another thing. >> i tell people i have eight husbands. say, imagine making every single major decision with eight husbands. you, butnow about deciding to go to a movie is a hard thing. they didn't choose you, and you didn't choose them. it's really extraordinary, isn't it? >> what we are seeing where we are embedding capabilities into the environment, i certainly consider the smartphone we carry .round with us it takes the form of radio frequency. certainly surveillance and cameras. the embeddingof of computers into the real world. >> the deputy editor on a world that anticipates your every move. our club selection. read the book and join in the discussion. in-depthour next guest. thework includes award-winning book on gang life. book tv, every weekend on c-span 2. for over 35 years c-span brings public event from washington directly to you. offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service industry. we were brought to you as a public service by your local cable and satellite provider. like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. forum on immigration policy, political analyst examined the record on border enforcement and immigration reform as well as discussed congressional action on immigration. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> welcome, everybody. everybody to make sure you turn off your ringers on your phones, that would be terrific. we have a wonderful event today that is timely and also very informative and eye-opening too many people here. it's on a hot topic in washington right now. this is an issue driving the debate. the president has not followed the law. given them pause that he is a trustworthy partner. this is central to the way republicans are approaching the next few months and whether we will have an immigration bill not.- or this is a hot topic. there are dreamers demanding it did return to the country. the issue of what has really with border and immigration enforcement is really the single most important , and we are really pleased to have with us three experts from across the political spectrum, people who are well sides,d by people on all independent thinkers who have done a lot of work. there are no newbies here. we have a lot of new data. been the mostways transparent institution. they have put out new data that has helped give a brand-new window into many of the issues we have been talking about to give us a fresh perspective and a new look at old topics. any of you who worked on this issue no mark well. he has been a longtime thinker and leader in this arena. next week they are publishing what will probably become the definitive take on this. mark is going to preview a little bit of that but not all. he has to save some for next week. to -- mark is going to lead us off. on thisbeen working issue and has been a great collaborator. whenever we have questions we call ted to make sure we are getting things right. lastublished this pamphlet year on illegal migration to the border. he will offer some thoughts complementing what mark had covered. finally, jamar jacoby and a great friend of ours who comes from a different perspective, a leader from the center-right for immigration reform. i want to applaud her for her courage and steadfastness and trying to bring along a part of our politics that is not always anxious to move in some of the directions we want to go in. immigration works as a network of small businesses we have been advocating for a solution to our broken immigration system. we are glad she is here today. then we will open it up for q&a to all of you. mark, want to take it away? >> thanks. thanks for having me and everyone for being here. i will give a preview of the todings and encourage you check out the full version later. i'm going to focus on the three key trends in the deportation system. the first is that u.s. deportations, the system has moved from one that focuses mostly on informal returns to one that mostly employs formal removal. let me explain what that means. when an unauthorized immigrant is apprehended they can be deported in two main ways. one basically means the person is put on a plane and sent home. the alternative is a formal removal. it has more significant long-term consequences. it means they become ineligible for a visa. it also means if they get apprehended for the u.s. in the future they can be subject to criminal charges as a result of that removal. 90 five percent of everybody apprehended in the u.s. was supported through informal return, put on a bus and sent home. last year that was earning three ercent. that's a big change. there is a lot of confusion about whether this administration is setting new records for enforcement. we are talking about deportations on one hand and formal removal from the other hand. in terms of deportations the overall numbers are down. there are a lot fewer unauthorized immigrants coming to the united states. there are fewer people apprehended at the border and fewer deportations, but because such a higher share are getting removed they are setting all-time records. more than ever but not more deportations. the difference matters a lot. it is significant. focusing on those removals, previously, almost all formal ,emovers involve a judge involves going before an immigration judge in having a chance to seek relief. now most are handled exclusively by dhs. in 199597% of the people removed went to a judge and had a chance to seek relief. last year 25% went before a judge. it went from three percent nonjudicial to 75% nonjudicial. unauthorized immigrants are being charged with criminal offenses. been a law on the that crossing52 the border without permission is a crime and being in the united istes following the order also a crime, but those were rarely prosecuted in the past. i think very rarely in 1997 about one percent of people apprehended at the border faced charges. last year the number is 25%. those criminal charges matter because when you are convicted of a crime you go to jail. you have a criminal record. you become for the rest of your life a convicted criminal, so that's a big change also. recap quickly. we have gone from informal returns to mostly formal removal. we have gone from mostly judicial removal to mostly nonjudicial. we have gone from mostly not facing criminal charges to increasingly facing criminal charges. long-term trends that go back to the mid-90's. the obama administration inherited program's and funding that supported those, and he kept all those in place. all of those trends have continued. all three of them have accelerated under the obama administration. that's a broad sense in which the administration has been very tough on immigration enforcement. the other thing the obama administration has done is create new, explicitly articulated enforcement forrities and guidelines prosecutorial discretion. what that has done is while keeping in place enforcement tools, this administration has focused on priority cases. cutting to the bottom line, that enforcement.in in the interior, they are not getting these guidelines. focus on border control. administration tend to want to have it both ways. they want to gather and record measures of progress, but they want to claim constantly to be making progress. what do you do if the measures don't seem to show progress? that has been a real problem. broad story is of progress. fewer people trying to cross the border than any time except the early 1970's. our research suggests the odds of being apprehended are much higher than in the recent past. if you go back to the 1980's and the 1990's, you have only had about a one in three chance of getting caught. you would get put on a bus and taken back to mexico. today at least 50%, probably higher. much of that is an economic story. a weaker u.s. economy, fewer people trying to cross in the somewhat stronger mexican economy. there is little question that robust border enforcement is making a difference. it actually does better -- does matter that we have 21,000 compared to 10,000 a decade ago or that we have 700 miles of fencing, that we have aerial drones monitoring 24 hours a day. all that stuff does have a real mpact. why do they claim the border is hopelessly porous? some of it is there are places along the border were there are still high levels of crossings. if you go to the crossing at texas, and if you are a landowner you don't feel secure. successive administrations have done a poor job of gathering administration. obama came to office established effectiveness was operation and control. this was largely based on the patrol. of border it measured capacity to respond effectively and to encourage them at different places along the border. it was a problematic measure for many reasons, partly because it relied on those subjective judgments. there are still very remote parts of the border where you see agents. they came out with a report that 44%, and that became a ightmare statistic. they decided to stop using operational control methods. i supported that decision. i thought it was a good idea. their effort to find a replacement was badly missing. it was designed to throw together real estate values along with traditional come upent metrics and with an index. it never saw the light of day. the result was the administration didn't have measures to tell a story. what it fell back on was the apprehensions data. there is the number of arrests by the border patrol in any given year. there are individuals arrested multiple times. 1925.ta goes back to border patrol has been taking fingerprints. we know there is recidivism. is very goodion but hard to interpret. if they are making more arrests, is that a measure of enforcement? is moreeople side it logical to read it the other enforcements that is better because fewer people are trying. they may not be coming for economic reasons. they may also be deterred by enforcement. they are down dramatically. if you go back to 2000 over 1.6 million apprehension at the border. that fell after 9/11, rose again and fell in 2011. that was the lowest number since 1971. that has been a good news story that suggests the border is under more control than in decades. --t small novel of entries number of entries allowed them to get a lot tougher. the problem for the administration is that it darted to pick back up. the economy has gotten stronger. most of that is central americans coming through the texas corridor, but it makes it harder to tell the story of progress they want to tell. what we arguede, for is that this administration and future administrations should be gathering a larger range of data. what's the apprehension rate at the ports of entry? people tried to get to the legal ports as well. what is the number of visa overstays? thethis should be part of report. there are challenges. it definitely could be done. there's a pretty good model for how to do this. the border security result was passed last year. bill sets out achievable goals for border security and lays out how the administration should assess and evaluate progress to those goals. just in case anyone thinks it's impossible to find a consensus, that bill passed the homeland security committee in the house unanimously. every democrat. every republican on the committee voted in favor of that bill. cane is an approach we agree on. >> thanks very much. [applause] >> hello, everyone. thank you for being here. these guys have done such a good job of talking about the numbers. i'm going to talk a little bit about the political ramifications of the debate. the first thing to understand about this debate is you have one side saying we are not doing enough to enforce. the other side saying we are doing too much. it's the reason the debate can get resolved -- can't get resolved. i think of it as a riptide. in some ways the administration has gotten tougher. in some ways the obama administration has decided to use discretion. to tell which of the crosscurrents is what they are reading. on the one hand there is a big spending buildup. hand there has been a culling off of workplace raids and calling off of the porting workers caught in raids and an important move for indiscriminate harassment to a much more targeted approach we have been hearing about. --me the most important there's this tightening, this loosening. what am i seeing? what's the result of that data? most important change is a change my predecessors have talked about, the change on the from informal sending people back on the bus to apprehending people, fingerprinting them, putting them in the system, making it a formal offense so the next time they come -- this is the important thing. if you get caught the first time you get the same consequence but because you were sent back in a different way when you try the it looks much more and you are committing a real crime and the consequences play out the way they are playing out. the ultimate point is there is more deterrent and the border is secure. we want a system where there are ample legal ways to come and go but it's difficult to come in illegally. all these changes -- that's one of the consequences we are seeing. andnt to take a minute speak in defense of enforcement. is a longtimeo immigration advocate and spend more than a decade working to advance immigration reform, i'm also somebody who really and effectiveg enforcement is necessary. i think it's maybe worth explaining my reason. we live in a globalized world where workers and families are coming and going. mexicans work in the u.s. silicon valley would never have happened without immigrant. people talk about a day without a mexican -- without a mexican. the economy would come to a screeching halt, but the point is the american people are not going to support that kind of coming and going, no matter how good it is for us in other ways unless there are rules. control,ople feel in and unless they feel the people are people we decided to let come in. we are not going to support immigration unless there is a system with integrity, and that means rules. good rules are the foundation of a good system. today we are living with dad rules. we are living with the consequences of a decade of bad rules. today we are living in an era where the rules are unrealistic and enforcement seems almost evil because we have these bad rules. to be aiming for a day when we have good rules and meaningful enforcement. even in a climate like today you can't ask people to say a total is ok.g of the rules reasonable people can disagree about where the lines are, where the discretion should the. should he decide to target criminals or should he try to arrest everyone? there are republicans who say there should be no discretion. we should be doing everything. i think that's an unreasonable position. of course the government is going to allocate resources. i think more effective border control is a much more effective use of resources. i also think there are murky situations where one side can that's uncomfortable and the other can say that it's acceptable. i think there are some circumstances -- it seems to me most of the american public the violenthe porting felons -- there are not many people who think that's a mistake. the situation on the border is important because once you have done something once, you have been sent back, and you do it again, most people think that's unacceptable. it's one thing to cross once but to make it a way of life to flout the law, a lot of people say no. looking the other way doesn't really pass. bottom line, if you think immigration is good for america and you want america to remain a nation of immigrants you have to believe in enforcement. i want to step back and talk about political ramifications in congress of these ideas i am talking about. giving obama a enough credit for what i am saying in some ways is good improvement on the border? simon says no, they are not getting enough credit. they are doing better on the border. why can't they recognize that? i would like to put it in context. there is a difference between having priorities and making allocations of resources. that is one thing, having an allocation of resources. it's another to say the law doesn't matter, i'm going to do what i want to do. just taking the law in his own hand and doing what he wants. we are seeing this not in ofigration but in lots areas. republicans call it executive overreach. they see a pattern of it, and it's not just about immigration. it's obamacare and labor and the epa and drug sentencing. they have a whole laundry list. issues mr. cantor has 33 . the point is, and it's something where senator rubio was proposing something much like what the president did and instead of going to resident rubio -- senator rubio the unilaterally.it this is infuriating for congressional republicans and i think in some ways justifiably so. to be here, but this is where i disagree. i don't buy that obama's record is really good and the problem is republicans don't appreciate it. i think there is some complexity to that. even if i liked the outcome of the memo focusing on interior enforcement and criminals, that doesn't make obama trustworthy. make him a trustworthy, appealing partner. case anyonelear in has any doubt, the road to a permanent fix on immigration runs through congress. no fix that doesn't include legislation. obama can't do it alone. he can't do a real reform fix alone. action,her unilateral it's going to be a kiss of death for getting bipartisan action. passing legislation in a republican-controlled house will be the kiss of death for the next two years as well. if obama acts alone on immigration it's over. you have to try to see this from the republican point of view for a few seconds. they see this as a trade. they see they are going to accept legalization of some kind and get enforcement, but if they feel they aren't really going to get enforcement, then they aren't going to want to give up what they don't want to do and i suppose you can say, and maybe simon will say -- you could say republicans don't look like they are going to act anyway. the president just act? i believe they are getting closer. i think republican leadership wants to act. i think more republicans understand we need to act. ishink the question really when and not if, not pressuring the government to do things that are going to get in the way of an eventual legislative fix. term we ought to keep our eyes on the prize. [applause] are going to take a quick 92nd intermission and move the 92nd -- 90 second intermission and move the chairs around a little bit. i want to remind people you are not only on c-span but on our internet feed forever. make sure you do it really well and pithy. give us about 90 seconds. we will be back with you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> i'm using my mic. do you want to use yours? before we go, i want to thank, for putting this event together and andrea who is here today. she has been an amazing intern for a year and has done a lot of graphs and charts. -- he helped put it together. we are not going to sing happy birthday.res, happy i want to start with one question, and then we're going to open it to the audience. in our research one of the things we concluded from looking at the graph showing the increase in border removals and the crease in interior removals, and the latest data there were only 10,000 people supported who the united states neither had a criminal record in the interior or were a recent border crosser and meaning of the 300 70,000 people reported in 2013, only 10,000 fell outside of modern priorities, meaning the question i'm going to ask is -- do we believe it is an undocumented immigrant in the united states you don't have a criminal record and you don't leave the country, is the test of your deportation aluminate it? chance of deportation is a lot lower than if you are a border crosser or you do fall in one of the priority categories. i wouldn't quite use the word a limited, but reduced. -- the word you live in a to -- the word eliminated, but reduced. casual crossing has gone way down. are people affected by border enforcement who are definitely tied to communities. the programing is where people are arrested in every jurisdiction of the country, when the fingerprints are sent to the fbi for background checks they are used to identify people for removal. even though the program doesn't support a lot of people who don't follow into those categories, i think because it is so seamlessly integrated with law enforcement, it has a broader ripple effect, and i'm not sure people understand how narrow the focus is. i think it has had a much bigger impact than the numbers suggest. >> i would agree with the general conclusion that if you don't run afoul of the law the chances are fairly small. >> the border region is a big region. it's 100 miles to the border. there are people who may be living there a long time who could get apprehended. i think mark's point about the border anecdotally, a lot more of these are people who live here before and may have and andrted and have families are trying to get back to these people. we would look at these differently. wouldn't necessarily see this as priorities. at the senate bill a lot of them would potentially be eligible for legalization. there are challenges. you have got a fundamental dilemma. you have got to show serious credible enforcement to address republican concerns, but on the number are a fair people the democrats they got to be eligible for legalization. is it appropriate to be targeting this? are still real issues out there. >> i don't work with the data. i would agree with your assessment. is withould expect these people crossing the border, it's true people in the past went back and forth repeatedly. it was a way of life to cross repeatedly when the borders didn't mean much, when we treated the border as maybe a string of barb wire and everyone knew it was a joke. crossing reputedly had one moral significance. once you start to say, we are going to apprehend you and put you in the records and call it a crime and prosecute you criminally and you keep doing it over and over it has a different moral significance. it's one thing to cross to be with your family. it's another thing to make it a way of life to break the law. i'm not saying these people are evil, but it has to have a different weight in the way we regard it if we believe in the rule of law. i am as sympathetic to these people as anyone, but i think it has a moral way. >> if you had better legal channels to allow people to immigrate and work in the united states and you have a legalization, you deal with a lot of these people trying to navigate through a dysfunctional system. ofhave got this problem trying to establish credibility of enforcement without having made some of the changes to the legal system i think are necessary. i think you and i would agree on hat front. that onek we have seen of the messages to the undocumented community is you shouldn't leave the country anymore because the consequences -- the chance of you getting caught reentering is much higher. significanten a change. the enforcement mechanisms are working much better. the second point is when you get caught the consequences are much greater, to the point where you might not even be eligible for legalization in some cases when there is legalization, so that could remove your ability to become legalized when the legalization process begins, so i think one of the things we have learned in the process is for those advocates talking to the immigrant community, we have to be more honest about the fact that leaving the country now is far more dangerous than it used to be and it can end up breaking up your family because if you have been here 20 years, you went back and forth and saw your cousins in chihuahua twice a year, and now if you got caught he would be returned on the bus and you could try again a few gone.ater, those days are we have to be more honest about the consequence of leaving the undocumentedll the immigrants we care about so much. >> i'm not saying good that people can go home for their grandmothers funeral, but it's a reality. >> let's open it up to this wonderful room of people. we have a mic. if you can identify yourself and speak into the mic that would be great. >> my question is for ted, but anyone can answer. if there is a lack of good data on things like apprehensions and who is crossing the border, how can we get those numbers, and morecan we do to make dhs accountable? >> i think it is improving a lot. i want to give it some credit. the data released a year and a half ago was the record that the border patrol collects on the sector by sector station by station basis on apprehension, what they call turn backs, which seen tryingho are to enter the united states and change their mind or whatever and go back to mexico. think theyople they missed. these are people they actually cited. we knew there were 10 people. ory only caught five of them more commonly, footprints and other things. they are very good at saying this was probably a group of 12 people. all of this data was released for an important report in 2012. it gave us pretty good data on apprehension rates. i think border patrol is too we used what they call the recidivism method. i looking at people caught multiple times and making an assumption of who will try again , and most recently we have aerial drones. you can do observations in the desert. months,fly over four and if you are not communicating with the agents on the ground, you can say, this is the percentage we have caught. there are press reports that suggest an apprehension rate of about 50%. i have never been able to verify that with the government, but the data is not perfect, but it's a lot better than it used to be. it's not clear to me this has penetrated leadership. i see a real commitment to improving data gathering into reporting this in a more systematic way. i think that will be a big step forward. >> i am going to come to you next. >> my name is lucas with united we dream. i'm an undocumented immigrant. my parents rob me here when i was the-year-old in 1989. i'm originally from brazil, overstayed a tourist visa. my dad was -- my parents brought me here when i was one year old in 1989. your numbers you have been talking about reflect the actual reality of the pain that families are suffering on the ground? the separation of families? how do these numbers reflect that i couldn't bury my father? i will say something about that. starting with i'm sorry for that. give is thatwould the administration has been pretty successful at focusing enforcement on people they say they are going to focus on. supportivelso been about removing about 400,000 a year, so that's a lot of people. even though those exclude a lot of people, they include a lot of people, and most of those people have deep roots in the community. you can't have it both ways. you can't do robust enforcement and not have a major impact on deeply rooted, long-standing immigrant communities. your story goes to that point. i don't know the conditions under which your father was deported, but most people who are deported have lived in this country for a while, and many have families here. they may also have been previously removed or convicted of a minor crime or another apprehended at the border, in which case they are defined as a priority. there are a lot of people who have these connections in the u.s., so both storylines are true. true the administration is focusing on those categories and that is having an impact on communities. >> i didn't think i would necessarily end up doing this kind of work. the situation is one where aat a lot of us want is program that would have allowed you to bury your father. the only way that is going to happen is if congress acts. there are a lot of people in congress who have insisted they will only act if they believe we are not going to end up in the situation we ended up in 1986 where we legalized 3 million people with the promise this was going to be a one-off and a decade later we have 12 million people. you have to be able to say we do have a credible enforcement system in place. been in some way the republicans will be persuadable. i'm not sure. then the logic changes. a lot of the reason i do this is the way to do this right is through the immigration program and the only way you do that is through enforcement. i think these need to go hand-in-hand. they haven't. >> i will say a version of what both of them have said. it's a terrible story, and it's awful, and everyone can understand your pain very well. we do live in a time like prohibition where we have rules that are really unrealistic and we have rules that are wrong and people are breaking them, and that the situation you are in. he did something that wasn't that bad and got punished for it. the way to fix it is not to say that no rules matter and we don't believe in rules. an order to get the better rules we have to say we do believe in rules. that's the state we are in now. in some ways your family and many others are suffering, but we aren't going to get to a fixed width better rules if people think we are in a system where no rules apply. >> one of the questions i get asked about is we have to recognize if the graph is is a lag going on between the reality of what people are experiencing and what the system is doing today because in many cases -- if you read the new york times piece about the backlog in immigration , there are people coming for deportation who were apprehended six or seven years ago under a completely different system than what we have, and what you saw in that data is far fewer of those people were being deported than they used to be. the courts themselves are implementing discretionary standards and letting far more people go because they weren't apprehended under the same set of standards we are applying today. a really thoughtful piece in the new york times using data that came out of the is thet the key thing anecdotal stories, many of them are things that happened two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago under a completely different system. i think both of these things can be true. your story can be true while also this can be true. thatmy basic contention the president deserves far more credit from the immigration community for having been responsive to their concerns and actually change the system where virtually it's almost impossible if you live in the interior of the united dates and don't have a criminal record, it's virtually impossible for you to be deported today. that's a completely different 2009 whenn we had in all 11 million were under imminent threat of deportation at any time of day and it's a completely different system than what the republicans passed in the house. house republicans have wanted rollback priorities. and reestablish a day when ice would create a reasonable threat of deportation. republicans are on record voting for that in 2013. the contrast between somebody who has all -- who has only beinged 10,000 people responsive to your concerns and the republican leadership who wants to undo all those reforms and put the threat of imminent deportation back in the system immediately, there's an enormous contrast there. i think this is something we have got to unearth. this is very different from where we were a few years ago which is why i think we are having events like this. there is new data we have to help create a clearer picture. >> i'm not going to rise to the debate. i could, but i'm in your house. maybe later in the conversation. >> thanks for coming and spending time with us. i want to get a couple of reporters, and we will come back to some other folks. >> i am jim. this is a very important issue for readers. is if thisn i have is purely a republican versus or isatic disagreement, it really a geographic disagreement, and if it's how is the experience of people in the border states with illegal immigrants different from people like us who live in the d.c. metro area, where immigration seems be nine? tbenign?a -- seems what we are saying is in some ways, despite the there is lessds, of the divide then you might argue. and the administration is going to say the border is important. honestlyns look at it and they say adding a deterrent to the border is a good thing. simon and i are standing here we are adding a new deterrent to the border and that's good. think people in the government -- i think both of them realize -- both sides realize we are not going to get to affix a must we have a sense of rules that work, and maybe there are more agreements. other point. i think years ago the answer was more yes than it is now. one of the major things that has unauthorized immigration has become a 50 state phenomenon. even though the numbers aren't as big and rural pennsylvania as in arizona, the rate of change is very noticeable. phenomenon, so it's not the case that only border district are concerned about immigration the way it was for many years. >> if you look at geographical impact, originally this effort to build effective enforcement started in california and texas. operation gatekeeper really shut down the corridors. the result was all traffic went into arizona. you want to know why arizona became ground zero? it was because you guys started first in california and texas and all the traffic came through arizona. that has been shut down. the numbers are very small compared to a decade ago. publicplaces where opinion is most affected is the southeast. there were great rates of increase of 300% in recent decades. >> it's interesting that despite arizona's historic role in this debate you have senator mccain -- two republicans being the most outspoken advocate for comprehensive immigration reform and the last senate round and the congressional delegation in arizona is 5-4 democrat. we are coming out the other side in a place like arizona in part because the flow is significantly diminished over where it was a decade ago. >> i am going to go to you. if we can get a mic over here. we have an actual expert instead of those of us pretending onstage. >> i want to congratulate you on verypanel for portraying a complex situation this nation is facing. all of these things are critically important we are taking into consideration. what i got out of all three speakers is you captured stuff we have been struggling with when ahe late 70's immigration started climbing up the dramatic pace. the strategic approach you described, how we move forward, how we got to where we are today. a measurement of what is happening out there. how can we get to the level of detail that is going to be meaningful not just to specific pockets in our nation but the nation as a whole? legislativeneed for reform means there are policies that need to be set. one of the things i think is critical is that the strategic approach we took has worked. together's, who put these depictions, an outstanding job. puts together what has happened. 1.6 million apprehensions at the peak of a legal border activity. were 8000 agents at the border at that time. drop in a 72% to 78% cross-border illegal activity. imagine new york city had a drop of crime at half of that. we would be giving the commissioner, the chief of police, the governor a parade down main street. look at what has happened. there has been that evolution. 1981, the border was climbing at a dramatic rate. you don't. -- it peaked out. strategically.t we're talking about data. we're talking about statistics. critically important. what this admin describes emma what about all the other considerations, measuring the environment. some things are deafening in their silence. the border. trade is up to medically. nafta passing $500 billion worth of trade. a 444% increase. german this growth. -- tremendous growth. growingon growth, dramatically along the border. crime has dropped dramatically. it goes on and on. this is tremendous for the border. all these things going forward. frome we get away [inaudible] leading to, where is it taking us as north america,. just america, canada, mexico, and the u.s.. .easurements i can go on for hours but i will not. looking at the border through the appropriate lenses. we hear the horror stories i have heard some money times. stories about 20 years old. it is the same one. stories thatlized make the national news. how can we capture the national environment of the border? what is the true national environment? i will close out with we are country of laws and we need to continue to be that. the only thing i would add is comprehensive immigration reform. i wish we could go back and titled this comprehensive border security. that is what it is. thank you. >> we will be able to get in two or three more. i will do a lightning round. thank you for coming. >> [inaudible] --[inaudible] i wanted to talk to you [inaudible] we cannot deny that reality. we appreciate being here and adding that to the discussion. i stick to my argument. we are not going to get it fixed if we go to the situation of anarchy and the american people looks at that. they will not accept the level of immigration. anarchy to live with for a few years. we are not going to get there. we are not denying the reality of those horror stories. you're bringing them here very perfect -- very painfully. we know the pain you are describing. it does not mean if we were to listen to that pain and say ok, let's everything go until the past law. >> i do sympathize although i have not experienced it personally. i do not wreck we know your pain. it is the case that a lot of people who fall into one of those priority categories do not necessarily look like real bad actors. maybe they got convicted of a minor crime. maybe they were previously deported and they came back in. somebody who was deported 20 or to go and comes back in and has been here with their family does not seem like a bad actor. the one thing the obama administration is looking at is adjusting those priorities. ultimatelyd add is it is not a problem the administration can fix by itself. even if we decide congress is never going to do anything. the administration does not have .he authority i advise you to years. they're still vulnerable and it is not something the president can fix without congress. finding a formulation that allows the build to go through congress has to be part of the conversation if you're getting durable solutions. >> the political process operates on multiple levels. the dream act movement has transformed the discussion of this issue in this country. it was a transformative moment. equivalent to the history of the civil rights movement. the senate now at bill or you look at the house republic on -- republican principles that came out. we have got the republican sayinghip on the record they favor legalization. extraordinary progress. the reason i have worked on the border enforcement stuff, it is the last thing we had to persuade the republicans to get them over the finish line. i am disheartened with what is going on with house republicans and i am trying to tease out optimism. on all the issues that you care about we have a pretty substantive agreement which is not where we were five or six years ago. can we get it over the finish line. that is what changes the situation. is the elephant in the room. i am disappointed. the eighth thought we had a good chance and i thought going into the house principles we were close and it has not happened. i do think that if you compare where we are to where we are in 2006 or at the time when romney was running, he used to have the hell no people were the majority and there were a few outliers who hardly dared talk about it and the hell no people ran the conference and were the conference. hold off ande will hold onto the house. as recently as one romney was running he could say self deport and that represented where a lot of house republicans were. he could save be due with the dream act and that is where house republicans were. and i use a leadership saying legal status, you have the majority leader writing his own dream act. i don't think there is a republican in the conference to do not realize that something will have to happen and the republican party will have to be hard of the solution. it is about when, not if now. they are in denial and delusion. there like people who know they have to go to the dentist. they do not want to do it. the certified know they have to do it. i can put it off. they are in denial about how it doable it will be. i am not saying there -- they are in a place that is good. last 10ally are at the yards. to throw that away by having the president do a unilateral act that gives an excuse to say we are not going to do it, i do not think that is smart. >> let's do three and then we will take those questions and make our final comments. we will go to these. >> [inaudible] at what point does this become [inaudible] >> thanks to everybody for the discussion. i'm also with adc coalition on immigrant rights. a two-part question. is washington a border city? what is the 100 border mile around the u.s.. it is misleading if we do not have an idea. the second is in terms of is whenity the question we say the president is deporting all may the dangers for males and terrorists. how do we explain the momentum and against compliance. atcalifornia we're looking massachusetts. [inaudible] i will address the first two questions. question there is a piece i want to talk about. the difference between prosecutorial discretion prioritizing who is going to be focused on versus what you are describing which is the executive ranch exercising , certain laws not to enforce because there not in the national interest. there is a different understanding and none of us are lawyers. constitutional scholars have written on both sides. have far the executive could go if they decided it would not happen and congress. terms of the politics of making a decision like that it is a very -- it would be a confrontational position to take. the types ofthan discussion we have seen. it would be may be motivated by recognizing congress but it will be the stuff of prophecy. on your question i think there is no question that there are convicted criminals who are defined as priorities who identifies your secure communities that are not serious criminals and terrorists. you have seen a broad reaction to security across different jurisdictions. you have jurisdictions that are going the other way. it is at the heart of the different views and people have about we should be using enforcement. there is no question the administration has focused in on cheeseor ties -- higher -- priorities. is operated at the land border. our coastal borders do not fall under that definition. i want to talk about the executive action question. closely with people who are active on both sides of this issue. all -- for the president a becomes a calculation of can anything happen with congress and i look at the time frame through the summer. if the republicans had not made some movement, i do nothing it will happen this year. i do not think it happens for the next two years. i do not see congress during this in 2015. what can the president do and he can do quite a lot. i am not sure that the politics are necessarily bad. the message that sends it as if you're not willing to legislate i would do everything within my executive power to fix this problem. dare the congress to challenge them in the courts. you could claim that might force side. on the republican you can go to political strategists and see what they say. has tried hard to go down issues. on addressing i do not think we're there yet but we can get there pretty soon. i am not sure why anyone asks many more. for what it's worth. it is not a cold corpse up there now. it is on life support. i would not bet you a cop of coffee -- a couple of coffee but not a cold it is where talking about people in leadership positions. they want this in the worst way and they are having meetings trying to make it happen. there is a lot going on up there. i still would not give it high odds. not dead. next year will be hard. assuming republicans take the senate. it is not impossible. everyone understands this -- it has to get done eventually. if you are a local guy face election there is not much advantage in doing it for almost everybody. the hope would be that some of those bigger concerns would have an immediacy. there are people today say we will do it next year. this is a better opportunity. there are a lot of people you would not expect to see we have to do it and do it next year. it will be -- 2016 seems likely. imagine whether it is jeb bush talking about this and making it safe. contested here so i do not rule it out this year or next year. why would you kill it by acting this year? i hope someone will make that argument. my fear is he will act. if he is making a longer-term calculation it will be my legacy. acting unilaterally advocating for unilateral hesitation on enforcement, never. it is one thing. when president bush acted administratively [inaudible] besides getting to a better position. i do not see anyone i can think of saying we will never get it ite so let's start making easier for people to go back and forth illegally. i do think the folks who talk about the 100 miles and so on. my conversations is that there are not a lot of actual agents positioned far outside the border itself. talked to the person who wrote the i.c.e. report. e were people who were caught not physically crossing tehe border. the logs of where these folks were caught, this is a material beng that needs to answered. offve been vocally to get this ass and get resolved as quickly as possible. the second thing is getting to the politics. my concern and one of the -- meetings happened in this office. i have been a stalwart advocate for immigration reform for nine years. non-latinos in washington who spend as much time fighting for this as i have over the last decade and i am concerned about the way the community is attacking the president. everyday john boehner gets up has lessthis, he incentive to move this year. the attacks have been making it harder to pass comprehensible immigration reform. youas done exactly what wanted and he needs more credit for it. every day that you are in front of the white house there's a lesson for john boehner to do a deal. he wants there be -- to be in equivalency, he wants to reinstate the regime. i think this false equivalency that is being created has been damaging to the cause. we cannot let the republicans off the hook. how many times, what else can we do here. 68 votes, we have all sorts of stuff on the enforcement side. everyone who cares about the border, the border will be far more fortified. theill get much more -- tools the customs and border will have for apprehension will get much more sophisticated after we passed the senate bill. i do not think we're going to get this done in 2015, 2016. is a leader and champion against immigration reform. rand paul this by his efforts to portray himself as a more ecumenical leader voted against comprehension -- comprehensive reform. the republican primary will look 2007-like what we saw in 2008. the republicans could win the presidency and we could have a republican senate or house and a president. what does immigration reform look like? i do not think any of us would want to see that. i do think that it is about right now. we have to put all the pressure we possibly can on the republicans, taking it off the president to my and force them to do the deal now. that weot be until 2024 get a bill that anyone is happy with. the political and comparative is to get this done now and keep the pressure on where deserves to be witches on john boehner and the republicans. thanks for being here. let's thank our three guests. [applause] to thank tomar for sharing her views. thanks, everybody. >> during this month c-span is pleased to present our winning entries in this year's student cam documentary. it is the annual competition that encourages middle and high school students to think critically about issues. students are asked to create their documentary based on the question what is the most important issue in the u.s. congress should consider in 2014. these first time winners are eighth-graders at eastern middle school in silver spring, maryland. they want congress to improve the nsa's data collecting and surveillance program. >> edward snowden, thank you. for bringing to the attention of the world the fact that the u.s. government, the nsa is engaged in massive information gathering. billion cell phone conversations among. >> there has been a lot in the media about the situation, some right and a lot wrong. >> the examples i gave you and how important they have been, of america's without a court order, and of story. -- period, end of story. record your testimony. >> the nsa, what is it and what does it do? it was hard to answer these questions before edward snowden leaked thousands of detailed classified documents to the public. these documents show the full extent of the nsa surveillance on americans. >> the nsa is doing bulk data collection on american e-mails. it is not limited in scope to terrorists, two spies, two -- to spies, to people they have probable cause to believe that they are committing some type of crime. it is a bulk collection of data of american's e-mails. >> that is just one side of the story. many people believe the nsa is doing the right thing under a law called fisa. >> what the nsa is doing is trying to implement something called the foreign intelligence surveillance act, fisa, which is designed to try to capture communications and information from foreigners who are believed to be trying to do harm to americans or the united states. >> i think fisa has a lot of problems. i have repeatedly, during my tenure in congress, voted to rein in and redefine the fisa courts and responsibilities. i think we have more work to do. if anything, all of the news we have all endured over these last months about the national security agency really tells us in a deep way that there are things we have to do to rein in and provide oversight as members of congress in what the responsibilities of the nsa are. >> the nsa's method is changed over time with the advancement of technology. >> the change in technology, the technology back then [indiscernible] there are occaional telegrams, but not much more than that. the nsa is pretty limited on who they can eavesdrop on. >> edward snowden released thousands of documents that >> edward snowden released thousands of documents that revealed the true nature of the nsa to everybody, not just the american public. >> i don't think what he has done is ethical and right. i don't consider him to be a traitor because i don't think his intent or his purpose was to harm his country. i don't think that was his intent or it but he clearly violated the law. there are clearly, in my view, better ways for him to have proceeded. >> a lot of people have very different feelings of what edward snowden did. some people consider him a hero and some consider him a traitor. the most important and that edward snowden did is start a conversation. he started a conversation about what our government is doing and how they are spying on us. it's a conversation that america needs to have because people need to talk about where the balance should be. before edward snowden, all we had to go on was the government saying no, we are not collecting our data. we know that is not true. he started a very important conversation. >> the nsa is very controversial and the only way to resolve that conflict is it congress puts this as their number one issue in 2014. >> to watch all of the winning videos and learn more about our competition, go to c-span.org. tweet us using #student cam. >> a look at the state of the u.s. gambling industry. and a debate on genetically modified food. form on immigration policy. tomorrow the national council for behavioral health launches a program to provide mental health aid to veterans. live coverage begins at 11 eastern. the american enterprise institute looks at the fight against al qaeda. this coincides with the release of an ai report stating that u.s. national security policy is failing to stop the spread of al qaeda and its affiliates. you can watch our live coverage here on c-span at noon eastern time. >> a recent bloomberg businessweek highlighted the state of the gaming industry and declining casino revenues. we discussed the article. this is 40 minutes. last hour here on wednesdays, of "washington journal," you take a look at a recent magazine article. today we are looking at a bloomberg businessweek piece with the headline -- casinos know when to fold them. brian miller is the bloomberg .ndustries gaming analyst your colleague wrote this piece for the magazine. you have studied this industry every day. how large is the gaming industry in the united states? wethe gaming industry that look at at bloomberg industries is $38.5 billion, the full year number,ear 2015 including commercial casinos throughout united states, but not native american casinos, which are very large in their own right. and then lottery sales, the lottery itself is a very large industry that somewhat specializes to certain states. has been the history of casinos in this country? what has been the trend? what is the present day status? to the 1930's,ck 1940's, you really have one market in the u.s., las vegas, nevada. 1970's, in the late gambling was also legalized in new jersey, atlantic city. late 1980's,e 1990's, and to thousands, there was a corporation of casinos around the country referred to as regional gambling markets. you had one major destination market in the united states las vegas and the las vegas strip, then atlantic city with other little markets around the country. even though the industry continues to grow, it is saturated and declining in some specific areas, certainly the more mature markets. one that we can discuss is atlantic city. casino revenue there has declined 40% since 2006. your headline, "casinos know when to fold them ." what is going on? is twofold.roblem one, too much supply. regardless of where you are, it really deals with how close you are to the casino. the problem you have in many , as other states legalized gaming, that sucked business away from casinos. casinos have a high fixed cost structure. you have to have a lot of employees in a casino, especially if there are hotels with other amenities attached. you have to have a certain amount of business coming in on a regular basis. what happens is when you lose customers, those customers get a supplyble. that is problem. the second problem is a demand issue. what we have seen there following the great recession was that the dynamics of the labor force in the united states had changed. there was a dual recovery for the upper-class wage earners had done much better, proportionally, than lower income people. we have seen people move from blue-collar jobs -- construction is a great example -- to retail jobs that have lower hourly wage basis. it sucks discretionary income out of budgets and they are able to gamble less. host: why did we see states start to build and approve more casinos in their regions and areas? guest: there are two reasons for that. one is jobs. theis the employment at casino itself. second is tax revenue. casinos are taxed at the federal level, but then somewhat separately state and local follows the recession, or even from before, states look for ways to plug holes in their budgets and they look for casinos as an opportunity. they can be taxed at high percentage, anywhere from 20% to 30%. the incremental money going into fundseneral obligation of or school funds, they kind of use it as a stopgap measure to balance the budgets. the: from the article, irony is that it was the economic downturn that prompted several states to expand their gambling offerings as a way to increase revenue. maryland voters improve their first casinos in the 2008 referendum. massachusetts legislators joined them in 2011. illinois began to roll out those in 2012. they approved a maximum of seven resorts last year. financial projections have been made with a gambler's sense of optimism. ohio voters were told to expect more than one .2 billion dollars annually in gambling revenue hyundai approve the first for casinos in 2009. the take was $821 million last year. what does this mean? >> you can apply the general rule of budgeteers being overly optimistic to anything within the federal, local, or state budget. but it really means is that you are going to have an issue because of these overly aggressive assumptions. another example, online jamming -- online gaming is a relatively new phenomenon. new jersey is the largest state. the chris christie administration, when they put out their fiscal year 2014 they assumed that online gaming was going to generate $1.2 billion in revenue that would be taxed at 15%. in reality, over that same. of time online gaming is currently scaling to look like it will be a $100 million business. that is one example where government is really optimistic in what they assumed. that's going to actual gaming. what is profitable? what games are profitable? who is profiting? att: at the bottom --guest: the bottom line, everything is profitable. the way they gaming industry works is that whether you are playing slot machines, the most popular form of gambling in the united states, table games, blackjack, or roulette, statistically the casino will take a certain amount of money. between eight percent and 12%. over time the casino will keep about $10. for table games it is 15 dollars to $20. they make money on an ongoing basis regardless of what is happening. the issue comes in going back to that fixed cost structure and having too much supply. are you doing enough business to cover your costs and be profitable? as far as who is in the mix, it is an interesting consortium of large public companies that would be well known to the audience like caesars entertainment, who has 53 resorts around the united states and a large presence on the strip with many casinos in atlantic city and other regional markets, with another one that is well-known, mgm resorts in the las vegas strip, they have casinos down in the southeastern u.s., in mississippi, but then you get into smaller, regional companies. and then you have one offs where it is private companies or it is loaned by a very local group in a specific area with one casino. that does not even touch upon the native american tribes. four hundred 30 native american casinos interspersed around the united states as well. the public and native american casinos regulated? casinos, itublic really is a states rights issue. it is legalized and regulated on a state-by-state basis. if you are in las vegas, the casino there is regulated by the nevada gaming control board. they are not suspect to laws in other states other than nevada telling them that if they do not abide by laws, like in new jersey, their license can be revoked in nevada as well. as far as tribal gaming, each tribal casino is regulated by the tribe. those are all different sovereign lands. you run into issues there if you are an investor if, for example, you give money to the tribe to they falter,o and financially, you may not have recourse there. once you get into tribal casinos and tribal gaming, it becomes an interesting mix. you are just dealing with the tribe. >> our viewers here, the question here is from twitter -- what is gaming and how is it different from gambling? guest: a good question. theng is a term used by industry itself. certainly, if you go to a casino and our gaming, you are gambling. it is most specifically answered by saying that those terms are more or less synonymous. alex, good morning. aller: it just seems to be bunch of nomenclature to mask what seems to me to be drug addiction, marketing something that is as addictive -- i mean, i am not a drug user or addict, but my experience when i played roulette in las vegas 10 years ago, i won $100, i lost $100, my heart pounding, it seems to me that it is like a drug. they are marketing very clearly to the same thing that is alluring to drug addicts. this brief burst of pleasure. host: any thoughts? guest: you could say that gaming is really industry verbiage of taking the edge off a term that might have negative connotations. as far as problem gambling, that is certainly an issue. the way that we look at it is the way that we look at other vices as well. at the end of the day it comes down to self-control, to some extent. no one forces you to go into a bar or any other vice activity. elsee same extent, no one forces you and you need to make the choice on your own. if this is something that you struggle with, you can sign-up for an exclusion list and they won't let you in if you show up. another tweet for you -- well, i would say that the racing business in the u.s., the horseracing business specifically is in a long-term structural decline. that is a bit of a different industry. however, it really seems that they -- you can draw some parallels between them, but it seems you are really losing your audience as opposed to where they were 50, 60, 70 years ago, although there are three big races every year, other than that people have not really been going to the tracks. when you look at the casino business, and i mentioned this before, there are structural issues they go to the recovery following the recession. when you look at the demographics of people who are it skews more towards slightly more blue-collar individuals and people in the middle to low income tiers, though that may be part of the natural dispersion of people in the u.s.. anyway, those jobs have really not come back at the same pace that higher wage jobs have. those people make up a larger part of your core customer base, you are going to see an impact through less revenue. one of the trends that has been expressed in the last year, a lot of regional casino operators, there is a decline in visitation. when you go to the casino maybe you show up with $100 to campbell. if you were going four times per month, you would still show up with $100 but you would go fewer .imes are fro $10 in the long run before you show up? they just lost you the revenue that they were getting. taking a look at the data compiled by bloomberg, 2007 is where it was at four las vegas, and the downward trend for those areas -- brian miller, another tweet, how much in tax money does the fed take from gambling? host: --guest: it is an interesting case. casinos are highly leveraged business. a numbers are based on that comes into play after interest. businessen a souring over the last five or six years and large business expenses for these casinos, some of them do not pay a lot of taxes of the federal level. however, i would say that part of that is because of the current business environment in another part of it is due to the way that their business structure is set up. when you want to think of revenue coming out of casinos going to the general populace, you want to look at that on the state and local level. you would not want to say that the strip is doing $10 billion per year in revenue, because how much is going to uncle sam? according to the american gaming association, in 2012 u.s. commercial casinos employed 300 32,000 people, paid wages of 13 point $2 billion, and contributed $8.6 billion in earnedgaming taxes and 360 billion dollars in gaming revenue. working at aho is casino? what are their wages like? host: you have many different types --host: guest: --guest: you have many different types. the integrated resort, like in las vegas, with entertainment and dining options. a very big deliver gambling is only one of the things you can do. at one of those operations, you certainly have your employees on the floor and then you have the hotel service staff and entertainers, the people in food and beverage. for you look across those demographics, getting very granular there, to some extent it goes beyond what the bureau offers in terms of data, you are certainly looking at an hourly wage of around $20 per hour. one thing i will point out is a biggere benefit at these locations, large portions of the workforce are unionized. collective bargaining tends to lend itself to higher hourly thes, a benefit for industry. conversely, a regional concede now might be a stand-alone , there you just have the casino staff. if it is a union workforce, your wages might be slightly lower. >> a net, you are next. --when you first came when you first came on, i wrote c-span an e-mail to tell them i really liked you. stay with us. why are the casinos allowed to operate on palm sunday? it is very hypocritical. there is some sort of law in new york, something about the mutual greeting law. what is that about, mr. miller? it is craziness this. i could not go online to any other because they sent me an e-mail saying that to to new york state laws, i guess new york state must've contacted them and said that they are not allowed to service you. what kind of stuff is that? other people live in new york. people.eople, muslim who is creating these laws? host: brian miller? understand your question correctly, if you are forceg at any kind of based bedding or anything like that, that can be very different, especially if it goes across state lines. one of the interesting things about the wire act is that sports betting is only legal in four states. if you are making racing bets in other states, a form of sports betting, the bet is taken in a state other than where you make it. without being 100% sure of what happened in your situation, i think that what might have occurred is that due to the laws in another state, because of those states specific laws you are not able to do an activity you wanted in your state. how that ties into religious holidays is probably outside my expertise. host: what is the wire act? guest: a federal law that prohibits sports betting, essentially, wagering on sports. when it was created there were caveats taken out of it. the one that people are most familiar with is that if you go to the state of nevada, you can gamble on sporting events. what happened recently, 2010, 2011, the department of justice released an updated opinion on the wire act that narrowly pertainingas specifically to sports betting and other types of gambling. that is what opened the door to online gambling in new jersey, delaware, and nevada. you could see it pop up in other states as well. an offshoot of that that is interesting is the fact that the chris christie administration at that point attempted to push to as well sports gambling in new jersey, which really benefited atlantic city with its issues from a gambling perspective and losing business. i believe that that is going to dateupreme court, but to they have pushed back against that and said that this is only for non-sports betting activities. host: this comes from bill on twitter -- so, there are two different ways to really address this. one is at the state level. the other is at the federal level. maybe we will take the state level first. that is the more likely rollout of online gaming across the united states to date. reinterpretation of the wire act really opened the doors. it has been up to each state to address it on a one-off basis. what we think will happen is , they will states also legalize it. states that have come to mind that have looked at it includes new york, hawaii, california, nevada. not just for poker, but for other games. and illinois. i believe that eight or nine are currently considering it but it has been somewhat put on hold until they see what happens. at the federal level i think that is a different case. the problem that you have there is that at the federal level you need a majority of the nation to agree to go along with online gaming. although harry reid has been a , he essentially represents the casino industry who backs and financially, other than him really continuously every session or so pushing a new gaming law, there has not been a lot of ground support for something like that happening. for that reason, we think it will happen on a state-by-state asus as opposed to a federal basis. it comes up all the time at the federal level and it honestly never goes anywhere. host: what about the u.s. gambling industry as opposed to other countries? how do they compare? an interesting question. until recently the u.s. was probably the largest gambling market in the world. if you look at the role of native american gambling in the united states, that is still probably the biggest. lasthas happened over the 10 to 12 years is gambling was legalized in macau, a special administrative region of china, very similar to, very close to hong kong. after that happened some u.s. casino companies, like mgm and las vegas sands, as well as steve wynn, they opened casinos there. that has been an enormous market driven entirely by mainland china. it is a different type of customer than in the u.s.. i think it is mostly slot players. all everyone plays there is a game called rock around. similar to blackjack. that market has gone from essentially $2 billion to $3 billion up to $45 billion in the last 10 years. it is still growing very quickly while the u.s. gambling business has slowed down to a two percent, three percent annual growth rate. does the united states attract foreign tourists into our country for gambling? to some extent, they do. they have a scene in "casino" where they have to deal with the frail from japan or china. these destination markets have a certain amount of international business that is usually high-end. what you have there is even though it is a small amount of people, because they gamble so much money, how they do actually skews the casinos revenue numbers for the entire company on a quarter to quarter basis. i would tell you it is a small demographic, but it has an outsized effect. you would deal with other tourists coming from other places. everyday, normal tourists who are not coming in to las vegas with $5 million or $10 million to gamble. do not have the same effect as these vip customers. host: doug is next. i was in atlantic city the day they opened the first casino. it is going to do wonders and it never happened. ha ha why would people think that this would change with the number of casinos going up now? when it was the only game in town and it did not work, why would it work now that there is this large volume of casinos going up? guest: i think that is a great question that you hit on. i think two things are happening. one, if you specifically look at hasntic city, atlantic city many bureaucratic and municipal problems that extend way back to before the casino business came to town. someone recently commented to me that if you cannot have the casino market work on the ocean, why would it work anywhere else? in hindsight that market could have done many things differently. certainly the people running casinos now, some of the heads of the different operators there are investing in redeveloping portions of atlantic city, trying to bring in new business. one of the big opportunities that they have hit on is the convention business. you already have a lot of hotel rooms with entertainment or it you have to bring the new business in that is incremental revenue. when that money goes to the municipal government, what are they doing with that money? are they putting it to the best use? is the money getting fumbled around in a repetitive cycle? the other part of your question is -- does the math work? ohio

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