Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capitol Hill Hearings 20130816 : comp

who offered a helping hand and a warm smile. repeatedly, when i was reading a piece in the "the wall street journal" written by governor jeb bush, i thought of my family's journey out of the ghetto. he said "today the sad real city if you're born poor, if you're parents didn't go to college, if you don't know your father, and if english is not spoken at home, then the odds are stacked against you. you are more likely to stay poor today than at any other time since world war ii." what struck me about governor bush's piece was that all except one of his prerequisite for being condemned forest fire poverty applied to me. fortunately i know my father. but i was born poor. my parents didn't go to college, and english was not and still is not spoken at home. the odds were stacked against me. so like barack obama has been eager to harp on the odds for political purposes, in the narrative he has been pedaling for the four to five years. the little people at the bottom of the society don't get a fair shake. millions and billions, according to him, or the richest 1% have edged out everyone else from opportunities for success. america's economy has become a -- for the privilege few, and unless government barack obama's government intervenes heavily, the poor and the middle class will never thrive. in this paradigm, in mr. obama's paradigm i had no business getting out of the ghetto at least not without receiving a welfare check. this is because barack obama doesn't just peddle the benefit of the welfare state. he really ped dahls the welfare state mentality. the mentality is even worse than the welfare state itself. it absorbed individuals of personal responsibility. it confines them to grievants and encourages even justifies their sense of entitlement. since the election of last november, republicans have been hyper ventilating about how much more effectively mr. obama and his party can relate to the urban poor and minority. he seemed willing to point that the odds are always stacked against the poor. it's not supposed to be easy to get out of poverty. that's why you work harder, you purr -- pursue your stunt more aggressive and learn to be more nimble. it's a reality that conservatives should be ashamed or afraid to point out. in the conservative bar dime, in our paradigm, free men and women make choices. we take responsibility for our lives, and we extract ourselves from less than stellar circumstance. that was how i got out of the ghetto. despite the odds. unfortunately the el welfare state didn't just exist in the ghetto. it's plagued with racial strife, a break down of law and order. if you were to take away the latter two and the high crime rate, or the racial strife, big government is all over in this country. and find the welfare state everywhere. the welfare state really isn't just about welfare. it's about government intrusion from the top and entitlement mentality from the bottom. we live in a country where collectively we spend more money than we have. we are the takers who are like to take more from the makers. we have a president who uses every opportunity he can to land base the successful, to tell americans that fairness and progress can only occur which those who have the money given more via higher taxes to those who have less. taking and spending other people's money is what barack obama likes to call our shared commitment to each other. americans agree with him. at least enough to reelect him as president last year. unpleasant as it may be. the real city that it is always -- always difficult to convince people to say no to free money. it is always difficult to convince them to opt for the uncertainty of free market and free enterprise and walk away from government subsidizes. i may have emerged from the ghetto without received welfare benefits. but i think it was purely an accident. if i had known that welfare programs existed and my parents qualified for the welfare programs, i would have brought them myself to the relevant government officer -- offices, filled out the application, served as their translater, and anal 10, whatever it was i would made sure they got some free money. i never had to do that in oakland. i had family and friends -- and if my parents were to call qualify for welfare programs today, i would still be the first to hep them apply. the truth is, most people find it very hard to say no to free money and most simply don't. we all respond to monetary incentives. of course, we know that there's no such thing as free money. our big government is funded by people who work, people who create wealth, people who pay taxes. and it is funded by money we borrow by a national debt of approximately $17 trillion. we also know barack obama's welfare state didn't just hand out welfare check or food stamps. it also hands out goodies ranging from amnesty for illegal immigrants, free contraceptive for women. if you're at the receiving ends of those goodies, it's very hard to say no. so the key is not to be giving out the goodies in the first place. i know i'm supposed to provide an uplifting story tonight. the truth is we simply cannot defeat the welfare state on our own. in the grand scheme of thing it is makes little different that my family and i made it out of the ghetto without receiving welfare benefit. we got lucky and able to escape the tentacle of the welfare state. it to truly defeat the welfare state, we would have to defeat the welfare state mentality and roll back policy that incentivize dependency and foster a sense of entitlement. and when we do that, we will have a real story to tell about defeating the welfare state. that would be a truly great story. until then, i would merely leave with the greet my book. it's from the introduction. in china i couldn't avoid the randomness, or the weight of authoritarianism. i remained upbeat, cheerful, and happy. in the ghetto, i forgot what it meant to be joyful, but even in the ghetto, people have a chance to walk away from some of the worst attribute of the free society in to the finest virtue. it is disbelief that lies at the heart of my journey of getting to know freedom. i hope in the end freedom will defeat the welfare state and the entitlement mentality. thank you. thank you very much. [applause] those who would like to follow my work. it's yingma.org. you can find my writings and interviews there as well. >> thank you. and for those of you who have been here before. you know for the q & a we'll have people passing out cards like you see over here. and over here. and we'll take them to the person in the back who will read them for the speaker. so if so you questions, raise your hand. and we'll get a card. thank you. >> yes. i am. [inaudible] a child's life in china -- [inaudible] between the age of 8 and 18 -- [inaudible] not necessarily. i think that every -- i think that for people of my generation in china, no matter how happy they were in china, they were gavin chance to come to the united states they would come. and having gone through what i went through in oakland, i don't regret coming to america. i think that one lesson i would draw is that freedom isn't supposed to be easy just because you show up in a free society, a wealthy free society doesn't mean there are any guarantees. and so a success is not going to be there waiting for you. and i think that for people who live in communist countries, like the former soviet union, for instance, they would rather have the opportunity to fight for that freedom to fight for their success and than confined to a lifetime of immediate of course if i and hopelessness. i think it's hard to be an immigrant no matter what. it's hard to leave your friends and family. it's hard to leave a society that you're familiar with. and i think that for kids leading china today or any other country, that's going to be the case no matter what. but in this country, i think the opportunity is always beckon. it continues to beckon all kinds of people. i think policies that promote economic growth, policies that are business friendly. i think those help a lot. i think community groups and adults who actually teach children not think with an entitlement mentality helps as well. i think there a lot of things. i think part of it is that the government in oakland tends to be antifree market. very -- and it has not always been all that strong on law and order. those things are very important if you want a save -- stable environment. but at the same time you can't rely on the government to do everything, and so part of the problem with oak sland that the men -- at least when i was growing up there. the mentality was an awful one. until you get at the root of the mentality and teach kids not think that way anymore things won't change that much. >> to the comment you made is how would you -- how someone trapped in the mentality get out of it? if you're a friend of yours? >> well, i would say a few things. number one, don't make any excuses for yourself. when you grow up in a poor environment and unsafe environment, when your family doesn't have a lot of resources, it's very easy to make excuses. it's easy to say i can't do this. i can't do that, i can't go places because my family simply hasn't provided for me. and or, you know, my people are oppressed or whatnot. don't make any excuses for yourself. that's step number one. step number two, don't blame others. there are certainly bad people out there. there are always going to be people who don't necessarily wish you well, but there are so many people who will always be there to lend a hand. .. that is really just how it is and i grew up in it, his country before it liberalized its economy. everybody had the same number of opportunities which was not very many. so, the key is in a society that does provide opportunities you have to take advantage of them and you have to apply yourself. >> how long did it take your family to get a visa to get out of china? >> we -- it took approximately four to five years. in fact come to i wrote an article recently for "fox news".com called a legal immigrant story and you can find it on the web site trade in that story i describe how incredibly hard it was to jump through the hoops to actually do everything america asked us to do in order to come here legally. what's interesting is that these days you constantly hear people say that well our immigration system is broken. we wanted to come here legally but we couldn't or they were just too many obstacles. the truth is lots of people actually stand in line and wait for a very long time man they do that because they respect the rule of law and they also respect the country that they wish to adopt as their home. in my story, the story i wrote for "fox news".com a story entitled a legal immigrants story i talked about that process. i talked about how hard it was my remember seeing my mom come home from the american consulate and she came home crying. i knew that our days for immigrating to america had to wait a little bit longer. in our debate about immigration reform we should not forget those people who are legal immigrants and absolutely not let people talk us into forgetting the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. [applause] >> how did you get from a poor inner-city education to cornell university? >> well, i read a lot. they -- when i first came to this country i didn't speak english so what i did was i spent his summers reading chinese novels and they were very good novels but most likely my parents if they knew what was in those novels would have said they were really inappropriate for my age. they were written by a very famous novelist and asia and you know i spent my summers reading those novels. one because i didn't have access to books like that in china when i was growing up. back then under communist rule people weren't really allowed to read anything colorful or exciting. you read a lot of things that had a lot to do with communism and why communism was great. and as i got a little bit older and once i began to learn english i handed up spending a lot of time reading english books. it was terrible for my eyesight but the great thing is that books take you to all kinds of places that you can't even imagine and once i started digging into the books i realized there was a whole new world outside of the ghetto and i was eager to get out as soon as i could. one way for me to do that was to study as hard as i could. >> what the your thoughts about the gang of eight. [inaudible] >> well, i didn't seem too fond of the idea of marco rubio running for president earlier so i think that probably gives everybody a hand. first of all i hope it fails. [applause] at least i hope it fails in its current form. there were all kinds of efforts by different senators recently to try to make amendments to the gang of a proposal and to make it better to strengthen the enforcement mechanisms but those amendments were all shot down so in its current form it's a disaster. it has now gotten to about a thousand pages long. i actually wrote another article about this. it's called emigrating to america is not an entitlement and it addresses many of the flaws. [applause] and it addresses many of the common misperceptions of what immigration is about. i have a number of disagreements and i suspect that those of you in the audience do as well. i think that my number one disagreement with the bill is that it provides provisional legal status to approximately 11 million illegal immigrants who are in this country before and a significant and meaningful measures of enforcement actually take place before the border is actually secure. i think that is a huge problem. but in addition to that given that i've gone through the immigration process, i suppose i have a little bit of a problem with people saying that while america's immigration system is broken and hence we just get to come here legally. i am sure that many of you believe that our tax system is broken too and that you all believe that you don't want your tax dollars to go to our bloated welfare state. but it doesn't mean that you can stop paying your taxes and if the irs were to come after you you would say well i believe our tax system is broken and hence i stop paying. but that is however the situation we have with their immigration system. it is broken and everybody acknowledges that, let's fix fit but somehow it doesn't affect its broken all these people have a claim to being here because they just want to because they aspire to be american. i have a number of other disagreements and i would point you to my article. i think the title tells you how i feel about this issue. >> how do explain the chinese immigrants to come here resume a bully to -- to join and vote for liberal democrats? politicians are here from china. [laughter] >> i would say a few things. i am actually not sure -- i'm not convinced that people who escape tyranny from china come here and immediately start voting for liberal democrats. some of them probably do when they become citizens but i haven't seen enough studies that say the anti-communist folks in fact are more likely to vote democrat than they are to vote republican. what i do know is that oftentimes when you get to the second or third generation chinese-americans they do tend to be less conservative than their parents because the immigration experience is further away from them. the hardships that their parents with their grandparents had to go through aren't orange is relevant to them and many of these kids you know, apply themselves and end up as very good colleges. at these colleges what happens is they get brainwashed by liberal professors. [applause] so i think that's part of the problem. what is also part of the problem is that folks who tend to be very politically active in the asian community a lot of the easy to do it on the national level tend to be a lot more liberal than the people down the street than your average asian-american particularly more recent immigrants. for whatever reason these asian-american activists have decided that unless they adopt the rhetoric of the left-wing that somehow they have failed. many of these activists don't necessarily. >> the native languages of their respective communities. they don't necessarily know all that much or for all the details of the people or all the difficulties of the people they claim to represent and in many ways you know you can see a parallel between the asian community in the black community. lots would say jesse jackson or al sharpton publicly don't represent their points of view. someone like former representative allen west would in fact have said that quite a bit. in the asian community it's an issue that is not as pronounced. i think because they community probably isn't as politically active as a whole but there is also that this cannot from those national self-appointed spokespeople a disconnect between them and your average asian-american citizen simply because the former doesn't always understand the latter and the latter tends to be a bit more conservative. the third thing i would say is that i think immigrant communities tend to be more pragmatic and because china has undergone 30 years of economic liberalization it's not the same communist country as it used to be. it still is very repressive in many ways but i think for a lot of younger chinese don't necessarily know those awful days, at least they don't know intimately the awful days of the cultural revolution or those days of starvation under chairman mao. and so sometimes they actually can be very nationalistic. so instead of bearing hostility toward communism they might actually be very mad -- nationalistic toward china. i think overall the community may not be as ias ideological. for instance the cuban-american community and when people are less ideological and more practical if you give them a promise of a whole bunch of goodies contest they are likely to respond that way. if mitt romney says i'm going to cut the size of government and i'm going to cut -- i'm going to reform entitlement programs and i'm going to do tax reform but the other side says well that just means he's going to cut your benefits and is going to take away medicare and so on the pull respond to that. a lot of folks these are pocketbook issues and part of it is that they could very well swing the other way if you have someone who actually is a more charismatic political candidate, someone who can speak more direct you to their concerns. so, i have given you a whole bunch i guess. [inaudible] >> i think immigrants i think they are all over the bay area. obviously it's full of immigrants. there are lots of community groups. i think community groups whenever a particular group is close to the local level i think they tend to understand the needs of the people in that community far better. i mean there are lots of things. when i was a kid living in oakland one of the things i benefited the most from was approach i'm called the arthur ashe tennis program. i think this was something founded by arthur ashe. he was a tennis star. he was the first african-american to win wimbledon and the founded this program for inner-city kids to learn to play tennis and to give them something to do so that they wouldn't be out on the streets and to have coaches teach them sportsmanship and self-respect. that was where he learned to play tennis and the folks who taught them that program didn't get paid all that much i know. if they were to give private tennis lessons they would be paid a lot more and that is something that i benefited from quite a bit. i think they're all kinds of programs like that. there are ways to tutor folks. there are ways to -- even if you are let's say to donate clothing or money i am sure there are lots of -- out there to serve immigrant communities. you know their needs range from everything from food to clothing or sometimes to do translation ,-com,-com ma translation help to things like maybe sometimes they need legal services and can't afford them. there is a wide range of services that folks need and i think there is no shortage of groups here in the bay area to try to help them. getting involved with one of those groups is one way to do it. another way is i think a lot of times it perhaps doesn't even require participation in some sort of organization. i think just being kind and being decent to somebody and trading in immigrants just like he you would treat one of your friends, that i think that often goes a long way to make an immigrant feel at home in this country. and i think that would be a good place to start. >> you have any ideas on how to encourage young people in the ghetto to seek role models from successful people and other individuals with backgrounds that might help them? >> you know what, i would say especially to people in the ghetto there are role models everywhere. i think our culture has just gotten so politically correct that we often make it seem like if somebody does not share your color or your ethnicity or your cultural background that somehow you can't look up to them. we are constantly saying we have to provide a role model for a particular community. we have to find people of that race and that gender, that ethnicity. i think it's great to find role models of any gender or ethnicity or culture or race. i think for young people one of the things that adults or authority figures who deal with young people a lot what they shouldn't do is to inculcating young people's heads that somehow the only people you can look up to must look like you are sound like you. that is simply not the case. you know when i was growing up, to one of the instructors who was the kindest to me was an african-american instructor. he taught me in fifth grade and unfortunately has passed away since them. but i remember that you know this is my second year in the united states and they knew how to do math really well but i didn't speak english all that well and i didn't notice that i worked really hard to learn. i carried this pocketbook dictionary with me everywhere so that if any time i countered a word or a phrase i didn't understand i would look it up and see what the chinese translation was. he went out of his way you know to help me acclimate to american society but also to encourage me to do better. it didn't matter to me that he was not chinese. it didn't matter to me that he was black. he used to tell, in the class that i had with him, most of the students in my class were black. he used to tell the black kids of the time that they needed not to slack off and stop making excuses. they needed to work harder. it was great that they have a role model i cam but just because you don't have a role model that shares your particular color doesn't mean somehow you should stop looking. there are all kinds of people and i've seen all kinds of folks who have been willing and able to mentor people who didn't share their gender ethnicity or cultural background. i think actually, i think the mentoring goes both ways. people who mentor are willing to do it but you have to be willing to open yourself up to people who wish you well and want to help in the first that this to a bout those people who may not look like your sound like you to do that. >> do you have two or three specific recommendations for the city locally to improve itself? [laughter] >> you know it's interesting, that i haven't thought about that. i haven't lived there for a while and i know the city has changed quite a bit. you know, and i remember under mayor jerry brown i do remember that a number of improvements were were made in were made and i appreciated those improvements. i sort of feel like i've been gone for so long that this question probably would be better answered by a resident of oakland who really have to deal with the city government as well as other aspects of the city. i would say that i mean for me when it comes to making changes in inner-city areas i think it's very crucial for those areas to become business-friendly and two in courage small businesses to encourage entrepreneurship and i have to go back to the mentality the mentality among the city's residents fostered not just by people in government but also their families and churches and communities and your schools. i think for those cities that have inner-city areas that require a lot of help, i think getting to the root of that mentality is very key. >> many immigrants have dual citizenship and allegiance to the country from where they came. our system recognizes dual citizenship. do you think this should change? >> i think at the moment dual citizenship is not for everybody. dual citizenship is not allowed for people who immigrated to the u.s. from china for instance. usually i think dual citizenship is only allowed for those countries that are friendly to us. so if you are a swiss and u.s. citizen most people would like to think that you are going to be homeless. and you know, god my understanding is that if your home country as a country that is considered to be hostile to the united states for the most part the government won't actually allow you to hold dual citizenship. you either stick with a citizenship that you are recently had or renounce it and become an american city which makes perfect sense to me. [inaudible] [laughter] well, to that would go back to what i said earlier. i think strengthening enforcement mechanisms is very key. until you do that the rest of the talk is pretty much just talk. if you're not going to enforce our borders and if you're not going to deport people on a meaningful basis so for instance right now there is a union within the immigration and customs enforcement's unit and those officers complained that what the obama administration won't let them do are two things that are very crucial to their jobs. one is to actually detain folks who are here illegally and two is to deport them and the obama administration has adopted this policy that once you are here unless you have committed some sort of serious crime i mean the administration is not going to spend that much time supporting you or spends too many resources on things like that. when you have an immigration policy that really doesn't have a whole lot of teeth and when people don't think that there is severe punishment for severe consequences to coming here illegally, then obviously we have a broken system. i do believe that we should make this country far more friendly to tilt laborers from oversees. there are lots of people who would divide a lot of help to our economy who would provide their skills and their expertise and a three-year folks like that get what is called and h.b. one visa. there's a small quota for them and usually all the employers in the country that would like to hire people like that do want to have visas like that at the very beginning of the year and that was the case this year. they sort of hit the limit of those visas in january i believe. so it actually makes a lot of sense to make it easier for scientists and mathematicians and others with high skills to actually come here and provide their expertise and help our economy grow. i think that we need to get away from the identity politics that is often being played on immigration policy. unfortunately it's very hard to do because many illegal immigrants the largest group of illegal immigrantimmigrant s in this country are hispanics and within that are mexicans. it's often very hard to separate the two but the key is we actually need to have people who would be willing and not afraid to say that just because we want to enforce our immigration laws and just because we want to secure our borders does not mean that we are bunch of racists. and i think that is actually a tone republicans are constantly talking about how we got the tone wrong in the last election. well, one thing we should do is to set the right tone and the tone is we should stop actually letting people characterize conservatives as racists just because they want to secure our borders. i think rule of law something that conservatives have always cared a lot about and we shouldn't give up on that poor seabed to the other side just because we lost the election and by the way even if we did have the hispanic vote in the last election romney would not have one. anyway i think that there are lots of folks who have thought very intelligently and thoroughly about immigration issue but what we do have right now is obviously a system that doesn't work very well and we also have a proposal that is very imperfect. so we need to get beyond that. >> have you ever considered running for office? >> didn't you hear me earlier? i was thinking about running for president and that was why i wrote this book about myself. [laughter] and then of course since i'm not a natural-born citizen it turns out i can't do that anymore. >> as conservatives should we stop using the term illegal immigrants? >> no, absolutely not. [applause] be what do you think -- this is his sixth day that obama got 70% of patients votes and that is obviously not chinese but chinese filipino japanese korean whatever so what would you think would be the appeal to win this group of people to the conservative republican side? >> yeah, i have been asked that question a number of times since the last election. i don't think anybody has done an extensive polling or any substantive studies in the asian community to ask people why they voted the way they did. i think everybody who has talked about it really has just been taking a guess and i offered a few educated guesses. one of which i mentioned earlier which is that i think second or third generation asian-americans oftentimes are a bit -- they have a tendency to be a bit more liberal or a much more liberal than their parents or grandparents. i thinking governor romney's case my guess is that it's quite hostile that his tough rhetoric on china ended up turning off a lot of folks in the chinese community and like i said earlier these days there are a lot of chinese immigrants who are very nationalistic about china. and there are lots of americans who disagree with governor romney's proposals on what to do with china. i don't agree with him 100% on many issues but i think if you are somebody who is very nationalistic about china or your heritage and you hear one of the political candidates constantly talk about china and getting tough with china comes and i have no doubt the governor romney was talking about getting tough with the chinese communist regime but oftentimes voters don't make that distinction. they might think that governor romney is being anti-china and they might think maybe he is anti-chinese. that is simply a guess. i think somebody would have to to do is study and actually ask folks why they voted the way that they did. in addition to that, as i mentioned earlier governor romney also promised that he would roll back big government. i voted for him and was certainly counting on him to do that but the immigrant community is not insensitive to monetary incentives. as i said earlier there are lots of immigrants who do have failed themselves of government freebies. these days most people i guess and not as ignorant as my parents or my family was when we came here. people nowhere to go to find free money and people nowhere to go to apply for welfare benefits and people know what to do to make themselves appear eligible before government bureaucrats when they need to apply for those benefits. and i think that many of those people probably to vote and when they hear that one candidate is going to roll back the government they probably think you know that would affect their pocketbooks and that would mean fewer benefits for them. i know many people feel the asian community is more inclined to be conservative than a community that is hard-working and industrious. in many ways it is true but just because that is true doesn't mean that people don't want free money or would say no to it. if you are a hard-working immigrant did you come here poor and the government offers you free money you are going to take it. it's very unlikely that you would say no and i think that actually probably has an impact on how people float as well. >> this maybe is a question of optimism versus pessimism. if you look down the road 30 to 40 years what do you think the state of the welfare state will be? >> i think we need, i think conservatives need to start winning some elections. they weren't need to run candidates who are charismatic articulate a viable and conservative free-market thinkers and that we need to take back the white house. we need to take back the senate has if the government continues to be -- our federal government continues to be run by people who are big government types the welfare state will become ever more bloated. we will be staring down a path that greece is currently on and our society will become a huge entitlement state. so i would say i would like to be fairly optimistic. i would like to think that there are viable conservative candidates out there who can articulate a message without compromising on their principles. and you don't think there are lots of governors out there right now who fill that void. i think the key thing to do is to start winning some elections and we can turn things around. [inaudible] >> i have written about that too i think what people say is folks like president obama and liberal columnists like thomas friedman with "the new york times" as well as other big government types ever since the financial crisis hit they have been advocating heavy government spending. they wanted more infrastructure spending. they wanted more funding for renewable energy projects. they wanted all kinds of things and when they got pushback from free-market types and folks who believed in limited government they started using china as their example and they started using china to go to conservatives into sort of this position of having to adopt their rhetoric. china as many of you know has grown dramatic way in the past three decades or so. they began undertaking economic growth in 1978 and they opened up their economy to the world. but it's still a communist country and still politically oppressive and a lot of things are still run by the state which is why commentators these days like to refer to china's economy as a state capitalist economy. folks like barack obama for a long time he kept pointing to the roads and bridges that china was building and saying why are we just sitting here watching them build these roads and bridges, the airports and other big infrastructure projects while our infrastructure here is crumbling? he also says why are we sitting here not willing to give our noble energy companies funding while china is just shoving money in these companies directions and china has gotten to a point where it now dominates the solar industry. so for liberals china is kind of of -- when they look at the chinese government they see something that they would love to have which is the ability to spend freely without accountability to voters. it's very exciting to them. there is no meddlesome congress. [applause] there aren't any tea party types you now and so but when i've written about this topic but the research shows is that china started growing dramatically largely because it introduced more free-market mechanisms and to its economy not as it became more status. the chinese economy today is much freer than what it was 32 years ago when they first started their economic liberalization revolution and numerous chinese reform minded folks whether in government or small and medium-sized enterprises in china they all recognized at the hand of the government is intruding and interfering with the economy and it creates all kinds of inefficiencies. it creates or supports monopolies that in a fit lots of large state-owned enterprises and it suffocates certain industries. what a lot of reform minded chinese officials and economists what they advocate is that they would like to see further economic reform. in fact this is something that the new chinese leadership has been talking about. this is something that they would like to see too. they believe that in order for their economy to grow in the long run to really get to a modern first world economy they will have to implement some changes. if barack obama, he certainly has talked a lot about becoming more status like china but what a lot of chinese recognize if they actually need to become more free-market oriented. so i would say and this is something i say all the time. we shouldn't listen to barack obama for that matter. [applause] >> to believe that many first-generation chinese the most conservative ones do not vote? >> i am not sure about that. here in california we make voting easy for chinese immigrants. there are ballots that are translated into chinese so even if you don't speak the language you can go get yourself a chinese ballad and fill in the circles. obviously that is not the case in other states with smaller immigrant populations but i would just say here in california it's very easy for immigrants to vote. so many things are bilingual and multilingual. whether immigrants actually vote or not is a different issue. i haven't seen the polls are the studies so i'm not totally sure about the voting rates within a particular immigrant population but i mean i'm sure that like other in america there are lots of people who don't vote so it wouldn't surprise me if lots of first-generation immigrants don't vote either. >> you think america is still free? >> i think lots of things are relative so when people ask me that question i usually ask compared to what? there is an index of economic freedom and so every year hong kong and singapore come out of the very top of it so compared to hong kong and singapore are economy severely is free but when it comes to political freedom or other measures you know we certainly are much freer than modern day china and much freer than russia for instance and then i would say that you know i continue to refer to our society is a free society. i think there are ways for our markets to be freer. i think that there is a lot of government intrusion that interferes with that. but in recent years as a result of the financial crisis and the economic intervention that has taken place economic activity certainly has gotten freer certainly with the passage of obamacare but i remain hopeful that some of those things can be rolled back. [applause] steo follow-up question. you'd came from -- which is neighboring of hong kong. how does the united states freedom of economics compare with hong kong? >> i think hong kong has an extremely free economy. hong kong is constantly ranked by conservatives or free-market research institute says he did the number one or number two freest economies in the world. when you talk about it that way our economy definitely is less free compare to hong kong's. see i think that's it e-rate thank you. >> thank you so much. it's been an honor. [applause] >> thank you very much. she will be signing books over here in the corner. [applause] what's interesting about washington in this age is that once you have that title even if it's a very short title, even if you've been voted out after one term you can stay in washington and be a former chief of staff a former congressman tom, that a former chief of staff to congressman x. macroy. you are in the club and that's a striking departure from the days in which people would come to washington to serve, server little bit and then go back which is is as i guess how the founders intended. so there is a new dynamic now and a lot of it starts with money and the resources available for people to be very wealthy. >> last year president obama's signed a memorandum that called for deferred action for certain undocumented young people that came to the u.s. as children and had pursued education or military service. that action by the president was the topic of discussion today at the center for american progress. panelists looking at the initiative successes and challenges one year after was implemented at the department of homeland security. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> hello everybody and thank you for coming today. i name is philip wolgin and i'm i'm -- at the the center vern in progress. we are excited to be a sting this event offers anniversary of the deferred action or daca directive. usa's began accepting applications for daca which is remarkable considering president obama only announced the directive three months earlier. daca represents a new usage of executive authority and prosecutorial discretion to prioritize who u.s. immigration enforcement focuses on namely criminals rather than in this case young unauthorized immigrants, people who grew up in this country and our americans in every way that their papers. daca gives eligible applicants a two-year reprieve from work authorization but unlike the d.r.e.a.m. act daca can't give permanent legal status and it's at best a temporary fix to a larger problem of a broken immigration system and a of a pathway to legal status for unauthoriunauthori zed immigrants. just over 1.7 million people are estimated to be eligible for daca with just over 900,000 of them eligible to apply immediately and given the uncertainuncertain ty in the first few months of the program remember it began during the presidential election when there was a real possibility that would and daca and send it directly. it really is remarkable how many people applied to get new government data from dhs just this morning. the shows over 570,000 people will have applied and over 400,000 have received the status. out of the total number of applications we expect that just under a third will be eligible and 61% of the people immediately eligible. .. we'll also what to know what lessons it can teach us for a wider legalization program for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country. that kind of program would obviously be as large. but share many of the same characteristic and potentially many of the same pitfall. more than anything, today's event is the beginning of a conversation. we'll need to know more, for example, about best practice is for service providers or government officials. or why disparities continue to per sì among different groups when it comes to application rates and acceptance rates. so we hope that this event will only spur further inquiry to the subject. we'll begin with an overview of new research by tom. the head of interdisciplinary team who have been analyzing docket data. we have a great panel to respond. he's a assistant professor of political sign at the university of california, san diego. has been a leader in statistical modeling how they will vote on immigration reform. and when it comes to issues of undocumented young people, this is an thash is very personal to tom. he was himself an undocumented immigrant once. like so many others, tom's parents brought him here at the young age on a tourist visa and stayed when it expired. it has been -- please join me in welcoming him. [applause] [applause] >> i'm not going to risk spilling that water. i'll leave my laptop here. thank you, phil, for the warm remarking. thank you for coming today. there's a lot to go through in the report. so we're going jump right in to it. so as phil mentioned, it's the product of the work of an interdisciplinary team. this include political sciences, issuologists, those with experience and immigrant and political participation, civic engagement, and demography. so it is no surprise that docc -- on the part of undocumented youth. for many we hear that data can is not enough. i hope it's something we can get to in the discussion today. the mixed findings we get when we evaluate the first year of the existence of daca. here we have a few different quotes from a new innovative survey actually administrated by undocumented youth, undocumented grad students in southern california about specific engagement of undocumented youth. as it relates here we see one person say i feel free in the u.s. now. i'm no longer living in fear. another i was able to get part-time job and save money for tuition. driver's licenses, building credit, those are some practical benefits of daca. one more person it has motivated me to continue organizing. so again this sort of resonates with the theme that daca is not enough. that the end of goal here is a path to citizenship. but here is a another response. i'm grateful for the opportunities that i have with daca, i'm still scared for my parent. daca doesn't protect them, my entire family. i'm still in fear of losing them. these mixed emotions around can reflect our finding about the mixed result to the implementation of data. some of the main research questions we pursue in our report is daca prfning evenly across the country? are any particular groups being left behind? these can be national origin group, men v us is women, et. cetera. what impact has community-based organizations had? one focus of our report is actually to identify things that may be useful for service providers on the ground. and lastly, how restrictive state level immigration policies like sb 1070 sometime mid daca. how do we answer these questions? through numbers. and if this were an academic presentation, i would sort of show out some equation to stroke my academic ego. suffice to say, we are using data obtained from the freedom of information act request. phil mentioned the overall number thus far. they do a great job? recording summary statistic about daca. in order to answer some of the questions we're interested in we need better data. we have -- individual level records from applicants. from august? based on the last release of daca information from uscis. things still are, for the most part true. over 400,000 approved. 99% of application with final decisions have been approved. so one of the numbers that have been thrown out is 75% of approval rate. if we think about the case review status of daca application. we have approved, we are have denied. we have pending. it if we throw pending to the mix and think about approval in light of pending application, then the approval rate is about 75%. but if we think about those applications with final decisions meaning approved or denied. we are talking about 99%. the most recent release today changes this number a bit. that's 98.3% approval rate of those with final decisions and 1.7% of applications with final decisions have been denied. and we'll talk more about the national origin with you in a second. here daca applicants are overwhelmingly latin america. okay. so i do apologize because this is in part stroking our my academic centuries go. it's throwing a bunch of number and stuff at you. it's meaningful. so one of the first questionses that we address is it performing evenly? the answer is no when we look at the implementation rate or the actual number of applications that have been received in a state real toif what we expect, we can begin to identify where daca is underperforming, and whether or not the under perform is statistically significant. meaning it's not random. the make take away there are 13 states that are underperforming when it comes to daca, california, texas, arizona, nevada, montana, and there's a printout of the powerpoint presentation so you will have the slide. there's some commonality across the states within all southern borders states are included in this table. the states tend to have the largest number of daca eligible youth. these states also tend to have a larger population. larger asian population real toif other states, and have almost twice as much his pan knick latino in the state relative to other states. this is about identifying where new bolstered outreach related to daca is needed. so i was able to rerun this analysis this morning. so instead of face timing with my 3-year-old triplet boys this morning, which, which, i deeply regret now, because the slide didn't make it in. it's okay, phil. so i did rerun the analysis based on the updated number released today. this table remains unchanged. the 13 at a states are the same. there's one new addition. that's the district of columbia. so in the past report d.c. was actually sort of performing as we would expect, but now it's underperforming in that difference statistically significant. so that was about identifying where new bolstered data a can outreach may be needed. it's about identifying to bhom the outreach should be targeted. here we're talking about whether or not daca is reaching all groups evenly. and so here a another table you have in the printout -- here is the maintaining away. when we take the individual level records from the data, store all of those individuals in to their country of birth or region of origin, and then we begin to evaluate what we see versus what we expect. we can then identify particular national origins groups or particular regions that are underrepresented in the sample. and so here what we see is that applicants born in mexico are actually doing very well in the daca process. they are actually overrepresented in the poor daca applicants. those from central america, asia, and europe, on the other hand, are underrepresented in the pool of applicants so far. and for these three groups, this underrepresentation is also statistically significant. so adjust reminder here, i'm going through the sort of top line findings, and this discussion hopefully will impact some of the reasons why. okay. so we can move beyond national origin. this is where i do apologize. it should have been removed. it's about stroking academic centuries go. this is just the most progression able spins it's a way to take the data, analyzing the data. underrepresentation is one thing, and new bolstered outreach to the national origin group can correct that underrepresentation. but are all groups experiencing daca sort of equally? another way we can address the question is look at denial. and so when we think about approval versus denial we ask ourselves are any particular groups dis proportionately being denied? it may be one of the most pivotal questions not just from the policy point of view. but service providers on the ground. this table here answers that question controlling for the age of the applicant, the sex of the applicant, and where the applicant is from. the make take away is here. there may be strong reasons to rupt that mexican-born applicant may be discriminated against in the daca process. when we think about thing like sb 1070, et. cetera. there's a clear focus. it is not about what european undocumented immigrants for the most part. we think of sheriff arpaio, and we think about tent city and we think about who is in there. there's a clear racial and ethnic sort of direction of those policies. and so we can think perhaps that mexican-born applicants are more likely to be denied in dat can process. they also form the largest bulk of applicants and so lot of mexican born of a -- applicants maybe we would expect a lot of denial. that's not what we see. mexican born applicants are actually the least likely out of all group to be denied. and so what we can do is evaluate denial rates for other groups relative to mexican born applicants since they represent the lowest rate of denial. when we mush all groups together, then he can sort of say this sort of nice little statistic. all other daca applicants are 1.8 more times likely to be denied than mexican bosch applicant. the result is statistically significant. but we want to unpack this a little bit. this is where the multivaried analysis comes in. in one of the model here, we actually take each of the national origin groupings and compare denial rate to the denial rate for mexican-born applicants. here what we see is a following. south americans are doing okay. their denial rates are on par with mexican born applicants. central american, asian, and europeans are about 1.8 times. that average or 1.8 times more likely to be denied than mexican born applicants. the most staggering number is that the other category, which is comprised mostly of african born daca applicants. they are seven times more likely to be denied than a mexican born applicant. and so this, again, is about identifying to whom daca outreach should be targeted. it we see disproportionately higher central americans, asia, and european and at the most stream end the other category which is mostly african born of a cant. maybe it can provide some sort of insight for service providers to design new outreach programs. i will skip this. [laughter] okay so we can also think about denials not just by sort of, you know, group being racial and ethnic group or country of birth and region of or begin. we can also think about male versus female, and the age structure of daca applicants. here what we see is that in general all men even though they have fewer daca applications than women. 1.4 times more likely to be denied. that's the general finding. but when we sort of throw the information in to the multivarious model, what we can do is actually identify particular sort of kind of men and particular kinds of women. question look at the 31-year-old male and compare denial rates for that particular individual to a 23-year-old male. and so we pick 23 years old because that's the average age of a deny applicant. what we see is that 31-year-old males are 4.3 times more likely to be denied than 23-year-old males. and so this combines the finding for sex and age. males are more likely to be denied. and older applicants are more likely to be denied. the finding for a 31-year-old female is 3.7% times more likely than a 23-year-old female. the graph kind of shows the denial rate and how they increase with age for males and females. so we're also interested in potential facilityive factor for daca. what is happening on the ground that leads to increased daca applications? and the first thing that we looked at are those immigrant organizations. those non-profit that serve immigrant community. one cut draft that shows an undenial positive relationship meaning more immigrant serving organizations, means more daca applications. you can think of the daca clinic, the daca workshop, everything that the organizations are doing also we have new daca iphone apps that help individuals sort of determine whether or not they are eligible for daca. all of these combined to improve the overall implementation of the program. but when we cut the data a different way, the results are less clear. we can think about the overall number daca of application. we want to see more of them. we can also think about the different implementation rate across states of daca. what this is looking at how many open -- applicants have been in the state relative to how many there are. because when the number reaches 100%. that means everybody eligible has been touched by daca. when we sort of look at different metric of immigrant serving organizations, different outcomes like implementation rate. we see less clear results. these are three different ways that we look at whether or not the density of immigrants serving organizations, actual has an impact on implementation rates. and all of these results are statistically insignificant. now we can remove some outliers there. new york and california because they have a large number of immigrants serving organizations. and the results are unchanged. so here this is a mixed portrait . more immigrant serving organizations, more daca application. it doesn't necessarily translate to higher implementation rates response in the interest of time, i will just say for those policies that are designed, you know, to drive undocumented immigrants out of the country or underground or to self-deport eg sb 1070. they are not having an impact on daca. they are not driving undocumented youth away from the country to the point where they are not even up here to apply. there's absolutely no relationship. for the chris coback of the world, sorry, but what you're doing is not having an effect on daca. here main conclusion, because i think i went past my time. daca is not performing evenly across the country. 13 states plus district of columbia are places where we have identified our underperforming and with the underperformance is statistically significant. central americans, asian, european and others are statistically significantly more likely to be denied than the reference group which is mexican born applicants. because again, they are the least likely to be denied. males are 1.4 times more likely to be denied than females. and we see this result alsoer intersect with age. older applicants statistically more likely to be denied than younger. and while immigrant serving organizations are having a measurable effect, the results that we sort of find are unclear. and lastly, this is a generally sort of take away. a lot has been done with daca so far. a lot of work remains. [applause] [inaudible conversations] all right. thank you so much. let me introduce our great panel we have to discuss interesting findings. in addition to tom, next to him we have are we one of the founding member of the drm action coalition. and finally awe degree singer, senior fellow in the metropolitan policy program. i want to start with you turning from the data it to the more personal narrative. as somebody who received daca what has the status meant to you and the dreamer community as whole? >> yeah. of course. so i think being not only a dreamer but an advocate is a little bit different than the overall population of the dreamers. but to me i think that it was more than a personal benefit. it was a win. because of so many years of advocacies, and so many years of, you know, sort of trying to figure out how to come out of the shadow and thing the doings so we can put a face to the undocumented community. it was definitely a win for us. but also i guess in the personal level, you know, having a family that targeted by joe arpaio and anything else in arizona, having a mother that wasn't to be work because of the rate she was in when joe arpaio of doing his thing. it was very -- i guess it impacted me so much that i was able to get a job and contribute a lot more to the household. but again, it just like, you know, some of the quotes you showed it was just interesting to me that the same day that i was able to get an offer for a job, exact same day i come home and immigration knocks on my door. right, and try to take my mother and my brother. and so it kind of just shows that it's important to have this. it's sort of a step forward. but at the same time for us, you know, we can't focus on the win we have on a personal level. we have a lot more wins to fight. a lot more battles we need to get through so our families families are nothing but sufficient. i'm not okay with just having a job. i need to have my family with me to make sure that i am as happy as i can be. >> hard to follow that up. since you work with the same data. i know, you have been interviewing service providers and applicants. what jumps at you from the data? >> yeah, sure. so tom and i have been playing around with the same data in different ways. i have some developed a profile of the people who have applied for daca so far. we have about 87% of all accepted application in the data set. they're not estimates. they represent real people. it allows us to know more about the population and the characteristic of the population . we don't yet know much about the people who have not applied. by definition it's an el losive population. the data we have provides a window to this daca or dream group. and the portrait is still emerging. the program is ongoing, applications are still being accepted and adjudicated. this is just a snapshot in time. more than half of those estimated to be immediately eligible have applied. the success rate is very high. nearly equal number of young men and women have applied. women slightly older. by my count there's 192 companies represented. the vast majority are 75% are from mexico. central meshes make up another 10% of the total. with el calf and that order are the four largest groups. asians comprise about 4% of the total. south dakota korea ranks fifth. it stands out. philippines, india, and pakistan are the next three largest groups and notably china is not on the list of the top 25. including any country with more than 1,000 applications. and applicants and europeans make up 1% each. poland and nigh nigeria are the largest group there. they live in every state. 28% in california, another 18% in texas. along with new york, illinois those four states have more than half of all daca applicants. and the most some of the most interesting thing about the group have to do with the age. a large share of teens, high school age, a time when we are making important transition to adulthood, driver's license, graduating from high school, applying for jobs, perhaps applying for college or joining the military. these applicants are relatively young. more than a third or 36% were 18 or younger when they applied. only 24% were 24 years of age or older and in the middle 19 to 23-year-old larger group of 40%. so they are relatively young and young when they arrived. two-thirds of them. ten years of age or years older. one-third were five years old or younger. so this is a very group that have has been in the u.s. far long time. the majority have been in the united states for a decade or more. that's important. they have spent a good portion of their life in the united states. another thing. i think her comments to this, because many of them came here as young people, they are likely to be in once they get daca, they are likely to have different status from other people in the household, younger or -- including parents and other adults. so this is the big discussion that is also brewing about how to handle this. >> we can get in to the oh stuff later. >> i'll tell you a couple of -- i've been interviewing organizations that are implementing helping people apply for daca, and there is three main things i've been hearing. i'll talk about them more, i mean, when we have faller discussion. eye don't want to take much too much time. i have an sight to pace and trends in application and tampering of daca application. what makes a case easy, what makes a case hard. insight in to the population that is not applying not being served either. and the third thing that has been enlightening is the staff at the non-profit who are running clinics who are providing legal services, many of them are lawyers, are very much defining the method of documenting and undocumented status. and so this is a very important thing that is happening organically in different places. piece are strategizing perhaps with groups that they're associated with, but this is a really important part of the process when you think about a large legalization program and the meaning of documenting continuous residents in the united states. >> all right. so what we're told. i know, you have been putting together one of the most wide ranging survey of undocumented youth. those eligible and those applied. tell us a bit about the survey and what you have found. >> sure. july 1, we launched a national survey of daca eligible young adults. 18 to 31. and in the six weeks since we launched the survey, 2,000 young adults have taken the survey. essentially those young people come from 38 states, 41% are male. 59 are female. roughly a third of the respondent have a high school degree or less. a third have some college. a third of them have a college degree between an aa and professional degree. today my colleaguer have -- in collaboration with the immigration policy center and the center for the study of immigrant integrations -- and so i want to briefly share some of those findings with you all. what we're focusing on is the roughly 1400. i guess 140 14- 02 of the survey responders have received daca. and these are the young people i'm going talk about. so we're finding strong evidence that daca resip gent are benefiting from increased access to the american dream. for example, 61% of those young people reported they have a new job since daca. 61% now have driver's licenses. 54% have a bank account. and 38 percent have obtained a credit card. as we all know daca's benefit are only temporary and partial. daca recipients want further social integration. they feel american and want to be full americans. and overwhelming number of the respondents. 94% of them said if given a chance to receive citizenship they would. there's another side to the story. tom alluded and erica also did. over the last several years, immigrant communities have witnessed a shrinking of rights, and increase enforcement efforts. right, such that some 1100 people have a day have been deported over the last several years. that's undoubtly had effects. nearly 50%. one out of every two of our respondents all right report that they worry all the time or most of the time that a family member or friend will be deported. emergency room two-thirds of them know somebody that has been deported. 14% of them have a parent or siblings deported. and another 57 percent know a friend, neighbor, coworker, or somebody else in their who has been deported. indeed daca recipient don't live in a vacuum. they are part of family and communities and their fates are tied to what happened to their parents, to their neighbors. , and so forth. overwhelmry respondent ends indicated their families would benefit from immigration reform. these numbers are staggering. 86% said their mother would benefit. 75% reported their father would benefit from immigration reform. 62% reported a siblings would benefit from immigration reform. and 60% said that another family member would benefit from immigration reform. so the story here is one of important although partial access to the american dream. whether we have a lot of work to do. >> let me bring you in here to weigh on what you heard. >> well, i mean, the there's so much. in term of the survey. i think it's one of the next steps at least from a research perspective. in term how we can integrate daca and how it performed in the first year and undocumented youth are doing with daca. with the broader immigration reform debate is to actually figure out what undocumented youth are doing with their daca status. this is something we would refer to as the counter factual in casual inference. this is what is legalization happens. and so, you know, all of those questions and answers that mentioned in the survey are incredibly telling and speak to the urgency and need for immigration reform. something that a lot of undocumented youth who i've talked to kind of share is this motivation to use their daca status to prove something. to prove to whoever is out there they are fully american, as phil said, in every sense of the word except in paper. and that they can actually use this status to succeed and succeed beyond expectations. and so that is something that i get from are burr tow's comments here. and using daca and the new status that is undocumented youth have ooze evidence for why we need a broader path to citizenship is the next step in research that can potentially inform policy. erica's story, i mean, these are heart breaking stories. i only met you today. i saw the youtube video. these are things that traumatize and humanize the undocumented immigrant experience. and it, you know, stories like yours, i am not afraid to say that they invoke emotions. i would cry if you weren't looking at me. these are things that in the 21st century in 2013, i think our immigration policies should not be geared toward. which is separating families. separating american families. and we need team up. we have can colot with the data. painting a profile. identifying unmet need. i think that's a new research sort of opportunity moving forward. especially when it comes to program evaluation comparing the outreach strategy of organizations to identify practices. if it represents the sort of precursor to a broader legalization program than getting this right means potentially getting it right for 11 million undocumented immigrants. >> yeah. that's great. i think that cig ways nicely. let take a deeper dig. i think you identified two things. the profile and the organization. solet start with the profile. i'm struck by the differences what groups are applying and what groups are denying. what are the obstacles keeping people in possibly different communities from fully access daca? i'll open it up for everybody. >> i'll take a stab at it. i think what i'm hearing and reading from other people's work is that there are a couple of key things. one, is that a lot of people don't realize that they qualify for daca. even though the criteria are, you know, -- we often find people don't necessarily take that in and think they'll be able to do it. that's one thing. other people may not especially if they are young, may not realize they are undocumented. and i think some parents shield their children from nap once they start going through these life course moments like applying for things, like a driver's license or seeing their siblings do that. they understand it. that's another thing. the fee, the cost of applying is $465. if you're young, if you're not working, or if you're working in a very low wage job and your parents are too, it may take awhile to scrape together the money to apply. i think that's another thing. and then the final thing, which is maybe the biggest is that people don't feel like they have the reck with documentation strategy to prove they have been count usely resident in the united. so the requirement is that you had to be present since june 15th, 2007. so, you know. the older you are, the harder it is to show it on a regular basis. that may be also why we're seeing this population skew young. [inaudible] >> her last comment. ic it's no mistake those who got daca really were the younger dreamers. those in school. those who hadless of a trouble proving continuous residents. providing all the documentation needed. i think what we're seeing is for those who haven't applied and those late in aplaying is those who have been out of school for any number of years, those who are growing older, and having responsibilities in their household and communities that it's a much tougher effort to provide all that documentation necessary. i would just add -- yes. i would add that part of the evidence area requirement are continuous residentially sincerity. there's also a very basic sort of requirement of establishing some sort of nationallalty. who is undocumented here in the united. part of me undocument survey, the survey for undocumented youth ask a set of daca related question. there are some who identify not having a birth certificate is one of the reasons they haven't applied for daca. so when we look at the numbers and see that the denial rate from mexican born app can't significantly lower. well, there is a very good reason for it. and that has to do with the work of the mexican consulate. i was able to speak with folks from the mexican consulate for this, you know, not for this project, but the panel, to get some background information, we're talking about the mexican consulate across the country increasing staff, increasing hours, increased seability. specifically, for those daca eligible youth who go to the consulate and say i'm putting my application together. i need my birth certificate. there's even an effort right now among the mexican government to try to facility that process online. to make getting a birth certificate and acquiring those identity documents much easier. i have not heard the same for other consulates. and so so yeah. >> i would just, i mean, i'm not an expert on the numbers. i would say that, i mean, at my job i have applications and work with some of the organizations that and what i noted is that sometimes people in the commune drink afraid of going a lawyer or don't know there's free services. and so sort of defining those two leaves people not even trying to apply. because, you know, we are afraid of applying for anything on immigration without being consulted by a lawyer or even in the community there's a lot of -- [inaudible] i think that's the big one as well. a lot of people at consulate things like oh my god, i didn't know thfts free ways of doing this. i went to a lawyer and they were charging me $2,000. there's a lot of, you know, very high fees to even just apply. plus you have the $465. >> that's great. ting gives a good sense of the overall the and mexican applicants might be more likely to apply. but what is going on in the asia and particularly african communities? we are seeing such low numbers? >> so i can start with asian community. that a few month ago when the first batch of daca were being released. we south korea in particular being high on the list. in the l.a. area where there's arguably the largest pocket of chinese national, and the chinese i dids a per are a. there was a sense among serving organization in the l.a. area that more outreach needed to be in mandrin or cantonese to target specifically chinese daca eligible use. they got that because korean ethnic media was doing a great job just like spanish. not just informing people. let's not forget the best recruiters are those who have gone through the process and speak to the process. and early on, in another batch of data i received, i was able to map the geography of chinese applicants in the l.a. area specifically. it was very clear under representation. what it meant is advocacy organization in the area reaching tout chinese ethnic media to try to replicate the same model that spanningish language media employmented. let talk people through the process. current language media have done that. chinese language media tried to do that, but numbers do not show it's been very successful. in term of african born applicants, i have nothing to say except speculation which is that one african born of a cant, in term of language, diversity, i think of asian language diversity. it's pretty complex. if we think about the african continent. the language diversity is exponentially more diverse. when we think about different outreach strategies, lang wanl at -- culturally specific and sensitive outreach strategy. i haven't heard of many organizations specifically focused on africa daca applicants. and those groups that have the capacity to put some programs together, well, you'll be leaders as far as i can tell. >> i echo some of the things tom said. a lot is speculation because we're talking to different people at different point in time. it's not been very systemic yet. i think tom is right that the outreach that has happened or not happened to different groups is one of the determining factor and the type of outreach and the idea of having testimonial and success stories play a bigger role. it's very important. i think also when you look at the approval rate by country of origin and region of origin, there's another group that is very low. those from the caribbean. it seems like the outreach and coordination and information flow there may also, you know, there's a lot of language. several languages. there's a lot of different countries. there's some clustering of these groups in the country, but, you know, they're a small group. another opportunity for greater outreach. >> thing is a good segue to talk about serving knob profit and advocacy group. from -- we certainly know very important to integration. i think what i'm hearing is kind of a mix of we know they are important and organizations means more applications. but, you know, talk to us more about what role they're playing here and the challenges they are facing. it's statistically correct. [laughter] i think that i can tell you when we start doing the outreach in arizona with the arizona dream on coalition and -- we were able to get, i mean, we're trying to serve about 100 to 200 people. we didn't have as much as a capacity to serve more. so we have a surprise with the fact we filled an entire auditorium of the school. they were hundreds and hundreds of people that were trying apply, what we found is not at love those folks ended up applying. because they, you know, they broader documentation they had, you know. they brought whatever they could. when they went back home many didn't necessarily have, you know, the check already or will were some pieces they didn't have yet. when they go home they say i forgot i had it there and don't know i have to have a birth certificate or a passport. it's a challenge to some follow up with them. you follow up with them. many times they will tell you they are trying to raise the money and so on and so forth. there's at love, you know, arizona i can say only mostly from the latino community. we don't have a big, you know, population of the asian community or any others. but there is still at love programs being developed. that are -- but the national is called -- >> we own the dream. >> yeah. we own the dream right now like you mentioned before. putting out apps. putting out videos. we are putting out everything we can to reach people through social media. we're also looking for more feedback how to best serve other population and how best to have people actually apply and not just come and take the information with them. >> i think going back to the sky level view. we look at the immigrant serving non-profit in the sample. there's a wide distribution in term of the experience that the organizations have. and so when we sort look specifically at the founding or want to make sure the organizations were around prior to the announcement of daca. for statistical reason. we see that overwhelmingly about 91% of all of the, you know, 2100 or so organizations in oure diferlgt organizations we can consult them up in a lot of ways and expect how we cut them up may be two very different outcomes. some more positive than others less positive. but there's another thing. at love organizations are densely packed together especially places like los angeles and new york. something i heard there's not a lot of sort of cooperation between organizations to coordinate undaca-related services. working on cir, and working with lots of organizations and lots of different interests i have learned how dpiflt it is to bring them together to share similar objective. down the road -- may be something that improves daca implementation. i think the capacity and resources issue is a major one. you know, this is something that developed over the last year to the announcement was a little over the year ago staffing up and trying to figure out how to serve the population has been a challenge. we have also seen a tamper of applications. and now the question is how to reach people that are harder to reach whether it's geographically or national origin group or language group that, you know, other than spanish, basically. and i think one of the important things is that a lot of the people who have come through the application process already have had some ties to other institutions and organizations. there's been a lot of recruitment through school and higher ed programs. there are people trying to work through other organizations in order to, you know, reach people who may not otherwise reach. but i think there are -- as we continue going to be harder and harder to reach people because some people may have given up already. [inaudible] >> very shortly. i don't know i have anything specific to add to the excellent comments. if we look at it from even more altitude a couple of things stand out. over the last several years as congress has been unable topaz any sort of immigration reform. what we have seen is states and counties taking upon themselves to pass their own sort of immigration reform. baa with we have seen across the country is the uneven geography of immigration policy and practice. what we have also seen to overlay on top of that is imgrants are moving to very different what scholars call new destination area. so spread across the united. i think finally there's also an uneven distribution of kind of local level infrastructure when it comes to immigrant serving organization and the capacity to respond to the need of immigrant young people in their families. >> so thing is a segue to a final question before going to the audience response putting on your policy maker hat, both for daca going forward and if daca is the blueprint for larger legalization program. what recommendations do you have for policy makers, advocate, service providers, whatever level. i'm asking each of you. >> i think the first is to identify unmet needs which i'll report begins to do it's not the final word. it begins to do that. where to whom it's needed. that's the first step for service providers and u.s. cis local engagement team to think about the places strategically where they should be. those people who they are targeting so they can come up not only language appropriate event but also appropriate informational material to distribute. i think that's one sort of critical thing as it relates to daca. but two the policy recommendation, i mean, past immigration reform and the path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. it mean we won't talk about daca at this point next year. we talk about how to implement a larger and more difficult task. >> i think i would second his comment and especially the second. in the meantime, i think we have certainly found out that cost is a huge barrier. i said it a few month ago when i was here. i think we need to be talking about a flat family fee. in several families, fraternities have to come up with money for -- as she talked about. $465 for one child but if i they have two, three, four children, on top of that have to pay lawyer's fee. a flat family fee would really help to move a lot more young people through the pipeline. second, daca has done a good job at providing multiple educational pathways. ged programs, for example, what we're seeing across the country is in a lot of places in new york recently responded to this is there are not enough seed in the programs. so thofm these programs there's an opportunity available they're underfounded. and we need to figure out how to provide more resources in to these alternative education programs. we've been talking about immigration reform for awhile. it's close this year. we hope that we really move it past the goal line. in the meantime, young people and their families have to carry out their every day lives. how do we think about integrating them to the community and a broader level? work through internship, apprenticeships, through opportunities to legally engage in the they to day life of the community. finally, as we talk about issue of enforcement and deportation and family being separated, many of the young people that are going through daca are also transitioning in to adult hollywood with very, very stressed mental and emotional health. how do we think about mobilizing the mental health community to address some of these really important needs? >> so, i mean, to repeat to said. adding one more thing in term of implementation. i think it would be important to figure out ways to get more folks to get the ged in different states. i think that, i mean, i don't know looking at the data before i think one of the republicans that a lot of older folks are not necessarily applying as much. i think it has a lot to do with not having a ged. you can apply and good to go. older folks definitely i found a lot of community members that are trying to figure out where to get the ged. because there's not as much outreach to try to do that as well. it's a challenge. in term of policy immigration reform and so forth. we're going keep pushing as -- we're still, you know, still very targeted. i don't have a driver's license. i cannot get one in arizona. it's like i'm half dacamented. my mother is still in deportation proceedings. we only have about now five months to see what is going to be happening next year. she was gavin one year stay. as undacamented with we're going to keep pushing not only congress but the president as well to stop the deportation. you know, for us, it's not black and white. it's not immigration path or not. it's about, you know, there's no other way in congress we are going to search for something bigger in term of daca. perhapses for parent or people that are not necessarily dreamers. people didn't believe we could it with dreamers and we pushed and proved wrong and able to push the president to do this. and so there is a way, you know, we're going of course push congress for a longer term. there is no question. at the same time we also have urgency. and reality is that, you know, i'm not going to live -- i'm going to push for it either way i can. >> to add to the comments my fellow panelists have made. i guess i would say that if daca has been a kind of test for uscif for a broader legalization program if it -- not if, when we extend legalization to many more people in this country. it's important to take note of what happened already. the uscis has been keeping up with the application process. the fact they have made decisions on 75% of them already. it's a rolling process. everybody people are submitting and every day being adjudicated. i think it's important note. it's going really ramp up in the future. and i think the reason why that is important qualityively and in the live of people is probably the number one reason people are applying to get work off authorization. and the young, you know, the longer gap between applying and getting your card, you know, the harder it makes having they hold the key to what this process is going to look like. they know on the ground what works and what doesn't work. i think that's a big door we have to walk through. >> one thing i forgot to mention. they have been great in term of providing data. those updates they give about these national view and the data they have given. to the extend we can help as researchers make daca work better. we need better data. i think with sort of you know what is happened recently with data analysis, this is the age of big data. and they have a wealthy of it that can help us identify how to make this process better. if they can be more forth coming with data. we can do a better job. but in the absence of that, those service providers can also provide for us a wealth of information. thinking about the intake survey that these organizations do, there can be very specific questions related to not just the applicant but who the applicant knows so we can actually map out the networking of where those who haven't been serve bid daca are. that's a form of networking analysis. but those organizations, you know, in the absence of cooperation can be the to call point for the data necessary to help improve the program down the road. i stay because i know some of the immigrant organizations are working here. [inaudible] it's more of a policy question i'm not privy to whether or not the president can do this. they mentioned earlier a lot of daca people feel that this is not enough. of course, congress needs to approve immigration reform. up with and for all. my question from a policy perspective, can the president just like he was pressured to authorizing daca last year. can he effects tent to the parent of the dreamers or in other words what the limits to what he can or cannot do while congress decide whether or not they'll pass immigration reform this year. thank you. >> this is sort of my thinking we have been able a lot of immigrant youth organization. we've been to be actually, you know, stop deportation with something called a memo -- or [inaudible] we've been to be fight a lot of cases just like with my mom. we have been able to stop deportation one by one. and takes a lot of pressure and, you know, people to call immigration and do this kind of thing. and so our thinking and we sort of think through this. we're not going stay without anything. people are family can be deported. daca was sort of the same thing we try to get. it was a discretion for dreamers. now, i mean, we look for the way to do it . e with can talk to lawyers like the deferred action. we think we can expand something where the discretion can be granted to our parents and our older siblings sort of any the same way. i guess, you know. >> what i would say is that one thing that can certainly be done is stop the deportation. but i also want to say from my perspective the book is not closed on with 2013 for immigration reform. the house is coming back next month, and it look like there's increasing pressure on how republicans is more of them are coming forward and supporting immigration reform. i think we have a good change this year to push forward some really important legislation that include a pathway. and- you know, to me that's the most important thing. i think that many people are of the thinking that it can still be done. >> great. >> great dinner to the panelists for the pre-event. i'm with the national latino institute for reproductive health. the immigrant latino we work with. they were tremendously excited when the program was announced. for the first time they felt their contribution were being recognize and invited to come forward and participate in society. unfortunately, a few weeks later the u.s. department of the health and human services issued a rule noted unlike others daca recipient are not present effectively shutting them out for med -- [inaudible] , you know, unfortunately the tremendous benefit of data. there was a lot of disappointment they were looking forward to getting health insurance for the first time. being to be pay to the system. and so there's a lot of talk about integration. i was wondering for you could speak to some of the how -- in term of the program and integration what impact -- in some of the communities and some of these were coming have from the restriction on health care and daca have been -- [inaudible] >> i think i want to take a stab in thinking about this. in the survey i mentioned i'm wrapping up a third year study. i'm following up 150 in los angeles since 2003. i started without broad sober logical question about educational attainment, jobs, civic and political participation. enone thing i found overwhelmingly that i didn't expect was that almost to the person of those young people i talked to. these are young adults that come to the u.s. before the age of 12 who have grown up here. at love people we're talking about today. almost to the person they described mental and physical manifestation of stress. chronic headache, chronic tooth ache. trouble sleeping, trouble getting out of bed. eating problems, thought offed is, attemptedded is. real, real intense problems. and i think that -- this segment of the population that is also economically challenged doesn't have access to health care but having enormous needs. i think it's something that needs to be changed. >> i would say that part of the broader immigration reform debate has been around health access for undocumented and newly -- it's an upclimb climb. despite what the findings suggest and the absolute moral impartive of serving this community. and meeting the health needs of the community, we see health access being a bargaining chip and here's an example in twik -- 2006 with the senate bill boxer introduced an amendment that we can create an state impact fund we can take money from the application from the path of citizenship and distribute that to states to help some of the cost of health services, for example. instead of taking the must be away from the health and increase of overall costs of applying for this path to citizenship. and so at the end of the day, if we're talking about undocument use who are negatively impacted in term of health, and if they do sort of fall to the lower income category. access to health may be unattainment. it may be there, but may be un attainable based on the high cost. in the senate bill round that language was clearly excluded. barbara boxer's office was considering the amendment before they shut the down on the senate bill. we know in the house, you know, the affordable care act is a rallying against all things obama in the house with the 40th or 50th on bureaucracy. so policy wide it's an uphill climb. >> i think we have time for one more question. >> thank you. my name is -- [inaudible] i'm a professor at arizona state university doing research on immigration poll. i'm here at the directing the -- [inaudible] i say that in case people are looking for research funding and want to talk to me. [laughter] yeah, hi. [laughter] one of the things i'm finding works i'm doing on discretion is on the number of people who are not eligible for discretion because of the 1996 laws and what has been defined. i'm speculating, but it's only speculation and i would love to hear your thought that part of the reason why the denial rate has been so low is for daca had been a, they have done a good job of putting up on the website what makes you eligible and not eligible. don't bother applying for you have a dui. and the agency, the non-profit are working with people in saying you're not going to get it. don't come -- because are nervous. i'm assuming there's some hard conversations where advocates are saying you're probably not going qualify. i would love to hear about research grown you find that research. also how you respond to the opponent of daca who are saying everybody is getting it. so this isn't really a fair kind of thing. i'm guessing what is happening is that the earlier process is reading out people who would not qualify. but like i said, it's pure speculation on our part. i'm wondering for there's time for a second point is in the data you have, do you have other information on education, family occupation, anything else like that that gets you to do -- in your work? >> yeah. >> yeah. i figured from the qualitative part. >> sure. i think your hunches are the same as mine. it's hard get a bigger perspective on it. it it does seem to be that the slam deng have gone through are going through and that people who even themselves think they may not qualify are probably holding back. what i do have in the paper -- in the brookings paper there's a table of the top countries of birth, and you can see the share of all app cants from each country that were approved. and there you can see that some of the lowest apriewfl rates from nonspanish speaking countries. and, you know, jamie can it's not like all jamaican applicants. it's all adjudicated. so there is something about maybe people flying so low on this. it brings down their success rate. just to add to her point. in term of -- try to interpret the finding related to the denial rate for men versus women and how that increases with age. and so fits neatly within the sociological phenomena of criminality among men. and right within that sort of age frame too. and so this isn't to say large pool of criminal males in the sample of daca applicants. we're talking about, you know, tenths of percentages here. because there's a sort of disproportionate number of males who are denied and increases with age the issues yolingses on the team point to the sociological reality of sort of criminality in the united states. .. >> i certainly support a greater love all of data but in the meantime we your getting some of aggregate data on these important questions. i would be happy to talk to you more about that. >> that is a good place to leave it. i just want to reiterate this is just the beginning of the conversation with the trends we have highlighted today or the trend or approval of what happens to people going forward. we will have you back to continue the conversation. please join me in giving a round of applause. [applause] >> continues to be one of the department of defense top priorities for carver's service member deserves a safe environment in which they are free of from sexual harassment or assault we must continue to improve our response programs. it may secretary hegel strength of our programs in the areas of commander accountability victim advocacy and safety. today the secretary directed the immediate implementation of the following additional measures to improve victim support, strengthen pre-trial investigations, enhance oversight, make prevention response efforts more consistent across military services. first, creating a legal advocacy program to provide a legal representation to sexual assault victims throughout the judicial process. next coming insuring all pre-trial investigative hearings and related charges conducted. third, providing commanders of options accused of sexual assaults in order to eliminate contact law respecting the rights of those victims or the accused. requiring the officer within the chain of command shows the timely follow-up reports of responses. directing dod to evaluate closed sexual assault evaluations. standardizing prohibition on inappropriate behavior between recruiters and traders across dod and finally, developing changes to the manual to let victims give input during the court-martial. follow these measures give rights and protection and legal support to ensure that a sexual assault proceedings are conducted fairly and professionally. and for fiscal year 2013 this panel is reviewing to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate crimes involving sexual assaults under the uniform code of military justice. the secretary has met with members and will closely review the recommendations. sexual assaults is a state on the men and women to serve our country as well as a disciplining competion of our forces. this must be stamped out. secretary hegel will continue to meet weekly with the senior leadership team to personally review these efforts to ensure the directors and programs are being implemented effectively and the department will work closely with both congress and the white house to eliminate sexual assault in the united states military. we are all accountable to fix this problem and we will do so together. his decision in very much supported all the time. there were other sayings attributed to her that i wish they could be back over they best belonged but she honestly believed her husband would be acquitted in a very proud when he was then she said she knew it would happen. she knew it. risk their own lives. hosted by the cato institute in washington d.c., this is an hour and a half. >> [inaudible conversations]ute. wrote:everybody to the cato institute i live from the center of global prosperity theo since the beginning of then hasb sheerur immigration is a burning public policy issue in washington for the first time in decades the united s states is considering a major reform and how itimmigran. deals of the immigrants. the ensuing debate of reform are welcome, but the fact is isliticians are writing very light -- relate to the issue because in this country there is the gap between restrictive laws and the reality of immigration with ecomicp that reflects economic and social fact that there are millions ofns americans and millions of immigrants from mexico and central america of that wish wi to work together to engage in peaceful and voluntary change exchange but not legally allowed to do so. that inconsistency has produced problems associated with legal immigration. pro many serious problems imagines. the prospects of reform have also stimulated the debate about econic andral have jobs? what does the evidence say about the extent to which immigrants are assimilating into american culture in recent decades? are immigrants and net drain or contributors to the welfare state and did they mainly come here to today many come here? impact of immigration is something that has been debated. what should we expect from increased legal immigration in that regard first is the status quo? these are legitimate questions that go to the heart of one's worldviews on such issues as in equality and fairness the proper role of the state in regulating business and labor, cultural and national identity issues, and fiscal policy just to name a few issues so it's no wonder the sudden interest on the part of republicans and democrats to address this issue has caused heated exchanges exaggerated claims come to and some amount of nastiness. that is why i am pleased today to be able to host a forum for a book that takes a balanced look at a wide range of issues that are being discussed today. the book comcast "global crossings" immigration, civilization and america by alvaro vargas llosa comes at a perfect moment and it puts immigration in historical context showing how so much of the debate today is not actually new in american politics and that we can be guided by a lot of american experience, long american experience. it's better to let the author talk to us about that. my good friend alvaro vargas llosa is the senior fellow at the center for global prosperity at the independent institute who publishes -- who has published this book. he has been a nationally syndicated columnist for the "washington post" writers group. he has been the author of numerous books including the che guevara risk and the guide to perfect latin american idiot which was a bestseller in the spanish edition in latin america. he is a big what has in his columns that appear throughout latin america every week and has contributed to leading newspapers in the united states. he has been a board member of the "miami herald" publishing company and an op-ed page editor and columnist for the "miami herald." i could go on and on that i would say one more thing. he has also been one of the great champions of liberty in latin america, very present in all of the most important places on the right side of the issue i believe in with this book i could say in the americas. please help me welcome alvaro vargas llosa. [applause] >> thank you very much ian for that wonderful and generous presentation and thank you to the cato institute for hosting this and alex for being so kind and helping put it together. we have been asked why did i write this book? why was i interested in this topic? and welcome to there are several reasons. perhaps one of them has to do with diet i guess identity problem. i have been called a spaniard in peru. i have then called a pejorative term for south american. i've been called a pakistani in london where i was based for a while and now i m. called spanish, liberian which means spaniard so i don't really know where i belong and who i am but i guess it's probably a good enough reason to explore this important issue today. so let me tell you a little bit about what i do in this book. what i do is i take on all the different myths that i have seen over the years that are really driving this discussion and this debate, including the current discussion in the senate and soon in the house as well. about immigration reform. i won't cover all of that but i will share with you a few and give you my perspective on them and i hope that this will help at least clarify some of the misinformation that is out there it's really quite striking. one first myths and all i am going to say i have heard many people say, people with all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of places. i didn't make any of this up. one argument basically says we are getting the wrong kinds of immigrants and we used to get the right kind of immigrants. i'm not anti-immigration. i'm just against this current type of them a grant that getting today. the answer to that is the united states always got the wrong kind of immigrants. that has always been the case. the variety of immigrants sources and types of immigration that this country has received in the last two centuries, two and half centuries is simply astounding. of course between 1830 in 1880 yes it was mostly northern europeans but between 1880 and 1920 it was all about southern europeans and eastern europeans in central europeans had nothing to do with northern europeans. they look different in the different cultures. they were the mexicans of yesteryear and of course after that you had an and even before that you had people from asia. you have the chinese with with the gold rush and the chinese in the early 20th century and yes you had spent -- hispanics and you had indians after 1965 because of the changes that evolved that triggered an unintended consequence so there has always been the wrong kind of immigrant in united dates. it's simply not true. another important myth says that the u.s. is getting a disproportionate number of immigrants. just this morning on a radio show i heard we are getting more than any other country in the world. they are all wanting to come here and they don't want to go to other countries. again, but this is very silly. about 3% of the world population is made up of first-generation immigrants and illegal immigrants constitute about one sixth of the immigrants that travel from one place to another every year. so the total number of immigrants every year is about 215 and the total number of illegal immigrants about 30 million. the u.s. gets in terms of just illegal immigrants one sixth of 1% of its population so clearly a much smaller proportion than any other country is getting. so again it's not sure that the u.s. is getting a disproportionate number of immigrants. this is a worldwide phenomenon and other countries are relatively getting more immigrants than the united states, undocumented immigrants into the united states. another myth says that the only motive behind immigration is poverty. why should we in the united states solve world poverty? we have enough poor of our own. let us take care of our own and let's not solve world poverty. that is not true. that's not the only motive behind migration and in fact the poorest of the poor almost never migrate from one country to another. they migrate within the borders of their own country. let's take europe. until the 1980s, early 1980s europe was a source of migration of outmigration i mean, people leaving europe and that was a wealthy and prosperous continent before they got into this mess which is a different story. germany, the richest among the rich and europe was exporting half a million people every year until the 1980s. so clearly the motivation for that was not poverty. south korea has a significant number of immigrants or immigrants to come to the united states. that is a rich country. bangladeshi women who are very poor, the poorest among the poor , by great even in asia which is the continent that has the greatest number of migrants every year. so i could go on and on and on. what are the motives? do they very? yes of course great economic conditions are part of the story but you have everything including depressed conditions at home politically institutionally and economically. family ties occupational preference adventure, all sorts of different reasons for migrating. historical ties have a lot to do with it as well. the u.s. has historically been entangled around the world in conflicts and all sorts of exchanges, sometimes friendly and sometimes not so friendly and that is created conditions for permanent migration. there has been a significant bit of immigration to the united states as we all know and that has to do with the involvement in the war at the end of the 19th century and also with the encouragement that the united states gave to filipinos to come to the united states to start including a special program set up after the second world war for filipino notices. all those were signals that the u.s. sent saying it's okay to come. we recognize we are bound together succumb to the united states. mexican migration, the origin of mexican migration it to the united states is not poor mexicans wanting a better life in the united states. it was u.s. business, needing to replace eastern europeans. first japanese japanese workers in an eastern european workers in the early 20th century so they went to mexico and asked for mexican workers and mexican worker started coming to the united states to work particularly in railroad construction. all these historical ties have a lot to do with it as well. another important myth is the fact that there has never been any hostility to immigration in the united states. we have always been a country of immigrants and we have always welcome -- welcomed immigrants. we have always valued people coming from oversees to contribute to the society and again that is not true. there has always been hostility towards immigration and of course it hasn't always taken place exactly in the same way. it's not been as intense but historically it has always been the case that there was significant hostility to immigrants. if you look at what happened in the gold rush, the chinese were the object of vilification at the time. they were frowned upon by all those who were taken native born americans who are taking part in the gold rush. the japanese at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century would office and and -- often undergo tremendous illegal restrictions. they have had to find all sorts of ways to get around the law. in the middle of the 19th century, the whole nativist movement was born with the famous know nothing party were very much hostile towards immigration and they had an impact on the government and generally the outlook of society towards immigration. so it has been the case and that is why we have seen throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century and evolving situation from the point of view of how the law address immigration. that has always been i guess an evolution towards more or a change towards more and more restriction. that reflected the mindset, the mindset that was relatively hostile. not everybody of course partook in this. not everybody was reflected in these attitudes. there has always been a force for pro-immigration opinion in the united states but what i'm trying to get at is this is not something necessarily new or very different. one thing that i think we need to understand and this is also part of the myth is that whenever there is a big disconnect between the law and reality you are going to get -- it happens with goods, it happens with services, it happens with things but it also happens with evil. you constantly hear this argument and of course i can see where they are coming from. we cannot as a country governed by the rule of law except people who violate the law. we are just not that the country. this is not something that is morally or legally accepted and yes on paper of course that's an extremely powerful argument. who can argue with that? however the problem is the law is simply not realistic, when the law does not take reality into account then you create conditions for a systematic violation of the law on a grand scale. when that happens usually something is wrong with the law. not necessarily with the nature of the people who are violating that law. it's simply the way it works. it works with all sorts of other contacts, social contacts that stem from the criminalization of things that should not be held as being criminal by the law. so the same sort of thing happens with immigrants which is why when people say there is a disproportionate number of criminals who are immigrants of course if you penalize immigrants you have just made the condition of an immigrant a conditional one. if you adjust for age there are no more criminals who are immigrant then who are native-born. it's about the same rate. there are all sorts of studies but yes you had a significant number of people in jail sometimes on the way to deportation particularly in the last few years who could have been considered criminal simply because it was criminal to be an immigrant. so, it's important to get this myth out-of-the-way if we are going to find a legal way to deal with what is a social problem having almost 12 million people operating in the shadows outside of of the law is a social problem. we just need to make sure that is addressed from the starting point of believing these people are somehow biologically criminal. these people are simply the result of the disconnect between the law and reality. another important myth has to do with culture. i heard this time and time again and i'm sure many of you have heard this. these people are culturally different. unlike the previous waves of immigrants who are culturally in tune with our values. these people are different and yet if you look at this in so many different ways you find exactly the same pattern. immigrants today are culturally in tune with us-born people, with u.s. society almost any way you look at it. if you look at religion for instance, in the last 20 years but talk about hispanics for a moment and immigrants in that period of time. 70% of them are catholic and about 23% are partisan. of the ones who call themselves catholic one fifth of them call themselves born-again which is by the way something you never hear in latin america. latin american people never describe themselves as born-again. they are describing themselves as protestants in the united states of this is clearly an effort to tell the united states that we are like you. we believe just like you. we pray just like you. if you look at family values which is something i don't think conservatives who are critical of immigration clearly understand, you will find that there is probably more inclination towards family values today among immigrants than among any other part of society. for instance, half of all households are made up of couples with children and only 13% of households are headed by a single parent against one third in the case of native-born americans. so again if we stand for values values -- family values and we want a society based on family values then this is surely a source of great comfort among immigrants. they are all about family values. if we can convince them of this which is a tough thing to do that they will say out of there having many -- too many children. i don't i that argument with a problem that the well for state is a problem with immigration. that has not been the case. the birthrate is going down and down just as it's going down and down across latin america. it's still a little bit higher among hispanic women in the united states but only 60%. just half a child more than native warren women and the trend is going down. in latin america there is this new discussion and until a few years ago of course there was a high birthrate. today it's going down in an incredible way and so those societies are beginning to face some of the issues that developed countries have been facing in terms of the rate of course contributors to the system of transfer to beneficiaries. so they are facing the same issues. no matter how you look at it, for they are culturally compatible. if you look at all those neighborhoods that they have helped regenerate and i mention a few in the book in south florida, in new york. a process called gender fixation. communities that were in a complete disaster and they have become very nice communities thanks to the efforts of hispanics particularly but that general democrats have put into this. that is a cultural side of perfect compatibility with the host nation. i will grant you this though. it is true that most culturalism has distorted things a bit and i think we would -- it would not be fair if we did not recognize that. in the early part of the 20th century there was something that used to be called americanization. friedrich hayek for instance one of our heroes of course praised americanization very much. he attributed to americanization the virtue of having values and ideas relating to the free society. and yes i think there is something to be said for americanization. there were some aspects they were that were kind of chauvinistic and i guess there were abuses but by and large it was a healthy thing. it was not so much government policy. it was just a general cultural attitudes across society that somehow created incentives for people who came to become familiar with the values of society and all of these things. it was a positive thing. that began to change in the 1960s of course when this whole new paradigm what we call multiculturalism today emerged. i don't go into a lot of detail because there's a whole chapter in the book and it's a fascinating discussion but i don't want to be sidetracked. just quickly i would say that essentially what happened was europe's decolonization after the second world war we began to look at values in a different way through relativism. we began to see values as an exchange and all values were equal. all place of looking at society and institutions were pretty much equal. that gave rise of course to a whole new way of analyzing and studying societies from the past and then from that we went on to think of minorities as collectivist entities that were somehow in need of special protection, special rights to correct an imbalance that was historicahistorica l in nature that was the legacy of past abuses. this in turn translated of course into all sorts of i guess social engineering based on ethnicity and we saw things like gerrymandering along ethnic lines and unequal and employment opportunities and positive discrimination in all sorts of things that gradually i think went beyond what was really compatible with a truly free society governed by the principle of the quality before the law. that was bound to generate a backlash at some point and of course it did but my argument is this. people who are to blame for multiculturalism are not immigrants. they are u.s. academics mostly and it was mostly something that emerged out of academia not just in in the united states but to be fair also in europe. so yeah there has been a distortion there and yes there things i myself was an immigrant here do not feel it all comfortable with but if we are going to fight multiculturalism the way to do it is not defied immigration. it's to fight the ideology behind multiculturalism. so from that and this is one way to prove that it's not immigrants that are to blame for this. i am constantly told i drove past such community and reading spanish newspapers. it used to be that way of course. it always was that way. german communities in the west what did they do? a printed german papers and they spoke german among themselves. that is what first-generation italians did and that is what nations did and sometimes they do that still. it's human nature. people want to feel they belong to something and they want to protect themselves for a little while but that doesn't stop her and sarah the process of assimilation. it's a three generation process. the first-generation make some progress in the second generation is bilingual but they speak english better than any other language we are talking about and by the third generation they don't even speak the native tongue as we say anymore. i see that among hispanics and it's really a fascinating process. that was case. that was the way it was for their times in the polls and the germans and it's always been that kind of dynamic. again just as in the past the second generation does better financially than the first-generation and until the assimilation is completed if you look at marriage beyond the community which is one way to look at this, we see the same pattern today as we saw in the past. i compared second-generation italians in the early part of the 20 century with mexican state. the rate of marriage was 17% today it's a little higher, almost 20%. by the third generation of marriage is very strong. so again very similar patterns of assimilating, assimilation. of course since you have a constant permanent inflow of first-generation hispanics it's only natural that you are going to see some pockets of i guess spanish speaking communities almost on a constant basis but that is not because they are not assimilating. it simply because -- so there is nothing to fear. they are assimilating and i think that is something that we need to embrace. so let's just go into the economy. again it's another important source of myth. i am always hearing this. we would like to have high-skilled immigrants but these low-skilled immigrants, why do we need these low-skilled immigrants? because the modern economy needs low-skilled immigrants. since the second world war we had all these imbalances that needed to be corrected through basically migration. that is why the germans signed treaties with the turks. they needed turkish workers and the spanish with the moroccans the french with the algerians and the united states with the mexicans. that's the way it works. even in a high-tech economy you certain repetitious mechanical jobs that will be part of it. somebody will have to fill those , take up those jobs and that's something that migration helps to do. do they hurt the economy? they do exactly the opposite. immigrants help enlarge the pie again help make the pie bigger. i went to one of the most prominent academic critics and even he recognizes illegal immigrants contribute $22 billion to the economy every year so we updated that data. it's a very conservative statistics and i think it's more than that but let's accept that for a moment. which we just updated his calculation and that would translate into about $36 billion today. you make that legal it probably would be increased by 2.5 times, three times almost 100 lean dollars a year and a per decade over a trillion dollars. that's a contribution to the economy by immigrants. how does the process works quite fair producers and they are consumers. when they come in at the low-end of the scale they help others move up the scale. yes they have a very tiny temporary effect on wages at the lower end. our calculaticalculati on 1.45% in others very little bit but it's a very small impact but that is offset by people who are moving up the scale and earning higher wages and also offset by the fact that immigrants help these labor-intensive industries be more productive and they help keep prices down. so as consumers everybody in society is benefiting from that. the effect is of course a very potent one, positive potent not to speak of high-skilled immigration. again how could that not be a huge contribution to the economy? one third of doctors in engineering technology sciences involve immigrants. immigrants. one fourth of nobel prize winners throughout the 20th century in the u.s. have been immigrants. immigrants made silicon valley. the silicon valley miracle between 95 and 2005 immigrants founded many companies and created half a billion jobs. there is -- it was always absurd that the rules, i hope they're going to change now but were such that the quota for h. one bbs as high-skilled visas with the exhausted on day one. as soon as it was open for applications they would be taken up because 65,000 until a few years ago because it was of greater demand. that was economic suicide on the part of united states. let's finish but touching very quickly on the issue of cost versus benefit. that's another huge myth the idea that immigrants cost a lot more than they contribute fiscally i mean. that is simply not true. there is one great study a couple of decades ago by the natural research counsel. they calculated not only the fiscal impact of legalizing immigrants now, they calculated what would happen for the next 50 years because of course as you know they are young so we would expect they would be working for the next 50 years and they calculated them at present value of those 50 years in terms of what they will put into the system or take out of the system. that concluded of course -- included children better in public school today that will come out and work for the next 50 years or you have to bring all of that into the equation. their calculation was a net cost a one-off cost present-day value of $5000 which is nothing if you weigh that against the contribution i just talked about to the economy. other studies beyond that even the net contribution without taking into account the contribution to the economy, just the fiscal impact is going to be positive in terms of generating more revenue than they are taken taken out in outlooks has written about this very forcefully. my message is basically this. we are in an age of globalization. we have one case for free trade. we can say this point that we have ideal free trade conditions across the world but we have won the intellectual case for free trade. no one speaks against free trade on an intellectual level. no one says i'm against free trade. they say i'm for free trade but and then they talk about the level playing field and all that. the intellects really won the case for free trade trade we have made the case for free immigration and it's simply not reasonable to expect that a world moving grassley towards free trade can continue to contemplate immigration and the way it is. trade in goods constitutes the equivalent of 45% of wealth gdp. about 20% of world savings are invested outside of the country where they originate and 3% of the population is first-generation immigrant. this imbalance will have to be corrected. the dynamics are pushing the world in that direction so you can either accept and embrace and channel that energy through legal channels or you can try and put barriers against it and you will be overwhelmed either because the negative effect of actually being able and managing to control this will be huge or because you will not be able to control it. by the time you accept that you realize you will have spent a lot of money and with all the side effects that come with it and trying to -- immigration is not a danger to the united states to its values to its economy to its standing in the world. it is exactly the opposite. it is i think one of the best ways to keep the united states a free country keep it up rospars country and to keep it as a model for the rest of the world. thank you very much. [applause] see thank you. our next speaker is alex. he worked at the competitive and enterprise institute on immigration issues. he has degrees in economics and economic history from george mason university. he has been an exemplary policy analyst at the cato is two and has been quite involved and very influential in the current debate on immigration. please help me welcome alex nowrasteh. [applause] >> thank you ian for that very nice introduction and thank you i'll there'll for coming talking about your fantastic book. i want to save part of the reason why free trade is accepted intellectually by so many people around the world today as opposed to 50 or 60 years ago is because of the hard work of alberto and other classical liberals around the world the united states in central and south america and everywhere around the world. that hard work i think is really paid off. we are able to do so much at the cato institute in part because people like myself are able to stand on the shoulders of intellects like alvaro and others who have forcefully argued the point for generations of thank you very much. now i want to go into some other details about this fantastic book "global crossings" some details that we weren't able to touch on in a limited amount of time that we have but one of the main issues that a lot of people raise when it comes to in the gration is they think national security. today is a different environment if you have global terrorism and we have al qaeda and issues like these and because of this we can't be as open to immigration as we were in the past because of all these issues. just like the other points made in this book that is no different from what it was 100 years ago. there was an intense terrorist campaign in the united states in the early 20th century carried out mainly by italian anarchists and communists who had different points blew up dozens and up to 100 bombs across united states targeting people like the attorney general of the united states a mitchell palmer and numerous public officials across the country at the time. people had a reaction at that point. they said we can't have this type of thing. this is a new experience. this was at a time when communists were marching across the world and having success in europe and eastern europe and the chaos in the soviet union. these people were seen as an extension of that and we needed to close their borders to block the sale. that is not different than what we hear today about islamic terrorism and other issues like that. but what is even more astonishing is how a lot of our immigration policy makes it easier for national security threats to exist, makes it easier for these problems to grow in a lot of cases increase the ability of the national security threats in these opponents of liberty across the world to more exploit their advantages by taking advantage of american immigration law. one modern example of this is in 2010 there were about a dozen some always arrested in mexico. there were rumors that they were aimed members of the al-shabaab militia which is an islamist terrorist militia based in somali. the mexican authorities in their incompetence release them early without any kind of records. there was a big for of a better word freak out in the american media. these guys are deftly coming here and coming to the united states. they're going to wreak havoc and as a result border patrol and these people were eventually apprehended or they faded away and nothing happened but the point is because american immigration enforcement because our immigration laws are so focused on keeping people out for economic reasons or for any other types of reasons a small amount of what they are pulled to do focus on legitimate threats. instead they are more concerned with asking how will an additional worker affect the wages for american tomato pickers? they're more concerned with how one additional worker will affect the labor market conditions or computer programmers in silicon valley. they are more concerned with where a high-skilled immigrants will take a conference call with her is at his home or whether that home is listed as a place of residence or as a place of work than they are about these legitimate threats that are out there. we are really concerned about this. if we think that we live in an age that is so dangerous internationally that immigration needs to be restricted and regulated okay if you believe that's true than you should argue for a total refocusing immigration away from keeping out willing workers and separating them and focus entirely on the small but real national security threats that exist. throughout history these threats have also been used to our disadvantage. think about the numerous hoops and hurdles american immigration enforcement but in the 1930s and early 1940s on scientist trying to flee europe and come to the united states to work and eventually were employed to work in a manhattan project to help win the war. there is enormous bureaucratic fear and keeping these people out because of national security. a lot of these people had ties ties to common is our alleged ties to communist. because of the fear of national security -- one of my favorite examples is there was a chinese rocket scientist. he died in 2009. he was involved with rocket research in united states in the 50s. because of the national security law that said that communist could not be employed or emigrates united states he was investigated by the fbi and they said there was enough circumstantial evidence that he had attended a communist rally 20 years before the end he was kicked out of united states and deported to communist china where he was the founder of international rocket and missile program. the entire rocket program in china is based on the internetting expertise of this immigrant to the united states who wanted to stay here and live and work but was forced back to china as a result of that. i am a libertarian and i don't leave china is an accidental threat to the united states anything like that but if you are worried about this about national security issues coming from other countries the last thing you want to do is to send talented foreigners who have come here to learn these issues back to their home countries. that's pretty much the last thing you want to do. now i think switching gears to culture and how really americans have taken a look at immigrants and treated them to the much the same throughout history. we have always been skeptical of them and compare them negatively to previous immigrants. it's a quote i thomas sowell and a recent article written on june 4 titled abstract immigrants where he writes the immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here 100 years ago. i think he massively exaggerates the differences between immigrants today and back then. we heard a lot about these differences but what is also different or americans today. it's true multiculturalism has impacted american society to an extent and i think that's a bad ideology that we are also in a lot of ways more welcoming. americans today may say nasty things about immigrants today but let's not forget the largest mass lynching in american history's was in the 1890s in new orleans of italian immigrants by a mob of white americans that thought they had committed a crime and had gotten away with it. in in the 30s ahead matzo protestant americans going out and burning down churches catholic churches occupy by the irish burning down and destroying confidence raping the nuns inside and horrible things like this. the rhetoric today about immigration of americans who are opposed is nasty and it is gross but we don't have this level of cultural aversion violence to the extent that people are going out and doing this. americans are behaving much better in the face of immigration than they did back in the day. and i think that comes across as well. these worries about immigrants being different or totally exaggerated. the catholic example is a great one. immigrants today are majority catholic just like they weren't 100 years ago. they come from different countries in the world in different parts of the world. what is most remarkable about assimilation especially for mexican-americans and the descendents of mexican-americans is that so many of them came in illegally. they came to this country illegally and they lived for years oftentimes in the black market. the extent to which they and their children have assimilated truly in a lot of ways outpaces the tying immigrants who came legally 100 years ago who were able to live entirely within the legal market. what is truly remarkable and i think if immigration was allowed to be dashed to the extent that all had come legally they would see a better pace of assimilation. looking at it that way in realizing immigrants to come today are more un-american when they calm and they become americans faster despite having to live in the black market i think is a testament not just to the entrepreneurial and energetic spirit of immigrants today and how they want to become american but also a testament to how much american culture has influenced so many people throughout the world and how we we are still a beacon for millions of people who want to come here and want to become americans. i think this book really goes into fantastic detail about that process about the cultural process by which people become americans. it differentiated from a lot of other books out there that sociologists write about assimilation. it really describe the process. it creates a model for how it happens and it was the first time i'd read that third generation. your parents are born here and you look longingly back on that ethnic or religious identifier where your parents came from or your grandparegrandpare nts came from and that is a feature of success. that is a market success of becoming an american because because as merrick is we don't have an ethnic or racial identifier. the largest ethnic group in the united states is german. that's going to change in the near future. that is the largest group. we don't have any blood borders culture conception of being american. it's a value conception, it's a civic notion of being american and that is something that is virtually unique throughout the world and unique throughout history and what this book does is describe that in some of the best detail i have ever read anywhere in the literature and both sociology and economic academics and even in popular books made for a popular audience. for that notion i think it made me -- a steady immigration policy and sometimes i become skeptical of the way my government does things and i've become skeptical of the united states and its immigration policy but this really filled me with more enthusiasm and more hope for the future of this country and the ability to assimilate immigrants and to be a beacon than virtually any book i've read in my years of working on this topic so i highly recommend it to all of you. i couldn't recommend it more. it's a beautiful book and thank you very much for coming today. [applause] >> thank you alex. we have time for questions and if you have a question please raise your hand and wait for the microphone. identify yourself and your affiliation. so we will take the first question up here in the front, please. wait for the microphone please. >> hi. my name is stephen. i have no affiliation. i was kind of interested in this notion of low unskilled workers versus high-skilled workers as whether we want immigrants are high-skilled or low-skilled. it always seemed to me that human beings are a resource and therefore if lots of low-skilled employees is a resource because -- it doesn't mean that we don't need the high-skilled but this idea that there is only a set number of jobs for low-skilled -- look at all the people that came to new york city that were low-skilled at the turn-of-the-century area jobs were created. in other words i think there is a misconception that you look at an economy and you say well we only have this amount of need right now for low-skilled but i think the answer is if you bring more resources that is more low-skilled workers, businesses will take advantage of that low-skilled. we will produce goods that will take advantage of these low-skilled workers. even if that production doesn't constitute this it will come to exist because the incentive. what i am saying to you my question is isn't that another big misconception that you guys seemed to overlook and you always hear so many people say we only want high-skilled labor with immigration. >> thank you very much. i couldn't agree with you more. i look at it in a different way. one way to look at it is just look at it domestic league. much of this discussion would be better understood by people if they thought these issues in the domestic context. since the second world war the u.s. has added about 100 million people to the workforce if you count baby boomers in general and women in particular. if the argument is made against immigrants were true on the economic level that those 100 million people would have destroyed the u.s. economy it would have generated so much unemployment and that would be the number one issue in the united states on a permanent basis and that is not the case. in the 60 years there has never been long-term unemployment of any kind. there has been unemployment of course in times of recession but that have different causes. look at arizona for instance which is such a sensitive place for this debate. just before the bursting of the bubble i looked at unemployment rates in arizona. among the lowest in the country, 4% and is sometimes less than 4% and get 10% of the workforce was and ice and continues to be immigrant. so clearly it's not generating unemployment. it is generating growth because arizona is a wealthy state and it is helping make as i said the pie larger. that includes both low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants. .. yet at the same time we had an constant inflow of immigrant. it wouldn't have been possible if immigrants were hurting that productive process. >> if i could -- yeah, if i could add one small thing to do that. i have been doing a series of debates for the last couple of times this week. i have another one on sunday. the issue is always brought up, and the analogy i like to use is if we have 100 high-skilled people in a room. 100 college grads and bring in 50 more. the economy gets bigger production increases. the rejoinder critics say you lower the average education level in the room by doing that. that really shows, i think, the danger of knowing a little bit of math and knowing not very much economics. an average of the terrible way to describe that. it's a example of the danny devito fallacy. the average height in the room will i did crease. -- decrease. nobody is actually any shorter. that's something that is pervasive. talking about public policy and the impact of immigration on the economy by using broad averages like this, really is probably one of the worst ways to do it and betray a total of lack of understanding how economics works. >> question right there. >> my name is steven. a wonderful, wholly convincing presentation. one aspect i'm wondering about the effect on the nation that immigrants leave from. are those nations any worse off? for example, it was said that when the 1848 revolution failed failed in germany. a lot of german liberals here and germany became more autocratic. today as much as we complaib in the building about economic regulation. a lot of immigrants see the united as a more fertile place for -- applying entrepreneurial skills. are countries that immigrants leave from worse off, say, in term of entrepreneurial skills? >> that's a great question. well, what -- if we look at -- forget about nation-states and borders for a moment. what are we talking about? we are talking about how people are able to create the most value. in other words, they choose their location according where they can create the most value and exchange the friewft our labor according to what we need and what we can offer. if you look at that way you'll realize people moving in or out is not going have a long-term effect of a negative kind in any way. europe was exporting people, again, until the 1980. the country were becoming more and more prosperous. they are a mess today for different reason. we had the same in latin america. people my grated to vens with a lay from countries such as peru on a consistent basis for half a century. it's a wealthier country than venezuela. look at it this way as well. chinese immigration in the united states has played a key role in the growing economic prosperity of china, they have not only of course been able to export stuff and import stuff to them. they invested in china response i think that borders and barriers are really art initial term of the impact on the economy. we all benefit from the constant circulation as people. the same is happening in europe. some of the eastern -- or central european countries have been -- in the last few years. it became legal to do so. and yet they have been becoming more and more prosperous. poland is more prosperous. it export the an incredible amount of people to spain. >> i have some small things to add. he's 100% right. about the german 1848ers. they left behind complained about the liberals leaving. americans who experienced and met them complained about the autocratic germans who are bringing their socialist notion of collectism. 1848 formed a core of what became the republican party in the antislavery wing. that's a little about dote about the feeling of immigrants destroying the core of america no matter where they're from. the issue you talk about, you know, does immigration an e leave the sending country worse off? that usually takes the frame of the brain drain. that's what people call it. they say the best and the brightest and the most energetic leave and what is left behind everybody else suffers. that's assumes a person in a country is a property of everybody else in that country. which is a terrible notion that no person who has any concept of individual freedom or liberal in the classic call sense interpretation could actually deal. what we actually see is when the opportunities to e mate, -- e grate. they go to school more. they acquire more skills in order to do better in the source -- and in a country where they want to go to. at love them end up staying. we see this in south africa, in nursing scoop. a lot of lot of people go there to try to emigrate to the utah. a lot stay behind. we see it in the philippines. the filipino nursing program. they have some of the highest percentage of nurses of any country in the world because there's a possibility to leave when they have it. as a result the rest of the pill fee knows -- filipinos gain from that. you're right it's a weird argument used by most i are restrictionist to say immigration is bad for people in poor countries when it's not true. >> i guess i would add, i mean, -- so it does the opposite. >> yes. >> george washington university. i'm one of the academics you speak of. and i, you know, i love the presentation. thank you. i'm a little bit uncomfortable with your romantic vision of assimilation and acceptance. because we know that some groups are more asimilarble than others. perhaps you tell us a little bit about how you define assimilation; right. because, you know, how many times have the third or fourth generation immigrant been asked where are you from? all right. what language do you speak. maybe you can talk about how you think about assimilation. assimilation is not only based on the desire for individual but also on the desire for the larger society to allow that person to assimilate. >> well, about the first part is are they asimilar plaiting -- assimilating, you know, immigrants assimilating today the way they did in the past? and the an is definitely yes. the research is very extensive. i looked in to this in a lot of detail. there's many ways to measure it. whether it's, you know, the use of english. or mingling with the native born population. marriage, whether it's entrepreneurship. that's another way to measure this. the idea that the lot of entrepreneurship that is home grown but these hispanics are bringing in notions, you know, to entrepreneurship. that's not true. the rate of self-employment among hispanics almost equal the rate for native born americans. almost 12%. and the number of companies that are founding every year is just amazing and astounding. what does happen is this, which is something alex touched upon in his comment in the book, which is fascinating. the first generation of course, is first generation. they are trying to find their way around and try to fit in. at the same time they have attachments back home. incidentally you should look, people ask me mexicans are tied to their home country. it didn't used to be the case. read some of the letters italian were sending back home in the 120th century. full of italian passion. expressing profound follow stall georgia and sending money back home as well. that's totally natural. the second generation moveses in the opposite destruction. they are 0 conscious of being seen by u.s. society as not really fitting in, as being somehow different they escape from their root. they reject the roots to an extent. i wouldn't -- that's not fair, you know, for everybody, but certainly there's big percentage of that. yet, by the third generation they feel so secure they go back to those roots but the a different way. a purely sentimental way they begin to -- simply because they know they are so secure and accepted by u.s. society that there's no risk in that. that's really how cinco de mayo was born. it was never a big deal in mexico. it's a big deal here. because it's a big deal here mexicans back home start thinking it's uncomfortable because mexico immigrants are more patriotic than we are. we have to assume it's a national holiday. now in mexico they are celebrating it. that was the result not of first generation immigrants. certainly not of second generation immigrants. this was third generation immigrant they thought of it about time to celebrate that. who celebrates cinco de mayo it's not just mexicos. it's americans just like irish and italian holiday. as alex said, the country is not based on the nation-state here is not based on flood. it's based open credo. it's not a nation-state it's a nation of nations. a state based on credo. i think the reality speaks to that. >> i think the cinco de mayo example is great. i can't think a more american holiday than the defeat of the french army. that's what it is. and, you know, to go in to some, you know, more. this is what he writes a chapter here about the phenomena. it's about the immigrants moving toward the main stream society and in the main stream society moves toward them. whey learned in the book everything i like to do on sundays comes from the germans. i mean, i like to go bowling. i like to go to the shooting range nap is something that germans did on sunday that was really un-american in the 1870. people were afraid of that because, you know, the old puritanical version of sunday was you sit at home and, you know, go to church. you sit at home, you read the bible, and basically don't do anything that is fun. and the germans were like, no, we're not going do that. what to do we do on sunday? go out and have picnic and have a good time. that's app example of american society and changing partly to the immigrant and their culture. it's pretty clear that the immigrants do most of the changing. >> we'll take question in the back. >> hi. i'm emily colins from the atlas networking. my question for you, it seems like there a couple of institutional thing in the government that may need to change in relation to immigrant such as the minimum wage or welfare. at love immigrants work under the minimum wage and illegal immigrants may take welfare or became legal might take more welfare. people argue it would be associate drain on society. i was wondering for you would speak on whether or not that has been discussed in the house or in the senate or your opinion on that. >> sure. the congressional budget office just came up with a report calculating what the impact in fiscal terms would be legalizing 12 million people for the next decade and beyond. they did two different calculations. you know, a -- i don't want to get too technical something called dynamic scoring. you calculate the effect on the economy will be. and you calculate what the fiscal impact of that will be. the other way of doing that is calculate the fiscal impact assume there no huge change in the economy. chevre way you look at it, the impact is beneficial. what they to is simply calculate what intake is going to be on the deficit and it's going to be a very positive impact in term of reducing the deficit. but as i said, there are many studies that very respectable studies that indicate that contribution is very positive. just thinking of one of the point. i mention the national research council. there's another one that was very significant at the time. jeffrey did a study of what happened between the 1970 and the 1990s. that's two-decade period. he came up with a figure i think very significant. the net contribution was $25 billion. but again, when you look at it, you always think that the effect of immigration on the economy goes beyond what they themselves produce and consume and they themselves pay and what they themselves take out of the system. the impact the whole of u.s. society. they make all of society more productive. the entire economy more productive. ultimately it's almost impossible calculate what the impact will be. we know it will be positive because if the economy becomes more product iand producing more goods and services. by definition you're going bring more revenue to the government. ultimately, if that were not the case, though, that's a great argument to get rid of the welfare state. i mean, immigrant were not to blame are not to blame for the fact that government spending has gone up by a factor of 50 in the last seize pry until the second world war they weren't entitled relief programs. we had welfare reform in the 1990s that impacted immigrants as well. now they are able to use that system only in a very limited way. >> there's very few things more dangerous about the welfare state than it changes the perception of being asset and good for society to liabilities. to viewing people entirely of cost and to look at this, you know, one government agency to look at that and say people who take from there are a net cost are terrible. we did research here at the cato institute. we hired a couple of professors, recently at george washington to do a study about how much welfare for poor immigrants use compared to poor native-born americans. that's the relevant comparison. you want apples to apple. poor people to poor people. what we found is poor americans use medicaid at the same rate as poor immigrant and took the same amount of immigrants the program would be 42% smaller. it would be a huge savings. for some people when they look at the immigrant of taking a dollar of welfare. the damage is magnified beyond all comprehension compared to an american citizens taking the same amount. now, you know, i favor getting rid of the welfare state for everybody. but if we can't do that,let build wall around it, at least, and try to improve the perception and try remove the perception that immigrants are takers. they make far, far more an contribute far more to society than the paltry amount they take in welfare. >> okay. a question in the front row. >> thank you. my name is -- [inaudible] i'm an economist. thank you very much for the presentation. especially for the -- i couldn't agree more. in spite of the overwheking economic and cultural of the benefit -- everywhere across the world. how is it it the anti-immigration arguments find a for the fertile soil. you look at the experience of other countries, i'm sure you have done in the book, but can we draw any lessons from the way the country say europe or canada the way they have dealt with the myth in order have an immigration policy which makes culture sense. second question there's one myth where i couldn't agree with you. you said that the myth of the immigrants have a lot of children. i think that the myth that cannot be refuted because they a lot of more children. it's one of the economic benefits that immigrants bring younger population and generation or so. they have more children, and bring in influx of younger people to the nation and to the economy. that's a plus. >> great points you make. first, answer ting has to do with fear. any community that is faced faced faced with an influx of newcomers will be afraid. it will rationize that fear with arguments of the kind we tend hear because you proved to them those arguments are not true. you prove they are myth. you throw at them the statistics and historical experience. and yet that fear remains. i think it has to do with fear. that's how stereo type were born. you know, at the time of the irish immigration, the idea was irishmen were drunk. that was a stereo type. all italians were mobster. there may have been one or two but not all italians were mobsters. not all catholicses were repressive. we embrace them because they are about religion and values. catholic were hated a few centuries ago. they saw him as european repressers so today we have the stereotype that his pans -- hispanics are different and worse. we begin to embrace indians because of contribution to silicon valley. they were also the object of stereo type. about children, it's definitely coming down. even in europe. there's no question. it's slightly higher that night native rate in europe it's about two children. here it's 60% higher than the native rate. but the tendency is coming down. that's also the case in latin america. and incidentally one more point about the previous question connected to this. the average age for immigrants is 27. the average age for americans is 42. so again, that's a -- welfare state is what we really care about. clearly that's a plus. that's more years of con fry biewtion to the system. and in term of taking money out of the system, of the tran for system, only 1.2% of immigrant over 65 against 12% for the u.s. population. so, again, if those arguments were real, then, you know, those fears should be dispelled by the evidence. i think there's fear at the heart of this. it's very difficult to dispel. >> about why the rest of civilization and society doesn't take up the well known argument and fact and economics. i mean, i wish that immigration was the only instance of that. , i mean, there are so many economic notions that have been known for quite a long time that are not taken up in the main stream society. intellectually, i think we won the debate about free trade. when you ask the common person, you know, do you think we should be able to import goods and social securities from china without any kind of government. it's no, it takes american job. of course there should be barrier. i think the notion goes beyond this to the conception that there is a fixed pie. i think people have this ingrained notion there's a fixed pie of wealth. a fixed pie of jobs, a fixed pie of x, y, z. having more people come to the country will decrease the amount available us. i think it's a wrong headed notion. it's something we have been fighting against every sphere of public policy. for a long period of time when it has to go economics. and we have a lot of work do with immigration especially but numerous other issues. >> we have time for one more question if there is one. we'll take right there. >> hi. my name is mike. i'm a retired foreign service office with the agency for national development. i was previously the officer in charge of central america. we looked at the lot of issues in central america. and basically i looked in your book and i was going through the idea that most of the poor people do -- maybe within central america. i read in your prolowing mostly poor central americans and mexicans as, you know, in effect the drug war going on. this is a key issue. we have disease in central america right now for coffee plants called coffee rust. it's going impact about 3 million workers in central america that work in that sector. there is talking about 40 to 50% loss of the sector and loss of their employment. if they can move north, i think they may. i'm not sure it's on anybody's radar screen. it you are right you won't move north. they'll basically change their area of location within central america. that will also have impact. i would like to get your perspective on what could happen. it happened in the past. that's why we have different type of migration from central america before inspect is pending and coming up. >> well, i mean, it's not inconceivable that a small percentage of them will try to move north and eventually come to the united -- united states but they indicate they will mostly my grate within the area. if that what happened in central america. even in mexico. it's something people don't talk about all that much. i know, the experience of my home country of peru very well. it's a country in the last fifty years has seen a huge amount of migration internally. so much so everything has been impacted. the story incidentally is no different than the united states. domestic immigration is four times larger than international immigration for the united states. so it's just a pattern that seems to be repeating itself everywhere. so i don't know exangtly what will happen with the people. if we can go by historical precedent, it's very likely that that will not have a huge impact in term of international migration. of course, it would probably have an specific domestically in term of the economy. that will take us to the whole issue of the central american economy, institution, drug war, and all of that. it's a different issue. >> yeah. a few hispanics in the research, they looked from 2002, 2010, the increase in origin of different countries of my grants. central america was 16.5%. it was off the charts compared to any other origin. the next was 9% for south america. mexican country of origin was like 2% increase. something is happening. ethan, you map it out here incredibly difficult to come. but people still coming. and from central america, they're really coming. >> it's because central america is not doing that well and mexico has been doing better the last few years. which is why i predicted that a few years from now, the debate in the u.s. will be where are we going to get immigrants from? the mexicans don't want to come anymore. mexico is growing in 4% a year. i think it that will go to 6% and enough to ash absorb the new work force. they will be comingless and less and probably replaced by central americas for awhile until they take out the reform they need and get rid of the drug war which is devastating the whole area, by the way. in which case we need find them. i don't know where. it's going to be an issue. it will be, believe me, it will be an issue. there being recorded. twenty years from now mexicans won't want to don't united states anymore. >> and, you know, it's interesting, since 2008 of lawful immigrants coming to the united states, asians have outnumbered the hispanics. now we use hispanic broadly. i'm an american, so i use it central and south americans. asians have outnumbered them in term of the lawful migration system. and the gulf is getting wider every and every year. asia is the new source going forward of immigrants to the united states. it's going the new historical dynamic. so i predict my kid, when they are adults. they will look back and say, alex, why were so many people upset about his cantic or mexican immigrant. it's absurd. these indians or, you know, these southeast asians. they are different. they are taking our jobs this time. that's when i'm going to hear, i think, in the future not only from my kids if i have done a poor job educating them but also people in society. >> it's fascinating and encouraging discussion. i hope our friends on capitol hill pay attention to the points made today and read out of the book on sale here at the discount for all of you interested. thank you all for coming. please, join me in thanking our great speakers today. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. before we get started, i want to tell everybody a quick story. as much you know, we have you can only come here as a guest. we have the golden rule one time. today depack depack is going break his own record. it's at fourth time. we make an exemption for him. the amount of people come out and how great he is. and we were delighted to learn of the incredible bock that was coming out, and to see his other half, or as some people would say, your better half. [laughter] anyway, redelighted to have both of them here. deepak and tonight also sanjay are going to impress us with an incredible fascinating story. we're going do a 45 minute conversation followed by about fifteen minute of audience questions. and for those people are standing. there's about ten seats in the first two rows. please feel free to come to the first duorows as there are seats in the first two rows. we don't want you to stand. so tell us, what was it like growing in india? how did that play in to your future but different careers? >> so growing up in india was an absolutely enchanting experience. we had the most loving parents, we had uncles and aunts, amazing grandparents. each one of them was an amazing story teller. growing up, we participated in the ancient ritual. every few weeks an uncle would arrive, an aunt would stay with us. our grandmother lived with us for many years. and hearing stories from them was absolutely intoxicating. it was a vibrant colorful experience. i can't ever forget it. deepak, what role did growing up in india play on your future career? >> sanjay say, we grew up with stories. our mother told us stories. mostly from spiritual literature from the mythological literature, and it was many, many years later i realized that everyone's life here is a story, you know. there's a story with us standing on the streets 2,500 years ago and lot of traffic on the street. and it was crowded even 2,500 years ago. and waiting for the camels to, you know, clear the traffic and -- [inaudible] explain life to me. that points to the char yacht passing by at the moment. and we have three divisions. life is like that. the will have karma, memory, and desire. and this is we experience our thoughts. we tell the story. we lived the story. we call it life. we were fortunate, as he said, to live in a household of stories. then we became doctors, and we realized that every person that comes to see us comes to see us because they have a story. you know, that have the tradition we grew up. we got stories from our families but also our parents. and also from my father about his experiences with his patients who were his best teachers and we learned later that was the same for us as well. >> and three -- [inaudible] i'm going pass along the mike phone. i know, some people are able to hear the microphone. there's three more streets up front and i think more in the back. >> all the stories had a lesson. what that instilled in us was the core values of growing up in india. the principles that we now -- hopefully passed on to our own kids. and now to our grandchildren. >> and your father was an incredible individual, one of the most famous doctors in india. what do you think he provided you for both of your future journeys? >> i have a dhapt in the book called blindfold a day. and i -- it's a true story. we were started in saint columbus high cool. e were -- hindi with an irish accent. after the a match on sunday, i was reading reader's digest. i fell asleep and woke up 45 minutes later and i'm blind. i cannot see. i nudged deepak and he's next to me and i said i can't see. he raised his hand in front of me. as if he's going poke my eye. i didn't believe. then he knew official that i was blind. he started crying. he said i have one brother and he's gone blind. [laughter] and then we were staying with our -- suddenly. suddenly. we were staying with our fathers younger brother, and he took us to the military hospital. they had no idea what was going on. they were using the term hysterical blindness. i was a 12-year-old kid who was a great athlete, a good student, and there was no reason for me to fake it. finally they got ahold of my father who was 300 miles away on a military jeep in a field trip. this is the art of medicine. he said tell me everything that happened to sanjay in the last two months. he's been fine. he's been perfectly. tell me everything. did he have any injuries? any new medicine. sure enough i had a laceration from a cricket. a week later, and i received stitches. so he put -- any antibiotic. did he get a tetanus shot the answer was yes. he ain't biotic and a shot. he said what kind of tetanus shot. this was 1961. antitetanus zero. and the app was antitetanus zero. our father was a cardiologist a specialist in heart disease but ably brilliant and said to the doctor he's having a rare id owe -- idiosyncretic give him masses doses of steroids. so they did that, and after that i could see gray and finally see deepak. it was an amazing experience. that's when i decided to become a doctor like our father. i told this story to professors of ophthalmologist. they are bedazzled. they said oh my god. such a rare reaction in 1961. >> here is another story. and this is when he was? england. my father and my mother. we were staying with our uncles. i was six he was maybe close to three and a half. my father was at eden eden burr roy and passed his exam he became a member of the royal college of physicians. in those days know e-mail. we got a telegram from england that he passed his exams. and so my grandfather, his father, took us both out that evening to see a movie. i still remember the movie, i don't know if you do. -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> then we went to a carnival they took us out for dinner. then in the middle of the night, we were woken up to the wailing of women crying. my grandfather had died. he skyed of a heart attack that -- died of a heart attack that evening. the next day they took him to the cree -- the same uncle he's talking about. he used interesting remarks and said what is a man, what is human being one day taking the children out to see a movie and a carnival, the next day he comes back as a bunch of ashes. for a 6-year-old to see someone and disappeared completely. he started losing his skin. his skin started peeling like a snake. he had sores everywhere. and they took him to see lot of doctors. and nobody could make the diagnoses. until my father was in england. remember, it take ace while to get the information. he made a diagnose is from opening land. he said he's feeling vulnerable. so he's losing his skin. he's feeling insecure about what happened. and then he actually he was going stay there longer, but he didn't. he took a boat and two week later he arrived in bomb dosh bombay. his skin came back. in hindsight, i'm thinking, you know, i wondered about this. if it was the mind body connection. a long time ago and my obsession with the meaning of death. >> bril -- brilliant. you have a fascinating funny story. i was hoping you could share it with us and also the qerks of how that really helps start this lifelong bond between both of you. >> right. so those of you who are sitting in the front, if you have met deepak before will realize and appreciate he has a dimple in the chin. i call it douglas chin. and with great pride, i want to tell you that i'm responsible for that. [laughter] so i was about nine years of age, and deepak was 11. i was a very good shot with bow and arrow, one our uncles gave him a gift of a bb gun as a birth certificate day present. bsh birthday present. i took a can of cherry blossom shoe polish and knocking it. and deepak comes and stands next to me and said shoot. he said what are you saying? i have a gun. he said you never -- remember the story of will -- [inaudible] i'm your older brother. i'm telling you to shoot. so i was -- i shot and missed the can and it hit him in the chin. so he said you know what? we have to go home, mom is there, and our grandmother is there. stay us with, and he said, i'm going to say i tripped and there was a piece of barbed wire on the ground and it anybodied me. i said, deepak, that's a lie. he said listen, mommy has been telling the story of ancient epic spiritual test. in it there's the guard, the guard, and younger brother, and i am -- i'm the older brother and you're the younger. you have to listen to everything i say. barbed wire. so we go home, he's bleeding weab my mother comes out. she cleans and said what happened? so i said tripped. there was a piece of barbed wire. [laughter] and that night our father return, he would come home often at 9:00 in night seeing patients in the hospital, teaching. we would wait for him for dinner. we were sitting for dinner. enhe said what happened to deepak. i said he tripped on a barbed wire. two days later there's a lump here. my grandmotherred a demon and people come from all over india to see you, and you have not met the diagnoses in your own son. there's probably a piece of rue barbed wire stuck in there. go get him an x-ray. it's the summer holiday. off he goes in the morning for an x-ray. i'm facing ther have ran data. and every two minutes i go, mom, did they call from the hospital? she said, you know, you're worried about this. just as she said that. the phone rang. and my father was on the phone and said impress what we found? a little pellet. the surgeon is going extract it. that's why he's got that little dimple in the chin. [laughter] >> it seems the key lesson is the good chart. if he missed a little bit it wouldn't be here; right. and i wouldn't be here to tell you share the story with you. [laughter] >> and moving forward in time, what age did both of you arrive in the u.s.? and what was it a challenge or benefit arriving as two newly immigrants? >> i came two years before sanjay, at this time, there was vietnam war was coming -- before watergate. at love you won't remember that because you weren't born. there was a shortage of physicians in this country. we had to go outside india to take the exam to come here, because india had -- [inaudible] banned the exam if. further more if you passed the exam you couldn't create the country with more than $8 foreign exchange regulation. you know the story. we had an uncle in the navy who was england at this time. he lend or gave me a gift of $100. i had $108. which if you're from india is a very us a push awe pushes number. all of that. and we have do do something auspicious. i spent it at gambling. when arrived in new york, jfk, i had nothing but in those days no cell phone, you to make calls and put money. but has been told me you can make the collect call. so i made collect call to the hospital in new jersey. they were so desperate they sent a helicopter. there was a shortage of doctors at that time. i my first experience of the united states was riding over manhattan in a helicopter looking at the manhattan skyline this time. and totally being wonder struck. i said this is manhattan? i want to go disney land. [laughter] shortly thereafter we arrived. i was joined by the nurse who was in the emergency room. i could take a nap. i went to the dorm twenty minutes later she called many and said dr., chopra, we have an extraction. i have no idea what the word meant. i said you bet i'll be there. [laughter] and bounded down the stairs. she showed me to the room with the dead person. lots of machines, no people. in india you see only people and no machines there. and so i looked at the patient, i looked at her, and made my first diagnose is. i said he's dead. she said i told you. you had an excavation. if he's dead why do you need a doctor? and she looked at me and she said, pronounce him. and said this is a bizarre statement for me. your body, your soul is leave the body to the lady otherwise known as md. i pronounce -- then i realized like everybody else in our profession. we have ritual listen to the heart, check the pupil, so we had learned english in india, with which is a little similar to british english, where the words are in torch. said to the nurse, may have a torch. [laughter] [laughter] and she was looking at me very strangely. she looked at the other nurse and said she wants a torch. the other nurse sideses me up-and-down and said maybe he wants to do a cremation. talk about culture shock. [laughter] six months later i was totally at home. >> what was your first experience? >> we came -- my wife is also a physician. we were classmates at the same medical school. a very competitive medical school. 10,000 people would sit for an entrance exam. after you go there and premed. they would windle it down to nineteen. have an interview. in the book i write i was first -- my wife was first. she's a pediatrician and brilliant. out of 10,000 people. i was also first. i was first on the waiting list. [laughter] think about it. that's 25 out of all of india. so we had deepak had already been in the states for two years. we heard stories and occasionally we could call him and talk open the long distance call. we decided to come to tbons first before going to new jersey, the same hospital. so we stayed with key deepak and his wife for several dais. we had less culture shock. for me one of the most interesting things that happened on day one of the internship. i had already decided i wanted to be a gastro entrolings. and the person giving the lengture was a world famous professor. located in new jersey. he's about to give the talk within and there's a medical student from rutgers. he's sit ising in the front row and got the feet propped up in the air. and that would have been sack religious in india. that was culture student. a student sitting and his shoes are facing the world famous professor. we would yes, sir, no , sir, good morning, sir. and he gives a brilliant talk. i'm mesmerized and talk notes. the medical student raises his hands and said i have a question. so the doctor said, sure. hoe asked the question and he gave a brilliant answer and the student got the quizzical look on the face and said i don't buy that. and i said, wow, what an amazing country. you can disagree with a professor we would never conceive or think about doing something like that. to me that was the first episode of culture shock. the other was we were told as interns that when you leave the hospital you're not on call. call the hospital operator, call the operator and tell them him or her you're leaving the hospital. that you're signed out to whoever is on call. so the second day of the internship, one of the other doctors happened also to be from india, said sanjay can i have a dime? i said sure. i give him a dime. i see him go to the pay phone and he's calling the new jersey bell operator. doctor, this is dr. rajiv. i'm leaving the hospital. then he hung up. [laughter] [laughter] >> absolutely brilliant. >> deepak, how did you manage to basically educate a population, help change conservative western medicine to an equally important but different way to address some of the same issues most important and single handedly create a field of mind, body, medicine. you are one of the greatest contributors. you came to the states in the 1970. grow in different direction. he goes to harvard and you didn't stop with the per sis tens. and basically change the belief of what medicine was viewed in the states. how? several factor in hindsight. i specialized i did end crinology. it's the study of here mono. then -- hormone. for a short while at the va hospital i was rotating under the dr. see more, who was the president of the end crin society at that time. he was a neuroend crinnologist. he was just like he said. we had brilliant mentor. he was absolutely brilliant and identifying hormones we didn't know too much about at that time. hormone in the hype thalamus like stimulating growth factor. i had a degree at the time -- colleague at her time. later on went 0 to become the chief of brain chemistry at -- [inaudible] she's now at georgetown university. she identified something called. tide -- [inaudible] he boss won the nobel prize for identifying neurochemical. one day candace said to me, these things that we're looking at, because there was a new technique. the dr. was a va physician and won the nobel prize for discovering the technique. all we did as fellows and residents keep measuring the chemicals. and one day she said to me, these are the molecules of emotion. so i don't know if it was a best seller called molecule of emotion. i wrote the forward to it. it was a huge book. nobody had used that term. it was a little bit of insight that whatever happened in the mind is registered in the brain. you can't have a mental event without a brain representation. our could you? after the brain is what made the event. the brain representation is in the form of electrochemical event. there's nothing that happens in the brain that is not registered in the body. these chemicals, neuro peptides. the education centuries presentation i have a gut feeling made sense. it was molecule of emotion. he would tell you the gut makes the same chemical the brain does. this is a scientific background. the body of information. and the information is -- [inaudible] it's from consciousness. any physician will tell you you have two patients who get the same treatment who see the same doctor, have the same ill p -- illness and different outcome. the prognosis wouldn't be called proking in sis is -- [inaudible] people on this side and people on this side. and you can accurately make a diagnose is. you can never accurately make a prognosis. it's like the temperature in new york today is 62. because the average temperature in new york is 62. it doesn't make sense. by saying your income is $100,000 because you come from manhattan and the average and the median income -- it doesn't tell me anything about you. i was thinking to myself why do patients respond unpredictably? even though we can strategically get some idea. just like the individual particle you can't predict when it will pop in and out of the vacuum. no individual event in the universe has a cause. nobody would accept that in the medical journal. i started to write them in a popular book. nobody would accept that. this is one of the strange things i read an ad in "the new york times" by vanity publisher called vanity press. not vanity advantage press. i paid $5,000 and got 100 books published myself. it was called "creating help; mind, body connection." nobody had used that expression mind body connection. somebody convinced. i had a call from a publisher and it was the same publisher of today's book. okay. [inaudible] next thing i get a call from an agent in new york. i call -- i get a call from jackie kennedy and said we want to get you for a publisher. what i found i could make a case for the public they couldn't make a case for my own profession. that started in a sense the movement. >> yes. this incredible -- [inaudible] how children succeed. where do you think both of you had the same success -- [inaudible] are >> was tin stilled we were taught to be daring, to not to worry about failure. in adversity is the greater success. one of my favorite quotes is from -- [inaudible] a great danish policy for. he once said to dare is to lose one's feeting momentarily. not to dare is to lose one's self. t a beautiful quote. i think deepak was being modest when he started to talk about how he launched to this. i thought it was very gut sincerity and courageous when he embraced mind body connection. he has a thriving practice in boston. there were medical students who were rotating. one day he reads a book, -- joseph campbell. no it was anthony. goaf is the other. follow your -- yeah. >> yeah. >> that's joseph campbell. he read another book. by british anthony campbell. >> okay. >> "seven state of consciousness" on the back cover there was if you're interested about meditation call the number. he went and learned meditation with his wife. he came to our home, in new -- newtown massachusetts. told my wife and me i have been meditating. it's the most powerful life changing event. and i said to him, good for you. [laughter] i wasn't interested. my -- i had a concept of chanting and monks in robe. my wife, a pediatrician, absolutely brilliant learned it. i noticed amazing changes in her. for about a month then i said to the teacher meditation. i said i have three concerns. the first, i'm in a position as associate chief of medicine at the oxford medical center to occasionally reprimand brilliant doctors. i don't want to become mellow. i'm playing in a tennis tournament. i'm in the finals. i'm very competitive. i don't want to be just a applauding every passing shot my opponent hits. number three, i enjoy some scotch. i don't want to give that up. and he said, listen, in term of the scotch. most people start to drink less. in term of the tennis, i'll be back. and he comes back with a pamphlet called the team program and excellence in action. testimonials by olympics diving champion. i said that's good. but i will win. i said i can't guarantee that. if you lose you won't feel that bad. i said, okay, what about brilliant people at harvard medical school and disciplining? >> he said you'll be more assertive but from a silent level. and i learned meditation. it was the most powerful thing i have done. now i tell my colleagues and medical students as interviewed in the "boston globe." give us some piece of advice. i talked about meditation. the best thing, i think, is saying you should med -- meditate once a day. if you don't have time to do that, you should meditate twice a day. [laughter] >> it's not really clear what happened. there are so many circumstances that the story is true. but also at the certain point what happened i was in a practice with other physicians, cardiologists, et. and i started to notice they were embarrassed about being my colleague, and i realized i was -- at that time an assistant professor bu medical school. i got the feeling they were -- [inaudible] and i don't want to embarrass them. so at that time, i met another friend of mine who long since passed and invited me to california, and i left. so, you know, these are things in hindsight something was going on. i was very restless and, you know, they responded. >> just a comment. back then, it used to be called alternative medicine. as it's as though you western medicine or the alternative thing you could do to help yourself. and now even at harvard medical school we have complimentary medicine. deepak gives a talk every year i direct with my colleague of mine. about twelve years ago, the chairman of medicine at the medical center say we should invite your tbroar give a keynote. and see if he could talk about spirit -- spiritualty and healing in medicine. i said i wouldn't feel comfortable with that. that's like nepotism. you can inprovide -- invite him. he's been coming for the last ten or twelve years doing a session about duo, two and a half years. more recently -- [inaudible] i sit on the front row on the side and proud of my brother. and my colleague introduces dpee key -- deepak. >> when did you think outside harvard across the united states and also across the world. whether do you think mind body medicine will be on equally standing and more standing. most of the people here are strongly attracted to mind body medicine. when did you think it will get the respect it deserves? because it's affecting so many people so positively. when does it send in the curriculum and you mentioned harvard? .. >> as we find a the scientific findings, then there will be clinical studies. we are looking at the genome and the recent studies that have been sent and all of this is happening right now. the thing that people realize is that your body is active. and so when you look at this, it proves the utility and you can't stop the utility. so this kind of inside has been very important as we do political studies. we have done double-blind studies. so there are combining factors and the fact is that that are center we give credit for anyone who takes a mind and body education at our center. and this is an important part of integrated medicine. >> this is actually happening at harvard medical school. i am humbled and privileged to say that the faculty deans this education important. but under the jurisdiction of the department of continuing education, we have to 25 courses, distance learning, some have over 100 online modules. and we reach out to help the allied professionals throughout the world. a couple of years ago we had a seminar on psychotherapy and he did this on wisdom. was actually breathtakingly beautiful. the next day he did a seminar on compassion. richard davidson is considered one of the top 50 best scientists in the world. he would say that i don't know the answer to that. now, richard davidson has said that this is true and he has done some studies at harvard. not only do they have the subjective experience for these creative and better relationships, but we see anatomical changes in the brain. we do functional mris and we can see changes in different parts of the brain. so that is happening and that is the concept. we have a position at harvard medical school and he talks about the neurobiology of leadership. when you have time, read about it. the one of the most fascinating syndromes to me and medicine is phantom limb syndrome. so some have an amputation and they experience pain. but here is a study. some of these experiments involving phantom limb syndrome, next to him a stranger is sitting in massaging his right leg. nuance is he gets a lead the lead of his pain by witnessing this. so we are looking at the medicine and technology, now catching up with the subjective experience that people have had for thousands of years. one of my favorite things is the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. >> i want to give the people the opportunity to ask questions. since we are also being filmed by c-span and we are broadcasting, if you could just wait until microphone gets you the people on television can here. again, we want to start with people that are sending and we want to give as many as possible a chance. i also want to thank someone who is one of my favorite people and that is maggie. doing a great job getting everyone here. we get someone standing up all the way in the back, please raise your hands if you have a question. >> thank you. >> what are the obstacles and is it's very responsive, how do you find the monetary basis, especially with children and others in the financial business of medicine. >> as you go on to that, have you and your colleagues ever viewed it as western medicine being complementary to mind and body medicine? >> well, yes. >> the technology that is used is basically growing. the technology is basically catching up what has been done for thousands of years, treating people well for a long time. >> that is correct. but let me make a distinction here. i am the beneficiary of a right total hip. i had daily nocturnal pain. i didn't know better, i would think that i had prostate cancer. i saw the best surgeon and that is by the way just seven weeks ago. and we could go i played nine holes of golf. so i would challenge anyone into taking medicine to say if someone pneumonia, you need the right medications. you probably need a good orthopedic surgeon. so western medicine does amazing things that we should not forget about. i have a patient that had a liver transplant. so complementary and integrative medicine has a major role in preventive medicine. how do we prevent obesity and depression? there is, in my mind, a sort of limit to it. and i preface this by saying that i disagree. i had arthroscopic knee surgery and suddenly my knee was swollen. it was a beautiful day in boston. and he they said sanjay, you had this and my knee was really swollen. and then she got out of the car and she kicked her foot in the air to see how good it was. so the next day i had a little hiatus and i called the acupuncturists early in the morning and i went to see her. and she did the acupuncture and you can compare one knee to the other. and i called home and my wife is not there. so my wife is going to come home after doing some shopping. went to the country club and played nine holes of golf. and i agree with much of what you have said. but i want to answer your question. i want to ask you about remediation and how does this practice. this means the disease that has been the result of medical treatment. 80% of pharmaceuticals are of optional and marginal benefit. which means it can make a bit of a difference except for some side effects so in between the most common heart surgery is part of this. the second most common procedure for heart is angioplasty. it doesn't prolong life or stabilize it more than 3% of people. these are alarming statistics everywhere. back surgery, 98% is useless. hysterectomy, 95% is useless. we are talking about huge amounts of money that are spent on procedures. and the neurological diagnosis would be made with precision. if you don't walk out with a cat scan or mri, you are lucky. because no one has the ability to do it. so we have what we call health reform that is not health reform. it is insurance reform and has nothing to do with health reform. most of the expenditure is end-of-life care. i just said that i am not going to die in the hospital. i'm not going to have any of these resuscitative procedures. i have been in community hospitals were the same standards don't apply. and i have seen doctors talking about an aberration in electrolytes, which would cause a problem in the patient would die. so a lot of what we call prolongation is elongation of style. this has been a huge problem and i have discussed it with politicians and have even brought it up to the president. but we have a system. they have a system for every congressman in washington. every business is either lobbyists or military industrial so what when we think that our country makes money? they go to dubai and the trade, and we have huge problems when the incentive for treatment becomes an influence. if you go to a baker, what is he going to tell you i'm not saying that you shouldn't have chemotherapy, i'm asking everyone here to be a difficult patient. you will know more than the average medical provider. [applause] [applause] >> icy pace patients who develop the symptoms to who died of liver failure confuted spirit if you have acute liver failure, you better pray that you get a transplant. and every single year the medical literature can result in acute liver failure. 1 billion people in the world have asked every single patient about what you think and so what are you taking? the list goes on and on. it's like, i say, how much are you paying for that. i am paying out of pocket every month. and just because it is natural doesn't mean that it is safe. hurricane katrina, others that have happened, the tornadoes that they are a part of nature. so we have to have the ability to apply the same standards as we should that we do to complementary and integrative medicine as well. >> this is a discussion that needs to take place. we have the ability to talk about this. >> could we get someone up on the stairs? someone who needs strong supporters? anyone? could we get someone right behind the cameraman? >> yes, what do you think of this? >> well, this is a very good question. i don't know if you want to go into the whole story. the guy was ambushed i was ambushed by richard dawkins, the preeminent militant atheist of our time. we were talking of the conversation that we had. and then i was in a movie and if you want to check it out, there are a million people out there. the reason they ridiculed me was a shift in consciousness. .. wonder, by the way, what is healing? why do certain people in fact, you know, it's -- you have many inflammation disorders, including autoimmune diseases. they published study. what is happening by logically. what is happen together people is a return to -- [inaudible] a return to the word healing or the -- it means the same thing. they have bilogically what we learned in when we go to medical school, the first lesson we learn. one is in inflammation. the second body protecting us. if you injury yourself you need the inflammation response. if you have a exaggerated response you have autoimmune, allergies, all type of things. in fact, exaggerated inflammation is a disclosing factor for diseases. there's a movement among chemotherapy to treat inflammation first. it's a protective response. exaggerated information is not good. what is the healing response in a return to the baseline of i did -- dynamic nonchange in the change. it occurred to me the people getting better, what the treatment was. weather it was meditation or [inaudible] even massage or deep hypnosis, or bio feedback or what i like to call bioregulation, because we are all of these devices that can monitor that. they were going to a baseline state of homeostasis. okay when is the healing response. when we go to medical school, because we are so oriented to specialization, say this is a gastrotrolings. not feeling, not thinking. at the lem of being. at that level, evolution has designed us for self-repair and self-regulation nap is what is happening. it's a long answer, but i try to give it to you. [applause] >> we're going take two more questions. the lady here. one lady in the back. no, no, that lady back there. when it takes three questionses. they are dedicated. first here. both of you have been successful in life in your own respective ways. you each talked about being willing to take on the risk. so i siewm sometimes you've also had failure along the way. i wondered what some of your most impactive failures were. and how they informed your later path to success. >> i'll let deepak go first. [laughter] >> i washinged out -- walked out of a fellowship because i was asked a question that i didn't know the answer to. the question was how many mill -- milligrams of -- get in the 59 paper. and i said to my supervisor, my professor, i said, i think it was 2.3 million grams. but i'm not sure. let me look it up. in about twenty people. he said you should have the information in your head. i took the briefcase and dumped it on his head and said so you it in your head now. [laughter] i walked out of my fellowship. he called my wife and said your husband blew his career. he's finished. my wife was pregnant with our son. they were looking for a emergency room physician. i have no experience but a medical license. i need the money. he said, i'll train you. so for one year, i worked in moonlighting, basically. i did feel like a great failure at that time. i felt responsible for my wife, for my children, for the fact that, you know, i joined a press pretentious fellowship, walked out. it took me a long time to realize that as long as i lived for the approval of my peers and my spear yo yours, -- superior i would not be able to dare to dream. it took my awhile to realize if i wanted to explore what i thought was intuitively something that needed to be explored. now we talk about it. i said i have to be independent of criticism and flattery. it took me a awhile to recover from that. it took a whole year. >> so i remember in the early '80s i signed on one decade and my goal in life. and i put professional, physical, spiritual, family, social. and next to professional i wrote on the bunch of goals. one of them was i want to be a single author. have a book on disorders of the liver. i burn the midnight oil. i stopped playing tennis which was my passion. there was no such thing as google. i had to go to the medical library, which has the largest collection of medical books in the world. and got basement and the sub basement and dig up the original articles published in 1970. and then i wrote the preface, i wrote an introduction, table of content then three chapters. then i sent it to my publishers. and four of them said thank you very much. but we're not interested. we already have a major textbook in hep tolings. the first one from new york, actually, wrote back and said sanjiv i like your writing style. i would like to come boston and take you out to lunch. he said we're not interested in your book. i said you're kidding you came from new york. but we like your writing style, and we would like you to write or edit a book on gastrointestinal, which is called second year medical student. i had a thing, i don't know deepak said it or one my uncles said it. in every adverse i are is the feat of greater success. i said i'm going get two books. i'm still going get my disorders of the liver published, by good publishers and edit a second textbook. i invited a colleague of mine, and i said, roger we willed dit the book. we'll invite the entire boston mafia. i discovered ways in which it doesn't work. [laughter] then he was 57. his company burned down. his factory burned down. and a lot of people commiserated with him. he said why are you doing that? all of my mistakes have been burned. now i can start anew. the value were instilled in us when we were young. >> the two ladies in the front. and -- [inaudible] [inaudible] patients from the croinic lyme disease community were suffering greatly. we were wondering perhaps we can't -- we e can't reach homeostasis with the western medicine we have tried. we're not getting well. >> yeah. i'm sorry, i'm not the right person to be answering your question. my specialty is liver disease and hep tolings. i think the question could be best asked of a rheumatologies and rheumatologist who also embraces inte greative medicine in the mind body connection. that would be the best fit. maybe deepak can help. [laughter] >> there are integrated oncologist and rheumatologists. integrative infect use disease specialists. dr. andrew has life all of these people if you go on his website you'll get more information. i'm not the right person to answer that question. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> i know i'm asking a lot, but would you lead us in a group meditation? [laughter] [applause] >> did you meditate this morning? on your own? [inaudible] there was a wonderful saying you should meditate once a day. if you don't have time to do that you should med date twice a day. maybe deepak lhd lead the group. here is something. if you're not already familiar. tell me if you are familiar with the 21 demonstration challenge. please raise your hands. that's about i would say 15% of the people in this room. every three months the center along -- we offer this meditation on it. and the last time 700,000 people med dated together with us for three weeks. 21 day. i was traveling the world in moscow, korea, and latin america and said how many people have heard of the 21-day challenge? and 15% of people raised their hands just like this. i want to know if you go to chopra center, meditation.com. free of charge. you will participate with the largest experiment in meditation that has ever been done in the history of civilization. [applause] there's never been. i want to make the opportunity of telling you this. you can register now for free. that's the kind of movement we need to start to create a critical mass of awareness. i'll lead this and then -- [inaudible] >> let me -- after the meditation is done, everybody needs to remain seated for two minutes. because san jiff -- sanjiv and key prak have a media appearance. please, remain seated. [inaudible] ly start you on something if you start your day with it. your day will go a little better. okay. so close your eye. and put your awareness in your breath. and let your mind settle in to your breath. let your mind settle in to your breath. don't try to manipulate it. allow your mind to set to your breath. bring your awareness to your heart, and ask yourself who am i? and allow any sensations, images, feelings, or thoughts to spontaneously surface. question? who am i? [silence] [silence] now ask yourself the question, what do i want? again, allow any sensation, image, feeling, oar -- or thought to upon respondent usely arrive. what do i want? [silence] one final question. what is my purpose, how can i serve? what is my purpose, how can i serve? again, allow any question, allow any sensation, image, feeling, or thought to emerge. what is my purpose? how can i serve? [silence] a reminder you don't go searching for the answer. it's deep in your soul. just relax in to your body. and please open your eyes. okay. as i said, there are many kinds of meditation. this is reflection. there's self-awareness, there's conscious-choice making. there's knowing the difference between the perception and the actual -- if you just do three or four minute of reflection, living the question. first of all, you'll experience -- [inaudible] meaningful coincidence in response of the questions you asked. let's do this every day. your day will be much better. thank you. [applause] risk their own lives. hosted by the cato institute in washington d.c., this is an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome everybody to the cato institute. i am the director here at cato. since the beginning of this year immigration has become a burning public policy issue in washington. for the first time in decades the united states is considering a major reform in the way that it deals with immigrants. the ensuing debate and the possibility of reform is welcome but the fact is politicians are arriving very late to this issue. and that is because in this country there has long been a wide gap between restrictive laws and the reality of immigration. there is a gap that reflects the economic and social fact that there are millions of americans and millions of immigrants from mexico and elsewhere who wish to work together in this country and engage in peaceful voluntary exchange but are not legally allowed to do so. and that inconsistency has produced a lot of the problems associated with illegal immigration. many serious problems and some imagined. the prospects of reform have also stimulated the debate about economic and cultural issues surrounding immigration and its impact and it's a debate that cuts across party lines and it's one that has generated a lot of of -- how would a possible legalization of millions of unauthorized immigrants and the creation of a guestworker program affect wages and jobs? what does the evidence say about the extent to which immigrants are assimilating into american culture in recent decades? are immigrants and net drain or contributors to the welfare state and did they mainly come here to work or to get state and if it's? for that matter the political impact of immigration is something that has been debated. what should we expect from increased legal immigration in that regard first is the status quo? these are legitimate questions that go to the heart of one's worldviews on such issues as in equality and fairness the proper role of the state in regulating business and labor, cultural and national identity issues, and fiscal policy just to name a few issues so it's no wonder the sudden interest on the part of republicans and democrats to address this issue has caused heated exchanges exaggerated claims come to and some amount of nastiness. that is why i am pleased today to be able to host a forum for a book that takes a balanced look at a wide range of issues that are being discussed today. the book comcast "global crossings" immigration, civilization and america by alvaro vargas llosa comes at a perfect moment and it puts immigration in historical context showing how so much of the debate today is not actually new in american politics and that we can be guided by a lot of american experience, long american experience. it's better to let the author talk to us about that. my good friend alvaro vargas llosa is the senior fellow at the center for global prosperity at the independent institute who publishes -- who has published this book. he has been a nationally syndicated columnist for the "washington post" writers group. he has been the author of numerous books including the che guevara risk and the guide to perfect latin american idiot which was a bestseller in the spanish edition in latin america. he is a big what has in his columns that appear throughout latin america every week and has contributed to leading newspapers in the united states. he has been a board member of the "miami herald" publishing company and an op-ed page editor and columnist for the "miami herald." i could go on and on that i would say one more thing. he has also been one of the great champions of liberty in latin america, very present in all of the most important places on the right side of the issue i believe in with this book i could say in the americas. please help me welcome alvaro vargas llosa. [applause] >> thank you very much ian for that wonderful and generous presentation and thank you to the cato institute for hosting this and alex for being so kind and helping put it together. we have been asked why did i write this book? why was i interested in this topic? and welcome to there are several reasons. perhaps one of them has to do with diet i guess identity problem. i have been called a spaniard in peru. i have then called a pejorative term for south american. i've been called a pakistani in london where i was based for a while and now i m. called spanish, liberian which means spaniard so i don't really know where i belong and who i am but i guess it's probably a good enough reason to explore this important issue today. so let me tell you a little bit about what i do in this book. what i do is i take on all the different myths that i have seen over the years that are really driving this discussion and this debate, including the current discussion in the senate and soon in the house as well. about immigration reform. i won't cover all of that but i will share with you a few and give you my perspective on them and i hope that this will help at least clarify some of the misinformation that is out there it's really quite striking. one first myths and all i am going to say i have heard many people say, people with all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of places. i didn't make any of this up. one argument basically says we are getting the wrong kinds of immigrants and we used to get the right kind of immigrants. i'm not anti-immigration. i'm just against this current type of them a grant that getting today. the answer to that is the united states always got the wrong kind of immigrants. that has always been the case. the variety of immigrants sources and types of immigration that this country has received in the last two centuries, two and half centuries is simply astounding. of course between 1830 in 1880 yes it was mostly northern europeans but between 1880 and 1920 it was all about southern europeans and eastern europeans in central europeans had nothing to do with northern europeans. they look different in the different cultures. they were the mexicans of yesteryear and of course after that you had an and even before that you had people from asia. you have the chinese with with the gold rush and the chinese in the early 20th century and yes you had spent -- hispanics and you had indians after 1965 because of the changes that evolved that triggered an unintended consequence so there has always been the wrong kind of immigrant in united dates. it's simply not true. another important myth says that the u.s. is getting a disproportionate number of immigrants. just this morning on a radio show i heard we are getting more than any other country in the world. they are all wanting to come here and they don't want to go to other countries. again, but this is very silly. about 3% of the world population is made up of first-generation immigrants and illegal immigrants constitute about one sixth of the immigrants that travel from one place to another every year. so the total number of immigrants every year is about 215 and the total number of illegal immigrants about 30 million. the u.s. gets in terms of just illegal immigrants one sixth of 1% of its population so clearly a much smaller proportion than any other country is getting. so again it's not sure that the u.s. is getting a disproportionate number of immigrants. this is a worldwide phenomenon and other countries are relatively getting more immigrants than the united states, undocumented immigrants into the united states. another myth says that the only motive behind immigration is poverty. why should we in the united states solve world poverty? we have enough poor of our own. let us take care of our own and let's not solve world poverty. that is not true. that's not the only motive behind migration and in fact the poorest of the poor almost never migrate from one country to another. they migrate within the borders of their own country. let's take europe. until the 1980s, early 1980s europe was a source of migration of outmigration i mean, people leaving europe and that was a wealthy and prosperous continent before they got into this mess which is a different story. germany, the richest among the rich and europe was exporting half a million people every year until the 1980s. so clearly the motivation for that was not poverty. south korea has a significant number of immigrants or immigrants to come to the united states. that is a rich country. bangladeshi women who are very poor, the poorest among the poor , by great even in asia which is the continent that has the greatest number of migrants every year. so i could go on and on and on. what are the motives? do they very? yes of course great economic conditions are part of the story but you have everything including depressed conditions at home politically institutionally and economically. family ties occupational preference adventure, all sorts of different reasons for migrating. historical ties have a lot to do with it as well. the u.s. has historically been entangled around the world in conflicts and all sorts of exchanges, sometimes friendly and sometimes not so friendly and that is created conditions for permanent migration. there has been a significant bit of immigration to the united states as we all know and that has to do with the involvement in the war at the end of the 19th century and also with the encouragement that the united states gave to filipinos to come to the united states to start including a special program set up after the second world war for filipino notices. all those were signals that the u.s. sent saying it's okay to come. we recognize we are bound together succumb to the united states. mexican migration, the origin of mexican migration it to the united states is not poor mexicans wanting a better life in the united states. it was u.s. business, needing to replace eastern europeans. first japanese japanese workers in an eastern european workers in the early 20th century so they went to mexico and asked for mexican workers and mexican worker started coming to the united states to work particularly in railroad construction. all these historical ties have a lot to do with it as well. another important myth is the fact that there has never been any hostility to immigration in the united states. we have always been a country of immigrants and we have always welcome -- welcomed immigrants. we have always valued people coming from oversees to contribute to the society and again that is not true. there has always been hostility towards immigration and of course it hasn't always taken place exactly in the same way. it's not been as intense but historically it has always been the case that there was significant hostility to immigrants. if you look at what happened in the gold rush, the chinese were the object of vilification at the time. they were frowned upon by all those who were taken native born americans who are taking part in the gold rush. the japanese at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century would office and and -- often undergo tremendous illegal restrictions. they have had to find all sorts of ways to get around the law. in the middle of the 19th century, the whole nativist movement was born with the famous know nothing party were very much hostile towards immigration and they had an impact on the government and generally the outlook of society towards immigration. so it has been the case and that is why we have seen throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century and evolving situation from the point of view of how the law address immigration. that has always been i guess an evolution towards more or a change towards more and more restriction. that reflected the mindset, the mindset that was relatively hostile. not everybody of course partook in this. not everybody was reflected in these attitudes. there has always been a force for pro-immigration opinion in the united states but what i'm trying to get at is this is not something necessarily new or very different. one thing that i think we need to understand and this is also part of the myth is that whenever there is a big disconnect between the law and reality you are going to get -- it happens with goods, it happens with services, it happens with things but it also happens with evil. you constantly hear this argument and of course i can see where they are coming from. we cannot as a country governed by the rule of law except people who violate the law. we are just not that the country. this is not something that is morally or legally accepted and yes on paper of course that's an extremely powerful argument. who can argue with that? however the problem is the law is simply not realistic, when the law does not take reality into account then you create conditions for a systematic violation of the law on a grand scale. when that happens usually something is wrong with the law. not necessarily with the nature of the people who are violating that law. it's simply the way it works. it works with all sorts of other contacts, social contacts that stem from the criminalization of things that should not be held as being criminal by the law. so the same sort of thing happens with immigrants which is why when people say there is a disproportionate number of criminals who are immigrants of course if you penalize immigrants you have just made the condition of an immigrant a conditional one. if you adjust for age there are no more criminals who are immigrant then who are native-born. it's about the same rate. there are all sorts of studies but yes you had a significant number of people in jail sometimes on the way to deportation particularly in the last few years who could have been considered criminal simply because it was criminal to be an immigrant. so, it's important to get this myth out-of-the-way if we are going to find a legal way to deal with what is a social problem having almost 12 million people operating in the shadows outside of of the law is a social problem. we just need to make sure that is addressed from the starting point of believing these people are somehow biologically criminal. these people are simply the result of the disconnect between the law and reality. another important myth has to do with culture. i heard this time and time again and i'm sure many of you have heard this. these people are culturally different. unlike the previous waves of immigrants who are culturally in tune with our values. these people are different and yet if you look at this in so many different ways you find exactly the same pattern. immigrants today are culturally in tune with us-born people, with u.s. society almost any way you look at it. if you look at religion for instance, in the last 20 years but talk about hispanics for a moment and immigrants in that period of time. 70% of them are catholic and about 23% are partisan. of the ones who call themselves catholic one fifth of them call themselves born-again which is by the way something you never hear in latin america. latin american people never describe themselves as born-again. they are describing themselves as protestants in the united states of this is clearly an effort to tell the united states that we are like you. we believe just like you. we pray just like you. if you look at family values which is something i don't think conservatives who are critical of immigration clearly understand, you will find that there is probably more inclination towards family values today among immigrants than among any other part of society. for instance, half of all households are made up of couples with children and only 13% of households are headed by a single parent against one third in the case of native-born americans. so again if we stand for values values -- family values and we want a society based on family values then this is surely a source of great comfort among immigrants. they are all about family values. if we can convince them of this which is a tough thing to do that they will say out of there having many -- too many children. i don't i that argument with a problem that the well for state is a problem with immigration. that has not been the case. the birthrate is going down and down just as it's going down and down across latin america. it's still a little bit higher among hispanic women in the united states but only 60%. just half a child more than native warren women and the trend is going down. in latin america there is this new discussion and until a few years ago of course there was a high birthrate. today it's going down in an incredible way and so those societies are beginning to face some of the issues that developed countries have been facing in terms of the rate of course contributors to the system of transfer to beneficiaries. so they are facing the same issues. no matter how you look at it, for they are culturally compatible. if you look at all those neighborhoods that they have helped regenerate and i mention a few in the book in south florida, in new york. a process called gender fixation. communities that were in a complete disaster and they have become very nice communities thanks to the efforts of hispanics particularly but that general democrats have put into this. that is a cultural side of perfect compatibility with the host nation. i will grant you this though. it is true that most culturalism has distorted things a bit and i think we would -- it would not be fair if we did not recognize that. in the early part of the 20th century there was something that used to be called americanization. friedrich hayek for instance one of our heroes of course praised americanization very much. he attributed to americanization the virtue of having values and ideas relating to the free society. and yes i think there is something to be said for americanization. there were some aspects they were that were kind of chauvinistic and i guess there were abuses but by and large it was a healthy thing. it was not so much government policy. it was just a general cultural attitudes across society that somehow created incentives for people who came to become familiar with the values of society and all of these things. it was a positive thing. that began to change in the 1960s of course when this whole new paradigm what we call multiculturalism today emerged. i don't go into a lot of detail because there's a whole chapter in the book and it's a fascinating discussion but i don't want to be sidetracked. just quickly i would say that essentially what happened was europe's decolonization after the second world war we began to look at values in a different way through relativism. we began to see values as an exchange and all values were equal. all place of looking at society and institutions were pretty much equal. that gave rise of course to a whole new way of analyzing and studying societies from the past and then from that we went on to think of minorities as collectivist entities that were somehow in need of special protection, special rights to correct an imbalance that was historicahistorica l in nature that was the legacy of past abuses. this in turn translated of course into all sorts of i guess social engineering based on ethnicity and we saw things like gerrymandering along ethnic lines and unequal and employment opportunities and positive discrimination in all sorts of things that gradually i think went beyond what was really compatible with a truly free society governed by the principle of the quality before the law. that was bound to generate a backlash at some point and of course it did but my argument is this. people who are to blame for multiculturalism are not immigrants. they are u.s. academics mostly and it was mostly something that emerged out of academia not just in in the united states but to be fair also in europe. so yeah there has been a distortion there and yes there things i myself was an immigrant here do not feel it all comfortable with but if we are going to fight multiculturalism the way to do it is not defied immigration. it's to fight the ideology behind multiculturalism. so from that and this is one way to prove that it's not immigrants that are to blame for this. i am constantly told i drove past such community and reading spanish newspapers. it used to be that way of course. it always was that way. german communities in the west what did they do? a printed german papers and they spoke german among themselves. that is what first-generation italians did and that is what nations did and sometimes they do that still. it's human nature. people want to feel they belong to something and they want to protect themselves for a little while but that doesn't stop her and sarah the process of assimilation. it's a three generation process. the first-generation make some progress in the second generation is bilingual but they speak english better than any other language we are talking about and by the third generation they don't even speak the native tongue as we say anymore. i see that among hispanics and it's really a fascinating process. that was case. that was the way it was for their times in the polls and the germans and it's always been that kind of dynamic. again just as in the past the second generation does better financially than the first-generation and until the assimilation is completed if you look at marriage beyond the community which is one way to look at this, we see the same pattern today as we saw in the past. i compared second-generation italians in the early part of the 20 century with mexican state. the rate of marriage was 17% today it's a little higher, almost 20%. by the third generation of marriage is very strong. so again very similar patterns of assimilating, assimilation. of course since you have a constant permanent inflow of first-generation hispanics it's only natural that you are going to see some pockets of i guess spanish speaking communities almost on a constant basis but that is not because they are not assimilating. it simply because -- so there is nothing to fear. they are assimilating and i think that is something that we need to embrace. so let's just go into the economy. again it's another important source of myth. i am always hearing this. we would like to have high-skilled immigrants but these low-skilled immigrants, why do we need these low-skilled immigrants? because the modern economy needs low-skilled immigrants. since the second world war we had all these imbalances that needed to be corrected through basically migration. that is why the germans signed treaties with the turks. they needed turkish workers and the spanish with the moroccans the french with the algerians and the united states with the mexicans. that's the way it works. even in a high-tech economy you certain repetitious mechanical jobs that will be part of it. somebody will have to fill those , take up those jobs and that's something that migration helps to do. do they hurt the economy? they do exactly the opposite. immigrants help enlarge the pie again help make the pie bigger. i went to one of the most prominent academic critics and even he recognizes illegal immigrants contribute $22 billion to the economy every year so we updated that data. it's a very conservative statistics and i think it's more than that but let's accept that for a moment. which we just updated his calculation and that would translate into about $36 billion today. you make that legal it probably would be increased by 2.5 times, three times almost 100 lean dollars a year and a per decade over a trillion dollars. that's a contribution to the economy by immigrants. how does the process works quite fair producers and they are consumers. when they come in at the low-end of the scale they help others move up the scale. yes they have a very tiny temporary effect on wages at the lower end. our calculaticalculati on 1.45% in others very little bit but it's a very small impact but that is offset by people who are moving up the scale and earning higher wages and also offset by the fact that immigrants help these labor-intensive industries be more productive and they help keep prices down. so as consumers everybody in society is benefiting from that. the effect is of course a very potent one, positive potent not to speak of high-skilled immigration. again how could that not be a huge contribution to the economy? one third of doctors in engineering technology sciences involve immigrants. immigrants. one fourth of nobel prize winners throughout the 20th century in the u.s. have been immigrants. immigrants made silicon valley. the silicon valley miracle between 95 and 2005 immigrants founded many companies and created half a billion jobs. there is -- it was always absurd that the rules, i hope they're going to change now but were such that the quota for h. one bbs as high-skilled visas with the exhausted on day one. as soon as it was open for applications they would be taken up because 65,000 until a few years ago because it was of greater demand. that was economic suicide on the part of united states. let's finish but touching very quickly on the issue of cost versus benefit. that's another huge myth the idea that immigrants cost a lot more than they contribute fiscally i mean. that is simply not true. there is one great study a couple of decades ago by the natural research counsel. they calculated not only the fiscal impact of legalizing immigrants now, they calculated what would happen for the next 50 years because of course as you know they are young so we would expect they would be working for the next 50 years and they calculated them at present value of those 50 years in terms of what they will put into the system or take out of the system. that concluded of course -- included children better in public school today that will come out and work for the next 50 years or you have to bring all of that into the equation. their calculation was a net cost a one-off cost present-day value of $5000 which is nothing if you weigh that against the contribution i just talked about to the economy. other studies beyond that even the net contribution without taking into account the contribution to the economy, just the fiscal impact is going to be positive in terms of generating more revenue than they are taken taken out in outlooks has written about this very forcefully. my message is basically this. we are in an age of globalization. we have one case for free trade. we can say this point that we have ideal free trade conditions across the world but we have won the intellectual case for free trade. no one speaks against free trade on an intellectual level. no one says i'm against free trade. they say i'm for free trade but and then they talk about the level playing field and all that. the intellects really won the case for free trade trade we have made the case for free immigration and it's simply not reasonable to expect that a world moving grassley towards free trade can continue to contemplate immigration and the way it is. trade in goods constitutes the equivalent of 45% of wealth gdp. about 20% of world savings are invested outside of the country where they originate and 3% of the population is first-generation immigrant. this imbalance will have to be corrected. the dynamics are pushing the world in that direction so you can either accept and embrace and channel that energy through legal channels or you can try and put barriers against it and you will be overwhelmed either because the negative effect of actually being able and managing to control this will be huge or because you will not be able to control it. by the time you accept that you realize you will have spent a lot of money and with all the side effects that come with it and trying to -- immigration is not a danger to the united states to its values to its economy to its standing in the world. it is exactly the opposite. it is i think one of the best ways to keep the united states a free country keep it up rospars country and to keep it as a model for the rest of the world. thank you very much. [applause] see thank you. our next speaker is alex. he worked at the competitive and enterprise institute on immigration issues. he has degrees in economics and economic history from george mason university. he has been an exemplary policy analyst at the cato is two and has been quite involved and very influential in the current debate on immigration. please help me welcome alex nowrasteh. [applause] >> thank you ian for that very nice introduction and thank you i'll there'll for coming talking about your fantastic book. i want to save part of the reason why free trade is accepted intellectually by so many people around the world today as opposed to 50 or 60 years ago is because of the hard work of alberto and other classical liberals around the world the united states in central and south america and everywhere around the world. that hard work i think is really paid off. we are able to do so much at the cato institute in part because people like myself are able to stand on the shoulders of intellects like alvaro and others who have forcefully argued the point for generations of thank you very much. now i want to go into some other details about this fantastic book "global crossings" some details that we weren't able to touch on in a limited amount of time that we have but one of the main issues that a lot of people raise when it comes to in the gration is they think national security. today is a different environment if you have global terrorism and we have al qaeda and issues like these and because of this we can't be as open to immigration as we were in the past because of all these issues. just like the other points made in this book that is no different from what it was 100 years ago. there was an intense terrorist campaign in the united states in the early 20th century carried out mainly by italian anarchists and communists who had different points blew up dozens and up to 100 bombs across united states targeting people like the attorney general of the united states a mitchell palmer and numerous public officials across the country at the time. people had a reaction at that point. they said we can't have this type of thing. this is a new experience. this was at a time when communists were marching across the world and having success in europe and eastern europe and the chaos in the soviet union. these people were seen as an extension of that and we needed to close their borders to block the sale. that is not different than what we hear today about islamic terrorism and other issues like that. but what is even more astonishing is how a lot of our immigration policy makes it easier for national security threats to exist, makes it easier for these problems to grow in a lot of cases increase the ability of the national security threats in these opponents of liberty across the world to more exploit their advantages by taking advantage of american immigration law. one modern example of this is in 2010 there were about a dozen some always arrested in mexico. there were rumors that they were aimed members of the al-shabaab militia which is an islamist terrorist militia based in somali. the mexican authorities

Related Keywords

Vietnam , Republic Of , Capitol Hill , New Jersey , United States , Nevada , Dubai , Dubayy , United Arab Emirates , Turkey , China , California , Jamaica , San Diego , Russia , Washington , District Of Columbia , Mexico , Arizona , Nigeria , India , Morocco , Hollywood , Ireland , Cuba , South Korea , Poland , Jersey , Switzerland , Georgetown University , Spain , Singapore , Greece , South Africa , New York , Moscow , Moskva , Canada , Japan , Philippines , Germany , Oakland , Texas , Algeria , Florida , Boston , Massachusetts , Liberia , Georgia , Bombay , Maharashtra , London , City Of , United Kingdom , Pakistan , Disney Land , Bangladesh , Denmark , Hong Kong , Peru , Somalia , France , Utah , Venezuela , Italy , Italian , Americans , Moroccans , Filipino , Mexicans , Jamaican , Turkish , Mexican , Germans , Pakistani , Turks , Bangladeshi , French , Italians , British , Swiss , Irishmen , Somali , Japanese , American , Polish , Chinese , Spaniard , Algerians , Filipinos , Spanish , Soviet , German , Danish , Liberian , Irish , Cuban , Arthur Ashe , Alvaro Vargas Llosa , Marco Rubio , America Asia , Al Sharpton , Los Angeles , Danny Devito , Eden Burr Roy , Jeb Bush , Thomas Friedman , States A Mitchell Palmer , Joe Arpaio , Jerry Brown , Africa Daca , Barack Obama , Knick Latino , Al Qaeda , Joseph Campbell , Richard Davidson , Jackie Kennedy , Anthony Campbell , Richard Dawkins , Miami Herald , Thomas Sowell , Friedrich Hayek ,