 Welcome everybody. My name is Andres Martinez. I'm a Vice President and editorial director here at the New America Foundation. Thank you for joining us for what turns out to be an even timelier discussion than we had anticipated when we scheduled this, given the week ahead here in Washington on immigration reform. To my left is Simon Rosenberg, the president of NDN and to my right is Tamar Jacoby, who is a fellow here at the New America Foundation, in addition to being the president of immigration works who we've partnered up with to do this event. So thanks, thanks Tamar. Both, as you know, both these individuals have storied longer biographies, but just to keep things rolling I'm going to leave it at that other than to say that, to add that there are fewer people, you'd be hard-pressed to find two other people in town who have as active and engaged and experienced with immigration reform in Washington and who have been more influential, both in this round of immigration reform, but also previous rounds. So we have battle-tested immigration reform experts, not quite scarred. And our premise here today is immigration reform has shown a great deal of traction this year. We hear a lot about how Washington is broken, there's excessive polarization, nothing gets done. That's kind of been the working narrative now for quite some time about our political process. And yet we've seen this year great progress on one of the more intractable difficult issues of recent years immigration. So who knew? And in fact a lot of the conversations that I've been around on the political climate in Washington generally always point to immigration as the one kind of sunny exception to a lot of the gridlock that's occurred in DC. And one thing that I worry about is that that might be too optimistic and maybe too prematurely optimistic because as these two individuals know better than most of us, it's not quite done yet. We've seen a very ambitious bill that was put together by this gang of eight in the Senate, voted out of committee. So we have an ambitious, what we can call comprehensive immigration reform underway. And this week it's going to the floor of the Senate and then the House will weigh in at some point. So some of us have seen this movie before in 2006-2007. So it's a little skittish to declare victory. So we shall see. But it is true that we've seen improbable success so far, or progress I should say. So one thing I'd like to start us off with is, and maybe Simon you can get us started, is to step back and talk a little bit about, you know, so far what we've seen in the Senate, how optimistic, how comfortable are you with the parameters of what this immigration reform looks like now? Is this something that you're ecstatic about? And then I'll ask you tomorrow that as well. And then since you're playing the role of Democratic advocate for immigration and you're playing the role of Republican advocate tomorrow for immigration, then I want each of you to talk about the potential pitfalls and obstacles that the other side might throw up to really play to form and have this at the end of the day be another instance of grid lock and dysfunction in Washington. And then we'll reverse roles and each of you can concede what your own side might have to compromise on to really get us to the to the promised land. So Simon just in terms of what the legislation looks like now, how are you feeling about it? So optimism first and then poison pill. Exactly. And then a happy ending. Well first of all, thanks. It's great to be here and it's always good to be up here with Tamara who I've learned a lot from and who I think has really done a, I think she's had a harder job than I have over the last eight years, which is keeping the fire burning on the Republican side. And it's always, you know, I have incredible admiration for the New America Foundation, so it's great to be here as well. Look, I, you know, I have to say that if you, if we go back to when these Gang of Eight negotiations began, there wasn't a lot of reason to be optimistic. You know, this is an issue that's been brought up as you pointed out. We made, you know, we did pass this through a Republican Senate in 2006, McCain and Kennedy leading the way where there was a lot of, then the House wouldn't take it up in 2007, even though the Democrats had won the Senate, there was a lot of optimism and then for reasons we could spend the rest of the program probably talking about it didn't pass. And so I just think there was caution, cautiously optimistic. We were cautiously optimistic and the Gang of Eight was a new group, right? There were new people involved and it was untested. And I think it's really worked. I mean, I think that even though there are things, and I'm sure tomorrow we'll say the same things, that there are things that are in the immigration bill that I don't like, I feel like all the compromises that we saw were understandable. I could explain them. You know, I didn't feel like the Democrats accepted things that they didn't get something in return for. And I think this was in some ways, you know, I think this goes back to the origin of this bill. McCain Kennedy, when they built this bill in 2005, did so in a very old fashioned way, which is they, everybody got something, everybody gave something. And there was a powerful coalition behind it that was going to see the bill through. I think that spirit prevailed in this and these negotiations. And obviously as a Democrat, I think, you know, we would have liked the path of citizenship to have been a little bit less arduous. And, you know, there is probably the main complaint that you'll hear from Democrats. But, you know, this bill, getting back to what you said, this is an ambitious bill. It does an awful lot. I mean, this is a, you know, in a time where I think partisanship has sort of diminished the legislative ambition of a lot of legislators in Washington. This is an antidote to that, right? I mean, it deals with border security. It deals with significant infrastructure investment along the border that's going to continue to create jobs in both sides of the US-Mexico border. It deals with a reorienting of the legal immigration system, so it's more skill-based. It deals with obviously the undocumented in a way that I think the undocumented immigrants in the country, I think in a way that is at the end of the day, I'll take it. It may not have been how I would have done it, but I'll take it. And it also, you know, and I think those are the major components of it. So optimism, happiness can explain the compromises. And I think it's one of the reasons you've seen Democrats really standing up and fighting for this. Tomorrow, your initial... Yeah, so, I mean, my overview is also positive. Also, thank you for being here. It's great to be at New America, and it's great to be on the stage with Simon. Also, very astonished at really at how much progress they made and how, in the big view, how good a product it is. Obviously, I have concerns about it. We can get into the weeds about the concerns, but, you know, it's remarkable the bipartisan work they've done a year ago to say that Republicans would have been full partners in an immigration, comprehensive immigration reform bill. I mean, people would have laughed if I'd said that, you know, on a panel like this, and that they were at the table and they were full partners, and that the two sides really worked together so effectively to try to find the sweet spots. And, you know, I kind of, I think all of us in Washington think that they've kind of lost those muscles, you know, that people don't know how to do my partisan compromise anymore. And so what's astonishing is to find out why you put eight guys in a room with the will, and they do still have. Once you have the will, people do still know how to negotiate and how to get to a deal. And I think they did that not just on the big things, because obviously, at some big level, this is a grand bargain between people who want an answer for the 11 million unauthorized and people who want more enforcement and make sure it doesn't happen again. They made that big bargain, but they also made a lot of, on every page, there's a bargain. You know, this comes down to every little detail has to be worked out so it works for Republicans and it works on the ground. And I think they did quite an amazing job of getting a lot of those things right. They looked for those sweet spots and they found them. And, you know, the biggest one is again, a humane and practical answer for the 11 million unauthorized, combined with a pretty serious determination to get enforcement on the border and in the workplace. I mean, we're, there's going to spend, you know, up to five billion dollars on the border. And every company in America is going to have to use eVerify to make sure that the people that hires our work authorized according to the Social Security Administration and the Immigration Service. That's a big, those are big enforcement pieces. And the other, you know, big deal here, the big compromise, is that they really rebalanced our immigration system. Right now, 66% of the green cards or the permanent visas we give out every year go to family. And 7% go to employment-based. People we need to work here. 7%. And, you know, that's way out of sync with other countries. You know, Canada, it's 25% go to employment-based. Australia, it's 40. The UK and Germany, it's 60. And we're still stuck at 7. So the idea here is a rebalancing. You talked about skilled people, but it's rebalancing in general workers we need for the U.S. economy, what's in our interest. And a rebalancing with family. Yeah, it's going to be hard to predict because it's going to depend on the economy and how many people apply. But we could get to something like 60-40. So 60 family, 40 employment base. And some people say, wait down the road, it can even get closer to 50-50. So, important rebalancing. And that was bipartisan agreement on that. You know, that's what's remarkable. I mean, I think Republicans might have been asking that for a long time or maybe some Democrats. But important bipartisan agreement. And, you know, I think as Simon alluded to, the answer for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants is there is an answer. It's tough. It's not an automatic or special path of citizenship. That's important to Republicans. But there's a path. So, you know, try to find a sweet spot. You know, concerns, you know, on my side. I mean, obviously, we're going to see a fight playing out in the Senate in the weeks ahead over are the border triggers tough enough. You know, that it has these provisions that say people can't get to be citizens until the border is secure. And he verified, every company is using he verified. But there are a lot of Republican offices, many Republican offices, I would say, who think that it's not really a meaningful trigger. That, you know, they're sort of put there on the same paragraph, but it's not really a trigger. And I think we're going to see some, we're going to see a lot of debate around that. You know, my other, and there are some amendments. And there are amendments that are going to, yeah. Unless you arrest 101% of people trying to cross, nobody gets it. Well, I mean, the key point in there. That might not be verbatim. I mean, we're going to get to this right about, but I mean, the key point there to continue the bipartisan compromise is that for Republicans have to have meaningful, meetable, meetable requests and can the Democrats meet them? You know, it doesn't work if the Republicans ask for something that's impossible, you know, full. Okay. But bigger picture, you both are very appreciative of the compromises that have been made. And I should say you both have played a role in making that. So, but let's interrupt the sort of kumbaya vibe for a minute and then we can come back to it at the end. Now, Tamar, tell us what are some of your concerns of what his team might do in the next few weeks, months, both in the Senate, but particularly when we get into the House. That could lead us, you know, they could get us off track and we'll be here in the fall bemoaning the fact that immigration is just another in the long list of things that Congress can't handle because of partisanship. Right. So, I'm not going to accuse any individuals, right, of doing anything, but just if I was imagining the mindset of the Democrat, right, if I was a Democrat and I was looking at this, I would say, you know, we won the election with 71 to 27 percent of Latino votes. And you know, as a political football score goes, that's a pretty good score, right? Like, why would you want to change that? It's pretty, you know, parties work hard to get scores like that, 71, 29. Why would you want to change that? Why would you pass a bill with which you have to share credit with the other party and go back to Latinos and say, well, you don't have to hate Republicans anymore. They joined us in passing immigration reform. So, just, you know, without knowing anything that anyone has ever done. You'd be a very cynical Democrat. That's just, you know, in the back, you know, it's not hard to imagine that there's some people out there thinking like that. So, the question is, you know, will they prevail? And there'll be lots of opportunities where things will be going badly, you know, it'll be a little rough in the negotiating room, where it'll be really easy to say, let's not compromise on that and let's make it look like it was the Republicans and it'll all fail and we'll say we tried. But so, what are some of those specifics? Well, okay, so, so, well, you know, so for example, there's a lot of talk about should the House vote on the Senate bill? And there's a lot of hope among Democrats and you hear advocates and immigration reform groups saying, you know, yes, the Senate bill is a good compromise. The House should vote on it. Well, the House will not and cannot and ever in a million years vote on the Senate bill, the House will want to come up with its own product. If the House was forced to vote on the Senate bill, the answer would be no, and we would, there would be no reform. So, you know, people who are saying House must vote on the Senate bill and people who continue to say that, that will, that is, you know, in my view, just a non-starter. You know, Republican members, you know, this is, into a lot of Republican members, this is the liberal AFL, you know, we think it's balanced, but to hardcore Republicans think of this as the liberal Democrat driven AFL, you know, AFL fingerprints all over it, Democratic bill, that's not what they want. And even if it was almost good, they're not going to want to take up the Senate, you know, so I think it comes out of the Democratic Senate. So, that's going to be one big issue. And there's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about there's a bipartisan group in the House working to craft their own bipartisan answer that they hope will be sort of parallel to the Senate bill. And there's a lot of talk that it's been Democrats who've made it difficult for that group to get to a solution, that they haven't been as forthright and compromising as some of the process in the House. Now I'm not in the room, that's talk, maybe it's not true, I hope it's not true, but there's been talk that it's been hard and compromised there because there are some folks who want the House to have to take up the Senate bill. So that all sounds like procedural stuff, but you know, the issues... But on issues, I mean, what do you think are, would be kind of unreasonable asks on the part of Democrats that, you know, would derail this and would be kind of beyond the pale in terms of what you've considered the sort of parameters of what's doable. Is it healthcare subsidies? Is it a pathway to citizenship that's, you know, five years, I don't know. Yeah, so the House is going to... I think the Senate bill, again, I think there are going to be Republicans in the Senate who want the border security triggers to be tougher. That's going to be the biggest fight there. When you get to the House, there's going to be an effort to... there's going to be movement to the right. And so the House is going to try for something, you know, shaved back. And I think the issues where there are going to be issues are... is going to be the path to the legalization for the unauthorized. I don't know if the House can go as far as the Senate has gone. And then the question is, can the Democrats accept that? I think that healthcare and other costs are going to be a huge debate. And that's already been the issue that's kept this secret group in the House that's coming up with their bipartisan legislation. That's where they've been hung up for the last month. They have a deal now, but that is the cost. So they're going to be a big issue, healthcare, but not only healthcare. And in fact, the size of the low-skilled worker program is going to be an issue. I and many Republicans think that the low-skilled worker... guess worker program in the Senate bill is a good design, but it's much too small to divert and re-channel illegal immigration. So Republicans in the House, I think, who are concerned about, we don't want to be here again in 10 years, pacing another unauthorized population of 11 million are going to say, maybe that program needs to be a little more responsive to market needs. And can the Senate go along with that? The AFL is very adamant about... or can Democrats go along with that? The AFL is very adamant that that program not get bigger, and so can any... or not get more market sensitive, can Democrats give it all on that? Right. So Simon, I'm sure Tamara was not referring to you when she was talking about the danger of some cynical Democrats looking at the scoreboard and saying, hey, why don't we just preserve this lead and not endanger it by having... allowing the Republicans to seem constructive on the immigration issue? You weren't, right? No. I wouldn't be here. But talk a little bit about, from your perspective, what are some of the stumbling blocks that Republicans might be throwing up that might cause us to get derailed? Well, I think... and just listening to both of you, in a new way, which is that Democrats have basically signed on to the Senate bill, not in the House yet, and we'll see what comes out of the House process this week, but if you think about the Senate, there's no effort to drag this to the left, right? I mean, we've sort of accepted, we're happy with the bill, it went through committee, we actually picked up Republican support in the committee process, 13-5 vote, kind of an extraordinary... I don't think anybody could have predicted that, frankly, as long as we went along. And so there isn't, even though, as we gain this out, there's this other body that's about to weigh in that is, in all likelihood, going to attempt to move the bill significantly to the right. There's no parallel effort to move the bill to the left. I mean, Democrats are basically accepting what we have, which in itself creates a little bit of a precarious situation in the way Washington works, because, in theory, if you, in any negotiation, the other side has to get something, and structurally, that's not the way this is being set up right now, right? The second thing, so first of all, I think the House Republicans have an enormous decision to make, because I believe they will pass a series of smaller things that will not be the Senate bill. And the question is, how far do they go? I mean, do they try to make this something that can be reconciled in a normal conference committee in the fall, or are they going to stake out such difficult ground that it's going to be some of their members to come back and accept the ultimate compromise? Now, the truth is, out of the conference committee, we may only need 20 or 30 Republicans, and so we could have a situation where, you know, there is a bill that passes with 100 Republicans in the House. It goes into conference, and only 20 can accept the final product with the bill 2025, but the bill still passes. And so, how much of an obstacle that is, we don't really know. But I will say that, for example, the bill that Goodlatt and Gowdy last week on interior enforcement is an example of something that goes so far, that it's hard to understand how the Republicans come back from it, because it includes things like providing weapons for ice agents and body armor, mandatory body armor for ice agents. It's sounding like they're going to go in and commit extraordinary acts of violence against undocumented immigrants. It's one of the wackiest moments I think we've had in this whole immigration debate. Two other quick things is I think stumbling blocks is the border triggers are a real issue. I mean, look, I think the Republicans have a legitimate concern about the border. I don't think the idea that 700,000 people can just walk across any border of any country whenever they want is something that any country can accept. We have to do a better job at policing our very porous and long and difficult border with Mexico, but in a way that makes sense. And I think that there is a lot of effort led by, for example, Cornyn to toughen up on the triggers. I think the Democrats have said no. I mean, the House, I mean, the Senate Gang of Eight have said no to any re-altering of the trigger mechanism that was negotiated. But the third thing, and I think this may get a little bit complicated down the line, is that the House Republicans have said no new spending, no net new spending on this. The Cornyn amendment, if it was passed, would cost, I mean, right now the Senate immigration bill, let's just game it out, is a $100 billion bill over five years, right? I mean, it's going to be $10, $15, $20 billion a year of new spending in order to achieve the very ambitious enforcement goals and everything else. I don't know how we're going to reconcile and the Cornyn bill called for a billion dollars a year of border infrastructure investment and 10,000 new border guards, right? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the Cornyn bill alone was $50, $60, $70 billion over a certain period of time. The issue of whether or not the House Republicans are ever going to accept a bill that has net new spending in it, I think is something that may be a bigger issue in the fall, but they have been very aggressive about that, and certainly the Senate bill is going to be expensive because it's ambitious. I mean, what's interesting is, you take a guy like Cornyn who's a classic conservative, right? The amendment he's floating around this week is an affirmation of the positive role that government can play in the life of the nation. They're giving government a lot more money to achieve important societal ends. And can the House Republicans accept that as part of this whole thing? That worries me maybe in the fall and not in the next couple of months. So just to come back a little bit on the, you know, on the asymmetry that you describe, which is asymmetry where ours are pulling it to the right and no Ds are trying to pull it to the left, just a few facts. I mean, the UAFA amendment, the lesbian amendment certainly would have, that did not get voted on, but certainly was much discussed, would have taken it way to the left in a way that Republicans could not be for it. And there were a lot of people in the committee, a lot of Democrats in the Judiciary Committee who, when some of these very fine points of labor business balance came up, say they would vote for it, but with an asterisk was the phrase used in committee, meaning, you know, I may live to fight this another day on the floor where I tried to push it more in a labor direction. So it's not as if, I mean, I'm not praising either side. Aren't the dynamics, as Simon described them, correct in that we've started the conversation by saying here's this artful compromise that's been achieved in the Senate and now, but now we have to have a compromise between this bipartisan compromise here and a Republican majority. But I would argue that that artful compromise is not, but I would argue that the original proposal is not entirely symmetrical, right? I mean, I would argue that this would be Democrats. So you're saying we should think of, it's fair to think of the Senate bill not as a bipartisan bill, it's a Democratic bill on the House. No, no, it's a bipartisan bill, but it's a bipartisan bill a little bit on this, you know, leaning toward one side of the Fed. And, you know, and that was because I mean, again, let's look at just the less skilled worker visa program, you know, the AFL was always saying and this was true on some of the high-skilled visa issues as well, the AFL has always said if we're not happy, we'll walk. And if the AFL walks, this will not get enough Democrat votes and that was always the sword hanging over the negotiations. And so I think the less skilled visa program is a good program, but the AFL had a veto on how market sensitive it would be. It's a good bill, it's on the fence, it's close to the center, it's a good compromise, but it leans a little bit toward, I won't say Simon, but it leans a little bit toward some other people on that side of the table. And on the border triggers as well. I think, you know, if you maybe describe a little bit for those of us who are not as steeped in the detail of this, like what do we I think I know what we mean when we talk about a trigger. Well, so for example, so for example, I mean the in the original legislation, this has been fixed now, but in the original legislation, certain requirements had to happen and Simon should probably do the details better than me on this, but there were certain requirements to be met on the border and it was only to be met in three of nine districts on the border. So like why would you have these requirements and say these requirements have to be met, but only in three out of nine districts. That's not exactly, I mean that doesn't pass the laugh test. I mean they were the three busiest districts and most trafficked ones, and for the sake of likes, like humor us, like pretend you're going to secure the whole border, not three of nine districts. Well, go ahead. So the trigger. So I mean, again, Simon is a little quickly. The triggers that are in the current Senate bill are there are metrics that have to be met for both monitoring the border and the people coming across and then the number of apprehensions now across the entire border. So that was one of the things that was changed. The second thing is that, and these are kicking at different points, but E-Verify, which is a new and wildly ambitious effort to create a legitimate worker verification system is going to be, has to go national. Third thing, Christiane, what am I forgetting? Well, I mean for part of it. So in the beginning. Okay, but before what? Before, this is the trigger for anybody. Before you can be legalized the government has to have a plan. Well, to a lot of Republicans, the government having a plan doesn't sound very interesting. And then for people to get citizenship, certain things have to happen. There's green card status and then citizenship, right? So the key thing is that what happened is, and listen, this was a, what you're describing in this, we're getting into the weeds here, but this was the huge thing that Democrats gave up, right? Democrats got stuff out of the negotiations, but the Democrats accepted something that for many people in the Democratic family was an unacceptable compromise. Which was to condition the citizenship path to a series of metrics that historically these things had never been connected before in any of the negotiations going back to the beginning of McCain-Kennedy. And what it meant was then the whole thing for Democrats became are the metrics that have to be met reasonable and will the government have the resources? Because these are expensive things. Nationalizing aid verify is a major undertaking, right? Will they have the resources to meet these triggers in the period of time prescribed so that you don't have another condition? Because if one of the things we're trying to solve with this bill is having a group, a huge number of people who live and work here and pay taxes here be in this netherworld of status, right? Where they're neither here nor they, you know, foreigners they're in this in-between place to be deeply inconsistent with American values about how we treat everybody. We're not, if the triggers are too hard to achieve, we're not actually solving that problem. I also feel, doesn't it I mean, I have to say that one thing that strikes me is a bit you have to take sides. Well, an observation I feel like in the last few years there has been a lot done to make the borders a lot more secure. And I think one of the fallacies of the political debate is it presupposes that nothing has been done since 2006 and 2007 either on or for. But let me just articulate the Republican concern and let me articulate the Republican concern. Right, but what people are afraid of is that in 1986 we legalized 3 million people and we, what? It was a long time ago. We legalized a lot of people and we said there's going to be enforcement and then no enforcement happened. And for years, I mean there was a year when 3 notices got sent out to employers who were supposedly hiring fraudulent workers. Well, and it was also said that we were going to enforce it at the workplace. At the workplace and a lot didn't happen. So people are very skeptical, they say well we're going to give you the candy but we're not going to get the price. And so a lot of Republicans are just skeptical about that and want to make sure that there really is real enforcement. And I dare say you know, it's not necessarily anti-immigrant, right? I mean from I don't want to see a situation where we have more I want to convert from an illegal immigration system to a legal immigration system. It's not, my quibble isn't whether it's anti-immigrant or not, it's whether it's accurate or not because I think the way a lot of senators talk about the porous border you would think it's as porous as it was in 1986 and it's clearly not. Fair enough, but what people are asking is just legitimate measure, meetable measure that is actually real and people are skeptical that we're going to have in charge of it the department of the secretary of the certify that it's done, right? They just want some measures. So in a report that we released recently which you can find on our website at nvn.org we addressed this issue that you're raising which is what's changed since we began this process since 2005 and let me throw out a few statistics because it's kind of amazing, right? Since 2005 now violent crime for example on the US side of the border you take the two biggest cities on the US side of the border, El Paso and San Diego violent crime is one third the rate that it was a decade ago. If you look at the total number of aggregating every border community on the US side of the border there were 19,000 violent crimes in 2004 there were 14,000 violent crimes in those same communities a year ago. So this notion that has been promulgated by many that the border region on the US side is this wild west, it's out of control it's a violent place, not true there's been virtually no spill over violence from Mexico and in fact this has been a sign of DHS doing a really good job, right? Working with local law enforcement to take what was a precarious and difficult situation and make it significantly better. We also know that net migration of undocumented immigrants went from five, six hundred thousand a year in the heyday of the unauthorized immigration to now zero, right? The third thing we know is that while those two enforcement goals were achieved were significant and meaningful and to me I think the only reason in some levels that we actually are able to have this debate is that those things were actually executed successfully by the Obama administration and a Democrat using the enforcement regime to actually make things better trade with Mexico has exploded you know this better than anybody by the end of this year we've gone from 300 billion dollars a year in trade with Mexico in 2009 to almost 600 billion by the end of 2013 on an annualized basis we've only had a significant gains in enforcement we've had incredible explosion of trade I mean this has been, I said this to the president myself when I met with him recently I said look this has been a wildly successful part of your administration you've incredible domestic politics huge violence in Mexico yet trade is exploding we're making the US side much better take credit for it, right? And I do think that it's been a mistake by our side that we haven't leaned and I think it's allowed the Republicans to get away with an exaggeration of what is actually the state of play today and I think that's ended up effecting let me just say two things and then let's talk about cost I'm not going to dispute the numbers but you certainly do still meet ranchers in Arizona Jeff Flake is very tight in centerflake he and McCain they come to it with a constituency behind them which is ranchers in Arizona who say my life is still not what it should be there's still danger there's still not just workers coming across my territory but dangerous people so I'm not disputing the improvement but I don't think it's unreasonable to say let's have some real measures but we can do better let's have some real measures and some real triggers but wait one thing immigration is way down now it's in part due to better enforcement but it's significantly due to that the economy has been in bad shape as the economy improves it's not going to be a trigger again unless we have a legal way for them to come and so the relative piece you described is certainly going to have challenges so it's not unreasonable to say this is going to be a deal where there is a trigger let's have it be a meaningful trigger that was what was insulting about the three sectors like if it's going to be a trigger at least if it's going to have a deal on this let's have it be a meaningful deal I agree and now this is where we're getting to the part of the section where we raise questions about our own side I agree that if they're republicans who say try to set standards that are un-meetable 100% never anybody cross no danger never see a gun within 100 miles of the border we can there are plenty of un-meetable things keep moving the goalpost so you can't get to a deal and it's un-meetable that will be bad faith on our side I'm sure there will be some unreasonable asks and negotiations but to have meetable triggers tough but meetable triggers it seems to me a reasonable position shifting gears a little bit do you think that a republican majority in the house is going to go along with having some pathway however arduous or non arduous to citizenship in its version of the legislation or do you think one of the defining kind of schisms at the end of the day going into conference is going to be legal status versus citizenship yeah so I think that's the kind of $64,000 question about the future and it's really hard to tell yet where the sort of center of gravity is among house republicans I hear a lot of people basically every office I know and go to visit people say we have to do something and a lot of the offices I go and the center of gravity I think I start to see emerging is we're okay with legal status but we are uncomfortable creating a special direct path to citizenship so we don't want to say that these people who came here the first thing they did was break the law that they get a reward which is a special path created just for them good phrase for it but the way people talk about it is a special path or a direct path now that people are not you don't hear too many people saying they can never have citizenship you have a lot of people saying there's other ways to get citizenship we're not going to borrow them from that we'd be okay with programs where they what if they came through a guess worker program where they and everybody in the guess worker program had an option to get to citizenship but a special path just for them that looks like a reward we're not comfortable with now allegedly that's what the senate bill has in it too so I think there should be room here to find a sweet spot but it is possible this is certainly going to be one of the more contentious issues and exactly where the majority of republicans are and I think the famous the term of art here is the hashtart rule that no bill can pass without the majority of the majority I don't see republicans breaking the hat being willing to pass something that doesn't pass on the hashtart rule so the question is going to be what can we get the majority of the majority what can the political marketplace bear what can we get the majority of the majority to be foreign in this realm and I don't think we quite know yet I don't think that's going to be something that's going to be emerging over the next few months along with the cost and how high do you see healthcare on the list of obstacles and so Simon had talked to me a few minutes ago about the cost the senate bills, I understand it a lot of the costs are to be paid by fees going forward and so there's a big budgetary number but the idea is that this is the financing of this is the financing works but that their fees will come in later and will come back to pay for stuff now always complicated and you know if I understood that stuff better I'd make a lot more money working in a bank but but it's not meant in the senate bill to be a huge outlay it's meant to be paid for as you go down the road by money coming in I certainly think costs are going to come up as a big issue healthcare has already been the issue that kept the house the senate came to its healthcare answer but in the house bipartisan group they spent the last month arguing over what the healthcare how this should mesh with Obamacare and just barely came to an answer and it's my understanding that the answer is so vague that you know almost no one can tell you what it is and you know so it is definitely going to be a subject cost they're going to be subject to a debate I can almost guarantee Simon would you be willing to and do you think a democratic majority might be willing to accept that politically you have to exclude these 11 million you know legalized residents from the benefits of the subsidies that people might be getting under the Affordable Care Act I think it all depends on the deal but I think that you know the question is if Democrats keep feeling like they're being asked to give, give, give and if the house stuff gets dragged too far to the right I think what was interesting in just since on Friday was the house the senate democrats and the gang of 8 saying no to this Cornyn amendment and I know that not everybody watching in the room knows what the Cornyn amendment was but there was an amendment by senator Cornyn and he would be a good get for it would be better for John Cornyn to support this legislation than not he had certain things that he wanted actually big chunks of what he wanted that I think were actually very positive you know all the border infrastructure investment given how much the border trade has increased in recent years there has to be much more done about this that was a very thoughtful part of the bill but the senate democrats said no because they felt that it was going to alter the structure of the deal that you know this is the whole if I can use language and vocabulary as we go to the floor over the next three weeks there are going to be two types of amendments there are going to be cosmetic amendments ones that really don't alter the structure of the deal the sort of magic deal this finally raw deal that was done and then there are going to be things in there that will alter the structure of the deal and those things are going to be I think resisted to a great degree by the gang of 8 they were during the committee process and they determined the democrats determined on Friday despite Marco Rubio's involvement in this and there's a little bit of annoyance at Rubio for the perception that he kind of went off and he went outside the gang of 8 operating process was that they said this thing was structural and it needed to be rejected so the corner amendments dead he's apparently going to come back and try with Orrin Hatch to come back and salvage pieces of it and reintroduce it in smaller pieces but that was a sign of the center holding in my mind and showing the resilience and frankly the efficacy of this gang of 8 the integrity of this gang of 8 process which has really been kind of an amazing thing I think you're going to see some I don't think the corner amendment I think was dead on arrival but I think there is going to be certainly a significant effort to toughen up the border trigger no even in the senate side and then I think there's going to be considerably more movement on a lot of things in the house can I just address that really quickly I think that when we say toughen up on the border what's really what that means for republicans right now is moving up at least what the corner amendment tried was to move in that period where you went from legal to citizen to take some of the triggers that were at the end and move them much further up in the process sort of loading up the process was much more front loaded than back loaded that's really what the corner amendment was the other concern is again who's signing off you know is it the person who's is it the fox guarding the chicken coop is it the person whose job it is it could secure also going to say that she's done a good job or somebody else going to get to say she's done a good job and if it's somebody else who but I think we've talked a little about the border I need to ask simon about the same thing I asked you about what are things that might make you nervous you know when you think step back and try to be fair minded about you know the desirability of getting legislation passed as opposed to keeping this kind of convenient political issue alive what are your concerns about what some fellow democrats might throw up as non-negotiables that can derail comprehensive immigration and let me just as a point I was groping for a third trigger and I couldn't remember and it's the entry exit visa issue which we're not going to get into the weeds of that because it's really it's super nerdy but it's I think we just need a plan on that a whole other segment on it but here's what I would say here's what I'm coming from on this I have lived for the last decade part of my history is that in a previous legal incarnation of my organization I ran the first set of ads ever by a center left group in Spanish that was ever run in American political history we did the first poll of Latino voters that was ever done by a center left organization in political history in 2004 I ran an ad campaign using what were called 527s then that went head to head with George Bush in Spanish and it was the first major national campaign conducted in Spanish by any center left organization so my organization has more paternity for the evangelizing around the Latino vote than any other group in the city other than the Bush administration frankly who did a really good job and that's why democrats had to respond and so I've been living the sort of the contentious battle over the rise of Latinos racial manifestation as a societal demographic change manifestation and what I think is so important about this bill is that not only will the senate bill give us a better immigration system but it will also resolve the issue of the undocumented it will be resolved and a lot of the horrible racial rhetoric and language we've seen in the US which to me is intolerable and really something that I can't personally accept and makes me upset will be gone and that the Jan Brewer's and those who I'm going to get to it but I think this is so what I'm saying is that I think for that there are a lot of things that we can accept in the trade off so what I'm saying is that if you're where you're coming from you want to see this get so what I'm saying is that I think the democrats have already exhibited by allowing there to be triggers which was a much bigger concession than anybody really understands and to me I still when the bill came out I was sort of fascinated by it because it meant that our side was really trying frankly to accommodate what we believe are unreasonable and almost ridiculous border objectives on by the republicans so I think that first of all I think that we're going to get a lot out of this that is really important to us and if we got to stay focused on that because I think some of these other things we can kind of compromise on the second thing though I will say and I'm going to make tomorrow happy that the W visa program or what's been called the W visa program is imperfect and if there were ways to make it better I think democrats should be open to that because I think that the whole theory of the low-skilled visa system to reiterate what she said is we just don't want illegal workers in the country it's bad for everybody it's bad for them it's bad for businesses I mean so many businesses by the way that I've talked to are excited the idea that they're not going to have to worry about their illegal they just don't know they've got papers they come in the idea that this is going to get resolved oh my god I mean business even though they'll put up with you verify it actually resolves the legal penalties and everything else for unknowingly hiring illegal workers right and so I think that the low-skilled visa program if it's too small too restrictive and too narrow will actually encourage more illegal immigration I may not be as sanguine or resolved the idea that the flows are going to be what they used to be because I think Mexico itself is changing Mexico is producing more middle-class jobs there was sort of a particular period in history post NAFTA where Mexico had other demographic reasons to export excess labor which I don't think are going to be replicated and so I don't know that the flows will ever be the same and we know but and we could debate this all day so tomorrow was characterizing this as kind of an AFL imposed and cosmetically yes we're going to have a temporary worker visa program but the numbers are so small so as to almost not be material well what was amazing was let me put it back is that an accurate characterization the way that I'll characterize it is that in the original McCain Kennedy bill in order to ensure that we legalize the flow and restore the circularity of labor in the United States that we needed to do that the first year of the new is 20,000 I mean you don't have to be really good at math to understand that this is a significant break from where we were with something that Ted Kennedy negotiated right in 2005 so I think there is the Republicans of just let me just anticipate where this is going the Republicans in the House have made it really clear that they are going to alter this the Democrats in the Senate have made it really clear that they're not going to accept any altering of the current AFL chamber of negotiation I have a feeling that in the tradeoffs to come this is an area where Democrats could give a little bit if we get something on the back end so do you think it would be completely unreasonable for the Democrats not to revisit those numbers? what I said was that in a reasonable negotiation that will be taking place over the next five or six months that if there are things that we can get that are important this might be one of the things that can be improved and just to talk for a second about the numbers this is really important it's important not just for the businesses but it's important for America because what we're trying to do here is deal with undocumented immigration unauthorized immigration we have to deal with past unauthorized immigration but you want to prevent the future why would we do all this in order to not fix the problem and be back here in 10 or 15 or 20 years facing it again surely we want to prevent future illegal immigration we want to prevent past and preventing it involves three things involves better work control on the border workplace verification and punishment of the bad Apple employers but the most important thing you need is a way for the workers we actually need to come legally if you think of it as kind of water and human beings are not water but if you think of it as kind of water running in a dusty ground you want to put it in a pipeline the pipeline has to be big enough to take the water otherwise you're going to still have water in the dusty ground on the numbers it's true that Mexico is changing becoming more middle class, smaller families but America's work needs are not going to change that much what draws this flow it's a push and a pull the American workforce in 1950 half of the people in the workforce were high school dropouts who wanted to do unskilled work today less than 5% of the people in the workforce are high school dropouts who want to do unskilled work we don't need as many but it's like a swimming pool has shrunk to a Dixie cup people still need some workers she's been doing this for a long time but so the point is you know that program it's not that the absolute you can change it without changing the absolute numbers you just have to make it more sensitive I mean numbers is one way to change it but more sensitive to employers real needs and the numbers should be adjusted the numbers should go up in good economic times we really need the workers and it should go down in bad economic times when more Americans are looking for work and employers should have to try to hire Americans first no questions I want to add one quick thing to that I didn't really come to the position I'm about to state until very recently we need a lot more immigrants in the country than we have now we're going to get a lot more of these bill passes we aren't going to get that many more I think we have to be careful because this is a negotiating thing with the Republicans that have also taken a position at least they verbally stated it no new net visas which is something that has sort of dropped out of the debate and we don't really know where they're going to end up on that and that becomes a very consequential position that could end up again killing the bill this is going to increase this is going to increase but I don't want to overly dramatize particularly because the W visa has been shrunk so much that the actual this is one area this is a part of the debate that I think has been grossly exaggerated by the opponents of the bill which is this notion there are millions and millions of people coming in and everything else the system is out of control and millions of people are pouring over the border and the immigration we for the size of our economy the size of our country now which has increased dramatically since many of these numerical targets were set 20, 30, 40 years ago is that we're allowing in legally each year a million people to give or take you can sort of carve it up different ways the economy needs more than that and so what we're doing is we're still I think at the end of this one of the things that may keep tomorrow in business beyond the immigration bill I'm not personally convinced the way that we're dealing with the legal immigration system is really at its core dealing with where the 21st century American economy is and I think there's going to be an area I think there's going to be opportunities to improve that as we go through this process of reform and learning about workflows and where the American economy is here's where I'll go a little authorization I think there's not enough discussion of that to be honest I think the discussion is about the unauthorized and about the border really what America needs for the 21st century and I think there's and we haven't talked even here about the high-skilled the high-skilled is a critically important piece of this bill so in the 19th century countries competed for coal and iron ore and colonies now they compete for the smart immigrants for smart people who brain power who can help your company innovate and if we're not friendly to them and make it easy and make the visa streamlined and remove some of the uncertainty we're really going to be at an economic disadvantage and the bill attempts to address that and really there's a whole new fangled system for how we decide how we give out green cards that almost doesn't get discussed the merit-based system how many people even know what it is and there's not probably for all the deal-making has been pretty good here and we're going to go on having a lot of this horse trading and deal-making there's some parts of this that aren't getting considered arguably and I think we're going to have a better legal immigration system but I still think there are going to be opportunities to make it better still in the next five to ten years that we're going to pass comprehensive immigration reform signed into law? I think very high single digits I think it's eight or not I tell a joke first before I answer there's a Republican member of the House who's been very engaged in this who has a little riff he does I'm just stealing it wholesale because it's so good he says I've never seen the chances better this is one of the guys trying to write the bill on the House I've never seen the chances better and Republicans see it as their future and the Chamber and the AFL agree and Microsoft and Intel are for it I've never seen the chances better he pauses I'll give it five percent I'm on the optimistic side of 50-50 six? we haven't talked about why the public doesn't seem to be that engaged in whether that's good or bad but I wanted to get into that and I have about a dozen other questions but looking at the clock I'm eager to get your participation so let's take some questions, comments this is being streamed so wait for a microphone and identify yourself please sir yes hi, my name is Brad Botwin I run a group called Help Save Maryland and I came today I really needed to get re-energized fortunately I didn't have lunch before I came over some of these Cheshire cat smiles about oh my god we're gonna have you verify in place well when you make everyone legal on day one you may as well just throw we verify out the window, you don't need it we're gonna spend another five billion in Maryland we spend close to two billion a year for education incarceration and other expenses for the 300,000 plus illegals we have crime on the border? hello? sure because it's up here in Baltimore and in Chicago and in other places where the illegal immigrants have moved to they're too smart to stay right at the border I mean I could just go on and on internal security measures here have been gutted by the administration 287G is no longer even on the ICE website secure communities is not being enforced and there are many communities just waving in the face they're thumbing their nose at ICE come and get them if you want them I was at a protest Friday the districts trying to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants saying who cares about real ID for driver's licenses come and get us this whole thing is really a joke what is happening and this is a new dynamic since 2007 is that on July 15th the black American leadership alliance is leading a very large protest from freedom plaza all the way down to the capitol so now we have black Americans who have double-digit unemployment and when they hear Simon say oh my god we need more immigrants we don't need more immigrants we need jobs for Americans right now and this is going to be a historic march and there will be other groups supporting it I think this is going to crash and burn as it should thank you for that perspective let's take another comment let's take a couple of comments and questions if you have some but I appreciate that perspective good afternoon Peter Boyce community of fears consultants panel isn't it true that this bipartisan group came together as a result of the demographics to the last president to the election is this bill alive on Simon or is it that Simon you're for us please we'll get to that let's take another question I know that gentleman almost wrapping him together please identify yourself I know you I'm the new American foundation so we have a do something posture but the most that the house can do right what they're do something is to reclaim some part of the Latino what they lost but is that enough to reclaim the Latino Latino is going to go for the most the Republicans can do is that gap irreducible why don't we take some of these now is this all because of the election I think the election woke a lot of Republicans up no question I think you know there's some Republicans who they're thoughtful Republicans who know the system is broken and want to fix the system and you know as Marco Rubio likes to say we have de facto amnesty right now we've got to do something about it it's not just pandering there are a lot of people who've known for a long time that the system is broken it doesn't work even if your values are conservative doesn't really work for you there's no question that the election is what triggered it and focused everybody's minds but to say you know I don't think it's only pandering will it work as pandering so to speak you know I think the problem is with Republicans that the way it's immigration reform has become a kind of a stand in litmus test issue for many Latino voters many Latino voters are skeptical about do we need more immigrants and some of those questions that we talked about but they've come to equate how elected officials talk about immigration as really a substitute or proxy for how those elected officials feel about them you know the famous ads in California were ads where the run by the Republicans were where they said they keep coming and they showed people running across the border and you know third and fourth generation people saw this on TV and they said who's they you know who are you talking about and you know what do you feel about us and you know when Romney I think and again I am a Republican and Romney was my candidate but the problem with the way Romney campaign is a lot of Latinos heard it as saying you know we don't like you we want you to self deport you know my analogy for that it's like encyclopedia salesman who comes to your door and says I'm trying to sell you encyclopedias but you know I don't really like people like you and the point is this this you know assuming we pass this bill and Republicans play our equal partners and play a robust part I don't think that's going to even if they get everything they want I don't think it's going to immediately make Latinos say oh yeah now we're Republicans but it's going to take that bad we hope the idea is it's going to take because there are enemies and they don't like people like us start to take some of that off the table so that Republicans can talk to Latinos about other things where Latinos might be interested in so to speak what they have to sell and you know so whether it's about small businesses or about education education and social mobility and conservative values you know President Reagan used to say Latinos or Republicans they just don't know it now maybe that is you know find some bad around the country but I think there are a lot of things that Republicans believe in that could be appealing to Latinos that they can't hear because they think we're the enemy on immigration you know and so whether or not it's exact if it's legal status with no special path to citizenship you know is that going to be enough to level the playing field you know I think it depends how more it depends on the tenor of the debate and sort of who looks like they're leaning in and who looks like they're trying to solve it and what happens next you know this is not just about Republicans this is in a way not so much about Republicans coming alive to the reality of the guy who's washing your dishes in the back of the restaurant as it is to Republicans coming alive to the reality of the Latino voters in their district or you know increasingly blue color and middle class people who are you know on campuses and in state legislatures and in in Bog in our communities you know it's just that Republicans haven't been really talking to them I think this is an awakening to them and it's going to, well that's going to depend on how Republicans handle that going forward it's going to be as important as exactly what provisions are in the bill and I think you were asked if the bill is dead or alive three things, the bill is very much alive you know again what was to me the the most important sign is that after the Boston, the terrible tragedy and the Boston bombing the Gang of Eight and even guys like Paul Ryan stood together and said this shouldn't really affect the debate we're having around immigration and that was sort of an early and important test and I think the Gang of Eight group continues to prevail just on the other two things quickly I won't spend too long one is that I do think the question that was asked by your colleague is really in some ways the important one my own view is that there is no bill that Democrats can support that will pass with the House to rule the House I just don't think it's possible I think the idea that we're holding that out Tamara has to say this because she works inside the Republican Party it's not possible given where they are given that the good lad is introducing a bill to give body armor and guns to ICE agents this week and they're going to be debating that this week I just think going from there and remember the last time the House voted on immigration reform in 2005 the House Republicans voted to deport 11 million people and felonize them it wasn't self-deport it was actual deportation and funding for it so the House Republican party although I just want to say I think the Republican Party is trying really hard I don't want in any way to be critical of it I think the Republicans in the House and the Senate as Tamara said have sort of woken up and gotten the memo that they got to try a little bit harder here but there's just a limit to how far ideologically any politician can travel in such a short period of time without sounding like they lied to their constituents for 20 years I think even if Boehner said I'm really going to sacrifice my career and ignore the Hastert rule I don't think with the profile and courage of the major kind ultimate sacrifice for a politician I don't think that the rank and power Republicans would stand for it we'll see and a lot of it will depend and I think it's things like how effective are the arguments I think the Democrats have done as I said earlier a bad job at really trying to win this argument about the border which I think would have weakened the Republican resolve on some of these border issues we just didn't lean into this issue but on the final point one statistic that I just want to point out and there was a lot put on the table here by the gentleman in the front row is that there's a lot about the role of the undocumented and the Latino community is that the community in the United States that has the highest worker participation rate the people who work more than any other demographic group in the country are Latino immigrants if you're an undocumented there are no you can't get welfare yes you can go to school as required by the Supreme Court yes you have to be treated in an emergency room as any civil society would do right but this sort of general dispersion that the undocumented community is more law breaking than the general public not true they actually work more than the overall public and so these ideas that somehow this vast pool of undocumented left the border region which would be surprising to hear from the people who live on the border by the way and have moved into places like Baltimore and are committing crimes is you know we would call that if I could say it wasn't on TV and it's just not fact based and it's sad to me that there are people making assertions like this that are so easily refutable and untrue and that really reflect the incredible racial bias I think that's driving this debate and the reason that I'm raising this is that there's nothing he said that was based in fact and so for example worker participation rates crime rates you can go look at all this stuff but you know immigrants don't commit crimes at higher levels than the rest of the population that's just not true and so what we have to do I think in order for the country to work through this this is a hard issue we're going through profound demographic change in a very rapid way we're seeing how Europe through their migration is tearing themselves up that's not happening here and so I'm just going to conclude by saying that I think it's incumbent upon all of us to do our best to be fact based to be here with all sorts of statistics during this entire discussion today trying to keep the civil and fact based and I think it's incumbent upon everyone this debate to do the same but this is hard to be fair Simon the gentleman from Maryland did he also mentioned and this is true that we're living at a time of relatively high unemployment across the country and he referenced the even higher unemployment rate among African Americans he referenced the fact that local and state governments do absorb a lot of the costs that the undocumented population bring in some ways some people have analogized our current immigration system to sort of unfunded mandates there might be aggregate benefits to the US economy but some of these costs that are borne by county hospitals because of the ER rooms and education systems at the local level they're not seeing they're not being compensated for now if you had legalization arguably but let me just say the perspective that he presented at the end of the day was kind of where the center of political gravity was the last time we tried to do this reform in 2006-2007 you had bipartisan support here in Washington for it you had the establishment corporate, you had labor everybody was lined up to do this and it seemed like we were going to do it but the perspective that he injected into this discussion turned out to be a pretty prevalent or at least quite a heartfelt perspective around the country since then we've had an economic crisis why do we feel like that sentiment isn't going to carry the day again I think polling shows that the public is even in 2006-2007 it was actually kind of a polling show when you dug deep that was a small minority that was adamantly against the bill every poll I saw a dozen polls and you saw a different dozen polls showed that adamant majority about 15-20% there's another adamant minority on the other side that's totally for it most of the public sort of 60% is kind of in between as they are on many many issues and if that day they saw on the news a drunk DIY illegal immigrant was in an accident they'd be against it and that day if they had just redone their house and the guy did a good job the drywaller they'd be for it and so the public is very movable on the very anti side dominated the debate and the big question this time is going to be where is that middle 60% and polling shows that they see immigration as much less of a kind of make or break, do or die issue those numbers I don't have them in my head but it's way way down it's like from 70% to 40% or something like that and you know I'm waiting to see in this next couple of weeks the public hasn't really been paying attention yet this has been sort of in the newspaper articles that we've been reading but you know not kind of leading the nightly news is it ever going to get to the point that the so much of the public is paying attention that it does lead the nightly news I'm not sure and when it does what I kind of wonder is and it'll probably be somewhere between this but is the public going to sort of shrug and say yeah it's time to do that which is actually what they did when the president introduced his initiative for young people brought here as my illegally as minors the public kind of shrugged even Republicans even Republicans kind of said it's about time to do that we got to deal with that is there are they going to shrug or are they going to you know roar and I'm kind of predicting it's going to be more on the shrug side we'll see but I just want to say one thing about the unemployment and you know we could argue all day about the economics of immigration let me just throw out one little set of numbers we just did a study where we looked in particular at we used government numbers to look at the difference in the jobs Americans do and the jobs immigrants do and one of the little things we looked at we looked at three occupations made in a hotel resort a dishwasher and I'm going to forget what the other oh landscape guy and we looked at the percentage of people who've been unemployed in the last five years who've actually taken those jobs those are really hard physically intensive jobs and the percentages are under 10% in every case so even unemployed Americans don't want those jobs I want to take a couple more do we have more questions comments yes sir my name is Sam Spahn part of the McCain Institute originally from Indianapolis but I'm currently in school in Austin Texas University of Texas so the immigration debate is obviously very big there but how do you think the president has played out on this he seems to be unusually quiet on this issue and at least the media tells us so do you think it's a politically smart move or should he get more involved in this debate is he leading from behind Simon let's take a few questions a couple more hi I'm José Diaz with Mundo Fox just a quick question about the politics for Senator Corning on this he doesn't seem to get the love from those people opposing the bill and also from the Democratic side what's what's his logic you get to answer that does anyone want anymore why don't we take those so president and senator Corning I do want to say that even though I don't agree with senator Corning it's important now that he's involved in the debate and is you know he's an important senator and he represents a state that's got a lot at stake in the immigration bill and I think it's much better now that he's actively and aggressively pursuing some you know public objectives than sitting on the sidelines and so I think in that sense this is helpful and as I said earlier there are in the Corning amendment there's a series of things that he's proposing about border infrastructure investment that I think are hugely critical to both the US and Mexican economies that I hope get adopted even if his amendment doesn't and so I'm not I'm not personally characterizing senator Corning's involvement so far in this in the way the New York Times did on Sunday that called his amendment toxic I thought that was a gross overstatement of the role that he's trying to play we need him in the tent and hopefully we can work something out with him in the next couple weeks but his amendment is dead and we'll see what happens look on the president I you know I think that the clearly the White House has made a decision to allow the Senate to lead reasonable reasonable decision right it was going well they've hung together they're doing a good job they produced a good bill right what has perhaps been lacking and I think the second calculation was all the reports in the Republicans that the more this felt like Obama's bill the more that it would raise the ire of opponents of Obama of which there are many in the country and the more that seemed like a bill that came out of Congress with a lot of Republican support that it would just be easier to sell to the 60% that Tamar referenced in the middle I think what's the cost of that however has been the defining of the issue to the public I mean to your point there was this raise that we're going to have a debate for the next three weeks I'm not sure we've had a Senate floor debate a meaningful issue in the country that's going to be this sort of spirited in the civil and this organized in a long time and I think it's in that sense this is going to be a very good exercise in democracy we're about to see whether or not the American public pays any attention to anything that happens in the Senate is something we're going to find out also I think because there's just general sort of unhappiness with Congress in Washington but I don't know what messages come out there's going to be a lot of horse trading and wangling and weird amendments and everything else but I do hope that this floor debate will bring the American people in because I think it would be better if this ends up passing which I think it will it would be better if the public was integrally involved in the consideration and thinking about it and coming to their own conclusions of supporter or against and I don't know that we've done that yet and I hopefully that will happen in the floor debate I just want to say one thing about polling and then I'll put it down because I didn't answer that question is that let's just be clear that in virtually every poll taken on immigration reform since 2005 there's been 55-60% plus support for what we call competence immigration reform MSNBC, NBC-Wall Street Journal last week in their poll when you demonstrated a second truism which is when you define specifically that the path to citizenship will include back of the line, pay of fine you know conditions the support in the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll went up to 76% right in the public there is broad bipartisan support for this bill in the country and there has been for eight years what there has been is a very effective opposition and frankly the advocates have not been nearly as spirited and as engaged as the opposition I think that's changed and I think that's why we're gonna win this time so the president I think from the Republican point of view it's thank goodness he's left it to the Senate right I mean I think the president is viewed as a very polarizing figure among Republicans and if the president had been more engaged from the beginning I don't think we'd be where we are and I think it's very at the beginning there were some of us who were concerned he wouldn't exercise so much restraint but thank goodness he has you know there are people again when I have my cynical, scary bad nightmare fantasies it's that the president has a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other and the bad angel is our folks in the party who say you know let's make this a partisan issue you know let's make this something that the D's win and that only the D's are doing with a handful of Republicans and you know I hope that the president doesn't have that angel I hope you know I'm wrong about my cynicism but I'm you know I hope that I hope that the self restraint that we've seen and the willingness to let the bipartisan process work its will will continue about Cornyn you know it's been really interesting I'm not going to try to get to channel John Cornyn because I certainly can't do that but I think it's been very interesting to see how all the Republicans many Republicans right in the even who do not support the bill I mean if you watch the judiciary committee markup Senator Lee, Senator Cruz we'll put you know we won't put them all in camp because they have different positions but even Republicans who in the end are not going to end up voting for the bill have tried to be sensitive to thinking about being part of the solution you know what can we do to fix the immigration system I mean and isn't legal immigration a good idea I mean Senator Cruz who you know no one thinks is going to come anywhere near voting for this bill his amendment in the judiciary committee was to add a million green cards right to say we need more immigrants we need legal immigration immigration is a good thing I'm not going to legalize the people who have broken the law but I'm for legal immigration that as much as the vote counts we're going to see on the on the bill are evidence of the sea chains that's going on in the Republican party about Latino voters and again you know you can read that cynically you can say oh they just want their votes or you can say they're listening to them and you know I think what you're seeing is people starting to listen to their constituents and say what can we do and you know somebody like John Cornyn is a you know as always his his role in life and his platform is about law and order you know that's not going to change and he's trying to reconcile his listening to Latino voters and what the Latino voters need and how do we fix the immigration system with his you know very his prosecutors concerned about the law and he's got his ideas about that you know whatever you think of them you know and I think the amendment is some combination of those things and as Simon's talking after a helpfully this concern about fixing the border infrastructure so that it works and you know it's no accident that going forward Texas is going to be the state where the where where Latino demographics are going to make the most difference you know in the next decade you know Latin Texas has been a pretty solidly red state for quite a while you know that will not always be true if the Latino vote comes of age in Texas and Republicans haven't started to have more hearts just one last I think this question that Tamar's raised about whether there is this thought in Democrats had that you know this thing could fail and we'd still benefit and we'd keep the status quo I gotta tell you I've never heard anybody say that this time around right it may have been whispered before I think that you know I was in a briefing this morning with someone from Univision who was showing clips of how the network is prospering and one of the core of the whole thing was I mean Jorge Ramos confronting Obama over him not keeping his promise and I think that about fixing the immigration system and I think what Democrats are motivated by is this sense of obligation we've said we were going to do this we're going to do this for a long time we've got to keep our word here right we've got to get this done this is a real thing that's going to materially affect an awful lot of people and also give us a better immigration system so I don't think Democrats I think the political the politics of this have been settled Republicans have lost the politics of this they misplayed this issue terribly over a long period of time they've been terribly damaged by it what they need to do now as Tamar said is to have any chance this is this is a suing for peace strategy now this is not about creating prosperity with the Latino electorate this is about getting Latinos particularly younger ones to open up to their party again to give them a chance to make the case on the rest of this stuff I don't think they're going to get a lot of material benefit as a party if this passes I think a lot of it's going to accrue to the Democrats but it's going to put them back in the game and give them a chance to rebuild their standing and with Latinos over the next decade in ways that frankly they've done well before I mean this is not pie in the sky stuff George Bush was expert at winning the Latino vote this is not really something that should be so hard for them so you know the politics and this Democrats really want to get this done I hope you're right yeah we're going to find out okay well we have some interesting weeks and months ahead of us thank you both for sharing your perspectives and wisdom thank you all for coming and let's do this again later in the year okay thank you I appreciate you