 Good evening. I'm Mark Uptigrow, the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's program, Immigration Pathway to the American Dream. Our co-hosts for this evening are Forward U.S., the Indian Coalition of Texas, and the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Additionally, I would like to thank AT&T, which is sponsoring tonight's program, and our friends of the LBJ Presidential Library sponsors the University Federal Credit Union and Frost Bank. On October 3, 1965, at the base of the Statue of Liberty, with the island of Manhattan gleaming in the background, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, putting in place the most sweeping immigration reform in the history of our nation. For the previous 40 years, those who wanted to come to America were subject to a quota system under the National Origins Act of 1924. The law favored immigrants from Northern Europe and the British Isles, while discriminating against those from Southern and Eastern Europe, while those from Asia and those who were non-white were virtually banned from immigrating to the United States altogether. The Immigration Act abolished quotas, opening doors to, in President Johnson's words, those who can contribute most to this country, to its growth, to its strength, and to its spirit. Tonight, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Immigration Act and explore its seminal natures and the issues we face around immigration today. I want to begin our program with a short video from forward.us, which is working to ensure that America is a welcoming nation for immigrants by mobilizing the technology community in support of immigration reform. Our beautiful America was built by a nation of strangers. From 100 different places or more, they have poured forth into an empty land, joining and blending in one mighty and irresistible tide. The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources, because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. And from this experience, almost unique in the history of nations, has come America's attitude toward the rest of the world. We, because of what we are, feel safer and stronger in a world as varied as the people who make it up, a world where no country rules another. And all countries can deal with the basic problems of human dignity and deal with those problems in their own way. Now, under the monument which has welcomed so many to our shores, the American nation returns to the finest of its traditions today. We're at a pretty critical moment in the movement right now, where it's really important to keep pushing ahead, right? I mean, we've had more progress than we've had in almost 30 years, but we need to keep making sure that everyone knows that this is an important thing. If you look at what immigration reform would do for this economy, it is an unbelievable economic drive or an unbelievable economic boom. Millions of jobs created, it's a huge help for the deficit, and it's just a win-win-win, and we're really focused on that. Without DACA, I really wouldn't know what I would be doing at this point. To be an undocumented student is really difficult. It starts affecting you definitely your junior year of high school, where you come to the realization you can't get your driver's license, you can't apply for jobs, and not only can you not apply for a job, you can't apply for financial aid. When I graduated from Michigan State University and I decided to have my own business and I moved to the Silicon Valley, if I can get a visa or green card to stay in the U.S. and my business is growing, I would like to hire more programmers. I'm benefiting from deferred action, which was a policy that was announced by the Obama Administration on June 15, 2012, and it gives me a temporary status. So I'm eligible to work, but we need a more permanent solution, we need a comprehensive immigration reform that addresses the whole broken immigration system. No one, including LBJ, could foresee how the 1964, 65 rather, immigration act would change the face of this country, nor the issue of immigration today and how relevant it would be to today's America. It is now my pleasure to introduce Ashwin Gattalia of the Indian American Coalition of Texas, who will introduce tonight's distinguished panelists. Ashwin. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a privilege to join hands with the LBJ Library and the Mexican Center for Mexican Affairs. On this wonderful occasion, I want to also feel very proud to represent my organization, Indian American Coalition of Texas. It is an organization that is heavily involved in civic dialogue and public policies, and we do collaborate with a number of different organizations. Forward US is one such example, the organization that champions the immigration reform. I just want to tell you a short story. Those of us who arrived here in early 60s to mid 60s, we saw a changing nation. That change came about by the confluence of several areas. First of all, the civil rights movement changed the conscience of the nation. At that time, Senator Philip Hart and Representative Seller proposed a bill. Now, Representative Seller has always been a kind of a champion of immigration reform. President Johnson champion this bill and it was passed by bipartisan vote. So on October 3rd, as it is mentioned before, this nation opened its door to Asians, Africans, Eastern Europeans, and Latin Americans, creating thus a very vibrant and diverse civil nation. What has happened as a result of that is many of these people have been able to pursue their careers, personal growth, et cetera. And what I want to tell you is that as of now, there are somewhere around about 20 plus million Asian people of Asian descent, including about 3 million people of Indian descent now make this country their home. The message from my organization is that the opportunities that was accorded to us for our personal growth and personal excellence, we accord the same to those who are waiting in the wings. Now, of course, there is the whole history of immigration. And today we have an excellent, excellent panel. The first one that I want to introduce to you is Mr. Tom Gelton. Perhaps some of you have already visited him for the book signing. He's a veteran of 30 years of journalism for NPR. He's also the winner of many, many awards. Just to give you an example are the Overseas Award, the POC Award, and the Robert Kennedy for Journalism Award. This is for the excellence of reporting that he has done. He's also a panelist on the PBS's Washington New Year Week. He has published three books. The last one was the sign of today called Nation of Nations. Mr. Gelton. The next panelist I want to introduce to you is Mr. Bill Hammond. He's an entrepreneur, president and executive officer of Texas Business and Commerce. He has in the past served as our state, our state representative. There are a number of credits to his activism. He has worked to create a strong business and tax regulatory climate. And you know that Texas is doing extremely well. He has worked on workers' compensation reform, building coalition for quality and transparency and accountability for education from KG onwards all the way to the college level. He also served under Governor Bush that time. And he was also the representative of the three member commission. He has worked on Texas workforce commission also. Mr. Hammond, Dr. Victoria de Francesco Soto. A graduate of Duke University, she was the NSF fellow during her doctoral work. She's an expert on campaigns, elections, immigration, women, race, ethnic politics. And she will lead today's discussion on what we are going to talk about. She's the professor and outreach director of University of Texas's Center for Mexican American Studies. A fellow at the Center for Politics and Governance at LBJ, a School of Public Affairs. She provides political analysis of US politics and its implications abroad. She contributes to NBC and MSNBC. It's my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Victoria de Francesco. Good evening. It is my pleasure to be with you here today and to be with such an August panel getting to talk about one of the topics that I am most passionate about, immigration. As a political scientist and a political analyst, I focus a lot on immigration. And as you can imagine lately, because of someone by the name of Donald Trump, I've been especially busy. But immigration is also a passion of mine because I am the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and the descendant of Polish immigrants and Sicilian immigrants. It is very much a personal issue for me and I think Tom, you do such a phenomenal job of putting the human face on immigration while getting into the nitty-gritty of policy. But even though immigration is a political issue and is a personal issue for the vast majority of us, it's also a dollars and cents issue, as Bill will tell us about. And I really don't think there is anyone not just in the state but this country who can tell us about those linkages, the crucial linkages between immigration and our economy. But because I am a professor, I am going to take five to eight minutes to give you a little bit of a historical context. You thought you'd get away with no mini-lesson, but I want to get us up to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, this way leading the way for Tom's discussion and also Bill's. What is so interesting about immigration is that for the first 100 years or so, there was nothing to do about immigration. The Constitution is all but silent on the topic. So, 1875, we see the first restrictive policy on immigration, 1875. And this policy restricted criminals and prostitutes. So you go, well, where are we seeing women of ill repute coming onto the shores and in massive numbers and criminals? No. But this is so important because it was the symbolic closure of getting away from the completely open arms policy that we had seen for the first 100 years. And not too long after the 1875 Immigration Act, we saw the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 and 1888. And the Chinese Exclusion Act are so important for us to understand and really shape a lot of the rhetoric that we see today because we see economic arguments many times cloaked in racial arguments. So, 1882, 1888, we have the Chinese Exclusion Act. Not too much happens up until World War I. And once we are done with World War I, we see our country turn inward. And we become a very exclusionary and isolationist country. And with that isolation comes the need for restrictive immigration policy. And this is where we see the immigration quotas come into being. There's a series of three policies. And it wasn't just closing the door on immigrants. It was also closing the door on a particular set of immigrants. It was closing the door on Eastern and Southern Europeans. And what the quotas did, it was actually quite clever. It said, in essence, you're an Italian who's in Europe and you want to come over. Well, we're only going to allow 2% of the number of Italians that were here during the 1890 census. We'll see during the 1890s, we still hadn't seen that large wave of Eastern and Southern Europeans. We see immigration essentially come to a trickle. And for the next 40 years, we do not see immigration into the United States. We do see Mexican migration, but I'm not going to get into that because that's a whole different ballpark. However, once we get past World War II, we see the country want to start to open its borders again. Two particular forces. The foreign policy front of it is we were just in Europe fighting fascism. We are in the middle of the Cold War where we need to win the hearts and minds of the people of the world, of the leaders of the world. And the second factor that was crucial to seeing that restrictionist policy from the 1920s turnaround was labor said, okay, we're in. So we had foreign policy, domestic policy, but the face and the voice of that is of critical importance. John F. Kennedy. In 1958, then Senator John F. Kennedy wrote A Nation of Immigrants. It was a report that he wrote to Congress. Essentially, the report says we're built on immigration. Immigration is great. We need to get back to our immigration roots. In 1960, we saw the Democratic Party re-embrace immigration and include an expansionary immigration policy in its platform. President Kennedy was not able to address immigration in his first years in office. After the tragedy of Kennedy's assassination, we saw President Johnson step into the helm. And to be honest, immigration activists of that time were braced for the worst. Because Lyndon Johnson had not been known as being a friend of expansionary immigration reform. But once in office, President Johnson was able to see that immigration, opening up our borders again, was integral to the vision of the great society. And it is here that I will leave us with October 3rd, 1965, when we saw the Watershed Act of the Heart Seller Act being passed by Congress and signed by Lyndon B. Johnson. So, Tom, with that historical context. Very well done, by the way. Well, it's basically the first lecture of every immigration class I teach. So, there you go. Tell me about the faces. The faces of the people we started to see post-1965. And more specifically, tell me about the intended and unintended consequences of the 1965 Act. That's a great question. And that leads to sort of one of the unreported, untold stories about this Act. Which is that when President Johnson and Senator Hart and Congressman Seller proposed this Act, the top visa preference category was for immigrants who had skills that were, quote, especially advantageous to the United States. And when President Johnson, in his State of the Union, in January 1964, just two months after President Kennedy was killed, when he announced, and by the way, President Kennedy, even though you're right, this was a top commitment of his, he never mentioned it in his three State of the Union speeches. So, President Johnson is the first to say, I'm going to make this a priority of my administration. And the way he said it was, we can ask in this country, what can you do for the country? We shouldn't be asking in what country you were born. But what's important about that, he's asking, what can you do for our country? And this was the idea behind the immigration reform, that we should bring in people who had skills that would be, that were needed in this country. And the opposition to the Act was basically trying to use gentle terminology here, but people that thought that we should remain essentially a white European country. And if you read the testimony from the hearing, the hearings over this, it's really quite scandalous what people were willing to say, do we, we don't want Africans coming here, we don't want Asians coming here, we don't want, you know, these people from these downtrodden masses that are going to just come and inundate the country. So there was a racial and ethnic bias to the opposition. And the way that the law was finally passed, and this was actually behind the chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, Congressman Michael Fien from Ohio, was allied with some of these conservative groups. And for the first year, after January 64, President Johnson could not get this bill advanced because Congressman Fien was refusing to hold hearings on it. And the, what broke the logjam finally was that Congressman Fien amended the law. He insist on a change. He took away the top visa preference for employability and said instead that family unification should be the top visa preference. And what's interesting is he figured and many people figured that if you rewarded first those people who already had relatives here, you would bring in basically more of the same. In fact, the American Legion, which was one of the key opponents of the original reform, came around only after this change was made. And two representatives of the American Legion wrote in a commentary that by emphasizing family unification, you would in fact have a, quote, naturally operating national origin system. Because you would be bringing in people who already had relatives here. Asians didn't have relatives here. Africans, Middle Easterners didn't have relatives here. The second visa preference went to people that, in fact, did have employable skills. Well, what happened was that, so in the beginning, all you got basically was Europeans because they were the ones that had relatives here. But there were these other categories. You know, you could get a student visa, maybe you were married to somebody who was a citizen here, or maybe you had a job training or job skill that was needed. And so there were people from other parts of the world besides European coming. And the family unification, it took a few years because it took a while to develop this pool of non-European immigrants who were coming in under the other categories. But once they started coming in, the family unification provisions kicked in on their behalf. And particularly because there was a new provision in the law that allowed naturalized U.S. citizens to bring in their brothers and sisters and their brothers and sisters' spouses who in turn could bring in their brothers and sisters and their brothers and sisters' spouses. And so you had this exponential expansion of immigration. And it really was focused primarily on those very countries that the opponents of the immigration forum wanted to keep out. It was Africa, it was Asia, it was the Middle East. Because what was going on in the world at that time was decolonization in Africa, presenting a lot of conflict and war, you know, economic pressures, all the factors that were pushing people out really were most intense in those countries. Europe, meanwhile, is a prospering country, prospering region. People no longer feel the need to leave Europe. So immigration from Europe really came to us, came essentially to a halt in, right before the act, seven out of eight immigrants were coming from Europe. By 2010, nine out of 10 immigrants are coming from outside Europe. So what you saw, as I say, it took a while to develop. It really wasn't until the 70s and even the 80s before you saw this big non-European wave coming in. But now, 50 years later, immigration has completely changed the complexion of our country. We have the share of the foreign-born population in the United States today is three times what it was at the time the law was passed. And as I said, 90% of the immigrants coming in now are immigrants of color from parts of the world that the opponents of this act did not want them to come from. So in this sense, it was kind of this scheme, this idea that somehow emphasizing family unification was going to perpetuate the national origin system totally backfired. Unintended consequences. So Bill, we've seen the demographic portrait that Tom has painted for us, but talk to us about the economic implications of immigration. In the last couple of decades, in the current period, and I would also like you in your response to zero in a little bit more on Texas, because as we all know, Texas has an economy that's larger than many countries in this world. And Texas is also one of these states that is soon to be majority minority, no longer made up of your white traditional immigrants. So if you could tell us a little bit about the economic implications. Well, sure. And I would point out that Texas is the most important state in the United States of America. So it's important what people here think and do. It's absolutely essential. I mean, you have skills at the high level, you have the H-1B visa issue, and you have basically construction, hospitality, and agriculture. And in Texas today, we rely heavily on immigrants to fill a lot of those positions. It's never been that people born in Texas or born in the U.S. will not do some of these jobs. It's that not enough of them will do these jobs. So when you look to home building or you look to agriculture or you look to hospitality, there is a reliance on immigrants. And rightfully so, in our opinion, I mean, they helped build the economy. A few years ago, the comptroller did a study on the effect of the state. And if suddenly some of those who were running for office today had their way and all of the undocumented workers were left the state, it would be disastrous for our economy. You took a question I was going to ask you Bill. So there's this cheesy low budget movie that was made in 2004 that was called A Day Without a Mexican. And it was under the radar until Donald Trump came along and said, you know what, we're going to deport 11 million people. And I think people started thinking, this could be a reality. What would our nation look like without Mexican immigration, Asian immigration, all different types of immigration. And one thing I want to point out is that immigration doesn't just fill our low skill jobs. Yes, we do see them in the construction sector and the service sector, but we also see them at the other end of the spectrum, technology, research in our university. So I don't know why, but we have just tended to think of immigrants doing the lowest jobs. They get off the boat on Ellis Island and they pick up a shovel, but that's no longer the case when we're talking about immigration in the United States. We can't talk about immigration without talking about xenophobia, without talking about the hateful rhetoric that has been surrounding immigration, not just today, but always. Are we going to see forward movement, Tom? A big question here. Ask me next year. Well, think about gay marriage, for example. So in gay marriage, we saw slow and steady movement toward at least the political resolution of gay marriage. Are we going to see? It wasn't really political. It was mostly judicial. Most of the states that made a transition before the Supreme Court, so I'm not sure this analogous, did so based on a decision from a federal judge. Well, and that's an excellent point, because today we're seeing immigration being played out in the courts because it is being stalemated in our legislatures, in our Congress, either in the judicial route or in the congressional route, and we also know the executive route has been deadlocked. Are we going to see forward movement or is this just something that we're going to perpetually have to revisit every 80 years of our nation's history? Every 100 years we're going to have to revisit the question of immigration. Well, as I said before, the debate about this in the 1960s was hot and intense and ugly. The difference between 1965 and 2015 is that we now have 50 years of experience of living in a diverse society. I set the sort of the character-driven portion of my book in Northern Virginia in one particular county that in 1970 was 93% white, 7% African American, and about 0.1% foreign-born. That county had just gone through desegregation. It was just going through desegregation. It was a segregated county. Schools were segregated, neighborhoods were segregated, housing was segregated, and it was a semi-rural county. It went through over the next 30 years three, or the next 40 years, three traumatic periods. It went through desegregation, which is really traumatic for any community. It went through urbanization. It became part of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and the population just mushroomed, and it went through immigration. From 0.3% in 1970, now about close to one out of three residents in Fairfax County is born outside the United States. It's a fascinating place to look at what happens to a community when it goes through this level of immigration. The truth is that in Fairfax County, with 30% of its population born outside the United States, goes up and down between one, two, three, four of the most wealthiest counties in the United States. It has a dynamic economy, and the economy was, the per capita income was going up, up, up, up all this time that immigrants were coming in. There are no, like, Chinatowns or Little Italy's or anything like, any enclaves like that. The immigrants in Fairfax County have become totally integrated. There are 100 languages spoken in Fairfax County schools. It's largely, I mean, there are problems. I don't deny that. There are problems of organized crime. There's problems of obviously human trafficking, illegal undocumented workers. But by and large, it's an example of how people have gotten accustomed to multicultural life. I tell the story in the book of a young man from Bolivia, whose two best friends in high school were a kid from Pakistan and a kid from South Korea. They all three arrived at about the age of nine or 10, speaking Spanish, Urdu, and Korean. And they found they had so much in common by their sort of shared immigrant experience that they became close friends. So you see these bonds developing there. So, you know, I don't want to underestimate sort of the negativity that you're talking about in terms of attitudes toward foreigners. But I think the experience of living with people who are different does soften that opposition. Bill, switching gears a little bit, getting into the nitty gritty of politics, because for those of us here in Texas who follow politics, we know that you were in some interesting situations this past legislative session. And I find it so interesting because it wasn't that long ago that immigration was one of the few political issues that cut across both parties. You had Democrats who were in favor of expansionary immigration policy and those who were in favor of restricting it, same thing with Republicans. Over the last five to eight years, we've seen the Democratic Party close ranks. And yet we've seen a fissure among the Republican Party with regards to immigration. If you can talk to us about that fissure. And also, are there bridges between the two factions in the Republican Party with regards to immigration? Well, I think there definitely are. I mean, you see the spectrum in the presidential candidates. From those who have been advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, Jeb Bush has been wrote a book about it. And of course, Rubio has, you know, got his fingers burned a few years ago when he was advancing immigration reform. And then you have, you know, all the way over to Trump, who is, you know, his bad politics and bad policy and just the worst of the worst, in my opinion, with regard to this issue. We need to solve the problems here. But over the last years, I mean, you saw in the early 2000s, the legislature passed overwhelmingly allowing undocumented students who went to school here in state tuition. And then you've seen the effort to repeal that. And a lot of us, a lot of people in this room work with us and we were able to defeat it. But, you know, within the Republican primary, which is the real problem, you've got probably 40% of the voters in the primary who are seal the borders and send them home. And, you know, that just does not work. It can't be done. It doesn't work for the future of Texas or the future of America. What we need to do is have comprehensive reform, have security at our borders. Obviously that's the key. But at the same time, allow enough legal immigration to meet the needs of employers and give some, at least at a minimum, legal status, perhaps with a pathway towards citizenship for those who are here and who are paying taxes and obeying law. So how do you assuage the very anti-immigrant activist? You go to a town hall and someone gets up and says, hey, send them all home. And you are a Republican legislature, legislator. What do you say to that person? Well, I don't, you have a hard time saying anything. I know that like John Carter from Round Rock, Williamson County, you know, perhaps it was two years ago at Salado. He calls it the Battle of Salado now. He was assault, I mean, not physically, but verbally assaulted at a town hall meeting. And, you know, I know that he's backed off from the issue. I'm not sure that there is a solution within the Republican Party, the business community, which I try to represent. I think it's pretty solid on getting something done. But it's just extremely difficult. And if you're running for office and you're getting elected in the Republican primary, part of the problem is there are no swing districts in Texas anymore, period. There is no one in the legislature or in the Congress with maybe one seat, you know, the San Antonio de El Paso seat held by her. Now that may be considered a swing, but the rest of them are not. So if you want, if you're a Republican, you want to get elected. All you worry about is the Republican primary. You do not worry about the millions of Texans in the middle, so to speak, who you could make the argument to. You know, I think redistricting has put us in a position where, and I think it's sad, I think there are no contests in the fall, and I think that hurts the body politic because there's no real competition of ideas except within a very narrow range on both ends of the scale. Can I throw something in? There are two aspects to immigration criticism. There is the cultural aspect which you're referring to and that I find most distasteful, just that sort of an opposition to immigrants of color. But there's also the argument that the authors of the 1965 Act never intended for it to produce the quantity of immigration that it produced. And that is largely due to one provision in the Act which I alluded to earlier, the Brothers and Sisters provision, which brought in, you know, many more people than the authors of the Act anticipated. And I don't think you can rule out that if there is some kind of immigration reform, there is going to be a second look at current law. And whether, is it really necessary to let every naturalized citizen bring in some adult brother or sister that they may not have had any contact with for 30 years? I think that there are, you know, there is going to be a sort of a non-bias look at immigration policy and raising some of these tough questions, avoiding the kind of the semi-racial or cultural or ethnocentric or xenophobic things that you're referring to. There are other parts of the immigration policy that I think probably will be questioned. Yes. And these are the parts that are not sexy, but that are so crucial because we can say, let's send another 10,000 troops to the border. Let's spend some more money on military hardware. But at the end of the day, it's about how are we going to allot visas? How are we going to check visas internally? How are businesses, Bill, going to keep track of who is working here legally and illegally? Because one thing that Tom, you alluded to was the push and pull. Immigration at its core is a push and pull story. Immigrants come here because there's a pull by businesses employing them. And also usually they're coming from situations where they're not as ideal as they are here in the United States. So in the business community, Bill, are you seeing reticence to say, for example, e-verify where every business is going to have to provide checks of their employees? What is the feel on the ground in the business community? Well, I think there's a lot of concern about e-verify and the validity of e-verify. So there's some pushback there. Some use it. Of course, the I-9s are prevalent. Everybody requests that. But that doesn't really get you where you need to be. I mean, I don't know if it can be done, but some sort of identification that an employer can rely on, because it's our belief that it's unfair to turn employers into forensics experts. There should be a document that's a safe harbor that they can accept and say that this person, citizen or not, is legal to work for that employer. And they shouldn't be in the enforcement business. But unless and until we allow more immigration, in my opinion, and fix the mess we're in, I think over-relying or penalizing the employer is not something that would be appropriate and would be harmful to the economy. So immigration, as we've seen recently, has been stalled. So we have the Gang of Eight Immigration Reform that tried to provide a substantial reform to the 1965 Act and also the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act under Ronald Reagan, passed in the Senate, but didn't go anywhere in the House. We've been seeing President Obama's executive orders for Dreamer children and their parents stalled in the courts. I get frustrated. I think, are we at a complete standstill nationally, and is all the action at the state level, at the local level? Are we going back to those days when DC, when our capital wasn't involved in immigration policymaking? And because at the beginning of this nation, most immigration policy was local. The independent ports decided who they would let in or not let in. So I want to get your reaction about what is going on at the state and local level. I don't follow the incremental politics of immigration reform on these levels so much. I would just call everyone's attention to a new study that came out this week from the Pew Research Organization that reinforced something that you suggested earlier, which is actually in 40 years. You mentioned Texas becoming a majority minority state. The United States will be a majority minority country in 40 years. This doesn't even depend on undocumented people becoming documented. This is the natural growth of the legal immigrant population, those who are becoming naturalized as U.S. citizens. So I think that looking at the prospects for immigration reform outside the context of demographic reality is pretty short-sighted because the demographics are going to change everything in this country. Obviously immigration, our view is that it's a federal issue and not a state issue. You have legislators who are frustrated as I am with the failure of Congress to do anything with regard to this issue. So they get elected and they want to come down the street here and they want to do something about it. I would point out though in Texas, for a combination of reasons, and a lot of credit goes to people in this room, the legislature has not passed any anti-immigration legislation similar to what happened in Arizona or Alabama or even Oklahoma. And I can tell you the business community in Alabama rules today that they said to immigrants go away because they did. And do you really want to go to the holiday Inn and have them, when you check in, have them hand you sheets and say, by the way, you need to bring them back when you check out? I mean that doesn't work for the American economy. You know, and I know that the economy in Texas could be stronger. I mean the length of time it takes to build a house, construction of restaurants and hotels in some cases is being held back by a lack of labor. And certainly at the high end, we have problems in the Austin area, we have 8,000 information technology openings. And what we do today is we allow foreign nationals to come to our great universities and go to school and get an education to something, not a lot, but to some extent subsidized by the taxpayers in Texas and the U.S. And then as they walk across the stage, we tell them, you got to go home. I mean, that's the definition of insanity for sure. And I think if we had a standalone bill, we could probably resolve that issue. But of course, the advocates don't want to take a piecemeal approach. They want the whole thing, which is understandable. Because if you did that, that would relieve pressure from some tech industry and actually lessen the chances, if that's possible, of passing comprehensive reform. I want to come back to the cultural aspect of immigration and with the exception of Native Americans. We're all immigrants in this country. And my question, Tom, is, do you think that some of the reticence of the American public in embracing the current waves of immigration is because they're not dropping the hyphen? So we saw Irish immigrants. They went from Irish American to American. Sam Huntington, as I'm sure you're familiar with his work, I'm going to read you a quote. The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves from LA to Miami and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril. Well, this is the lead paragraph of the story of the New York Times this week, based on a study from the National Academy of Sciences. The newest generations of immigrants are assimilating into American society as fast and broadly as the previous ones, with their integration increasing over time across all measurable outcomes, according to a report published on Monday by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. This is such a complicated story. What you say is true, but you have to control for a lot of different factors. You have to control for the levels of education. Many Hispanic immigrants are coming with much lower levels of education than previous generations did, and it may take them a little bit more or certainly the first generation may take them more time to learn English. But what you see is by the third generation, and also the quantity, the numbers, are such that there's sort of a less need for them to learn a language. But if you look at the second and third generations, by the second and third generation, the English speaking is as high as it is for any other group. So no matter the immigrant group, by the time you get the second and third generation, you really are talking about an Americanization. And the other thing is that, you know, that's a good quote from Samuel Huntington. There's actually another quote from Arthur Schlesinger, who was a very liberal Democrat and advised that President Kennedy wrote a book a few years after Samuel Huntington in which he talked about the national motto, e pluribus unum, out of many one. And he said there's too much pluribus and not enough unum, which is the idea that, you know, that sort of with our infatuation with multi-cultural life that we're not focusing enough on the unum part, the unity part. And I think that's a legitimate issue. However, the problem is that for immigrants of color, they can't change their skin color. They can't change their religion. They can't change the fact that they come from a different cultural historical background. There's got to be, in the definition of we, there's got to be, you know, more tolerance for people coming from non-European backgrounds. Because no matter how hard they try, they're never going to become a European American. And so there's something, it's easy. It's one thing for an Irish American to drop the hyphen, become an American. But for a Mexican American or from an African American immigrant, dropping that hyphen is going to be a more challenging thing because, you know, they have, they are different in some ways and there's nothing they can do about it. And Pope Francis said something really interesting, a mass in Philadelphia last week. I mean, he said to speaking to immigrants, particularly non-European immigrants, he said, you should not be ashamed of your traditions. You should not be ashamed of your roots. So I think the challenge for the nation is to find a way to define we in a way that does establish that unity but without sort of forcing people to take on some identity that they really can't take on. I'm going to take your quote over mine. I like it better than Sam Huntington's. We have just a couple of minutes, but I want to end on us doing a little crystal balling. I want to get your sense of how immigration is going to play out in the next couple of months as we come up onto the 2016 election. So just a couple of final thoughts and then we'll go ahead and open it up for questions. There's a story in the Washington Post today listing all the pundits and journalists who have predicted that Donald Trump is going to flame out. It's a very long list. My colleague, Mar-Alias, was one of the first to when he announced his candidacy, he said, this is the end of the Trump phenomenon. And obviously it wasn't. So it's, you know, you predict what's going to happen in this race at your peril. I do think that certainly as you get sort of closer to the general election, I'll skip to that. You're going to see a dramatic change in the rhetoric. And I think the whole anti-migrate, I mean, you know, the Republicans know that they can't go on winning elections on just sort of an angry white vote. It's just, it's not going to work. And the smart people in the Republican Party know that perfectly well. So as you get out of this primary phase, I don't know what you think, Bill, but as you get out of this primary phase, you're going to see, I think, a whole different level of language. Well, I mean, Donald Trump has done unimaginable damage to the Republican brand with Hispanics, and I'm not sure that it can be repaired. George W. got, I think it was 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Romney got, I think Reagan got 29 percent, and that trend will continue. I mean, somebody said that Romney was like a vacuum cleaner salesman who knocked on an Hispanic's door and said, I've got all these wonderful vacuum cleaners for you, but by the way, I don't like you. I mean, that doesn't work. And it doesn't work for the future of Texas. So I am pessimistic, but I think that, you know, hopefully Trump has, maybe he's not out, but he's plateaued. In other words, there is an element, obviously, that he appeals to. But I don't think, and I hope and pray that it's not enough to get him nominated. You know, Rose said the establishment may not be able to nominate someone, but they can stop someone from getting nominated. And I certainly hope that's not on Trump. And if we can, if the Republicans can nominate somebody who's willing to try to work on the issue in a constructive manner, then I think the Republicans will have a chance of getting elected. I think if they have someone who is in a Trump mode, they cannot get elected and will not get elected. Well, I want to make one final note here in that we have, I would say, two and a half Latino candidates in the Republican race. We have Ted Cruz and we have Marco Rubio. And I kind of count Jeb Bush because he's Mexican by marriage. He's culturally Mexican. So I think it's very interesting to see three fluent Spanish speakers and three fluent. Well, Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz. I don't think Ted Cruz is one. Does Cruz speak Spanish? I don't think he is. Two and a half Spanish speakers. Okay, there we go. So we have two and a half Mexicans. But I just think that in and of itself is very interesting. And I do think that that ultimately is going to push immigration to the fore as we get closer to the general election. So with that, let me take a couple of questions. Yes. I believe there are microphones on either wing. Oh, there you go. You can go line up. I just heard that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are Hispanics or Latinos. But if you go and look at the statistics, all the 80% of the Cubans list themselves as white. And if you go and look at Ted Cruz, he definitely does not identify with Hispanic community except for getting some votes. What's your opinion? Well, since I started this conversation, I think I'm going to get into trouble with it. So Marco Rubio does self-identify very strongly as a Cuban American. Ted Cruz, not so much. He is very- He's a Canadian, isn't he? Cuban Canadian. Bill, he self-identifies as American. And interestingly, I think Jeb Bush, even though he may not, even though I think accidentally he marked Hispanic on a census form, he's culturally Latino. So you're absolutely right that we can't just go by the labels, but we have to see what they are standing for, the policies they're putting out, and also what they say in terms of their cultural identity. We need to take them for what they're worth at face value. We often hear 11 million, give or take a couple of million, but we never hear how many taxes they pay. We never hear how many houses they buy. We never hear how many cars they buy. We never hear their payroll that's earned. This population, which is pretty fuzzy as far as the definition goes, makes a huge contribution to this country. And this is always in a defensive negative context when this conversation takes place. Whether it's Pew or someone else, I would love to have someone publish some credible information as to the huge contribution made to our economy and our culture by the Hispanic population that's one generation. Is there anything that's ever been put out? I know one, the comptroller of Texas put out a study now, I'm not sure how many years ago, and showed the value of the contribution to the Texas economy overall. And I can't remember exactly, but I mean, it was a very substantial contribution. And I think you're right. I mean, these people are paying taxes, they're paying rent, and through rent paying property taxes effectively, I've heard numbers as high as $5 billion contribution to the social security system that's never claimed because of their status. So I mean, there are lots of things like that that are very important. And the idea of, you know, rounding 11 million up, I mean, physically, I don't think it could be achieved and it would be disastrous for the economy. Thank you. Question. Yes, sir. I'm a first generation born in this country, and my grandfather and my father came over here, they didn't speak English, but they went to work, they became citizens, they learned to speak English, and they proved themselves to be very capable of earning a living. Now, how would we build our roads? How would we build our buildings? How would we take care of our yards? Who would do all these labor jobs that the American boys don't seem to want to do it? You take a ride along the highway and you see who's doing all the work. They're all Mexicans. Now, we can't go and export 11 million people, that's impossible. We all know that, and I think Trump knows that, but what we need to do, what is my personal opinion, we don't have any trade schools, we have to put these young people to work, and go to school and learn trades so that we can have an established younger generation that are willing to work and can do the work. And this is something that should be done. All our companies have went overseas because of the unions and the heavy taxes, and they went to China because they don't have to pay taxes, but they can't bring the money back in unless they pay a heavy tax on that money. Let me actually get one more question and then I'll have Bill address your question and our last question, ma'am. Yes, I'm interested. The Syrian refugees have not been brought up, so do you feel we should welcome them as suffering people that need open arms and open doors? Or do you think you're afraid of, or they would be terrorists? What does your feel for that? How do we filter out the good from the bad or do we not filter? I'm going to keep my opinion aside, but I do want to put into context the fact that immigration is a global issue. We sometimes think it's just Mexico and the US, but it's Europe and Africa and all over our world we're seeing the same issues that we're living out here, so it is definitely not unique to our country. I'll let the panelists. Well, I used to cover intelligence at NPR, and I can tell you that there is no possible way that you could screen immigrants and identify which ones are potential terrorists. You can't do it on the ground when they're there, and to somehow figure it out on the basis of their name. There's not some database that they're going to fit into. I think that it's kind of disingenuous for people to say, yeah, we should take Syrian refugees, but only the good ones, or that we should feel it's either do it or you don't. I'm not going to give an opinion on that, except to say that George Washington said in 1781 that the bosom of America is open not only to the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions. That was the promise that was made in 1781. Syrian refugees. I think we share some of the blame for the mess in Syria, meaning our government over the most recent history, and that as a result of that, yes, we should definitely take some. I'm not sure what the numbers are the administration has spoken to, but I think that we should take some, I don't know how you would calculate, quote our fair share, but I think that would be appropriate. We'll take one last question and then we'll wrap it up. I have a question, but first I wanted to comment on the Comptroller's Report. Is that the one that was put out by Carol Rylander when she was Comptroller? Yes, ma'am. I've read it and studied it and used it. It's an excellent report and it is available online. If anybody wants to Google it, it's an eye-opening report and has never been successfully challenged. The other thing I wanted to ask you, I was under the impression, and I don't know where probably on NPR, that there is, that UN, there's a UN something or other about refugees and countries being required to accept refugees into their borders. Does anyone know any of that, or did I just have a box on by mistake? No, I mean, I don't, I don't think that what the UN says necessarily carries a lot of weight in a lot of countries. So if there is such a requirement, it's, you know, there's no, how do you enforce something like that? I mean, we have a much better example right now in Europe where the European Union is insisting that each of its member states accept a number of refugees and a number of those states are just refusing to do that. Now that is, their own government is telling them, their own European government is telling them they have to do that and they're refusing to do it. So I don't, if the UN were to say something like that, I think largely, you know, it wouldn't really have much impact. All right, well with this, I would like to thank you all for coming tonight and one last round of applause for our panelists. Thank you.