[laughter] some students that are interested in the masters in applied Politics Program here at the university of akron. They are preserved tables at the front where we can provide you with information. Finally, as you may have noticed in your toe bags, tote bags. I have been told on pain of death to ask you to fill out your a violation form. Your evaluation form. Klees joined me in thanking linda and the panel please join me in thanking linda and the panel. [applause] all this week, but tv is in prime time. Tv. Ook tonight, memoirs and biographies. Malala, men we reaped, book of ages. Book tv, all this week in prime time on cspan2. 50th anniversary commemorations. Eastern, highlights from the ceremony remembering the march on washington. After that, an event held in memory of four africanamerican girls killed in birmingham, alabama. Finally, we take you to dealey plaza in dallas for a ceremony or numbering the 50th anniversary of the assassination of president john f. Kennedy. American history tv, all this week in prime time on cspan3. Ladies continues tonight with a look at the life and career of pat nixon. She traveled abroad more than any first lady before her and let efforts to require to acquire art for the white house. She offered her husband support when the watergate scandal broke. The life and times of pat nixon, tonight at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. You can listen on cspan radio. On fire. Rld is moving extremely fast. In computer science, my education expires after five years to 10 years. Everything is new, facebook and twitter are new. New programming languages. Historically, we have sliced human life into three or four or five slices. A play phase, a learned phase, a work phase, a resting phase afterwards. Maybe eventually dying. What we should be doing is interweaving these phases, play, rest at the same time. The world moves so fast, we cannot afford having a single set of education and we have to stay up to date. New years day just before 1 00 p. M. And through the udacity,n, ceos of footer, and others on the future of higher education, robotics, and data as the new industrial revolution. Header tv, former texas texas senator on when the new helped shape texas. Tv,merican history daughters of civil rights leaders and a segregationist share memories of the civil rights era. This morning, washington journal asked viewers what they thought the top news story of. 13 was. The republican shutdown of the government. Chris, the irs targeting tea party groups. Spying. A now more about key news stories in 2013 a look at immigration. From the west of front of the u. S. Capitol, where one year ago, january 20, 2013, president obama was sworn in for his second term. During his inaugural address he , talked about changing Immigration Law and talked about it a great deal on the campaign trail. He also talked about it in 2012. Over the next hour here on cspan, we will bring you more comments from president obama and hear house and Senate Debates on the immigration issue. And a conversation with alan gomez. He has been reporting for usa today. You wrote earlier this year about the senate gang of eight. Is it fair to say the senate took the lead legislatively this year. Absolutely. Right after the election that the senate came together and decided they wanted to tackle the issue. What happened was, mitt romney got a 27 of the hispanic vote, you saw a lot of republican senators get together and forming this coalition and a couple people dropped out, a couple people came in. It ended up being eight senators , four republicans and four democrats that took the lead. , it seems to have a lot of energy early on. What happened throughout the year . They ran through it. In this climate we are seeing in congress, very difficult to get anything through, they had a regular Committee Hearings and vote and pass the immigration bill on the senate floor. That is something we have not seen too much of. After they passed that that is , when things stalled. They seem to have a lot of things going in their favor. You mentioned the president and his desire to see immigration change. You wrote in usa today, an article about Congressional Budget Office that the senate bill could cut ilLegal Immigration in half. Did it help their case or move it forward . We will talk about the house in a bit. Did that have resonance over there . It did, incredibly. One of the reasons immigration failed in 2006 or 2007 was from the Heritage Foundation that found Immigration Reform would cost the u. S. Quite a bit of money in the services we provide to them and health care and education. This year, that was flipped on its head. Heritage came out with a similar study. But the Congressional Budget Office came out with a steady that it would reduce ilLegal Immigration and the and credible financial them an incredible financial boon to the country. The taxes they would pay and contributing to Social Security and medicare. Once the republicans saw it, they could say it is an economic argument for us. Going back to your comments on the politics. Mitt romney got 27 of the hispanic vote. A number of senators must be up for election in 2014. Who are some of those senators . For whom it is key to get. Mmigration change done one center we saw was orrin hatch out of utah. Once they werehe trying to get at the last second. He came over because they were able to do some things for visas. Ch in utah, that is very important out there. He is one utah and hispanic population is increasing. You get one of those senators, southwestern, arizona, nevada and places where the hispanic populations are growing. They are really affecting the statewide votes. Folks like hatch and others are coming from the region it has become very important. We will show some the floor debate in the senate and key hearings held throughout the year including the Judiciary Committee. Some testimony on the path of a path to citizenship. Peter, i know you are deporting all the 11 million here illegally. Assume that cannot happen. Most people do not they are not happy about ilLegal Immigration, isnt it better to have those who are here illegally able to work legally because they will be able paid a higher wage and wage rates for every body else will go up . In my neighborhood in brooklyn, as i ride my bicycle early in the morning and i see on street corners people were waiting day laborers who are waiting to be picked up. I guarantee you the construction workers picking them up are not saying i will pay you two dollars above minimum wage. They say heres 20 for the day. These folks, because they are living in the shadows and desperately need money, they take it. My question for you is very simple, if, assume, we cannot support we cannot deport the 11 Million People is it not better to have a system in our bill where people can work legally work as opposed to work here illegally which pulls down wage rates even more . Thank you, senator schumer. 2 things. I do not think i testified at all that i am in favor of deporting 11 Million People. I do not think we know how many are here. I am not in favor of deporting. Im an immigrants son. I support immigration, i am fully in favor of immigration. Im here to tell you today that even if you regularize and legalized across the board, everybody who works, subject to the same standards and everything else, the construction workers you are talking about are still going to exist. We are still going to have a sizable cohort of individuals that will take advantage of people regardless. Isnt it harder to take advantage if they are legalized than illegal . That is very logical. Yes, senator. On the margins. I live in this world and do this kind of work. I see it on a regular basis. We in a finished the are in a fantasy land if we think by a stroke of the pen because when something on paper, people are not want to take advantage. People always take advantage. You admit it will get a better but marginally, some of us think more. Great questions. Let me say, the important aspects go to the heart of the program. We really are creating in many ways in some ways, three brandnew programs. You have the blue card program. Then you have a yearround contract part of the Guest Worker Program. And then the at will part of the guestworker program. We know this is going to be administratively difficult and there will be bumps and bruises on the implementation. This ensures that for Agricultural Production which is so important in terms of timeliness seasonality that there is going to be a maximum amount of time here before the everify system is kicking in and fully operational. So we can make sure that in these three new apparatuses are working and the caps are being set in adequate amount to provide the workers we need. Time,es time it gives remember senator franken, these are Small Businesses out there on our farms and ranches. More than anything else, want to make sure that the small producers know the program and what it takes to get the legal workforce here before we get to enforcing this thing on every single farm and ranch. And that is only fair. Especially for the small operations. We need to make sure that everify system has an accuracy higher accuracy rate than it has now. I am worried that as we introduce millions of immigrants into the system, the error rate tends to get higher when you do that. When you run a dairy operation or other Small Businesses for that matter, you do not have a huge Hr Department like you might at other businesses. I think this is very important that we understand how this all fits together and we deal with our eyes wide open. To me, it is absolutely essential that we do it at one time because everything is so interrelated. I am very pleased with what this is going to do again for our dairy industry half of all dairy cows in america are milked by florian by rather by foreign, rather immigrant labor. I have called for this to be fixed for years and i am glad that senator feinstein has made efforts to do that. In your mind, mr. Connor, in addition to dairy by the way, senator, the chairman said something about you said cows we are only going to milk you seasonally and they dont like it. They do not know what you are saying. They do in vermont, maybe not minnesota. [laughter] well, ok. I know the chairman is a dead head. No comment on where he got that will come back to haunt you. Sorry, senator. Has the senator finished his questions . I have no idea where i was. I wanted to aside from dairy, what are the two most important aspects of this agreement . Again, senator, we have a problem in american agriculture today reflected in the fact that so much of our workforce is currently undocumented. For anything else that we have recognized the problem exists today. The status quo is intolerable. Across all of the agricultural sectors, the notion you are going to give us the ability to actually have a legalized workforce and that we know is legal and can verify that. Farmers and ranchers are the most lawabiding people on this planet. They want to have access to the workers. They want them to be legal. More than anything else, fundamentally, this bill gives us that ability to be legal. That is huge. The status quo again what are the alternatives . I challenge those who suggest it. The Current System is broken. We have to change it. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank the chairman and thank the witnesses and thank all of you and senator feinstein for working so hard to get an agreement here. Those of us working in the broader agreement were kept aware of the progress being made and the hurdles to overcome. It is not an easy task. We all know. Congratulations for working together on this and getting it done. When we launched the broader bill last week, i grew up on a farm and working alongside migrant labor. I know the motivations that they have and how difficult it is. And i know that they were here to make a better life for themselves and their families and for the life of me, ive never been able to place all of those who come here across the border undocumented and some criminal class it has never run true to me that way. I want a solution here. Farm work is tough work. I made it off the farm with almost all of my digits. I lost the end of one. In an alfafa field. I am in politics because i got tired of milking cows. It is a tough job. You cannot tell a cow we are not going to milk you today. I have tried. It does not work. I appreciate what you have done here. Mr. Connor, i appreciate working with you at the usda on issues and appreciate the work you have done. Let me say in your experience, i know you have been working on a solution for ag for years. Why is that so difficult and important to have this as part of the broader bill . Why is it the easiest part . Why is it easier as part of a comprehensive package . Why hasnt it been possible to achieve on its own . Senator, you are correct in that agriculture agriculture it is not a realization that has come about in the last few months. We have known we had a problem for a very, very long time. We worked with senator feinstein on solving just agricultural problems for a very, very long time as well. I would say that history suggests that did not work. That the agricultural problem in and of itself probably was not going to produce successful legislation. Being a part of this comprehensive effort. Our negotiations have been very limited to the agricultural piece. We appreciate the fact that it is part of the broader package. There seems to be some momentum to get something done in this year. We have been talking and proposing solutions and in some cases, producing legislation for a very, very long time. This is been a problem for a long time. We believe 2013 reflects what i have described as the best chance in a generation to stop talking about it and finally fix it. Can you just go on with that . If we fail to Reach Agreement here, there is no agreement just with the subset of agriculture. What would the consequence be . How much of our industry do we stand to lose if we cannot reach an agreement here . The consequences are substantial. Some of those i put in my opening statement. The status quo means large largemeans that a percentage of the American Workforce doing nothing means a large percentage of the workforce is going to continue to be undocumented workers. People not here legally. It is untenable to the american producer out there. Somehow we cannot get him or her a legal workforce. That is first. Secondly, we do have labor shortages in this country. It is resulting in crops going unharvested and Agricultural Production and i cited the case of the california study of tens of thousands of acres moving to another country. That pattern will continue if we do not fix the problem. In the remaining seconds i have. Some would argue that if we do not have a foreign labor force, that simply means more jobs for americans. How does the lack of a program like this affect u. S. Jobs or American Worker jobs . Several have raised this point. Comment,rturo has a too. I know time is running out. This has been studied and looked at exhaustively. Senator feinstein has been involved in efforts to demonstrate are we replacing u. S. Jobs here . Are there people out there that would really do this but we are just not paying enough or something is wrong and therefore, we are turning to foreign workers. It has been proven time and time again, study after study, that is not the case. They will not to do this work. Without this workforce, again, Food Production and crops will Food Production will go off leftnd crops will be unharvested in the u. S. Period. Why are we tying the pathway to citizenship to a Guest Worker Program . I am not going to get 11 million Illegal Immigrants a path way until i get something i want. I want a new immigration system. I am not going to trust the aflcio to give it to me after they get on a path to citizenship. Our democratic friends are not going to trust us to hold everything up until we are satisfied with Border Security. You live on the border. I know you are as sincere a as sincere about this as possible. We have to talk about the elephant in the room. Every time we have this debate, theres always a reason the border is not quite secure enough. We spend billions of dollars and we got 21,000 Border Agents on the border and were spending 4. 5 billion more. We will have 18 drones and were going to have technology that we used in iraq and afghanistan. We are going to have as a traitor that as a trigger that the comprehensive strategy is substantially deployed and operational. We are going to have terms that are flexible because at the end of the day, people on their side believe we are going to use 90 or 95 to find one problem after another at the border and we never quite get there. Your desire to secure this border is my desire. The southern fencing strategy is substantially completed. To me, that makes sense. As senator corgan has expressed as senator cornyn has expressed numerous times, fences are not the best security available to the country in some parts. In my view, the mandatory everify system is the ultimate Border Security because they come here to get jobs. As to the landbased exit system, the seaports and the airports have not had the attention the landbased system has. That is why we created a new system. That is a gap in the system. At that airports and seaports look at boston, that is the gap. On the land side, we are improving every day and want to do more. I am not against metrics. Here is what i am against i am against having systems that can never be achieved. In my lifetime. I am for moving forward and make our border more secure. The reason we have 11 million Illegal Immigrants, none of them coming from canada, its because the people come here from the south end of your stay their vis