Transcripts For CSPAN Undocumented College Students Survey 20240622

Notice that three of them are from ucla. I would like to remind those of you at nyu that these three people used to be at nyu, and i think their presence here today is a symbol of the fact that once you are at nyu, you never really leave. It is just like a magnet coming back. We would like to congratulate them on their new roles and especially on this study. I should also say to remind you at nyu, we are now the Global Network university. So in a sense, think of ucla sort of like nyu west. As we congratulate you, we are also proud of your competence. The way we are going to proceed this morning is, im going to introduce all of our speakers and they will follow each other without further introduction. Our first speaker will be are still as torres arose go. The other comment i want to to make, because we have very distinguished speakers, for those of you not in academia is important for you to know that when someone is a high level besser professor, they have this other name they start to use. Some of our speakers have multiple names. But the name that is not their own name as the name of the person who gave a large gift to endow their position. We start again. Marcello juarez orozco is at ucla. Before joining ucla he served as a professor at new york university. He is coauthor of the awardwinning book reporting the results of his landmark study learning in a new land. He focuses on empirical problems in the areas of social psychology and anthropology, with the study in mass migration globalization, and education. Following him will be robert who is a professor of social science and education, and the morgan and helen xu holder of the endowment. We also think of him as robert. Since 2004, he has concurrently served as the senior faculty fellow at the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education policy at nyu or he was associate presser where he was associate professor. He focused on race and the stratification of college opportunity. Following robert will be corolla suarez orozco. She is at the graduate school of education at ucla. Prior, she served as professor of globalization at new york university. She is coauthor of the book and she is editor of the journal of adolescent research. Her research focuses on mass migration, globalization, and education within your readers of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology. Now it is a special welcome to steve troy steve choi, who is bringing the voices of Network Community organizations focused on immigration in new york city. He is the executive director of the new York Education coalition , a coalition of nearly 200 members representing new yorks immigrant communities. From 2009 two 2013, he was executive director of the min kwon section for community action, which educates korean and asianamerican Community Members in new york. Prior to that, he was a staff attorney and founding director of the korean workmans project. At the Asian American Legal Defense and education fund, the only project on the east coast committed to providing Legal Services to lowwage korean immigrants. Janet perez is a College Student and undocumented activist in the immigrant community. She was born in play low mexico but raised in the bronx. The bronx, new york. Janet is currently attending Lehman College at the City University and pursuing a double major in political silence science and computer imaging. She is the leader of an undocumented Youth Organization fighting for the community, and court of its mentoring program. Hiro yushikawa, the Courtney Ross professor of education at nyu and a University Professor at nyu. He is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the events and Poverty Reduction on childrens development. He conducts research in the United States, and low and middle income countries. He served also as harvards academic dean. I hope you will give our speakers a warm welcome, and marcelo will speak to report on his study. [applause] marcelo think you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for your warm introduction. Buenos dias, it is wonderful being back at nyu, the ucla of the east. [laughter] marcelo we love nyu and miss it so much we are going to keep taking pieces of nyu back to the best coast. Thank you, and that is the kind of introduction that my father would have liked and my mother would have believed. Im really delighted to be back at nyu many of the ideas and the architecture of this, and so many other Research Initiatives we have undertaken in the field of immigration have their roots here at steinhardt, and at nyu or more broadly, i am delighted to have this opportunity to come back to steinhardt and the institute to report on our work. During the last decade of the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st century, the undocumented immigrant population of the United States grew substantially from 3. 5 million in 1990 280peak of 12. 2 million in 2007 as the Great Recession began. It has been stable now for several years at about 11. 2 million, according to the most recent estimates by our colleagues at the pew research center. One inevitable result of having a large undocumented population over a long. Of time over a long period of time is a growing number of mixed status families. While some are citizens by birth, some authorized by law many are unauthorized, and all come in many, many families, live in a kind of increasingly intolerable limbo. After five decades of mass migration, the foreignborn population of our country includes millions of individuals who have been living in the United States for a long time, and have wellsettled households, steady employment, and deep community ties. This certainly applies to the undocumented migrant population which also has become more permanent and much more settled than in private or than in prior ways of mass migration. Close to one quarter of the population are unauthorized workers in our midst, worshipers in our churches, and also parents of american children. In a population of 11. 2 million unauthorized migrants, or than 4 million are adults with u. S. Citizen children, and as of 2012, those parents have been living in the United States for 15 years, on average. According to the most recent data by pew. As our country continues its long, now interminable pause young people brought here as children without papers, perhaps 1. 5 million or so are graduating from high school in growing numbers and attempting to go on with their lives. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented College Students are struggling to find their way in Higher Education. We recently surveyed 909 undocumented undergraduates across 34 states that immigrated to america from 55 Different Countries. They attend an array of fouryear public and private colleges that range in selectivity. The first and largest study of its kind exclusively focused on youth emerging adults in colleges. The study presents a number of findings. The new congress, scholars, activists, concerned citizens and like, and above all Community Members should be wise to ponder. Undocumented students encompass a range of immigration history language background, and religion. They are black, their white they are brown, they are asian and pacific islander. They occupied positions across the full spectrum of socioeconomic status. For them, like for many, many other young people in college today, college is a real challenge. The students are studying and working hard, and they long to be long. Two bwe to belong. 80 are First College graduates. They have limited guides to navigate through college especially in the shadows of the law. Their major of choice by far stem science, technology engineering, and mathematics which constituted 28. 5 of the reported majors. And clearly, our fields were capable and a productive workforce. It is most needed in the globalized the First Century that has given birth globalized 21st century that has given birth to the globalized network. Students live in a kind of, as of now permanent limbo. Feeling invisible overwhelmed and stressed. Data paints a new and alarming picture of what undocumented College Students live in their days. With 61. 3 percent of undocumented students coming from families living on an annual house come Household Income of 30,000 a year, 70. 4 are working while attending college, taxing heavily their ability to succeed academically. More than half 56. 7 of the students report being extremely concerned about paying for their college education. Among the students who are reporting stopping their studies temporarily, 74 of them indicated Financial Difficulties as the primary cause for their stomping out. 72 worked and reported complications from juggling long hours at work, physical commutes , and their studies. As such, many felt left out of campus life. In the 21st century globalization is the macro context for mass migration. The family is todays meso context. Immigration is above all, an ethical act of and for the family. One family starts the migration cycle and another family now reconstituted psycho socially, completes the cycle over time and across generations. It starts with one family. At the end of the process, it is a very, very different family. Family separations and longdistance family systems are normative in the 21st century american immigration. The more this topic, the more dysfunctional, the more just topic, the more dysfunctional it becomes the more separate and complicated reunifications are the Emotional Center of immigration in the 21st century. In our sample, 22 of our participants do not live with parents in the United States. 93 have at least one undocumented parent. 13 6 of them have experienced the deportation of one or both parents, and 56 of them have undocumented siblings. 3 of them have experienced the deportation of a sibling. For them, family separations deportations, and a transnationalism of the heart defines family life. For many, the fundamental psychosocial consequence of our just topic immigration system dystopic immigration system is a life akin to surviving and the guilt attached to remaining in our country when so many love ones live in fear or have experienced deportation. I am going to now invite robert to share the findings and some of the policy perspectives, and reminded us, policy is fundamental to the egos of how institutions ethos of how institutions work, do not work and how they need to be transformed. Thank you. [ [applause] prof. Teranishi good morning. It is great to be here. When i was walking here this morning, i said i think this is the earliest i have an on campus. Nyu is not a morning campus, and neither is the village. I want to begin by thanking you for hosting this important event. I want to acknowledge the steinhardt institution for educational policy. I think that there is a need for deeper different deep or discourse and debate about our education policy. You do an important job in fostering that type of Public Discourse about the importance of Higher Education policy when it comes to things like college portability, axis and equity in Higher Education, how we will train the next generation of leaders and our work force in society. For those reasons, i appreciate the opportunity to stay engaged. I want to thank our esteemed panel for joining us. To talk about of this report. I will focus my comments on the policy issues that emerged from the study. I begin by picking up on marcelos overview of our sample. It points to a few important points about what the demography of undocumented students reveals in terms of the policy concept. No college or university should assume that these issues are not relevant to their campus communities. The higher ed Community Needs to look the on stereotypes and look beyond stereotypes and false assumptions that often drive the treatment of the student population. This issue of undocumented status and access to Higher Education is not just an issue that needs education or is relevant to federal policy. We often think about things like the federal dream act and comprehensive Immigration Reform. As something that will solve the problems for the undocumented student population. While it is relevant, policy exists in multiple places. We have to think about the role of institutional policies, state policies, and its relation to federal policy. Without context, we wanted to explore how policies like dr. Daca are relevant to the experiences of undocumented students. Daca does nothing explicitly for College Students. This is more about indirect benefits. It is limitations. And where these opportunities to push the boundaries of what daca can do to expand access and opportunity in Higher Education. We found that a key benefit of daca was it afforded undocumented College Students with a work permit. As a result, recipients were more likely than nonrecipients to have in working. This resulted in greater financial wellbeing. Not only did additional income help offset the cost of college Daca Recipients said their jobs were more commensurate with their future career aspirations. We are also interested in the impact of daca on access to internships. Internship providers often have residency restrictions. This has been a barrier for undocumented College Students, who are trying to pursue particular career paths. We found that Daca Recipients were more than twice as likely to have an internship experience. Over the corners of the students with internships reported that their internships first i should explain what daca is. It is an executive action by president obama. The First Program was rolled out in 2012. It is deferred action for children deferred action for childhood arrivals. It gave temporary status that afforded undocumented youth with access to work permits and relief from deportation. So, three quarters of students with internships reported that the experiences divided skills that prepare them for work. This is important, because a number of students reported that internships were a prerequisite for careers in their fields of study. We also found that more than half of students with internships received compensation. This is important for a population facing a number of areas when it comes to college affordability. A large proportion of responders reported being commuter students. 75 . This may transportation and housing important issues when it comes to their ability to succeed academically. We found that students with daca were more likely to have drivers licenses. Shorter commute times. They spent more time on campus. And daca enable students to get access to stable housing. This is important for students in terms of not just their ability to focus and concentrate on studies, but also, we talk about issues of safety and security. The data also revealed the greater sense of optimism for life after college among Daca Recipients. One indicator was a higher proportion of Daca Recipients aspiring towards an advanced degree. It is important to also acknowledge the negative consequences of the provisional nature of daca. Again, daca is temporary relief. It is not a passport or citizenship or residency. So we have openended questions. Carola will talk more about this, but students talk about being cautiously optimistic about their futures and not being fully able to realize their aspirations. With all of these positive findings, it is important to talk about limitations. Barriers and challenges that continue to impede access to Higher Education. College affordability, for example, is a major barrier. It continues to impact undocumented students. They are dealing with ambiguous policies. A lack of information. And inconsistencies and how institutions confirm access to Financial Aid. While some states have inclusive tuition policies, others have explicit exclusionary policies. The biggest proportion of states is in the realm of on stipulated tuition policy. This issue of instate versus outofstate tuition is important. Average outofstate tuition is about double the typical instate tuition rates. Regardless of state tuition policies, there are also differences at the level of institutions. While the state can have on stipulated tuition policies or have her strip it tuition policies, institutions can have their own policies around access to state tuition. A lot of this is with regards to Public Institutions. Private also has their own way of dealing with undocumented students when it comes to admissions and access to Financial Aid. We have heard a number of instances where private institutions will treat undocumented students as International Students, for example. This presents a number of challenges for undocumented students. They are put in this position of determining who they should talk to to get information about access to information. Whether or not the information is accurate. You go to two or three different people in an institution and get two or three different since answers. Another challenge associated with access to tuition instate, is the issue of access to aid. Aid and tuition are two different issues. New york is an example where they have instate tuition for undocumented students, but they do not have access to state aid. There are only five states where undocumented students can get access to state aid. New york is not one of them. It is a point of contention, currently, because of the recent budget decisions made. I am hoping we can discuss that further throughout the morning. There is also differences in how access to aid plays out at different institutions. At twoyear institutions, there is less access to aid then four year institutions. This is probably because more aid for undocumented students is determined by institutions and is afforded to students by the institutions itself, with twoyear students having less forms of institutional aid available for students. But the Different Levels of policy and how it plays out for undocumented students, the context for this is that students do not have access to federal aid. In the form of grants or loans. I just want to stay a little about the implications. We came from washington, d. C. Where we were sharing some of these findings with policymakers. I want to touch on some of the implications for finance and policy. I think there are opportunities for us to push the limits of what daca can do specifically in Higher Education. Government agencies can look at how daca promotes employment opportunities, it internships and access to aid. Higher education associations. These are associations with memberships that could be institutions or people who work in higher ed institutions. These associations themselves should be frontline providers of information and resources for their constituents to better serve undocumented students. We need to resolve some of the challenges associated with ambiguous information. A lack of consistent information. And the need for more advocacy in the field. Philanthropy shared partner with scholarship providers and the higher ed community to create more funding opportunities. Costs and aid is a major dairy or for any College Student, but especially for undocumented students that do not have access to a lot of forms of Financial Aid. We would like to see corporations review their recruitment and hiring practices and improve access to internships, fellowships, and other career opportunities. This is potentially a space suit developed privatepublic partnerships where the government can work with the private sector to create a better academic to career pipeline. This is critical for fields like spam, where we have l ike ste m, where we have not good recruitment for minorities. This scratches the surface of some policy issues that exist for undocumented students and how people in different spaces need to come together to start to tackle these challenges. An example is that while a student can now attend a Public Institution and pay instate tuition, they may even get access to institutional aid they can get an internship, they have a work permit that does not mean you can get a license to practice in certain fields. You could say great, i am now going to train to be a teacher but we are seeing that certification is a barrier in a lot of different fields. There is just so many issues that are emerging. We need to Work Together to try to tackle these. Thank you. [applause] prof. Suarezorozco good morning everyone. I want to thank you for organizing these event and thank our esteemed panelists for joining us. I cannot tell you how delighted i am to see some of my warmer colleagues who came out of this morning my former colleagues who came out this morning. I am honored so many of you came to have this conversation. It shows how important this is to so many of us. It is encouraging that so many of us are taking this seriously. Today, i am going to turn to the psychosocial issues. This is a is when eric interdisciplinary study. Because our panelists cannot see what is on the screen, i will read things that i may not have said, because i would have assumed you all see it. There will be at a go of effect. Apologies for that, but i think it will be fair because it is hard to comment on things you cannot see. There is a question on the screen that says what are some of the diggers challenges you face as an undocumented College Student the bigger challenges you face as an undocumented College Student . This is one of the three qualifier questions embedded in the study, but it is also one of the overarching questions at the bottom of our quantitative questions. What are some of the Biggest Challenges you faced as an undocumented College Student . I will reinforce some of the points already be made and also show you what the students were saying and tried to talk a little about the immigration practice at the higher ed level. As has been implied earlier, financial concerns were the key issue. We learned that the mass of the story a vast majority of our constituents were concerned about paying for tuition and fees. Even paying for basic books and supplies was a concern for most, with 29 being extremely concerned about books and supplies. This quote gives you a sense of this. There are limited scholarships and Financial Aid barely covers tuition costs. Another quote says i got accepted into uc berkeley, my dreams school, but i was not able to attend because i could not get enough scholarships to go. It was heartbreaking to know how hard i work in high school and not being able to go. Made me many of our young people said they had to settle for a lesser level school because of financial concerns. They would go to a Community College when they could have gone to a higher rated four year college. Another issue because of Financial Aid was feeling left out of campus life. As one said, lack of Financial Aid, which results in not being able to live on campus. Another said not being able to participate in College Experience like studying abroad, interning in certain programs, getting academic jobs, and traveling with organizations. They were not able to participate in the very rings that so many students, who do not face the issues of documentation, take for granted. They also spoke about issues of finding allies on campus. One of the Biggest Challenges is knowing who i can turn to for help to understand my undocumented status as a college dude. Not having safe spaces where i can express my feelings about being undocumented. Another says finding people i can connect with and people i can trust. This recurring theme of being misunderstood or disconnect it was a prevailing issue. 2 3 reported they had experienced discrimination because of their legal status. Another key and driving issue were fears of deportation. This occurred at the personal mobile. For example at the personal level. Going back to what robert was saying, for folks who had daca they began to talk about i do not have the worry about being detained or deported. With daca, this was alleviated at a personal level, but they began to report growing concerns for their loved ones. They would say things like i am afraid for my parents and brother, who does not have his daca yet. The fear of deportation never goes away entirely until you know your whole family is protected. We heard over and over issues like that. I am afraid of my parents being deported on any random day. We see this in the numbers. I am sorry you cannot see this but the vast majority of respondents indicated ongoing deportation concerns, both for themselves and family members. We see their worries about detention and deportation went down somewhat for those who had daca but they went up for loved ones. So folks with daca were more worried about their family members than those who did not have daca. It seems like once folks had daca, as they crossed over to safety or at least temporary safety for themselves they started worrying more for their loved ones. Given all the stresses that folks talk about and also because there is good qualitative work that had not done before this research, we thought it important to administer a measure of anxiety as part of our survey. So we administer the generalized anxiety disorder, a brief scale with seven items. It has been used widely on diverse samples. People were asked to respond to seven items that say things like over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems, such as controlling worrying. We administer this item. Here is what we found. We found very elevated levels of anxiety form from our participants. Female anxiety rates the lower bar is what the norm sample is. The elevated bar is what our sample was. What we found is that the female sample had an zaidi levels three times higher than the norm group had anxiety levels three times higher than the norm group. For the males, it was seven times higher. That is quite striking. To try to finish on some more positive notes we there was a clear longing to the long b elong. They talked about not having i will actually skip this. We asked them to we asked them about whether if they had a chance to participate in the nationstate, if they had a right to become a citizen, would they choose to do so. We found that the vast majority would 90 would choose to become citizens. There is a narrative in some places in the nation that immigrants do not want to belong. This is a clear sign that there is a clear longing to belong. We also asked about their Civic Engagement and participation. 88 of students reported being in causes they cared about which went from helping the community to civic protest. In the last decade, dreamers have been on the forefront of the line for change. They bravely exposed themselves on campuses across the nation and brought awareness to the issue of this very important of this very important topic. At the same time, there is huge uncertainty about this issue in the future. Our participants talked about it is difficult to know, i am being held by something so outside my control. It is not just stressful but also depressing for any human being not being motivated to think, dream, or plan a future. Another sums it up. What happens when daca ends . Their concerns are very fulfilled. Despite the president ial announcement in december, they have continued reasons for concern and uncertainty. Their parents and family members remain vulnerable to deportation, as they are not protected by daca. Further, the new congress is continually threatening to undermine the immigration accountability executive action. As such, our National Policy context remains extremely uncertain. I do want to turn to we had a question at the end of the survey, where we asked them an open ended question that said what recommendations the make would you make, for administrators on campus to improve your experience on campus. The participants really poured their hearts out and gave concrete and tangible recommendations, which could be a whole talk in and of itself. I will tell you that the recommendations fell into several buckets, which i will summarize quickly. One of those was around asking members of the Campus Community to stop, listen, and learn about them. They are of a key constituency on many campuses over the country. Certainly in many of the key states. As we learned, all over. There was a saying in the Lgbt Community in the 1970s, we are everywhere. I think the same stands for this community as well. They also go they also ask that we train faculty and staff to understand their needs. As robert was saying, everything is changing, all the time. What is true today is not true tomorrow. That is part of what we need to do. Be aware and find out you cannot be complacent about what youth and you know. Certainly by the basic psychosocial issues, it will change a lot from one minute to the next. The legal policy issues are changing constantly. Providing Financial Support that is essential. Providing safe zones. This was a recurrent and not expensive thing that can be done on every campus. Finding ways to provide safe spaces for students. And because of the Mental Health issues we see providing culturally relevant Counseling Services is essential, i think. In summary, organizations like united we dream, the the new york coalition, and others have been channeling the voices with similar message to the findings sorry,. That we have put together in this report. I hope this provides empirical evidence to support and serve the community with tested recommendations. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Good morning. I would like to thank nyu and i would like to thank my fennel my fellow panelist for inviting me to be here. Unfortunately, i have no other name associated with my position. I am the executive director of the new York Immigration Coalition. We are a coalition of about 165 member agencies all across the state that have a stake on immigration and believe there we strongly and allow the benefits that immigrants bring. This discussion is very poignant for me because we are coming out the heels and effort and campaign over the past couple of weeks in the last couple of months to get it included in the budget and that went down to a very crushing failure by not getting it in the budget. The game is not yet done. There are several months left in the legislative session and i will talk a little bit about that effort to get the new york premac passed in a little bit. It is also thoughtprovoking as an Advocacy Group fighting for the dream act but also asked the coordinator of the major 18 Million City Council initiative that we have been operating over the last couple of years working with the city council. That has been an effort to try and find the daca potential recipients, not the cap and down folks and know how to get to college and know what their rights are, but the folks who are not necessarily the kind of folks you would be thinking of. People who are restaurant workers, young day laborers, sometimes kids, but also they are potentially eligible for daca and we should be thinking of them as well and Higher Education because they are part of the mix and i want to emphasize that. The first thing i would say is that it is interesting, and i took some time last night to really read through the study which is excellent, of course, and it is interesting because my experience with undocumented immigrant youth and College Youth is not as a subject of study but as an agent of their own destiny. The thing that i want to point out is that undocumented immigrant youth have really dressed themselves onto the forefront of the immigration Advocacy Movement over the last couple of years. And you see that nationally. You see groups like united we dream really putting an ad to immigration advocacy. A lot of established organizations like some of our national partners, i think that they have made a tremendous change. They have really been a game changer in the way that immigration advocacy and our fight and and our never ending fight for, Immigration Reform has completely changed the rule for the game. I think when you look at things like president s announcement of daca in 2012, that was in many ways the direct result of the advocacy of undocumented immigrant youth. They went and took over president obamas Campaign Office who do not hesitate to target democrats and republicans. I think it is a remarkable fact and i think what we would do well to keep in mind. Even on the state level and the local level, you see organizations like the new york state Youth Leadership council. You see like the dreamers who just concluded a multiday Hunger Strike for the new york state dream act. They in many ways are the vanguard of advocacy around immigration and he would do us well, forget that i will keep my remarks short. I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts in looking at the study and some results that they found. One, and i think that this is i want to add a little confidence to this, but one is that daca, in our experience, has provided a new lease on life. I respectfully differ from my colleagues in that i think the impact of daca is not that folks are less concerned about their own deportation or anything like at, i think the fact is that for kids and for youth who were able to get daca, it means more than simply being able to get a Social Security number and be protected from deportation. It means you can conceive of a future of the United States. I remember that one of the students that i worked with, i have known him for about four years, a korean undocumented immigrant student, he was an honor student but before daca happened, i would meet with him and fairly regularly. We would sit down and i would say, i can say his first name because he is ok with that i would say, peter, what are you thinking about doing . I know you are junior going into your senior year and he would say, i do not know. Because without daca, or any kind of legal status like that, your options postcollege are very limited. What are you going to do . There are some opportunities to have a consultancy business or be an independent contractor or start a coop, but those are very limited. The fact is that daca provides you with an opportunity to work legally after college and that makes a tremendous difference because that allows kids like peter to imagine a future here in the United States the on simply college. I saw that. Peter was able to apply for daca. He was able to get it. He is a budding filmmaker and just got married and was able to go on a career. He sees this feature in the United States before going back to korea and really just a country he left 18 years ago. That in many ways seems to be his only option other than simply going into the underground economy. I would say that the impact of daca, at least that we have seen has been that it provides that postcollege goal and provides them with the vision and the ability of having a future in the United States. That in our mind is one of the key things. It has also been true when we look at our daca initiative, we work with 30 programs across the city who are finding people who are hard to reach daca who may not know they are eligible and in that age range. They may be day laborers, landscapers, restaurant workers, so we have been trying to get them to say, you know what . You have an opportunity to go back to Higher Education, to get a degree, to provide for your family and to get daca status. One of the things we found is that that kind of area between being a worker and the just a low income and low and came lowwage worker and you can be a fluid one. The folks who have eventually gotten daca, it has been an amazing change in their lives as well. I think that they see the tangible benefits and the intangible. The importance of daca, in our mind, cannot be understated. The second point, Financial Aid continues to be a major stressor for these individuals. There is a lot of talk recently about the rise of college and how that doesnt affect everybody, but for undocumented immigrant students, and i am sure janet can talk about this in more detail, the rising cost of college is not a bump in the road but an impassable barrier. It is a huge barrier even for those kids who are going to soon. For the kids going to nyu, where tuition and cost are more than 60,000 . 70 next year . Wow. Nothing makes you feel old like youre in the cost of college. I mean, 70,000 per year is an insurmountable financial barrier, right . I think it is especially for students who are barred by law from taking advantage of pell grants or who are barred from taking advantage of the state Tuition Assistance program. Financial aid and Financial Assistance and the impossibility of accessing those is a major barrier and i think one that affects us all. If we are not doing what we can to allow undocumented immigrant students, and studies show that the great majority of undocumented immigrant youth are not going to hire college, a great majority because of financial barriers and that we are not doing our state and our country we are doing it a disservice. I think that is something as weak as a society really have to look at ourselves and, what are we doing along this front . The stories we heard on the new york strain the new york state dream act would allow access to the state Tuition Assistance program, would allow access for the proximately 4000 undocumented immigrant youth that graduate from new york high schools every single year. When you hear the stories of the dreamers that were on this Hunger Strike, they felt it was important in the middle of midterms to engage in this Hunger Strike because this issue was that important to them. Because they face, and on a day in and day out basis, just how important tuition access is just how important every single dollar is. If we do not do something about Financial Aid, if we are not thinking about how to break down these financial barriers for Higher Education, there we really need to reexamine what we are doing as a society. The last point i would make is that public support and endorsement does make a difference. I know that at nyu last fall they made a public announcement stating that there would be Financial Aid available for undocumented immigrant students, and i believe it was really the efforts of the nyu dream team and other advocates to make that happen. I want to encourage them for that but the fact is that a lot of causes you not mention your support for the undocumented. The ones that do, and you see this with the cuny dreamers that we have spent a lot of time working with, cuny and especially some of the leadership there, people like senior vice chancellor, they had come out front and center and said that the new york state dream act is one of their top advocacy priorities. They have said that that they want and need to do everything they can to support undocumented immigrant students, even given the legal barriers. That has made a major impact in the mindset of these students. They feel welcomed, they feel less isolated, they feel supported, and these kinds of intangible benefits are important for us to remember that they do make a difference. Public support and making sure that the leadership of Higher Education is coming out clearly and strongly in support of these undocumented immigrant students is absolutely something we should be pushing for. Finally, as an advocacy organization, i do want to say that the fight for the new york state dream act is not over. I am sure there will be questions about that probably from the panelists. The fact of the matter is, the governor put it in his budget and then he took it out. I dont think that i am saying anything forward by saint we did not have enough support in the assembly nor in the senate obviously, that we did not have enough support from everybody. All of our elected leaders let us down, so i would say that we have a couple of months to get something passed. It is going to be a tough road. It is going to require everybody who is engaged around this issue, undocumented immigrant students at the forefront, other social justice progressive organizations, and a lot are the stakeholders, business Higher Education, we are all going to need to Work Together and fight together to make the new york state dream act a reality. But we can do that this year. I would ask all of you in this group to think about what you can do to support the new york state dream act. Whether it is joining a Hunger Strike in solidarity with some of these really brave and courageous students. Whether it is making contact with your local state senator or your local state assembly person. Signing on to petitioner for the governor, making sure that he lives up to his words. Campaigned on the new york state dream act. This was a Campaign Promise for him. We told him that we think he has broken it. What you do as an ordinary resident, there are plenty of things you can do and i encourage you to be engaged. We have a couple months to get this done. If we dont get it done, we are looking at probably not getting it done in 2016 because it is an election year. Every single year that this happens, more than 4000 undocumented immigrant students graduate and it breaks my heart they are not moving forward. Thank you. [applause] hi, everyone. Im really short. I am very happy to see everyone here and be part of the panel. I have been undocumented activist who has been involved with the movement for quite some time. I hear to talk about my experience as the directly impacted person. Yeah i read through it and there is a need for a further examination of the guidelines for federal and financial state aid for undocumented citizens and permit the residentials. [indiscernible] we have been fighting for the new york dream act since 2011. Based on 2011 findings 50 students from High School Graduate and only five to 10 of those students continue for Higher Education. The nys see has been working and listening since we first draft of the bill in 2011. Up until now, the dream act has gotten enough support from organizations and different groups and has now been turned into what has been called the new york dream act coalition. Since 2011 we have been mobilizing, organizing, and putting our lives on the line. We have done various actions which include vigils, marches protests, civil disobedience is a walk to albany, a walk where undocumented youth actually walked 150 miles. The three times in has passed through the legislator and three times it has failed. It is really disappointing to see that in the state of new york the message has become very clear to us that the new york state does not support our Higher Education for a documented students. As steve mentioned, it was recently taken out of the budget and we were told there was a lot of backdoor deals happening with a dream fund going around and i just wanted to say out there that that is not what we want. We dont want a fund that has no secure funding to it. So that is just a little bit of the policies we are talking about that should be implemented for undocumented youth and in the state of new york. That is one of the things we are trying to campaign for that will get passed in the state of new york. Something that wasnt mentioned i am part of the Lehman Dream Team which is one of the first dream teams ever created in the whole state of new york, which was created in 2010. It was a support group for undocumented students and the share the same space. We started to give each other support, resources, and information. Just a little bit about the report, something that wasnt really mentioned is that being undocumented once you find out you are undocumented a lot of people either case two ways, right . For one, you either go up grow up living in the country and you think life is good but then all of a sudden you find out you are undocumented and you face that harsh reality. The second way is like in my situation, i always knew i was undocumented. My parents always revealed that to me. They always told me, do not talk to anybody because i can get deported at any moment. But i never really processed what that meant to my life. At such a young age, when they come here at six months old, i grew up in this country. At such a young age when they tell me that information, i did not know how that would affect my life. My point for bringing that up is that even though daca has been very helpful in providing deportation relief, providing working permits, Social Security numbers, even though that has provided us with that kind of relief, it still is something that starts at a very young age and something that within that i would like to point out is it is great that we would like to have the resources create conscious saint spaces for documented youth, have Mental Health counseling for undocumented youth, but also important to note that a lot of that comes in Higher Education and the comes from high school. It starts from there. That is very important to point out. Something else that they were mentioning about the same space, i did not i actually had the opportunity to talk to my counselor where she actually encouraged me, but unfortunately, that is not the case for many undocumented youth who their First Encounter in high school is the guidance counselor, the teacher and instead of being encourage, they are actually being discouraged to even apply for college or to even think about the possibilities because that is not even because that is due to the lack of knowledge. Something else that we wanted to point out, we fundamentally believe that the greatest impact for undocumented people comes when undocumented people are part of the process. Who better to understand the need for undocumented people than undocumented people of themselves . As being undocumented, and undocumented student, working, striving for social change and doing with credible fear and anxieties, we dont exactly have an easy task at hand, which is why our experience in expertise should be validated. A great example comes from our very own institution which the panel is being hosted in. The nyu dream team is actually close we actually have a close relationship over the past two years and it is an allied we work closely with, an organization that the document undocumented youth led. Their intentions have been for undocumented youth input. From that close relationship using alexis as an example, nyu has actually gotten the institution to open up Financial Aid to some undocumented students, so i think that is very important to share. Also, in creating these spaces, we are able to have other spaces which is Something Else we are working on, a conference that was started in california that they brought to new york as a means to provide resources support, information for undocumented youth. Things like that we should be taking into consideration when we are trying to provide safe spaces for undocumented youth because it is important to have their voices at the forefront and throughout the process. Yeah, so that is pretty much pretty much what i wanted to talk about and hour back to point out that we would like to continue these spaces and Work Together to keep implementing change for undocumented youth especially organizations and groups that support undocumented youth but dont really support them when it comes to the actual work. We should keep fighting for these changes that we should be saying and not only institutional, not only institutional spaces but also outside where it was mentioned that not all documented youth that have daca go to college. They are part of the workforce and it is important not to only leave those people out because they are also their lives are just as viable as people who just go to college. We should not be making that distinction. [applause] good morning. Im going to be briefed as i know we are headed toward 11 00 for a q a from the audience. First, i want to thank the members of the panel and Marcella Corolla and robert for inviting me to comment on this study. Its an extraordinary historic study and a privilege to be able to read an early draft and it is wonderful to see it having an impact in not just academia but in policy circles with their briefings of the center for American Progress in washington, recently. What is not in here is that i know there are many challenges to conducting this kind of research, online service, which i have put a little bit from corolla, so i actually think there is a tremendous amount of work that went into this. Very, very careful attention to representation. Im just going to highlight a brief comment from four games. The first is reframing the undocumented. Reframing them as a resource for the nation is critical, and im glad that both steve and janets comments print this thing. For this 1. 5 million youth who are unauthorized themselves first of all, the sheer diversity of the countries of origin that they are coming from all over the world, the 50 countries represented in the study, that is very important. I look forward to hearing more about their actual experiences. I love that they are that they have qualitative information but i would like to highlight to think that reveal how strong and as much of a resource these students could be and are for the nation which is that over 28 are stem majors and we know we have a crisis in the stem field in this country around students from immigrant origin backgrounds. More diverse stem major populations. Many are high achievers, 80 have gpas over 3. 0. I dont think that was mentioned by anyone today, but that is quite extraordinary. When we consider the strength of the population, i think the lack of a policy response and scott in policy responses from state and Higher Education institutions becomes that much more shameful. Turning to daca, 26 states had sued to prevent implementation of the obama executive action as at this point in time and what is worrisome beyond that and building on steves point from the new York Immigration Coalition is that those who have received daca 10 to have higher levels of education in that they are in more selective universities, and nationally those were least likely are those who have not completed high school education. Maybe parents of themselves population i study undocumented parents of young kids. Those not enrolled in formal Adult Education. New york city pretty led really lead with a twoway dollars worth of education adult spots and they led in this fight with the counselor the council and mayor bloomberg but new york is the only city in the country who has passed specific Adult Education slots or this population that are daca eligible but have not applied or accessed it. There are many barriers like information, some groups are less likely to know that they are eligible. Turning to the College Experience i think there was shocking data in this report that i would like to highlight. That is the experience of discrimination on campuses. I was shocked that roughly one third of the sample reported unfair or negative treatment from professors, from counselors , and from university administrators. Now, that shows that there is a climate above and beyond, i think, Higher Education. Policies around eight, tuition around aid and tuition, i think there was a tremendous amount of work to do at the Higher Education level around practice. And janet mentioned that this reaches down into high school and what these students might be fearing and we have to think of the many, many more thousands who do not even make it into a college or university in part because they are hearing these kinds of comments, which are creating isolation and discrimination in what really should be a protected environment of learning. We know how harsh the work conditions of the unauthorized are, and we cannot be adding to those kinds of stresses and dissemination in the very settings for learning and education and social mobility that represent the schools and universities in our country. Finally, around research direction, we need many more surveys like this. We need them specific to campuses like nyu, like universities in new york city and new york state. Nyu students have been collecting these kinds of surveys in the city across multiple campuses, like brian herr, are you both here . That, they are both here. Probably, much more broadly on the National Level we need to add issues of legal status and the experience of legal status to Ongoing National surveys like the American Community survey, the Current Population survey, and the recommendations of the Science Panel that i am on, and the incorporation of immigrants into american society. We need to add questions on activism, youth and what portion are engaged in that activism and how to spread that kind of Civic Engagement work that really does empower this group and not just you that parents who are starting to enter that picture. We need to understand the wages and work conditions of those who receive daca. The rates are illegally low wages that are found in the study of parents in new york were as high as 40 , illegally low. Below the minimum wage. Our failover . Are they lower . They should be when you have official permit to work and things like the Social Security number. Overall, i think this is a historic study and i hope it draws a lot of practice and change, particularly in Higher Education across the nation, and i think we are at 15 well, 12 minutes. Instead of my posing questions i think it best that we open up for q a from the larger group. I am sure you all have a bunch of questions. And you will moderate that . Thank you. [applause] thank you very much to our panel. We have some time for questions not a whole lot of time. But i would like you to do if you have a question, we had a portable microphone that is going to circulate. Tell us who you are, where you are from, and then your question which you can address to the panel as a whole or two and an individual on the panel. Are there any questions . Yes, right here in the first table. Can you stand up also . Thank you. Bonnie hi, i am bonnie from San Francisco but im a graduate student studying Higher Education at nyu. I really appreciated the study. I can understand how it can highly generalize the entire country and includes Public Institutions etc. , but my question is directed to those of you who are at ucla saying that the study is coming out of the institution. What do you see as the immediate implication at the university being what you found from the study at ucla being very specializing because california has such a high and documented population, the Los Angeles Area in particular, and ucla, like other uc systems, have other tears. They have a tuition where it is nearly three times in state and etc. And you can focus on the social aspects or the commission aspect, whatever. Earlier i was talking about how the state contact matters and they matter in terms of instate tuition and tuition policies and they also matter in terms of state forms of aid. California is one of the more progressive states. They do a better job than most of the states. They had a policy called bp 540 and they also at the count on your dream act. Institutions the university of california generally has created funds to specifically target support for undocumented students. Ucla has over 600 undocumented students. Just the fact that they know that i think its something that speaks to their desire to want to know and understand and support these students. We have that in an office that supports undocumented students on out on campus and they were close to student organizations and they also work with the conduit two other to other offices on campus. Ucla is a good example. I think they also feel like they could do more, so there is always ongoing dialogue about how to improve services for documented serve students. I also wanted to add a little bit in response to what you are asking and also his comment. After this report, we drill down a little bit into comparing the fouryear public and the fouryear private to the Community Colleges and we looked a little bit at the differences in terms of how it matters. So we found that the fouryear private is better, not surprisingly, in terms of giving more Financial Aid, right . But the fouryear publics are much better at kind of a general employment there was a lot more discrimination going down. But it was like student on student and faculty on student. In the fouryear private. A lot of our responses were coming from california and they came from all over but we just happen to have more from california and from the uc system. The uc system is special ucla happens to be in the forefront of the dream movement, so it is a special space. The only thing i would add is i think the great tip oneill who once said, and and is the only person who remembers who tbone a was, you tip oneill was, all politics are so cold and this is true in two domains. I will turn to marry here. This is true in Higher Education policy and to immigration policy. In our country, we basically have we are coming to a new normal wear each where each state has the policy mechanism for immigration and they are so varied. To find yourself in california if you find yourself in georgia if you find yourself in illinois, you might as well be in three Different Countries because they are so disparate. The center for gold nature the central nature of the increasingly disparate policy mechanism suggests that the trajectories are going to be very, very different in what i think you can find yourself within what state and in what institution you find yourself. I just wanted to add since so many of you either teach in Higher Education or study in them, you have to remember how internally complex every university and college is, so it is often very confusing because the college may aggressively recruit certain students and the not treat them very well because there is no it is very hard to disseminate either policy change for cultural change in an institution. Faculty are just one small piece of it, but it is not unusual for a college to welcome officially welcome students and then have the student be sort of at tea and not feeling very comfortable once they arrive. We hope it is not any of our institutions, but we know that these things to occur. Anyway, more questions . All the way in the back. Please, introduce yourself. Miriam hi, im miriam in bilingual education. This is obviously a safe space for all of us and this is a very receptive audience as well as a wonderful and dedicated panel. I have a know your enemy question what is the mythology on the other side that would result in someone like andrew cuomo dropping the dream act from the ledger . And what are the myths that we encounter with evidence . Do you want to start on that . Sure. I can speak to that actually. Just a couple weeks ago, we put out an oped specifically titled that this about the new york state dream act. The number one message we hear that we hear this across the state particularly around the elections last year was that, why are you giving taxpayer money to illegals . Right . Our nativeborn children are already having a hard enough time to be able to afford college anyway, why are we taking taxpayer money and giving it to illegals, right . You know, and i think that we really pushed back and we said look here is what the new york state dream act is all about. It is about providing equal footing to everybody. It is saying that we have pools for the tuition system that will be posted up by 27 million and should be bigger anyway because it should be very, very large, but we will boosted up by 27 million and we will change the regulations. That will then get rid of the residency and status requirements and basically allow undocumented immigrants and other students who are refugees or victims and also be able to access that. That is what it does. It allows undocumented immigrant students to be on the same Playing Field as everybody else, right . You are not taking a big chunk of money and directing that specifically to undocumented immigrant students. Not that we would necessarily be against that, but in order to combat that specific talking point, that was really the structure. The problem is is that politics and demagoguery and messaging get in the weight of facts. We still hear this all the time. The Senate Majority leader came out recently and said, why do we give money to people who cant even work anyway after they graduate . That is simply not true, right . The politics of this and they made a specific the Republican State Senate who is now the majority in the new york state senate, youve got to get something by them if you want to have something happen, they had want last years elections because they demagogue does and put out fires with people flyers with people climbing fences to indicate exactly criminal or a legal who are coming over just to get benefits, right . They thought that they won the elections because of that, so it is a hard pushed to be able to figure out what kind of leverage do we have on them to be able to say, now you are going to accept this . I think it is a political question at that point. The only thing i would add is this is the numero uno law of immigration in our country over the last hundred 50 years 150 years. We look at immigrants looking backwards. In the here and now, there is always ambivalence, there is always push back. We are in lower manhattan. 100 years ago, there was a near panic about huge numbers of Eastern Europeans, the irish the mediterraneans, the fundamental structure of the antiimmigrant impulse had the kind of antisomatic, and i somatic, and tight catholic, antiradical unholy trinity. Today, today, we love immigrants looking backwards. We hate them in the here and now. If the ucla dean or former nyu professor 150 years ago would have, in this university, would have told you relax, in 150 years from now 100 , all, every Single Member of the United State Supreme Court the central room of american law, every Single Member would be a jew or a catholic, people would have said, dean, you are crazy. Today, the issue is mobilized around this final barrier. The question of who has the authorization, who doesnt have authorization . The symbolic apparatus that animates the those, the ideal of the current the ethos the idea over current anxiety is fundamentally challenging and echoing what has been a story in our country for over 150 years. Today, it is not the iris, it is not that italians, it is not that Eastern European jews, it is the unauthorized. A few more questions. Yes, the middle of the middle table. Gabby hi, my name is gabby, i am a thirdyear law student at nyu and on the nyu dream team. Gabby kind can you hold your microphone a little closer . A, yes. So, i know nyu just this past fall decided they would offer institutional data undocumented students but all that is for undocumented students is opening up, on the same footing, the able to apply nyu as a u. S. Resident rather than an International Student but even so, it does not mean that they are going to receive full Financial Aid, just that they are open to receiving it. My question is, how institutions can aid in pushing legislation to provide instate aid because even but institutional aid being provided when not be enough to cover a 70,000 institution when 80 of these undocumented students come from families who make less than 50,000 a year. Sorry. And we spoke to nyu administrators and they are pushing toward having this program being a permanent program, but even so nyu has not publicly pushed for the nyu dream act because they are afraid of the backlash that they can receive from it, so it is not something that they are publicly advocating for. It is simply something they are putting forward, so how nyu and other higher institutions can push for this legislation. I can answer a little bit for nyu. First of all, our institutional aid is very limited for everybody, so those of you from and why you know that. We can talk later. I mean there is a lobbying arm of nyu in albany and there is a Vice President who deals with governmental relations. The logic of that is not entirely clear to me because opening up that state son and that caps on is certainly something that nyu should favor and always lobby to increase those funds. I will try to help you find out, but robert ortiz, do you want to answer that in terms of institution . Generally in terms of institution . Robert i think it speaks to some of the points we are trying to drive home with this work and that is that the issue around undocumented data, undocumented immigrants, and are students this is not just an issue for immigration policy. We have to have a lot of different stakeholders who are involved in this discussion. It is something where we need greater political will around the issue when it comes to institutional leaders and i know united we dream is trying to work with a number of institutions to get them to sign on the support of undocumented students. I mentioned membership organization. We have a number of higher ed organizations like nafta and acpa they also work with the membership to educate them but also to garner their support around some of these issues. Can you comment on the lobbying in albany . Are the Higher Education associations and lobbyists in albany helping you . Helping groups on this issue . Steve i dont know about the Higher Education associations. I think that the dream act coalition is a whole other story in itself about the Coalition Policy and the different forces who are for the dream act and against the dream act and prison report but are actually against the. I could talk for hours about that. [laughter] what i would say though is that it is important to have institutions weigh in. It is important for the Catholic Church to be able to weigh in. It is important for cutie to weigh in. It is appointed for the Business Community to weigh in and it is important for an way to weigh in. I absolutely think so. It is hard i think it is important for them to weigh in and the real question is thinking through, what kind of leverage do we have on the folks that need to be leveraged . Whether it is the governor, the senate, or the assembly. I think really in this case, all of the above. I do think it is important for major institutions like nyu to weigh in. One more question over this table. That the hi, thank you so much for your presentation. I am on the staff of senator kruger because she has been working in trying to get these things past. I appreciate your report and cannot wait to share it in our staff and use it in the legislature. Im curious how much it is reflective of the situation in new york in particular. The number of respondents you may have from new york and the way that new york looks to our public and private institutions as is reflected in your report. We are consulting the number. [laughter] it was the fifth largest number of responses from new york, i can tell you that right off the top. But i think the question is, are the findings that you presented typical of new york as well as the other states . Yes, i would say. I would say that the findings mimic the realities that they are unfolding. Immigration into our country is everywhere now, yet, five states really need the way. Of course, california illinois, florida, new york, texas, and new jersey i think comes in six. They are the states that have by far the greatest concentration of immigrants and also large concentrations of a relatively large concentration of the unauthorized. If you look at the universe of folk that went d through theaca went through the daca process and the folk who responded to our survey, we are pretty comfortable that the sample really represents the story of young people that have undergone , at the student level, that have undergone the process. And statelevel policies make a difference. And campus global practices make a difference, right . Ok, i think we should our journey because otherwise, people are going to start to float out. Anyway, on behalf of the audience, i would like to thank our panel. [applause] if you have questions that we did not get too coming you could brush up. We will be here for a few minutes. If you would like to be on the institute permanent mailing list liz, give me your card or fill out one of the papers as you leave. Thank you. [applause] on this fourth of july, here is a look at some of the tweets sent out today by members of congress. Senator richard burr of North Carolina says, as you celebrate today, take time to think of those before us and those who continue to defend us and our freedoms. This from senator tim kaine of virginia happy fourth of july, thank you to our troops serving abroad. Photo from codealt with commanders station in warroad, spain. Lets remember the words that inspired the creation of our nation and the American Dream and he includes a portion of the preamble of the declaration of independence. Finally, from tennessee representative marsha blackburn, happy july or, lets celebrate our freedom and thank the men and women who ensure america remains the land of the free and home of the brave. The cspan city tour is partnering with our cable affiliates as we travel across the United States. Join us in this week and as we learned about the history and literary life of omaha nebraska where the club was one of americas first Advocacy Groups fighting for racial equality. Omaha had a reputation in the africanAmerican Community, in omaha and in the United States as a city as when he came and if you were black, you needed to keep your head down and you need to be aware that you are not going to be served in restaurants and you would not be able to stay in hotels. When the club began their operation, the idea and the term civil rights was not but they used Civil Justice because civil rights was not part of the concept at that time but the idea of civil rights was so far removed from the idea of the Greater Community of omaha or the United States that they were kind of operating in a vacuum. I like to say they were operating without a net. They were not support groups there were not prior experiences of other groups to challenge Racial Discrimination and segregation. We look back to the Union Pacific and how the construction of Union Station helped omahas economy. Union pacific is one of the premier Railroad Companies of america. It was founded in 1862 with the specific rail Grade Railroad tracks signed by abraham lincoln. He combines Double Companies to make Union Pacific and they were charged with building the Transcontinental Railroad that would connect the east and west coast. They started here moving west and Central Pacific and started on the west coast and moving east, and they met up in utah. That is really what propels us even farther. We become that point of moving west, one of the gateways to the west. See all of our programs from omaha throughout the day on cspan twos the tv pickup and American History tv on cspan3. Coming up next, garrison keillor, host of npr prairie home companion talks about the issues of the day. After that, discussion on Foundation Work on behalf of american war veterans. Former stampers for president George H Dubya bush share experiences working in the white house. Nprs prairie home companion host recently announced he plans to leave the show by 2016 and handing them to mandolin player and singer. He spoke at the National Press club in may delivering a speech titled, 15 things that need to change right away and they include gay rights, the 2016 president ial race. Welcome to the National Press club. My name is john hughes. I am an editor for bloomberg first word. I am president of the club. Just for today, i also went to mention, i am a native minnesota andn. Our guest today is minnesotas terracing keillor, the greatest American Storyteller and host of the longrunning radio show a prairie home companion. I want to introduce our head table. Each person should stand briefly as names are announced. From the audience is right, sam husseini communication director at the institute for public accuracy. Lower lip and im a reporter for bloomberg laura, reporter for Bloomberg News. Allies the, minnesota native and former washington correspondent and editor at large for the hill. And former press secretary for Vice President walter. Martha craver, associate editor for the kiplinger letter. Allen, a minnesotan and agriculture reporter for Bloomberg News and former National Press Club President. Tamika smith, anchor for National Public radios wamu. Alison fitzgerald, managing editor of politics at the center for Public Integrity and a National Press club board member. Skipping over our speaker for a moment [laughter] angela, a minnesotan, White House Correspondent for Bloomberg News, former National Press Club President and the Speakers Committee member who organized the days lunch. Thank you, angela. A freelance reporter who covers are, religion, and education. Elizabeth jia, a multimedia reporter producer for cbs affiliates, w usa channel nine. All peru, medical reporter for the gray sheet. And david henry, a native minnesotan and energy and environment reporter for the hill. [applause] i want to welcome our cspan and public Radio Audience and remind you you can follow the action today on twitter, use the npclunch. And remember, people are attending during this lunch, so applause is not evidence of a lack of journalistic object to objectivity. And are guest today is a humorist and radio personality best known as the voice of the Radio Program lake wobegon. He says that men are above