 Immigrant rights aside, what's the U.S. interest here, which would connect us a little bit with the political debate and talk about policy and get us back to our overarching theme about whether there's a different kind of conversation to be had around immigration. Before doing that, we also had thought that Matt Iglesias from Slate might follow up a little bit with John if there were questions from his presentation. We sort of made the segue a little quicker than we'd intended just in the interest of time, but I don't want to take away from your time. If you had any kind of reaction, this is Matt Iglesias again, money box promise for Slate. Why don't I defer a couple of minutes to you to engage John if you had any kind of follow-up questions or thoughts emanating from the presentation and then I'll present our other panelists. Sure. Well, the main thing that occurred to me looking at that presentation, which was fascinating, is that people in the business world and economists often make a big distinction about immigrants of different skill levels and the different kind of implications of people with low levels of education versus higher levels coming in. And I was wondering if you know anything from server data, do ordinary people see that distinction or find that there's some importance to it? We haven't drilled into that specifically about the perception that Americans have. We did ask a question about four years ago about sort of attitudes toward immigrants generally. Do they make a positive impact on the economy? Attitudes were not very high on that particular item. Asked about attitudes toward crime. They weren't great on that issue either. One was definitely about culture. Americans are very high on the culture that immigrants bring to the United States. But you know the interesting thing is when you dive in to see who is actually coming to America. You look in China right now and you look into their data set. A very small percentage of people want to leave China permanently. It's about 6%. The same is true with India. But if you look into who that 6% is in those countries and you look in to see what their background looks like, those are the most educated people in the country. That's what that 6% is made up of. So if you think about the brain drain and the brain gain conversation that so many leaders in the world are having today, China and India are having serious issues just based on those data points alone. If you look in America, 10% of people want to leave the country permanently. But if you look at the educational background of those that would like to leave permanently, it's actually the opposite. So this is kind of a cruel joke but if you could kind of shoot other leaders a deal and say any chance we could just kind of make a trade for these folks, then I think that might be obviously a benefit in terms of that brain gain, brain gain conversation with the United States. And I think a slightly related issue to that is you showed there's been a kind of polarization over time of opinion on this where there's a growth in the number of people who say we should have more immigrants and also growth in the number of people who say we should have fewer. And do you know anything about the sort of the demographics underlying that? What kinds of people are in those groups? Yeah, if you look at that trend, I think if you think of kind of the political, I don't think anyone would be surprised about what the background is on that. But I think one of the most striking things is when you look at the background on race. So I don't think it's surprising that Hispanics are among the top saying that there should be more immigration. Then it's white Americans that are kind of in the middle, but then it's black Americans that come between both of those two race groups. So I think that's probably the most interesting find within that data set. Okay, thanks. Let's segue into our next conversation. And I want to be sure to introduce Simon Rosenberg, who is the president and founder of NDN and who has worked for quite some time on many of these issues. And Tamar Jacoby, again, my co-conspirator in helping to conceptualize today. And for those of you who were not here earlier, she is the president of Immigration Works and also a fellow at the New America Foundation. Simon, why don't we start off with you? I was asked earlier today by a reporter, French TV, who is here, who asked me how large immigration is going to loom as an issue in this election cycle once we get to the general election in the fall. And I admit I was a little bit stumped. Part of me wanted to say it's not going to be a big deal, and part of me was like it's going to be huge, and what should my answer have been? So he didn't ask about whether Mitt Romney speaks French? Is that one? I was a joke, everybody, sorry. But interview him in French is true. Look, I think it will be an issue in the presidential election because it's an issue in the country. It's not, as we saw from the polling data, and this is very consistent with many other polls taken over a long period of time, is that people view it, I call it a sort of a top tier, top of the second tier. I mean, the economy, national security issues, healthcare for a while were paramount in voters' minds, but this thing pops up around the same level as education in national polls, in the mid to upper single digits, I mean single digits depending on the poll. So it's a top five, top six, top seven issue in the country, and in a presidential debate where things get aired out, I assume this is going to be aired out heavily in 2012, but also because of the states that will be in play. This is often, you know, in the congressional races, because of the way the population distribution is in the United States, the issue of immigration is not as big an issue in the Senate and House races as it often is in the presidential race, and that's because of the 12 or 13 key states that will be contested in 2012. Four of them will be in the Southwest, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona. And then even in states like Virginia and North Carolina, you're starting to see very large Latino populations that can end up being determinative in the outcome of the election. So, you know, six or seven of the 12, 13, 14 states that will be contested, this will be an issue, a significant issue, so I think it will be a big issue. I think there are just two observations I have as we look ahead to 2012. One is that there has been a rough consensus among leaders of the two parties around the immigration issue since the 1980s. It doesn't mean there hasn't been dissidents and people who didn't agree, but whether it was the Reagan Immigration Act of 1986 or the McCain-Kennedy Plan that was, you know, cooked up recently, the two parties actually, this was not historically a terribly polarizing issue. There was actually remarkable bipartisan consensus. What's true about 2012 is that Mitt Romney will be the first nominee of either party to be operating intellectually outside the consensus in the modern era. And, you know, he's taken what are positions that are frankly surprising to me on these sets of issues. And so you're going to have Obama who has run clearly as somebody who has wants immigration reform and Dream Act and has been tough on the border and we can get more into that if you want. And Mitt Romney, who is far to the right of the Reagan, Bush, McCain sort of wing of the Republican Party, and staked out, you know, a very verently anti-immigrant path in this primary season. And so you're going to have a very different Republican Party being seen by the American public on this issue without there being significant changes based on the polling data, right, of the way the public feels about this, right? So it's a question of whether there's been a shift in the Republicans and the Democrats. The other thing I think it's important is what's interesting again about if you use the data that we just saw was the continuity of the data, despite extraordinary economic changes that have gone on. And that's because this is not an issue that is actually deeply tied to the economy and to people's economic views. This is about race and about who we are and how we're changing as a country and this trajectory of us moving towards a majority minority country, you know, by 2040 or 2042. And I think that in many ways this issue has been much more of a proxy about that social transformation than it's been a statement about economic insecurity. And certainly in the polling we've done, the polling you just demonstrated, there's just not a lot of evidence that where this is being fought out in the public when politicians and groups speak about this, this is much more about becomes a surrogate about the growing diversification of the country and us, you know, going through the most profound demographic transformation that we've gone through since the arrival of the Europeans on the soil in the 15th and 16th century. And so I think in 2012 this would be heavily contested and I think it's going to be fundamentally different than what we've seen in the last several elections because of the change in the Republican nominee's position vis-a-vis the last few. John, on the issue of data and polling, I was curious when I saw the slide about, you know, where people were asked to rank immigration as a problem, how big it loomed. Was the question framed as immigration or if you frame the question, you know, how concerned are you about illegal immigration? Does that spike the numbers? I mean, I imagine a lot of this is... It might. We didn't ask it. We just asked generally about the satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the current state of immigration. The people could interpret that however they... Exactly. And I think a lot of, again, the results, the way that they panned out, although that there was, you know, a large majority of Americans actually saying that they did, that they were dissatisfied with the current state, the level of immigration. Again, you would think that that all kind of meant that they were somehow against it, but there were still about 10% of Americans that were saying because they actually believed that it should be increased as opposed to decreased. But then again, of course, you have a majority of folks within that bucket that say that they do think it should be decreased. Matt, Simon is suggesting that at bottom, the discourse around immigration and people's feelings on the issue are driven by culture and identity and even race, and that this is sort of a cultural issue. If you put on your money box hat as an economics writer, are you willing to cede that, or do you find that this is still in many ways driven by economics and economic insecurity? Or is it hard to separate? Well, you know, I've always had the sense that a perception of economic impact is important to people's assessments of these things, but it is true that if you look at research on the economic impact of immigrants, what you typically find is that if there are people who suffer economically from high levels of immigration, it's recent immigrants themselves who have the most sort of direct labor market competition with other immigrants, and at the same time, if you look at the politics, at the polling, it's clear that it's not recent immigrants from Mexico who are the driving force behind anti-immigration politics. So it does seem that whatever people's self-conscious articulation of it is, that identity is really what's pushing people, and that you don't see a ton of really practical discussion of the economics. It struck me many times that it's a little perverse to be living in a country where one big problem we have is that there's supposed to be a huge excess inventory of vacant homes, particularly in the southwestern United States, and then also a huge problem of too many people wanting to move into the southwestern United States. These are sort of, if you look at it on a purely practical economic level, there are some problems, but they're relatively easy to address. People have a political gridlock about it because it resonates on a more emotional, more cultural level. Tamar, you've been in the trenches in the last, I guess I should say decade, trying to create consensus around the need for reform, bringing together disparate groups, businesses, civil rights groups and others, and you primarily from a center-right point of view, arguing against the sustainability, sustainability and sustainability of the status quo. That effort hit a brick wall, shall we say. And to what extent do you think when you look back at that effort and you're still engaged in it, and I don't want to be completely strike a hopeless note, I'm sure the next decade will hopefully be different, but when you look back at the experience around the efforts of McCain Kennedy and particularly when you had a Republican White House that was trying to lead this effort, and you look at that failure, what are some of the lessons that can be learned in terms of the way that the issues were framed and the terminology and the discourse that was used and how should we kind of, or you in particular, hit a reset button in terms of the way that this is the pitch, so to speak. Yeah, really good question. I mean, I go to John's very interesting polling, right? What we saw was that 64% of the public, two-thirds of the public, is basically for the kind of reform we were pushing for. And only 20% want to, which is the kind of reform we were pushing for, allowing people to stay and become citizens. Only 20% want to deport everyone. So how did the 20%, one way of asking this, how did the 20% win? One way, I think, is that in American politics, as we all know, a small minority that's very engaged on something and very emotional and very dedicated can often stop something that a majority is okay with if that small minority is very intent on it. And I think that's part of what we saw. I think the other part of it, though, is that even that 60% has very mixed feelings. The Gallup data shows them to be very favorable thinking that immigrants are better, are good for the country, more than they're bad for the country. Other polls show that a little more mixed, that if you ask, is immigration more of a problem or an opportunity, people say problem. And they are, in fact, much more favorable to skilled immigrants than to unskilled immigrants. Much, much, much, much, much more favorable to legal immigrants than illegal immigrants. So the question is, okay, we've got that two-thirds saying we're forefixing it. We think it's a problem, we're forefixing it, and we think the solution is citizenship. But how do you get them kind of over their unease, over their volatility, and to have it be enough of a problem that they think the government really should solve it now? And to me, the answer to that is to connect it more, to highlight the link to our competitiveness. And this goes back to the other point that your polling shows very clearly, 80% of the people think economy is a big issue. Everybody's worried about the Chinese beating us. Everybody wants to do everything we can possibly do to be winning on that score. Only 4% think immigration is a big problem. The good news is, immigration is actually linked to our competitiveness, as we saw this morning. I mean, it's certainly linked to our competitiveness in terms of getting the people who are the best and brightest knowledge workers to America. That's going to be key to our future. And indeed, a large part of our workforce already here, whether or not they get the best education and fulfill themselves as the best they possibly can, is related to our policy. So to me, reframing in terms of our competitiveness, our economic interests, what this is going to mean for America, as opposed to arguing it out in terms of race, or hearts and minds, or what have you, that is the reset button. To be fair, I suppose one could look, drill down on those polling numbers and ascertain whether, if my top concern is jobs, maybe I'm baking into that concern a feeling that there are fewer jobs to go around because of immigration. So I think we shouldn't be so quick to say, oh, immigration is totally not a big problem, because only 4% of the people being pulled identify as the number one problem. If when you're identifying jobs as the biggest problem, you think part of the problem is illegal immigration. And I don't know if there's a way to sort of separate that out. We've pulled on that. And we've asked people, do you think illegal immigrants are taking away your job? And the answer is no, actually. And that's overwhelmingly, even in battleground states, even in the Southwest, there's a perception that undocumented immigrants are doing jobs that I wouldn't do, that are beneath me and my social status and beneath my friends. And to a great degree, by the way, that's actually true. And so there isn't... This is why I think the... I mean, I don't want to be a contrarian on this, but I think where the battle has been up to this point, and this is why what she's saying is so important and what you're saying is so important, is that up to this point, the debate has really been about race and about culture and about the way we're changing. And the question is, is there a way... So, for example... It's also been about rights and sort of what's morally correct to do for... If you look at the Dream Act for this one child, I think there's been a lot of spillover from the civil rights movement in terms of the rights-based discussion, which is a different pathway to discuss immigration than sort of a sheer economic competitiveness discussion. And I know you've done some writing on that. I'm pitching you a softball. Well, what I will just quick comment on is that I do think that one of the most... I often talk about... I've been working in national politics for 20 years and worked on a wide range of issues, and I've never worked in a debate that's willing to believe things that were not true, as I have in the immigration debate. And so, even if you just take this basic thing that's happened in the last 12 to 18 months, I mean, we know that the Obama administration has made the immigration system better and the border safer, and trade with Mexico has exploded while there has been increased violence on the Mexican side of the border. I'm willing to bet that we could... If we pulled on that, that the knowledge and the fact that the border cities are the safest cities in America today, that the crime rates along the border region have plummeted, that there's now actually no net legal migration into the United States. So, the question that you had there about people not wanting... There is no illegal migration into the United States anymore. That the system is actually moving towards the ultimate place that we wanted it, I think, back when we began... It's happening through roundabout means. We would have gotten there, I think, in this whole thing. But the system is actually... One of the things that's happened in the last six years is that we've learned that we can actually make the immigration system better and that we can make the border safer. This is incredibly important to take to the American people because a lot of the doubt is whether our government has the power to deal with these vast flows... We're making the system better. What exactly do you mean? You mean the crackdown on the workforce? Absence CIR, if I can speak in shorthand. Absence of comprehensive immigration reform and passing, which I think was the thing we all wanted. The steps the administration has taken over the last 12 to 18 months, including the most recent ones in the last few weeks, have tweaked the system on the margins. I'm not going to argue there's been wholesale substantial change, but there are 500,000 families who are going to benefit significantly from the most recent change in the last few weeks. So the thrust is to continue to make the system better and the border safer. I think the point I'm making here is that when you look at the data on this and the discussion, it's all about negative stuff. It's all about hordes of undocumented immigrants flooding the country. It's about drug violence. It's about taking jobs away. There's actually an incredibly positive story to be told about an administration with greater resources, greater cooperation with our Mexican partner, and the strategy has actually made the immigration system substantially better and the border safer. And I think that that's a message we have to take, those of us who want to see a better immigration system, have to take to the public, because it shows that it's possible, that it's not impossible. And I think that's going to be an important part of our narrative going forward. You know, when you said that your polling shows that people don't feel that undocumented workers are taking their jobs, I would just dissent, because up until today I felt like I should be a neurosurgeon. And now I know why I'm not. You know, these undocumented workers like Dr. Q. Took my job. Tamara, you hit. So the two things we haven't talked about, I spend a lot of time sitting behind a two-way mirror, or one-way mirror, I guess it is, watching focus groups. I sometimes joke it's the most fun way to spend an evening. It tells you something about my social life. But when you sit in focus groups listening to people to talk about immigration, they don't talk too much about culture. They don't talk about identity. And maybe they're masking that. What they talk about is welfare. And control. And it's control. So control is what you're speaking about. We're getting control. That's how it's getting better. We are getting control. The question is, what do you do else once you get control? Control is not enough because we've got 11 million people living here and we still need a bunch of PhDs and tech IT people and scientists and ag workers and guess what restaurant workers do? So control. So I think I totally agree that we have to make the case that we've gotten better control and we can have control. I don't understand why people think they get welfare because they don't. But again, people... I mean, I guess maybe just one thing to say about the race thing is sort of interesting to watch. Because in a focus group, everybody's complaining about the people in the emergency room and too much Spanish and everybody's complaining about it. But in every focus group, there's one or two people who are complaining with the kind of shrillness in their voice that everyone else in the room hears is a little too shrill and you can almost see them moving their chairs away. Like, I don't want to sound like that. So the race thing is complicated. I mean, it is undoubtedly about culture and identity, but people also... Americans truly, I think, don't want to be racist. Well, we elected a black president with 53% of the vote. It's the largest margin a Democrat has gotten since the 1960s, right? So the country has passed into some new place on race. The thing is that I think to go back to something you said earlier is that this hasn't been well digested yet. I mean, we've had the rise of the non-black white America, with rising Asian population, not only a post-1965 experience. It's very recent in our past. It's happened with incredible rapidity and great volume. And we haven't really digested it yet as a country, I mean, in so many ways. And even I was hoping last night in the Republican debate to listen to Juan Williams ask, how do you all feel about us becoming a majority minority country that you're going to be living in? That would have been an awesome question. I mean, you know, we elected a black president and yet the sort of narrative that he has somehow a little too foreign has persisted among a not insignificant part of the of the opposition. And maybe they're the opposition, they have to seize on something. And that's really tied into, I mean, it's a question of identity and it's almost as foreign as more as the two. So I wonder if, you know, Romney, if he's the nominee, is going to continue to pound sort of immigration as a cultural issue. Sometimes I feel like he's overcompensating on that to sort of, you know, show his bona fides with conservatives because there's so many other subject matters where he's compromised. But Matt, what's your sense of how significant immigration would loom in a Romney Obama slate sponsored presidential debate? But you know, it would be interesting because as Simon was saying, it's actually been a long time since we've had presidential candidates with big disagreement on immigration that you had, when McCain and Obama ran against each other, they talked about it, but they were actually operating from within a very similar kind of dynamic. Romney, you know, has really stepped outside that kind of bipartisan consensus. Obama at the same time has actually, I mean Simon was phrasing this as a good thing, but has in a lot of ways governed toward the right, you know, in a practical sense, since there hasn't been a real legislative opportunity for reform. So it's difficult to know how it'll play out, although it's clear that Romney, you know, beyond immigration in particular is sort of really emphasizing Americanness you know, in a very hardcore way as one of his key themes tying together everything he's saying, and it's difficult to know, you know, exactly what that amounts to, but there does seem to be an effort to claim that in his foreign policy, in his domestic policy, and perhaps in his attitude toward immigrants and immigration that Obama is like, is not a real American or doesn't really have America's interests at heart, and that's a, you know, that's a potent charge. I mean, the United States is a more nationalistic society than most of the other kind of peer-developed countries. But where is the policy divide going to come down to? I mean, on the one hand, and actually just to step back a little bit, we talk about how certainly compared to recent decades you know, we have two potential, you know, we're sort of already nominating Romney here today, but let's assume it's him. We have two candidates that are further apart than candidates that we can think of from each party in recent decades, but there certainly have been periods of time in American history where you might have had a candidate who felt that we should completely shut down the country to legal immigration, and I think we should just, you know, at least acknowledge the fact that even in this environment, you know, Mitt Romney and the economy where it is and everything, Mitt Romney is very quick to always say he's a big fan of legal immigration, and there were plenty of times in American history where they could even about that, but so given where we are and the sort of the fact that a lot of people in Washington Tamar accepted, and a few others here have kind of given up on immigration as a federal issue, and it's sort of impunted to the states, where do you think the actual concrete specific arguments would occur in that campaign or is it all going to be on these sort of vaguer questions of identity? I mean I think as we were saying, I mean there's not a huge number of, there's not a huge public outcry for specific addressing of the immigration issue in concrete terms, so I think it may stay rather vague, which doesn't mean there's no difference in policy. I mean we've seen that the leaders of the executive branch have a lot of discretion over how exactly immigration laws are enforced, over you know what you do with the system so on and so forth, and it's important to the Obama administration to attempt to be showing that they are making the system more humane insofar as they can, and it's also important to them to show a sort of defensiveness that they are securing the border. A Romney administration has some different incentives around that, but you know it's difficult for me to imagine people getting really deep into the weeds about it. But I think we're leaving at the one phrase we haven't uttered is the Latino vote, right? The Latino vote is going to be critical, is the largest, fastest growing voting block in the country, and critical in several of the states that are going to be hotly contested. So you know I think because of the way the two parties split up Romney wants to talk about immigration now because he thinks it appeals to the 20% who want to deport them, who are only 20% of the country, but a big percentage of Republican primary voters, he's going to want to And the people who are most skeptical of him. But he's going to want to stop talking about it next week, or whenever it is the nomination, whereas Obama's going to want to talk about it because he thinks he's going to win Latino votes. So Romney has had a stake in talking about it up to now, that stake is going to end, whereas Obama's is going to grow in a big way, so I think to the degree it gets injected it's going to be mostly, I hope Romney's going to say I don't want to talk about it at all. And it's also true that a lot of Latino organizations that supported Obama and worked hard for him, they feel, there's disappointment to some extent in that community, and there's arguments about how much and who's disappointed more about the extent to which the administration pushed for revisiting comprehensive immigration reform. Some attempts were made, but obviously in this climate it was only going to go so far. So Simon, if the president called you tomorrow and said I really got to get this back on the front burner here, because I owe these groups after all the support they gave me and I want to re-energize the Latino vote but how should I talk about it this time? How can I succeed where Tamar failed? I'm going to blame Tamar exclusively for a few years back. I'm assuming it's significantly to the failure too. Look, I think two things. One is I don't think it's interesting, Tamar, the way you're saying it, is that I don't know that either candidate will have an incentive to make it a front burner issue in the fall because of the data that we saw earlier, which is it just isn't a top tier issue and every time the Republicans have tried to make it a top tier issue it's failed for them because there are just other issues that voters care about more. Keeping that in perspective you got to show up on it, you got to lean into it, you got to have a position, but you can't expect it to produce beyond what it's capable of producing. There are two groups of voters in the country that this really matters to, and this is a voting issue for, right? Right wing conservatives, 15, 20% of the country who are very loud, very organized, very vocal through right wing talk radio and other means as you showed in your numbers, and then Latinos. And as I said earlier the Latino vote is disproportionately important in the presidential race. And what we know today about the Latino vote going into 2012 is that the Republicans escalation of rhetoric and policy in recent years, SB 1070 you know and what's happened in other states and the vote after vote after vote that's taking place in Congress recently has had an impact on the Republican brand in the Latino community. And what you see in the data today is that three separate polls taken the last six weeks all had almost exactly the same numbers which had Obama up in the high 60s which is where he was in 2008, and Romney down in the low 20s which is 7, 8, 9 points below where McCain's numbers were in 2000. I'm sorry 7 points below 7, 8 points below where McCain was so if the data on this quickly is that and I'll start with 2000 right it was 65, 35 Gore Bush in 2004 is 59, 40 Kerry Bush with Bush doubling his market share with the Republican Party's market share with Latinos in just two elections 2008 it went to 67, 31 Obama Obama McCain and so the thing is right now where we start today with Obama being below where he was in national numbers last time he's exactly where he was with Latinos four years ago and the Republicans have dropped you know up to high single digits but by the way that's the way it should be I mean the thing is those numbers I think are consistent with what the Republican Party has actually done in recent years the challenge for them is how do they get out of this hole that they're in in 2012 when their nominee is going to be the most inherently anti-immigrant nominee that we've had in national politics in the last 30 years and there is no running mate other than Jeb Bush who could put you know solve on those but help make the bridge to Latino community because I don't think Rubio can actually do it and I'm happy to talk about that more and so they're going into this election with a much bigger problem with Latinos than they've ever had and no obvious way to solve it I would say in the election which means that the south the path that Romney took to win the nomination and I agree with you he used this immigration issue as a bridge to the conservatives who are very suspicious of him and by the way it worked really well because it hurt Gingrich and Perry well that's been the other half of what's interesting is the nuance that's emerged even among Republican candidates look we have to recognize that Mitt Romney if you look at what he did to McCain in the primaries in 2007 where he spent millions and millions of dollars attacking McCain for being a liberal immigration and then he did it this time there's no candidate in either party of the modern era that has vested more money and more of his brand in being anti-immigrant politician than Mitt Romney and so the ability for him of who got to this level of politics other than Tom Tancredo right Tom Tancredo never broke 1% so he's got I mean he had to do what he had to do I mean I've worked in presidential elections I understand the game but there's going to be a price at the other end and it's going to be hard for them I think to get back and then a lot of his families and I want to just ask John if you're familiar with polling data that among Latinos and their perspective on how much they prioritize immigration how that might compare with their concern for jobs and the economy because as Simon mentioned you know we always sort of stipulate that this is a matter of huge concern for Latinos and anecdotally it seems true but are you have you guys done studies on that question among them? Yeah we have a little bit I mean I think the obvious answer is that it is a priority but you know at the same token it's a priority for all Americans it's just how it's individually addressed and what's of their interest back to our initial slide and what's the impact that immigration is going to have on this election coming down the pike it could have a big impact it all turns on what's going to happen with the economy again we see unemployment at 8.3% Q4 on GDP isn't out yet but you know we grew at 1.3% a lot of the modeling and analyses that are being done on trying to predict the outcome of this election everything that we're kind of seeing it just turns right back to the economy it's just the number one thing and I think it doesn't matter about really your demographic background your race, your age I think the number one thing that Americans are focused on in this election is just going to be the economy I can see foreign policy barely registers on those right? I should say one other thing this is just kind of an aside but you know Dr. Gallup our founder he said something about democracy and the will of the people but if it is about the will of the people somebody has to go out and figure out what that will is you know it's funny because we get slammed a lot by politicians in town because they say politicians say I'm not going to do what the Gallup poll says they always say Gallup I'm not going to do what the polls say I'm going to do what's right but you know Gallup has never never been anywhere where we've said do exactly what the polls say and really what we're saying is that leaders just need to be informed to what it is that the people are actually thinking so whether it is Hispanics about immigration and that kind of thing you know leaders need to be aware of exactly what it is they're thinking and again that's what's on top of the minds of Americans right now number one thing is just the economy Matt so how do we ascertain what's in the national interest if a lot of the debates in the past have been about what's fair and what should we do for these free Mac kids and the sort of morality and civil rights discourse if we could sort of magically set that aside whether that's the right or wrong thing to do and you just had a cold-blooded framing of what should the US and its national interests do and the kind of language that a good red-blooded mid-Romney voter could understand how would you even begin to sort of formulate that? I do think that it's clear that people have a greater I think friendliness toward the higher-skill immigrant bracket and that you know if I was talking about this politically I would try to lead with that with the idea that a strength of the United States you know not just currently but throughout history has been that a lot of the hardest working, most talented, most ambitious people from all around the world have wanted to come here and we've benefited from that in every major war we've fought we've benefited from it in peace time that a huge number of the founders of our high-tech companies in Silicon Valley are immigrants but I do think that that extends to the dream issues and to other kinds of things that you know if you have people who are in this country and whose aspiration is to get an education that it's more valuable to all of us to have them do it and you know even Rick Perry was essentially taking that theme I don't think it's working for him you know his campaign is a lot of problems but you know even inside the Republican Party primary I mean I think he was right to think that there's you know a real logic to that position that people are not going to say that it's somehow better for native-born people to have immigrants not going to school, not getting jobs, not having the opportunity to do this kind of thing and you know to the extent that people do seem to have a lot of concerns about use of welfare and other sort of public service type things it's difficult to know how much actual information changes people's concerns about that kind of thing but I think it should be it should be possible in your rhetoric to talk about you know people coming here and having the opportunity to work and to pay taxes and things like that you know as the exact reverse and to be very open to the idea that of course you know you don't want people to come here just to sort of cash welfare checks or something like that but that the main reason people want to come to America is because it's a good place to live and work and get a job and that it's good for America if people who want to work here are able to come here and contribute. I was thinking about what Simon was talking about the paramount importance of control and adapting the anxiety that's at the heart of a lot of this for some folks and Rick Perry yesterday you know in Boston South Carolina about in-state tuition in Texas you know there's a sort of two minute prelude to before he gets to the answer where he has to talk about the thousands of people he deployed on the border and the craft that he put on the river and he practically brags about shooting people and it's just this huge militaristic surge before he starts to get to the point about but then it's this kind of very reason do you want these people to be leaders or tax-users and again it's the fact that we've had Rick Perry and Gingrich speak within the contours of a Republican primary about reality in many ways and the sort of the fact that it's not realistic to deport 12 million people maybe that's a heartening milestone despite the fact that Romney's compensating on the other extreme you know that's exactly what I was trying to get into a minute ago I deploy Romney's rhetoric as much as you do but I think what we are seeing is in some ways a different Republican party both Perry's campaign did lose significant ground after he made his remarks about unauthorized immigrants but he was losing ground for other reasons Gingrich made his remarks Gingrich made his remarks about unauthorized immigrants and he gained 10% of the polls and it wasn't because of his remarks and it was the morning after people assumed he had really hurt himself and he wasn't dead because of it at all and so you know I think we are seeing even in Republican primary bases more room for an open view of that you know I think if you ask me what would my advice be to Republican candidates what would his advice be to Democratic candidates I can see that no Republican it's unlikely that Romney is going to come back and say legalize everyone he can't flip flop that much but he certainly could start with the way he talks now emphasizing the party usually leaves for last legal immigrants are good for the country high skilled immigrants are good for the country I think Latino voters Reagan used to say Latino voters are really Republicans they just don't know it the problem is they can't hear the Republican message because they hear anti-immigrant rhetoric and so the question is how do Republicans put that anti-immigrant rhetoric aside so that they can get their message across I don't know if Romney can do it anymore but I think other Republicans still do you think under a Romney administration the business community takes the lead in altering the tenor of discourse and educating the administration on the need to congressional Republicans will also even as the campaign is but on the campaign trail some Republicans are sounding off the chart congressional Republicans are moving to fix the illegal immigration system there have been a lot of bills introduced in the last several months giving visas here and visas there and trying to fix the legal system so maybe in a new administration what we do is we fix the legal immigration system first and then we do the enforcement and we allow everyone to make the speech that Perry said which works by the way when you say I've controlled this we're fixing the legal immigration system and then maybe down the road we get to the harder question of the unauthorized I think it's worth emphasizing in terms of control trying to emphasize the idea that if you create legitimate pathways for legitimate activity that it becomes much easier to isolate and weed out drug smugglers or human traffickers or whatever else it is you're doing I think most people one of the reasons why the illegal distinction cuts so much weight with voters is I think most voters don't understand how difficult it is to immigrate legally they have this idea in their head that there's people who they just didn't want to stand on some line so they snuck across or maybe they're criminals and we know that's not true but it has to be conveyed that if you create a process that's simple that meets people who want jobs with people who want workers that then you won't have there's so many people trying to invade the system let's take a few questions from the audience if you could wait for the microphone and identify yourself you have some time for questions Hi I'm Dara Lind with America's Voice so we have on the one hand everyone saying we need to take this to the American people we need to make the case to the American people on the other hand we have what looks like a pretty durable polling set over 40 years which not only features a lot of economic change but also some pretty significant changes that we'll see over that time and then Simon saying that people are more willing to believe wrong things about immigration than they are about anything else not to mention tomorrow the immigrants taking welfare thing that you were talking about in your focus group that's a 15 year old policy that hasn't percolated through yet so when we talk about taking the case of the American people like what's going to change what's going to break now? Again I think it has to be how we've got we haven't been arguing it in a way that's been making it enough of a priority for people and I actually do think I think the case is about we have gotten control it is about creating legitimate ways for it to work and I think in a big way it's about what the first panel was about I mean in a number no one throughout in 2010 8% of the kids born in America had an unauthorized parent that's almost 10% of the workforce of tomorrow and all those bad things we saw you know it's about the years of behind in schooling they're not going to graduating from high school they're not getting to college I can't believe we can't make people see that that's an issue for our competitiveness and the people you know if 10% of Americans aren't graduating from high school and they could if we help them I can't believe that that won't matter to people and be useful. Other questions? I was surprised that the other day going to the local pharmacy and seeing that the machines are all bilingual now we get to choose our language so I would assume that there would be more Hispanic or Latino candidates right now that really be depressing these issues more aggressively if not this time around definitely within four years. The issue of immigration red lines Simon do you have any there are every year there are more Latinos running for major office I mean there could be you know three or four Senate candidates a cycle of Latino descent we know that the you know that we know that all the governors the Republicans had tremendous success in 2010 in electing prominent Latinos and so I think it's a demographic demographic demography is not fascinating however it's important and the rising population but again the huge increase in Latino populations a very recent event in our history and it's going to take a while for it to cycle down to things like candidates running for city council and then bumping up to state rep and then running up for higher office but you're beginning to see it look Mitt Romney his family's from Mexico we even have a presidential candidate so I think it's inevitable that you're going to see more and I just want to make this one on the question before the thing that's also forcing the debate is what's happening in the states where the states are taking action because of the lack of federal progress and in many cases are taking action that is you know not positive in the way that it's you know in trying to solve the problem and trying to fix the broken system and so that's the point I think is that this is a real issue the system is broken it's anachronistic it fits it doesn't fit our values or our economy of the 21st century we need a better immigration system and until that happens I think this will be you know a major issue in front of the American people and just because we're going to enter and I throw out one other idea for you all to cogitate around is that I think also for those of us who want to see this through we're going to have to help rehabilitate the image of Mexico in the United States and I think that the portrayal that one sees of Mexico as sort of a failed state of a narco terrorist a new word that's been introduced by the Republicans in Congress this year which is a remarkable conflation of all the evil things in the world that has no bearing on reality whatsoever right is the this issue about what has happened with Mexico and it's the centrality of our relationship with Mexico going forward and I'll just do this very quickly right I mean 10% of our population now in the United States of Mexican descent we are Mexico's now our third largest trading partner our second largest export market you know vision is the fourth largest network television network in the United States now supplanting one of the traditional networks right you can go through the list of things about how you know we're increasingly are going to have an identity as a Latin nation how we resolve this issue of what the role of Mexico is and this enormous you know as I believe that Arturo Saracan the ambassador for Mexico to the U.S. is correct it's arguably our most important bilateral relationship in the world and we treat Mexico and Mexicans as very distant from our collective imagination I think that part of the success of winning this debate over time is to be honest and true about what Mexico is to us right it's it we trade more with Mexico today than we do with Germany the UK and Japan combined almost as much we do with China the centrality of the economic relationship is terms of recasting the economic piece I think as opposed to being about a failed state but this place that our economic destiny and our cultural destiny is so tied up into right is something that is is something we've got to figure out how to talk about because we've got to turn Mexico into an asset and not a liability in this in this conversation because Mexico is an asset and not a liability the United States and it's one of the areas that I think we've got to confront you know head on as we go forward and that's part of the advice I'd give to President Obama I think that's a that's a as somebody who grew up in Mexico in the same state that Mitt Romney's family's from I applaud that that's it's very true and it's it's one of my frustrations is how Mexico is portrayed you had an earlier question though that we were going to return to on the sort of linkage between immigration and security and John can you talk a little bit about that and even beyond the linkage just the fact that this campaign is happening in a time when we've alluded to this but when Americans don't seem overwhelmingly concerned by the issue of terrorism and national security that dominated the last couple of election cycles you want to flesh that out a little bit? Sure yes as I mentioned a little bit earlier when we asked people about and this was again in the survey four years ago but we asked about the impact that they think immigrants to the United States have on things like crime or the economy etc again you're asking about terrorism but also safety in general one of the things is the attitudes aren't great toward the perception that immigrants have toward crime that needs to I would think that if one's working in that direction that would need to get fixed the other thing is we've seen spikes at times when there's incidents like 9-11 where people say that immigration needs to get decreased substantially so you know when you think about it somebody had made a comment about how does this get addressed and what kind of recommendations would you have for politicians right now you know Americans the way they see things is two very different ways one is a national picture and one is something for themselves it's something that all pollsters will tell you all survey experts will tell you that you know if you ask about public schools they say the public schools in the country are a mess but then everyone says that they like their public school or how about congress everybody says that the approval ratings of congress are a mess yet you say how do you know about your own congress man or woman and they say well I actually have a pretty good feeling about that you see what I mean and you also hear about the survey data that reflects and say you think immigration is a threat to your own job well no I don't but I think it might have some issues at the national level so the thing is if you had to make a recommendation on those two things whether it's you know if you're trying to make an impact on security and that kind of thing there has to be an appropriate communication strategy at the national level on you know getting to Americans about what is happening for the country but also how does it impact the individuals for themselves and really trying to bridge the gap on those two issues and it would probably also be safe to say that one of the legacies of the period after 9-11 is this notion of sequencing and the question of even today that sort of paramount need to assert control and to show that you control the border before you can get on to the other subjects and there was that slide that you showed about when people are asked the priority about undocumented number one is you know the force at the border and number two is then deal with the people who are already here which I think does reflect perhaps still that lingering concern with with security right and if I may there was another question really about Hispanic candidates whether they're running for governor maybe one day for the presidency you know this is a sensitive topic talking about things like religion race and American politics but actually about the candidates specifically you know about 50 years ago Dr. Galf was just openly asking Americans if your party had a well-qualified candidate running for president that happened to be black would you vote for that candidate majority of Americans you know about 45% or something said no openly to pollsters now the trend on that is really fascinating because it's just perfectly increases right now it's at about 94 to 96% that said that they would vote for a well-qualified person candidate that happened to be black if they ran in their party we've asked that for a woman we've asked that about various religions obviously Joe Lieberman who's Jewish we've asked about that we've also asked if you would vote for a Mormon candidate if you were to ask Galf right now if I just go out of the limb and guess I don't think that would be something that if you rotated in that a bunch of Americans would say no I have a problem with that I wouldn't vote for a Hispanic candidate it's really more things that candidates have things like being married three times that really is that has a serious impact on voters on voters you know the same thing about being old even though Reagan was elected but if you just ask Americans would you vote for an old candidate they're they're a little bit less likely to being a Mormon and being Jewish is not significantly but it's lower than being a woman or being black so again if you had to ask if I just had to guess I'm going out on the limb a little bit Galf you know we're as neutral and independent as possible on all these issues but if you wrote that my assumption would be that that would not be something that would kind of be damaging for for a candidate for any means that Americans would be less likely to vote for a candidate because because they're back on like that I have to say one short thing in this like we're going to approve our message the other thing that we haven't talked about is talking about the success of immigrants integrating you know most people you ask them speaking you know the biggest thing that bothers people is press two for English you know everything that they only can no one's learning English they're not integrated they're not becoming Americans we don't do nearly enough good enough job about making that point that Phil said was you know the absolute gold standard uncontrovertible the kids learn English that's socioeconomically and all kinds of ways and I think that's just part of the long term education we've got to do to get around these cultural fears they're not racial fears they're cultural fears I have been really fascinated by the way multiple people on the panel have been talking about the beliefs that Americans have that are totally contra reality just not in tune with the way things actually are on this issue and I've bumped into this over and over and over again myself I I constantly have people ask me if I give a talk how come the girls in your book don't go apply for legal status I'm asked it all the time so there's a belief out there and I'd say it's a majority of the people that I talked to that undocumented workers or students in my case students can go change their legal status if they would just fill out some form if they would just go see a lawyer if they would just turn something in that they forgot to do and I just wonder to me it seems like that's at the heart of the problem that's why we can't pass reforms because there's no popular understanding of what the problem actually is that there's no way for these 11 million folks to go change their legal status with anything like what we would say is a reasonable investment of time or energy and I was wondering if the pollsters could talk to that have you looked at it have you tried to examine what people's popular beliefs actually are like I feel if you surveyed people the majority of people in the United States would say yes those 11 million people could go change your status today if they wanted to I feel like that's a belief that exists it's just simply not true I feel like there's a poll that could be written that would outline these false beliefs that would like map out really clearly what the public education is that would have to happen does that not exist? People overestimate the number of foreign born people in the country they do they think there's twice as many as there are they think there's seven times as many unauthorized ones as they are I mean basically Americans think that a quarter of the population are unauthorized immigrants I mean it's only 11 million out of 311 million so I mean it starts with just the size of the problem and yes you see it over and over again in focus groups you know if they just went down to the post office and picked up their papers you know a lot of packets waiting for you John Sides published a paper recently where he showed that if you correct people's misperception about the quantity it doesn't actually change their views so I think to an extent you can you can become overly focused on the misinformation something on the level of values or something else is driving people's opinions and they kind of make up facts at the same time I also feel that people have erroneous views in the other direction where there's this assumption that it's easy living for the undocumented and that plays into the debates around the driver's licenses and why people want to kind of draw a line there and this notion that there's sort of great access to all this welfare so it's interesting to hear you say that because I'm sure it's true that as if there's an act of defiance to remain undocumented because hey you can still avail yourself all these goodies I mean that's kind of like maybe the misperceptions are all kind of wrapped up there are two quick points one is that look the connection between the sociological other and the racial other and welfare was the central tenet of a major political party in the United States for a generation and this is not an accident that there is this sort of loose association that is being furthered by right wing talk radio and right wing shows this was the central tenet of republican domestic policy for two generations there's a reason that is continuing to have resonance and power and I think it's because the thing that's incredible about this and I've spoken about this and we've talked about this the welfare argument is particularly offensive to Latinos because the highest worker participation rates of any slice of the American population is Latino immigrants so it's as untrue it is more untrue for this audience than it is for let's say white rural older people who don't work anymore it's much more true for that demographic for the actual demographic that is incensed about this the second point I want to make in getting back to sort of the challenges is that you know look the other is the way that immigration is playing out in the US right now it's not universal it's not happening in every community in the same way essentially a huge percentage of the immigrants are moving into nine or ten states and so the cultures that are going much faster are represented by about 20 senators and the rest of the country is represented the cultures that are not going through this degree of change are being represented by 80 senators and it explains why you could have a situation where you know in every poll taken on the subject for years you've got 55, 60, 65, 70% approval and why you can't get it through the Senate because of the demography of the way that immigration part of my conclusion to this is the way that America is changing and the population differential between let's say California and South Dakota which is a hundred times different is was outside I think any conception that the founding fathers had about the way the country would develop the Senate's become an anachronistic body that no longer is capable of actually governing the United States given the way the demography of the country is playing out in the size differential between the big states and the little states and the small compromise which just simply doesn't work anymore