[applause] [inaudible conversations] who is isis, what do they believe, why are they so violent . All those questions are important and i address them in the book. Whats more important because of something we can do something about, is what is the u. S. Policy regarding isis . Why isnt working . Can we go to war against terrorism . I registering the war wrong or is it wrong to say there should be a war against terrorism at all . I think those are the questions that in some ways of the most important and it will be the most useful. At this years Annapolis Book festival former bush attorney general Alberto Gonzalez and his true professor sub ive discuss immigration policy. They both have written books about immigration or foreign. This is 40 minutes. Welcome to you all. I am the moderator. My name is pam constable. Im a reporter for the washington post. I cover immigration and International Issues and on a very brief personal note my very first job was at the Annapolis Capital and i will even tell you the year, 1974. Now you know. [laughter] its been all uphill ever since. We have very little time this morning, only 45 minutes im going to. Quickly and i hope everyone else will be brief. I would like to introduce my two guests here, are two authors. Starting on my far left Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history and coordinate or latin american studies at Salem State University in massachusetts. Her new book, undocumented, how immigration became illegal is a conference of and provocative look at the history contradictions and shifts in u. S. Immigration policy. I lost my page. And how it has both lured and punished the illegal immigrant population. Her previous book on topic was they take our jobs and 20 other myths about immigration. She is coauthor of the study of the history of cuba and the castro revolution. To my dear left is Alberto Gonzalez, a former u. S. Attorney general and white House Counsel under president george w. Bush. In his job as attorney general he became the highestranking hispanic to hold federal office. That tenure was marked by some controversy over executive actions in the war on terror but today we will confine our discussion to immigration. His new book is called a conservative and compassionate approach to Immigration Reform, coauthored with David Strange which offers a number of specific prescriptions for reforming and improving Immigration Law and policy. Judge gonzalez who previously served as a Texas Supreme Court justice is currently the dean of the Belmont College school of law in nashville. Welcome to you both. [applause] thank you. At first glance a reader might assume that these two books come from opposite points of view and reach opposite conclusions. They would be wrong on both counts. Both of these authors grapple with the same fundamental conundrum facing u. S. Officials and society as it tries to deal with the phenomenon of illegal immigration and both make practical suggestions as to how these contradictions can be reconciled or at least managed. Both authors agree that there has been excessive hostility and harshness towards Illegal Immigrants and both agree that some form of rod Immigration Reform is needed. Neither advocates a radical solution though they differ in emphasis and agree. I would first like to ask both authors to discuss two of the major issues raised in both of their books. We will have about 30 minutes for this discussion after which well open it up for questions for about 15 minutes from the audience. I hope thats agreeable to all and please. Brief with your remarks and questions because the time is very short. Here is my first question. One of the major issues you both addresses the fact that undocumented immigrants play critical roles in Many American industries from meatpacking to construction, from landscaping to fast food. Some critics argue that they are taking away jobs on americanborn work this and that if they were forced to leave the United States wages would automatically rise and americans would be attracted to these jobs once again. Both authors disagree with this argument but they offered different explanations for this phenomenon and different suggestions for how to deal with undocumented workers. I would like both authors to briefly explain their approach to this issue. Judge gonzalez proposes stricter workplace and border enforcement against Illegal Immigrants while at the same time acknowledging that many sectors of being u. S. Economy rely heavily on their neighbor. I would like him to address this apparent contradiction. Professor chomsky offers strong evidence that Illegal Immigrants are crucial to the us economy but in her case she portrays them as victims of deliberately unjust system that followed the end of the Bracero Program in the 191950s suspense comes she said criminalizes Illegal Immigrants to make them docile and exploitable workers. I would like her to discuss her findings and describe what happened to the meatpacking industry and the federal raids that followed. Judge would be like to start . I will stop at 5 minutes. This is a critical issue and from my perspective the fact that im hispanic and think i approach this from a fairly unique perspective in terms of what works and what we need in this country. We are a nation of laws and i believe in the rule of law. I think in a post9 11 world its very important that we know who is in this country and why they are here. My perspective is the right immigration policy is not only good for Border Security but its good for our economy. We talk about the possibility of deporting 12 million undocumented and was working in the white house. We believe that it was not possible. We couldnt do it but even if we could do it we believed it would have been devastating to Certain Industries and we believe the better approach and the approach that talk about in this book with my coauthor David Strange is to find those people qualified and put them into some kind of legal status so they can stay here work in america, produced in america and i think by working here and being productive its going to enhance our economy and will create our economy and create additional jobs for american citizens. I think this is something thats very important for our economy and very important for security and putting it into some kind of temporary legal status to think is the way to go and from there i have no problem with someone walking into a Government Office and saying i need a drivers license. Once you have legal status they should be entitled to most of the privileges that is enjoyed by american citizens and we can talk in a few minutes about whether that means at some point they become american citizens an issue which has become politicized in my judgment but one that i think can be dealt with in a respectful way and one that would be agreeable to most americans. I am a historian and so its inevitable that im going to answer by talking a little bit about history. I think what we are seeing today in the United States is it the labor market and the United States has always had some sort of a dual label market. By dual labor market may mean that we have some workers who are protected by the law, who have stable and safe employment conditions, who have benefits and who have job security firsts countrys life, the legal regime that maintained the dual labor market or significant labor market was slavery. That is, it kept a senate group of people who were a Significant Group of people who were working in this country outside the protection of the laws while creating a system of Legal Protections for other people working in the cup. After slavery was abolished, webeen after slavery was abolished we have been through a number of different types of legal regimes that have kept a secondary subordinate set her up the labor market, workers who did not enjoy the same protections as other workers. One way this happened was with the new deal labor legislation that explicitly excluded agricultural and a bust of workers on the protections granted to others, the right to organize unions, the right to minimum wages, the right to maximum hours, the right to work place protections, unemployment insurance, later workers compensation. Domestic and Agricultural Workers were excluded from that body of legislation. They were not protected and guess what . The mystic and Agricultural Workers were primarily people of color so there has been a racial aspect advantage to have the dual labor market has functioned in this country. The next that the press there a program from 1942 through 1964 and 1967 as it was phased out. A Guestworker Program that rocked mexican workers, recruited workers in mexico to work or merrily in agriculture as secondclass workers, has workers who did not enjoy the same rights as other workers and for a bursar workers to complain about your working conditions meant that you would be fired and he would be deported. You were almost an indentured servant to your employer because your right to be in the country depended on working this particular employer. I argue in my book that since 1965 the secondary labor market has been maintained primarily through the use of the legal category of undocumented nests where workers are still deliberately recruited and brought into the United States was sort of a wink from the law and in the status as undocumented. The meatpacking industry is one of the industries that has taken full advantage of this undocumented labor force. Its not the only one. In the particular case that pamela referred to the agree processors at postville iowa, the workforce was primarily recruited from villages in guatemala. They were primarily indigenous water moments were brought to the states asked to sign some papers and put to work through direct recruitment. They were all undocumented. And in the first decade of the 21st century there were a series of workbased raids, highly oversized workplace raids were large numbers of workers were arrested and deported. This happened at the agri processors plant and is one of the many cases where we have seen what happens when undocumented workers are punished by deportation forced to leave. What happened was the collapse of the local economy, the collapse of the industry and devastation for the town where the workers had been living and working. So on documented this serves a role in our economy. I dont think its a good or fair system. Its a system based on exploitation but the solution is not to further victimize and punish those who are working in the lowwage jobs. Thank you. I want to just put a fine point on it. What do you think, why is it for example and in that case we know that meatpacking used to be a very stable, wellpaying bluecollar job. It was unionized. Wages were good. It was not fun job but it was a good job create that change radically and the influx of a undocumented in this case clearly poor illiterate people completely replace them. If those people were sent back to quiche do you think the meat packing industry would be forced to raise wages and make jobs more attractive again to american americans or is that just gone forever . In the case of the agree processors we have an example of what happened which is the company went bankrupt. But i think we have to look at the transformation from the u. S. Economy has undergone in the second half of the 20th century which has been made process of deindustrialization. Its not just the meatpacking industry were Good Union Jobs have disappeared. This has been a deliberate fight back against the new deal on the part of Corporate America to escape unionization and escape labor legislation in any way they can. Most industries have done is through moving abroad and we have seen the industrialization has affected not just the meatpacking industry, its affected every industry. So, blaming the worker or punishing the workers is really looking backwards at the problem of deindustrialization which is a structural global problem that i think we need to look at not by trying to victimize, further victimize those who are the principle victims of it to. Would you like to add anything based on what she said, any other comments . Obviously one of the problems we have in our society is that we do have unscrupulous employers and one of the things that we propose an arab look, seems to me there are to be tougher employer sanctions. If you want to stop people from hiring undocumented immigrants as ceo of company that is a repeat offender put them in jail. That will stop them from hiring undocumented immigrants. I think its unfair to focus slowly slowly on the immigrant. Its true that a vast majority to come to this country want to provide for themselves and their families and i appreciate that. On the other hand we do have laws in place and so we have got to find some kind of accommodation. It seems to me one important component of that is revising our visa system and dealing with a 12 million here undocumented in addition to Border Security in addition to being with the children brought here by their parents. We have got to deal with employers and from my perspective thats also a very important piece of this. Okay, thank you. Im going to raise a second broad question i would like you to both address before we go to questions from the audience. And that is the issue of bush should be done permanently about the vast population of an estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented People Living in the United States today, many of them for very long time, many of them with deep roots in the community. Again both authors agree on the basic point which is that they cannot and should not all be deported and some form of rob Immigration Reform is needed but they have propose different solutions. Judge gonzalez offers what he calls a pragmatic solution, somewhere between mass deportation and mass citizenship which would most likely take the form of limited legalization. He also proposes various other tweaks in Immigration Law or policy to better distinguish between groups of Illegal Immigrants do as he puts it may be less or more deserving of leniency and relief. I would like him to describe his legalization proposal in detail and a couple of the smaller reforms he would like to see made on Immigration Law. Or vester chomsky describes u. S. Immigration laws and arbitrary labyrinth of enticement and obstacles to Illegal Immigrants which has had various unintended consequences. She describes various Government Agencies is welcoming threatening ignoring imprisoning and deporting Illegal Immigrants. No wonder they are confused. She does not explicitly advocate a permanent solution or policy but she suggests instead that officials must examine the quote unquote deeper structural reasons for immigration. I would like to hear her response to judge gonzalez proposal for a limited legalization. I used to work in the world is pams book about this morning in an earlier conversation about what is possible today, what is possible in todays politics in Todays Congress in terms of legislation or policy, what is doable . My view is with the republicans controlling both houses the notion of citizenship for the 12 man better here undocumented, its just not doable. In fact, theyre employable, that they can provide for themselves and their family that we put them into some kind of legal status. And this whole notion of citizenship, i think, is one that, as i said in my opening remarks, has been politicized. There are many im a republican, ill go ahead and confess that, but there are many in my party that the notion of these, quote, lawbreakers should be afforded citizenship is something that they cannot support. I dont support amnesty in terms of and this is where theres a lot of disagreement, what is amnesty. From my perspective, amnesty is comple i and what is amnesty. My perspective is amnestys complete forgiveness. And im not proposing that. What im. What im proposing is those who qualify should stay here and then if Congress Wants to provide some kind of pathway to citizenship for more permanent status than they can do so and that would involve additional fines or whatever. One thing i would not support which i dont because fair is that we allow these individuals who came to this country on lawfully to pass citizenship which allows them to become citizenship before those who have been waiting patiently outside of our borders. Thats thats not fair, thats not right. So im not opposed to citizenship for these individuals but i dont think they should be rewarded by citizenship before those who follow the rules. And one final point, a vast majority of these individuals are less concerned about citizenship than they are simply about being able to be in this country at some status without the fear being deported. I think we can find a solution here at both parties are willing to compromise. I believe this is an issue that touches Foreign Policy, security, our economy, our families, it touches the very essence of who we are as a of who we are as a people. In order to reach common ground, everyone has to be at the table an