. And what we found was that among any means tested programs. Not Social Security, which is not means tested, but food stamps, medicaid, tanneth, et cetera. What we found is about half of all families headed by immigrants, legal or illegal are using at least one welfare program. Basically what it boils down to is that less skilled immigrants cannot earn enough to feed their own children in the United States. This is a pretty basic a basic fact that has to be taken into account when making immigration policy decisions. As heather was talking about, what we are doing or what we have been doing now for decades is privatizing the benefits of low skilled immigration that restaurants and landscapers and other people use by keeping their wage costs down, then socializing the cost on everybody else. This is why the National Academy of sciences just last year did this magisterial study on immigration. What they found was that net immigration has a small positive effect on the economy but that small positive effect has two important caveats. One is it comes from taking wealth from the poor and giving it to everybody else because the people who compete with immigrants are worse off, everybody else is slightly better off, and the second point is that that Small Economic benefit is totally wiped out by the extra social service costs. I have a question first for heather. And then for kristie, i hope. There was for a very long time a consensus among libertarian minded thinkers and now thats being challenged in lots of interesting and useful ways, but a consensus that large scale, less skilled immigration would be just fine if we did not have a safety net, an extensive safety net, period. It occurs to me in the recent debate over obamacare, a program that is in fact quite young, that has only been on the books for a very short amount of time, that its actually very difficult to reverse this recent and quite modest extension of the social safety net. Do you believe its plausible that we are going to dismantle the larger social safety net in the United States in the near future . I dont think that the aclu and la raza are going to go away in the near future. So they are going to be pressing the notion that everybody is entitled to government support. So i dont think its likely. Even so, if we carry out that thought experiment and say that the importation of poverty, of multigenerational poverty that is occurring with mass low skilled immigration is not met with government programs, im still not certain that its a net benefit because you still have people who are not advancing, that are not necessarily adding to the nations ability to compete. Social capital matters. Culture matters. And the usual trick is when people are talking about more immigration, is to invoke sergei brin and obviously hes an immigrant we were right to bring in. His parents came, they were ph. D. S in mathematics from russia. Its pretty predictable that hes going to be a major contributor to American Innovation and competitiveness. But the endless importation of people, as mark said, with eighth grade or third grade education and a culture that reflects their own countries is not necessarily the way to go, regardless of whether they are using welfare programs or not. Niskanen takes a somewhat different view on think takes and the use of the safety net. Can you tell us than . Yeah. First we need to talk about this idea that all low skilled immigrants are coming to the United States and settling here permanently. With the right program, you can ensure that we are getting low skilled guest workers that we need and they dont necessarily have to live in the United States. There are a lot of solutions out there that sort of eliminate any opportunity they would have to be dependent on a welfare program. But getting more to your question are you concerned about the Civil Liberties implications of that . Because, for example, if you have a child on u. S. Soil, that child is a u. S. Citizen. And i wonder, because what the canadians do is they literally have gender segregated labor camps isolated from major cities. Yes. And also there is a question of renewability. Can i renew my guest worker status, et cetera. There are many folks in agriculture and tourism, for example, who want a consistent, stable workforce over time. So i wonder if some of those things that would ensure that guest workers are indeed temporary might actually cut against some of these Civil Liberties concerns. Yes. I mean, you know, canada does have their own kind of idea about how to regulate it. I think there is probably a solution in incentivizing people to leave and return to their home country, then come back to work. So you mean paying people to leave . Or do a wage withholding process whereby they can get a portion of their wages as long as they leave. There are a couple solutions out there that kind of make sense. But kind of getting back to this idea of immigration, yes; welfare, no. Its kind of a political nonstarter. We are never going to get rid of all our social safety net programs no matter how much everybody hates it or loves it or is somewhere in the middle. But what we really need to do is enforce the laws that we have on the books. Because they are pretty comprehensive. What the problem with some of these studies is that they arent quite nuanced now identify the people that are using benefits that they are allowed to use and people that are illegally using those benefits by way of fraud or abuse, et cetera. Mark, it seems as though its actually not really a matter of fraud. What you were pointing to is the fact that many immigrants including nonrefugee immigrants are incredibly poor and the concern you hear certainly from people on the left is that if you deny some of these folks access to the safety net, they and their children might suffer. Absolutely. Just first about the guest worker thing, theres nothing as permanent as a temporary worker. No temporary Worker Program has ever avoided large scale settlement. Its simply human beings dont work that way. Are you suggesting that people who arrive in the country temporarily sometimes might want the stay a little longer . Yes, i am suggesting that. Even if they dont plan it, once they get used to it and they realize the police dont shake you down every time you get stopped, you realize the cars drive between the lane markers on the roads here and stuff like that. For now. For now. For now. Their reaction often is why would i want to go back. If they have kids, i remember i had a cabbie from ghana who was going to go back but his kids who are teenagers said are you crazy . Were not going back. The temporary worker thing is a fantasy. As far as welfare goes, fraud is not the problem. I mean, this is often conservatives fall back on this, even when talking about size of government. Waste, fraud and abuse is the solution. Yeah, theres waste, fraud and abuse. Its the government. Its going to happen. Thats not the problem. The problem is low skilled pool who work. This is not people sitting around eating bonbons, leeching off the state. This is people who work. But our welfare system is designed to subsidize the working poor with children, and that defines immigrants. And the children, a lot of them are u. S. Citizens because theyre born here. Most children in illegal immigrant families are u. S. Citizens. Were not going to be denying them welfare. If youre going to let in lowskilled people from abroad, just accept the costs. You dont get to complain about it, because the costs are going to happen no matter what you do. Kristie raised the possibility when you are thinking about future Immigration Reform efforts, you want to do something thats pulling in a much broader coalition of people from both political parties. There are now two emerging legislative efforts. Lindsey graham, my colleague recently reported that Lindsey Graham is contemplating a new plan that would have three phases to it. The first, you would offer legal status to children who entered the country as unauthorized immigrants as minors and you would have enforcement measures attached to it. The second phase is that you would legalize unauthorized immigrants working in the agricultural and tourism sector, and you would make everify mandatory. The third phase would be we would legalize the remaining unauthorized immigrant population while also shifting to a more skillsbased immigration system. Tell me, heather, do you think that that sounds like a more palatable compromise than the gang of eight, or does it sound very similar to the gang of eight legislation to you . Well, the fact is that every amnesty that we have granted or that europe has granted has ended up being a magnet of encouraging more people to come in. So the argument for another amnesty is well, this time we do mean it, unlike with the reagan amnesty, and we will make sure that we enforce things. You know, its hard, as mark says, to trust that. My view, i certainly applaud aspects of it. I think the move towards a skillsbased system is long overdue, completely justified because again, as mark suggested, whats going on with lowskilled immigration is that americans without high school degrees, predominantly black or hispanic themselves, are either getting pushed out of workplaces completely when they become dominated by, say, the spanish language, or find their wages dropping 6 drop in wages over the last several decades, thanks to mass low skilled immigration. So we need to move back towards high skilled but you know, i applaud that. The fact is people who come here illegally have assumed the risk of all of the negative attributes of that status. And they have certainly assumed the risk of deportation, which is something that is being completely delegitimated by the left. If you cant even deport an illegal alien criminal, which is the position of sanctuary city, basically, you sure as heck cant deport an illegal alien who has not gone on to commit other criminal code crimes. And that is a very profound political gesture that is going on that has as its ultimate goal the undermining of the rule of law in immigration itself. So im not frankly, i support something that making has advocated which is do nothing. This is a problem that will eventually work itself out over time. The children, thanks to birthright citizenship, and this is one of obviously the most crucial aspects of our immigration policy that should be changed, but i dont know if that would be that sort of a pieinthesky hope. That the children are already american citizens. Im not sure that we need to go through the waves of legalization. Mark, you have argued that there may well be a place for an amnesty provided we go through another sequence of steps that looks rather different from the sequence. Sure. That Lindsey Graham has. First of all, if its coming from Lindsey Graham, im immediately going to be suspicious of it. And so but the idea of sort of confidence building measures, like, you know, in negotiations between the israelis and the palestinians, you first agree on the shape of the table. And then you can move on to the next things. Thats what we need to do on immigration, step by step. My steps are different from his steps. My fear is what he is talk about as we pass a bill in june and we pass the second bill in july and we pass the third bill in august. No. What we need is demonstrate we need to put in place the enforcement systems we need. And im okay with trading some of that for amnesty for the dreamers. I mean, im not wild about it obviously, but we use parking ticket amnesties and tax amnesties. And these are kids theyre adults at this point. But these are people, especially if you get down to younger ages. The dream act, which was the original legislative version that obama on his own enacted unilaterally goes up to age 16. Thats a mistake. But you go lower than, that 10, 12, 7, Something Like that, then there is an argument to make look, this kid is sort of emotional, Psychological Development happened in the United States. And so i think there is a case to make for it. But you dont just see what a lot of people want to do is lets just give them green cards. No. We trade that for Something Like everify. And i would submit senator cottons bill to cut familybased immigration. Because thats a little bit of amnesty. Its enough to maybe get eight votes from Chuck Schumers caucus in the senate, among senators that are up for reelection in trump states two years from now. But it doesnt give away the whole thing. And it minimizes the magnetic effect of the amnesty while getting something real, which is ending family chain migration and getting everify in place. Can i add something . Briefly, please. I support mark. I think he makes a good argument. I would have as a nonnegotiable requirement, we always hear clean criminal record. Sounds good. What that means is you get two bites at the apple. You get two misdemeanor convictions. Anybody that knows the criminal Justice System to get a misdemeanor conviction often means you committed a bunch of felonies and youve plead it down. I would say absolutely lets have a clean criminal record, and we mean it there is lots of people, immigrants and nonimmigrants who manage to go through life not committing crimes. It is possible to do so. So i would say if youre talking about lets actually take that at its word. Kristie, everify is a pretty big cleavage among a lot of republicans, partly because folks who favor more vigorous Immigration Enforcement will often argue what you really need is workplace enforcement because, of course, immigrants, regardless of skill level, are coming to the United States to work. And if youre an unauthorized immigrant, having the opportunity to work is a really big part of the attraction of coming to the country. So if you have more rigorous workplace enforcement, that would make a very big difference in deering the unauthorized immigrants. On the other hand, a lot of republicans represent low wage employers, particularly in the agricultural and tourism sectors. And they fear that everify would immediate a lot of legal liability. It might endanger their businesses and what have you. So tell me what you think about the idea of mandatory everify. You know, mandatory e verify is kind of tricky. We absolutely need enforcement provision. And Something Like everify is absolutely one of the pillars of that interior enforcement. What everify needs to end up look like precisely may have to fluctuate a little bit in order to make sure that it is financial financially realizable for some of the smaller employers. Well dont want to cut them out because they cant pay for this everify system. Well want to make sure its not giving out false positives weve heard about. We want to make sure its a good process that is certainly one that will help deter people. Isnt that the least contentious aspect . Because when i think of issues like sanctuary cities, when i think for example collateral arrests, those seem way more contentious issues than everify. Even if everify is contested in these ways, that seems to cast some shad doens the rest of the interior enforcement agenda. Is that wrong . When you frame it as, you know, a policy issue that is being contested, yes. But there are a lot of lawmakers now that are willing to come to the table and talk about all of these issues, even though they might be on slightly opposite ends of what to do. They want to find a solution. What are the other forms of interior enforcement that folks on the libertarian right would embrace if theyre skeptical about everify, just out of curiosity . Certainly im not going to speak for all libertarians. You know, some of the things that i think need to be part of interior enforcement are not necessarily, you know, the enforcement things that you think about when you hear the word enforcement, but a lot of administrative changes, a lot of changes to our immigration judicial system, increasing immigration judges. For instance, when we do have somebody commit a crime, they can move through the system and we can deport them in a legal and thoughtful way. But right now, i mean, there is so much backlog in our own interior processes that its practically impossible to do. And thats one of the big reasons that we have, you know, this Large Population of people that, you know, we suddenly need to identify and deal with. So in other words, no work site enforcement . No. Thats not kristies view. What is the work site enforcement . If were not requiring everify, if were not raiding employers. No, no, no. No. You misunderstood me. And i certainly didnt say anything about raids. I think that everify is going to absolutely be a component of it. But we need to look at the mechanisms of that policy, which is at this point pretty old and figure out how to make it the most efficient and effective everify policy that we can have. Let me just say a word for everify. We have used it for many years. It doesnt cost anything. The cost estimates are based on how much time it takes. It takes me 45 seconds to everify somebody. Half the workforce, half the hiring decisions last year were screened through everify. And people have this idea, grover has talked about this as a hiring, as a database that youre only allowed to hire. From all it is when you collect the Social Security, name, date of birth and information from a new hire, which youre doing anyway for purposes of Social Security and irs, that you just check online and make sure that the person youre looking at isnt lying to your face. Thats all it is. Its verifying the information that youre going to be sending in to Social Security with Social Security. Mark, i have a political question on this, which is so i think its fair to say that for a very long time, within predictably among republican lawmakers, the influence of employers who are everify skeptical has been very, very strong would. You say that influence has waned . Oh, absolutely. Once there was a court decision, Supreme Court upheld local and state everify rules based on as a precondition for having a business license, you had to use everify. Once the Supreme Court upheld that, the u. S. Chamber of commerce got together with numbers usa, one of the main restrictionist lobbying groups who are a think tank. They do the lobbying stuff. And they wrote an everify bill together and it passed the house judiciary committee. The fact is that the skepticism about everify still exists, but its really mainly at this point among farmers or the ag lobby. And they actually have a special, you know, sort of grace period in the legislation anyway. So the answer is, yes, i think there is not the real issue, the political problem with everify is not the people are against it. Chamber of commerce is for it. President obama was for it. Nobody is against it. Its that on the left especially, and to some degree amongst some of the employer groups, theyre holding it hostage to getting legalization. I want to get to a grow the audience. The first one i want to ask you, heather and then i want to ask a followup to kristie. Youre talking about the experience of california with large scale less skilled immigration. Texas is another state that has attracted a large number of less skilled immigrants, and yet many people, particularly on the right believe texas has had a happier experience with integration and what have you. Tell me, what would you attribute that difference to if you believe that that difference is real . I dont know. Dallas and houston, they have some bad crime problems there. Theyre at some of the highest rates of crime. Ive not been to texas. I cant comment on it really. It it may be that there is somehow was less of a political influence there, less advocacy groups. I dont know. But it is certainly the case that in places like los angeles now, you do have a very vocal Advocacy Community that is pushing more and more for the disintegration of the rule of law. And you do have stresses on social services. I would like open borders advocates to come with me to the barendo middle school in pico rivera, which is in los angeles and to see the growth in those schools of a massive social service bureaucracy to try and deal with the children of single mothers who are getting sucked into gang culture. It is the greatest out of wedlock teen birth rate in the country is hispanics now have 53 out of wedlock birth rate for all ages. These are significant problems. California shows where this is going. Again, ive not been to texas. But, again, im not sure that theyre doing so well on the education front. Rick perry made a big deal about an increase in School Test Scores thanks to his education reforms. But i dont think that its still at a marvelously high level. And as i say, the big cities there do have significant crime problems. But kristie, a followup question for you. A leading immigration scholar at the Cato Institute has skugted that one of the big reasons texas has been more successful visavis lowskilled immigration is that texas stringently limits access to food stamps and to medicaid. Do you believe that lowincome immigrants in texas would be better off if they had access to a stronger safety net, or do you think theyre better off as they are now . I dont know. I dont think that you can lump all of the guest workers or lowskilled immigrants into the same pot and say well, if we gave you this benefit you would clearly do well. I think that heather is making a good point in that a big part of the problem is our Education System. And you certainly cant blame all the problems of our Education System on immigrants. There is, you know this is a multipronged issue that you have to consider from a number of different viewpoints. Acknowledging that folks from families with very low parental incomes tend to have a somewhat harder time visavis economic achievement than folks of families of high parental income. That fair . I think generally thats probably a fair characterization. Also, i believe that texas does not deny benefits to children. So they are still able to get chip benefits if they need them. Theyre still able to get the lunch programs if they need them that should theoretically impact some of their ability to succeed. But also, as somebody who is from texas and who spent some time in Corpus Christi, my family is from there, my grandfather, my great grandfather was an immigrant. My grandfather was a judge in Corpus Christi for decades. A lot of the successes that they have seen there with immigrant populations is that rather than try to isolate them, they try to get them to invest in their communities. And its been successful in a number of areas. Certainly there are still things that we need to address as far as crime and education. But a lot of it has to do with attitudes and a willingness to try and work with your, you know, your fellow community members. So im afraid i dont have a clock here. I have a number of other questions. If someone could give me a time check, i would be grateful. Okay. Got it. We have a number of questions. So one i want to run by you, mark. This is something we often hear in the immigration debate these days. Recent studies have concluded that more individuals are crossing the boarder to return to mexico. Immigration from mexico has hit an alltime low. If thats the case, why are strong limits on the number of immigrants coming to the country still needed . Mexican immigration has gone down. Thats an unquestionable fact. Its still significant. I mean, were talking about tens of thousands of Illegal Immigrants from mexico still coming every year. But it is lower. And in fact last year, Border Patrol apprehensions on the Mexican Border were actually about 52 or 53 nonmexican. Almost all of them central american. The rest were mexican. Part of the reason for that is there is almost no working age men left in rural mexico to move here. They have sort of run out of people to move here. Because what we saw, the reason we saw that huge flow into the United States wasnt really nafta. It was that mexico was modernizing. And like every country that modernizes, people move from the country to the city as agricultural becomes more productive. You dont need ten people to farm the same plot of land. You have one person that does the same work. The problem is we didnt combine nafta with stringent border enforcement. So what happened is that Natural Movement of people from the countryside to the city. Half of it went to the United States. And so mexico seems to have, if not completed, at least gone a significant way toward that transition from rural to urban. Just to be clear, are you suggesting that mexico is not the only source of unauthorized immigrant to the United States . That is point number two. There are seven billion people in the world who are neither who arent mexican and who arent american. And a lot of them want to come here too. So what were seeing now is Legal Immigration is still a million a year. Has anyone ever overstayed a visa to the United States, mark . No. No one ever does that. Definitely. And in fact recent research from the center for migration studies which is on the other side of the debate, but they do some honest Research Finds that slightly more than half of new illegal aliens, the ones coming in now, about a thousand a day Illegal Immigrants settle in the United States, more than half of them are visa overstayers. A lot of them are mexican too, but its a lot smaller number than the border jumpers. This is a question for all of you guys as we head out. I want you to look to the future. Do you believe were going to get meaningful federal immigration legislation some time over the next two years . Heather . Yeah, i think that we are going to i hope move towards a more skillsbased system. Again, lets be very clear. That is not what the left wing immigration advocates want. They want numbers. But i think that trump is going to push that. But i think the most important thing, frankly, is the abomination of sanctuary cities. This has to end. It is an insult to the rule of law and makes it very impossible for cities to produce the public order in the streets that is so essential. I fear were out of time. Do you want to give a very quick answer, kristie and mark . I would love to. Kristie . Thank you. Yes. Im cautiously optimistic but i think there are enough people that are not on either the far left or the far right that really want to make meaningful reforms. And some of the frameworks that weve seen out there are pairing the right issues at the right time to make that happen. So ideally, yes. My answer is no. In the long run, yes. In the long run i see the end game as enforcement systems being put in place. IlLegal Immigration both the flow and the existing stock shrinking. And eventually, then, the deal that closes that sort of the end game deal is amnesty for most of the illegals who are still here in exchange for deep cuts, permanent cuts in Legal Immigration. Something a longtime cotton bill. And you believe executive authority will be enough . Not necessarily. I dont think in the next two years were going to get a mandatory everify bill. I hope im wrong. But i think the left is so determined to stop anything that trump does that theyre not going to allow it to happen even if they wanted it. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] you are just so amazing. Thank you. More from the National Review institute summit