Chomsky is a professor of history and coordinator of latin american studies at Salem State University in massachusetts. Her new book, undocumented how immigration became illegal, is a comprehensive and provocative look at the history contradictions and shifts in u. S. Immigration policy ooh ive lost my page. And how it has both lured and punished the illegal immigrant population. Her previous book on the topic was they take our jobs and 20 other myths about immigration. She is also coauthor of a study of the history of cuba and the castro revolution. To my near left is alberto gonzalez, a former u. S. Attorney general and white House Counsel under president george w. Bush. In his job as attorney general, he became the highest ranking hispanic to hold federal office. That tenure was marked by some controversy over executive actions in the war on terror, but today we will confine our discussion to immigration. His new book is called a conservative and compassionate approach to Immigration Reform, coauthored with david strange, which offers a number of specific prescriptions for reforming and improving Immigration Law and policy. Judge gonzalez, who previously served as a Texas Supreme Court justice, is currently dean of the Belmont College school of law in nashville. Welcome to you both. [applause] thank you. Thank you. [applause] at first glance a reader might assume that these two books come from opposite points of view and reach opposite conclusions. They would be wrong on both counts. Both of these authors p grapple with the same fundamental conundrums facing u. S. Officials and society as it tries to deal with the phenomenon of ilLegal Immigration. And both make pact call suggestions practical suggestions as to how these contradictions can be reconciled or at least managed. Both authors agree that there has been excessive hostility and harshness toward Illegal Immigrants, and both agree that some form of broad Immigration Reform is needed. Neither advocates radical solutions, though they differ in emphasis and degree. I would first like to ask both authors to discuss two of the major issues raised in both of their books. We will have about 30 minutes for this discussion after which we will open it up for questions for about 15 minutes from the audience. I hope thats agreeable to all and, please, be brief with both your remarks and questions because the time is very short. So heres my first question. One of the major issues you both address is the fact that undocumented immigrants play critical roles in Many American industries from meat packing to construction from landscaping to fast food. Some critics argue that they are taking away jobs from americanborn workers and that if they were forced to leave the United States wages would automatically rise, and americans would be attracted to these jobs once again. Both authors disagree with this argument, but they offer different explanations for the phenomenon and different suggestions for how to deal with undocumented workers. I would like both authors to briefly explain their approach to this issue. Judge gonzalez proposes both stricter workplace and border enforcement against Illegal Immigrants while at the same time acknowledging that many sectors of the u. S. Economy now rely heavily on their labor. I would like him to address this apart contradiction. And professor chomsky offers strong evidence that Illegal Immigrants are crucial to the u. S. Economy but in her case she portrays them as victims of a deliberately unjust system that followed the end of the [inaudible] program in the 1960s a system she says criminalizes Illegal Immigrants to make them docile and exploys bl workers exploitable workers. I would like her to describe what happened to the meat packing industry and the federal raids that followed. Judging would you like to start . Okay, ill solve this in fife minutes. This is a difficult issue, of course, and from my perspective just given the positions ive held in government and the fact that im hispanic from a border state, i think i approach this from a fairly you nook perspective in terms of what works and what we need in this country. I believe in the rule of law and i think in a post9 11 world its very, very important that we know whos in this country and why theyre here. My perspective is that the right immigration policy is not only going to be good for our border security, but its also going to be right for our economy. Its going to promote our economy. We talked about the possibility of deporting 11 12 million undocumenteds when i was in the white house, and we believed it was not possible, we couldnt do it. But even if we could do it, we believed it would have been devastating to certain industries, and we believed the better approach and the approach thats talked about in this book with my coauthor, david strange, is to find those people that are qualified and put them into some kind of legal status so that they can stay here work in america, produce in america and i think by working here and being productive, its going to enhappens our economy and actually enhance our economy and create our economy and create additional jobs for american citizens. So i think this is something thats very, very important for our economy again and very important for our National Security, and i think putting them into some kind of temporary legal status i think is the way to go. And from there i have no problem with someone walking into a Government Office and saying i need a drivers license. Once theyre given some type of legal status i think they should be entitled to most of the privileges that all of us enjoy as american citizens, and we can talk in a few minutes about whether or not does that mean at some point they become american citizens, an issue which has become very politicized, in my judgment, but one that i think can be dealt with in a respectful way and would be agreeable i think to most americans. So im a historian and so its inevitable that im going to answer by talking a little bit about history. And i think what were seeing today in the United States is a dual labor market and that the United States has always had some sort of a dual labor market. And by a dual labor market, i mean that we have some workers who are protected by the law who have stable and safe employment conditions, who have benefits and who have job security and the security that they will be working under safe and healthy conditions. The other sector of the labor market which economists call the secondary labor market is the unregulated, Informal Sector of the economy. It exists outside of this protection of laws that protect most workers in this country. And since the founding of the country or even before, we have had this dual or segmented labor market and we have maintained it with different legal regimes. For the first 100 years of this countrys life the legal regime that maintained the dual labor market or significant labor market was slavery. That is, it kept a senate group of people who were a Significant Group of people who were working in this country outside the protection of the laws while creating a system of Legal Protections for other people working in the cup. After slavery was abolished weve been through a number of different types of legal regimes that have kept a secondary subordinate sector of the labor market, workers who do not enjoy the same protections as other workers. One way this happened was with the new deal labor legislation that explicitly excluded agricultural and Domestic Workers from the protections granted to others; the right to organize unions the right to minimum wages the right to maximum hours, the right to workplace protections unemployment insurance, later workers compensation. Domestic and Agricultural Workers were excluded from that body of legislation. They were not protected. And guess what . Domestic and Agricultural Workers were primarily people of color. So there has been a racial aspect to how the dual labor market has functioned in this country. Next step, the brasero program through 1967 as it was phased out, a Guest Worker Program that brought mexican workers recruited workers in mexico to work primarily in agriculture as second class workers as workers who did notten joy the same rights enjoy the same rights as other workers. And for a brasero worker to complain about your working conditions meant that you would be fired and you would be deported. You were almost an indentured servant because your right to be in the country depended on your working for this particular employer. I argue in my book that since is the 65 since 1965 this secondary labor market has been maintained pri mauerly through the use of undocumentedness where workers are still deliberately recruited and brought into the United States with sort of a wink from the law and work in this status as undocumented. And the meat packing industry is one of the industries that has taken full advantage of this undocumented labor force. Its not the only one. In the particular case that pamela referred to the agriprocessers kosher meat processers in postville iowa there was a the work force was primarily recruited from highland villages in guatemala they were primarily indigenous guatemalans who were brought to the United States, asked to sign some papers and put to work through direct recruitment. They were all undocumented. And in the first decade of the 21st century, there were a series of workplace raids highly publicized workplace raids that where large numbers of workers were arrested and deported. This happened at the agriprocessers plant and its one of the many cases where weve seen what happens when undocumented workers are punished by deportation and forced to leave. And what happened was the collapse of the local economy, the collapse of the industry and devastation for the town where the workers had been living and working. So that undocumentedness serves a role in our economy. I dont think its a good or fair system. Its a system based on exploitation, but the solution is not to further victimize and punish those who are working in the low wage jobs. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to just to be a little, put a fine point on it, what do you think why is it for example and in that case, you know we know that meat packing used to be a very stable, you know, well paying blue collar job. It was unionized wages were good. It wasnt a fun job, but it was a good job. That changed radically and the influx of undocumented, in this case clearly poor, illiterate people completely replaced them. If those people were sent back to guatemala, do you think the meat packing industry would be forced to raise wages and make its jobs more attractive again to americans or is that just gone forever . Brief answer sorry. In the case of agriprocessers, i mean, we have an example of what happened, which is that the company went bankrupt. But, i mean, i think we have to look at the transpor formations that the transformations that the u. S. Economy has undergone in the second half of the 20th century which has been a process of deindustrialization. Its not just the meat packing industry where Good Union Jobs have disappeared. This has been a deliberate fight back against the new deal on the part of Corporate America to escape unionization and escape labor legislation in any way they can. Most industries have done this through moving abroad, and weve seen deindustrialization has affected not just the meat packing industry, its affected every industry. So blaming the workers or punishing the workers is really looking backwards at the problem of deindustrialization which is a structural, global problem that i think we need to look at not by trying to victimize further victim poise those who are the principle victims of it. Judge would you like to Say Something about everify . Well, i think one of the i mean obviously, one of the problems we have, i think in our society is we do have unscrupulous employers. And one of the things that we propose in our book, it just seems to me there ought to be tougher employer sanctions. If you want to stop people from hiring undocumented immigrants, then take a ceo of a company thats a repeat offender, and put him in jail. Thats going to stop hiring of undocumented immigrants. So i think its unfair to focus solely on the immigrant. It is true that the vast majority of them come into this country simply to provide for themselves and their families. And i appreciate that as a dad. On the other hand, we do have laws in place and so weve got to find some kind of accommodation, and it just seems to me one very important component of that in addition to revising our visa system, in additioning to dealing with the 12 million that are here undocumented already, in addition to border security, in addition to dealing with the children brought here unlawfully by their participants, weve got to deal parents, weve got to deal with employers. And from my interspective, thats also a very important piece of this. Okay, thank you. Im going to raise a second broad question id like for you both to address before we go to questions from the audience, and that is the issue of what should be done permanently about the vast population of an estimated 1112 million undocumented People Living in the United States today many of them for a very long time. Many of them with deep roots in the community. Again, both authors agree on a basic point which is that they cannot and should not all be deported and that some form of broad Immigration Reform is needed. But they propose different solutions. Judge gonzalez offers what he calls a pragmatic solution somewhere between mass deportation and mass citizenship which would most likely take the form of limited legalization. He also proposes various other tweaks in Immigration Law or policy to better distinguish between groups of Illegal Immigrants who, as he puts it, may be less or more deserving of leniency and relief. I would like him to describe his legalization proposal in detail and a couple of the smaller reforms he would like to see made in Immigration Law. Professor chomsky describes u. S. Immigration law as an arbitrary labyrinth of enticement and obstacles to Illegal Immigrants which has had various unintended consequences. She describes various Government Agency ises as welcoming threatening, ignoring, imprisoning and deporting Illegal Immigrants. No bond or theyre confused wonder theyre confused. She suggests that officials must examine the, quoteunquote, deeper structural reasons for ilLegal Immigration. I would like to hear her response to judge gonzalezs proposal for a limited legalization. Judge . Okay. Well, i used to work in the world of, you know, as pam spock about it this morning spoke about it in this mornings earlier conversation, what is possible in Todays Congress in terms of policy, what is doable . My own view is with the republicans controlling both houses, the notion of citizenship for the 12 million that are here that are undocumented, its just not doable. On the other hand and we cant deport them. So if theyre going to be in this country those who qualify and by that i mean those who dont have a criminal record perhaps they pay back taxes, perhaps they pay some kind of fine, show evidence that, in fact theyre employable, that they can provide for themselves and their family that we put them into some kind of legal status. And this whole notion of citizenship, i think is one that, as i said in my opening remarks, has been politicized. There are many im a republican, ill go ahead and confess that, but there are many in my party that the notion of these, quote lawbreakers should be afforded citizenship is something that they cannot support. I dont support amnesty in terms of and this is where theres a lot of disagreement, what is amnesty. From my perspective amnesty is complete forgiveness for a group of individuals. Thats not what im proposing. What im proposing is those who qualify, they stay here. And then if Congress Wants to provide some kind of pathway to citizenship or a more permanent status, then they can do so and that, again, could involve additional fines or whatever. One thing that i would not support which i dont think is fair is that we allow these individuals who came to this country unlawfully a pathway to citizenship which allows them to become citizens before those who have been waiting patiently outside to our borders thats not fair, thats not right. So again im not necessarily opposed to citizenship for these individuals, for those who qualify, but i dont think they should be rewarded by citizenship before those who follow the rules. And let me just one final point i would just say. A vast majority of these individuals are less concerned about citizenship than they are about is simply being able to be in this country in some kind of legal status and not worry about being deported. And so i think we can find a solution here if both parties, again, are willing to compromise. I believe this is an issue that touches Foreign PolicyNational Security our economy our families, it touches the very essence of who we are as a people. And in order to reach a common ground, to reach a solution he