You arrive in the United States at 817 never having been here, born in india, educated in indonesia. Granddaughter of a indian British Police officer. Remarkable mother and father, so motivated. Tell us a little bit about comeo well talk about immigration because immigration in the policy issue that has suffused your Public Service. Lets start with all the bit of what that was like. You say in the book you landed with two suitcases and that was it. Guest thats right. Taking so much for taking time to do this and to write commit such a pleasure to be able to have an indepth conversation with a colleague something we just dont get to do. So, yes, i landed here two months before 2027370003. I came by myself. My dad had about 5000 bucks in his bank account and use all of it to see me here because he really believed this is a thise as going to get the best education and have most opportunities. I show up at jfk airport with my two suitcases because thats all you are allowed to bring without having to pay for more baggage. We didnt have money to pay for more baggage. I just remember and a right about this in the book just how strange it was to see first of all not the diversity of people i was used to seeing even though new york city is pretty diverse in the grand scheme of things. A lot of physical displays of affection i wasnt used to seeing in asia. The smells of mcdonalds and burger king which is sort of trent about when youre in indonesia but they hadnt made it to the part of the world yet. And then of course just being in a completely new place, you know, with a completely new environment. Not really knowing if you would fit in, how you would fit in. I went to Georgetown University undergraduate here in the Nations Capital and i remember when i landed at georgetown and i went to the foreign Student Office to get on information and they said, they said something of being a foreign student but not having gotten my running assignment. The guy who is very wellmeaning i think all he heard was foreign student and he stopped and he said do you speak english like i remember saying, being so surprised by that and saying, jokingly saying, well, i do but only if you talk very slowly. So that was the beginning of my entry to the United States added to think i couldve ever dreamt i would be sitting here talking to you as a member of congress. Host absolutely. Its an magnificently intimate portrait that i would encourage people to read the book just to see how somebody arrives at 817 and the United States for the first time ever, the first evolution that results that person become a member of congress but what urf High School Leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and im a leader of the new democratic coalition, the more centrist wing. One of the things that was fun about your book is anybody wants to stereotype progresses is going to have to grapple with the fact that you went to business school, you worked on wall street and you work for a medical device corporation. Thats the wonderfully rich portrait of how the world is so much more complicated than the political stereotypes would suggest. Talk about that and having worked in the private sector informed i think about issues that affect the private sector. Guest that stems from my dad wanted me to be the ceo of ibm. If i could take all my savings and singe across the ocean you better be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Those are the three acceptable professions. Politicians was not one of them. When i went to college i got a degree in economics but somewhere along what i decided i wanted to be an english lit major and called my dad with the one phone call i had a you to tell you is going to be an english major and he screamed at me and said i didnt send you to the United States to learn how to speak english. You already know how to speak english. I promised him i would get work, get the same job with an english degree i wouldve gotten with an economics degree. At the time this was the mid1980s mike milken was king. Wall street was the place you want to work if you were smart and competitive, that was a thing to try to go do. Thats what i did. I went to work on wall street, i worked for painewebber in investment banking. I did a lot of things that no 20yearold should ever have done frankly representing companies in bankruptcy proceedings and working on leveraged buyouts. I realized it wasnt for me but one of the things i tell people i mentor all the time is its important to find out what you dont want to do just as much as find it what you do want to do and also the skills you gain along the way are invaluable. Anybody can put a spreadsheet in front of me. I worked on very complex 300 page spreadsheets back before excel was the thing back in the lotus 123 days. I can find the errors. Understand financial statements. I went to get a masters in business, i worked on Economic Development and some medical defibrillators in ohio and indiana and i feel like every single one of those things has made me better prepared for being in congress because i think just as you were implying people think about the progressive as being somehow completely divorced from business, not in begin economics but it dont think those portrayals are true. But i think people always surprised to hear about my background but its really helped inform idea of wall street accountability and the need to support main street and about what makes good economic sense. What is pragmatic and practical in my world is based on how i think about with the future looks like from an Economic Perspective as well as a social perspective. Host it was a really interesting biography. I worked at a bank for a while just because much more responsible because i was 22 when i was was doing that stuff. Guest a whole two years older than me. Full of wisdom. Host but but i agree with u 100 . I like you enjoyed that. I felt like i was learning a lot and actually an awful lot of negotiation skills and writing skills, the selling skills i did learn in the private sector so i relate to that. But then you make a wonderful transition and this allows us to transition to the issue that really animates your book. You are not satisfied. Youre not feeling that soulful engagement in the private sector and you go abroad to a camp but all of a sudden now the whole concept of immigration, you say in the book that you understand what drives migrants. Lets talk about immigration because that is so much of the story and it is at the core, sounding of the policy debate and the United States today. We dont debate policy. We play defense against our president who has as a to my constituency has created this redhot core of anger and bologna, quite frankly, describing immigrant as criminals. Given where you come from, given this book which is really infuses the immigration debate with morality. Here we are at a moment where we are having the most dysfunctional conversation nonconversation about immigration i can remember. I know 9 11 was important to you walk us through what gets you, they really get you so passionate about moral immigration policy. Guest i think when i was in thailand, and this was the summers between graduate school, i have this opportunity working for three months in thailand for the largest nonprofit and and i happened to go to the largest refugee camp at the time, mostly refugees from cambodia and laos, and it was a stunning experience for me. Really deeply moving to see people fleeing bombs. There was a bombing in the camp just days before i arrived so it was still a very active camp in that sense. Most of the people that are going to be there for very short time before being able to get permanently settled again, coming out of war, losing children, losing families. You just see the resilience that people have and you see a difficult life is for people who are escaping terrible, terrible economic situations, drought, war. And it was the formation i dont think i about as immigration or migration in the mold. I was experiencing what was happening but it was definitely a core piece of how i have related to the issue of immigration when its about other people. My experience as an immigrant infuses everything and you said but it was relatively privileged as hard as it was. I spoke the language. I went to college, all these Different Things that allowed my experience to be easier than most of the people i worked with. Later when i switched from the private sector i worked and International Health and development for several years running a loan fund and it worked all over the world in india, africa, asia, latin america, everywhere. Again i saw sort of the challenges that are the root causes of migration. Thats always been my orientation is how do we think about immigration in terms of root causes of sending countries, how do people gator . Day when 9 11 had then i started thinking about it from the perspective of being a uacs citizen, being an immigrant here in the United States, which is our immigration policy needs to be an begin favoring ensconced in that, started what ends up being the largest immigrant Advocacy Organization in Washington State. In fact, many of our policies in washington what of the best states along with california for immigrants to live and i think a lot of that is because of the work we did over the last two decades to preserve dignity and rights and opportunity for everybody. I got to know the policy detail of immigration. I talked about in the book there such a lack of nuance to the debate about immigration in this country when, in fact, the immigration system is so unbelievably complex, and everybody has a story to tell about immigration. Unless you are native american and, of course, if youre africanamerican you were brought over up in slave shipsd willing. So its a different situation. But anybody else has a story to tell about a parent or grandparent or great grandparent coming to the United States, and the moral core of the identity that forms the United States of america as a nation of immigrants. That has been i think very important to me to make sure that we explain to the American People how weve not had a system of immigration laws. Weve got a few lawsuit and their a few sites in history when the president has managed and the congress has managed to move a complete overhaul of immigration laws forward. But its been decades. Our system has not been fixed in decades. Theres been no major change and thats untenable for a country that has such deep economic needs, such deep societal and familial needs and whose identity is focused on the role of immigrants in building our country. Thats absolutely right. One of the things, to those who arent do not ascribe to the present point of view which i think is a key point of view and will come back to the policy that is built on lies. If you talk to Business People today and didnt even take a moral approach it will tell you absolutely essential to our economy get more robust immigration. Thats across the board. Thats a Software Program in Washington State and the agricultural worker and folks who were unseen, seeing ironically but unseen and a restaurant and that sort of thing. Describe for us, guess its not hard to look at the current mess, and it is a mess by any standards, and moral mess and will come back to family separation but describe what you think since this is really your thing and has been for decades, if you could wave a magic wand and American Immigration policy would change overnight, what would it look like and how does that compare to the bill you are not in washington yet but a bill passed the senate fiber secures ago with 67 senatorial votes. It had a very difficult path to citizenship for the 11 or 12 million undocumented people in this country and advanced sort of employment identification and verification, all sorts of things but a cut 67, 68 votes in the senate. Tell us your view of what a good immigration policy would look like. I was on the outside pushing for that bill and have a lot of compromise is but not all of us like but it had a major components. The key thing to think about is a lot of americans will say because of what the president has said he would for the the present frankly this issue has been political football for long time, taken to a completely new level and demonizing immigrants, something no other president before investing in the same way in recent history. The first thing is people say you should get in line. You have to understand there is no light in the United States. It is no system for people to even come here legally. Ill give myself an example. Ive been on visas my entire life but it took me 18 years to get my citizenship for whole host of reasons. I came in on a student visa. The first thing we need to do is we need to rectify the system so there are processes that is of people to navigate what you come here on a Business Visa or to join family or whether youre coming here to work temporarily for the student. Those quotas that were set three decades ago, those need to be completely updated. In addition to that, that allows you to have a functioning system going forward. In addition to that you have to provide a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants that are here. Why . These are folks who primarily had been living here for 1517 years, decades, and it hypocritical for us to say they shouldnt be allowed to stay when, in fact, if they all left, if there all the porta, personal cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money but second if they all left the entire economy would collapse. Lets recognize that we havent had a system that is allowed them to do the work we need them to do but also to be able to stay and they are americans and always accept that piece of paper. To give them a path to citizenship and allow them to come out of the shadows and be full contributors, and understand when they do that host which by the way is a position today that is exotic because the way trump talks about the undocumented by the concept, a half decade ago had substantial republican report because republicans understood nothing else that our food supply chain, our farms, our meatpacking plants simply dont work without that population. Guest thats right. In spite of what trumppence said, which is it is exactly right. There is still substantial support for path to citizenship its amazing given the demonization that trump is done but my growers who were all staunch republicans in Eastern Washington and sent to washington, the businesses, the chamber of commerce, there is clear sense that we need a path to citizenship and comprehensive and humane reform, just as it is clear to human rights activist who might get there for Different Reasons but for everybody people understand we need to fix the system. Third, i would say we need to make sure we have humanitarian ways for people to continue to see the United States as as a beacon of hope and light. So are assigned them processes, our Refugee Resettlement processes, and this is an area where this traditionally been very bipartisan support. Speaker pelosi always likes to talk about the evangelicals who call our Refugee Resettlement program the crown jewel of humanitarianism. This is another place where donald trump has destroyed everything that has to do with people seeking refuge. She has actually shut down the Refugee Resettlement program. He set down the asylum program. We are barely taking any. He set off all legal ways for people to, so we should be clear that Donald Trumps opposition is not just to undocumented immigrants. It is to all legal immigration. Thats why tried to ban student visas, people who we were heren student thesis. Visas. Its why he has tried to shut down legal immigrant programs for people who are coming here to work, h1b, spousal visas. He is rolled back all of that. Lets just be clear, as a gin and the agenda of the White NationalistSteven Miller and others were around in the white house is no immigration, and this country will die without immigration. That is just clear. Host i agree with your statement that probably no president has made immigration such a toxic part of their approach. Sadly, however, this is at some level same old same old. Chinese immigrants were talked about in the late 1800s, absolutely brutalized in the human eyes on the west coast and thats been the experience of any wave of immigrants, the irish catholics, mediterranean immigrants. They were very difficult of course and the germans and the Northern European immigrants. This is sad and very strongly recurring thing. Its ironic because as you point out all of us came from somewhere. Unless we are indigenous to the continent. Lets try to get behind the policy and politics of this. At some level that is sort of absurd that this country that says its value is all about immigration and all this stuff, but for 240 years practically this country is also been absolutely brutal to the latest wave of immigrants. Whats going on and how do we change that . If we dont change that, the way a demagogue, just decides to take on the latest round of immigrants. How do we change that . Guest we have to fix the policy and requires doing in spite of what people say. Every Immigration Reform that is ever happened has happened with tremendous resistance and yet the president that is overseen that has actually move it forward despite any concerns that he might have about what the reaction might be. Because it is what is good for the country and in some ways thats what happened was with l rights and its what happened with every difficult transition that