Start a business that has been successful employing about 200 people and i have paid millions of dollars in taxes. I am not unique. I am just one of many people out there who have done this once given the legal status. The legal status of one who has paid the price that many of us have had to pay and a lot of us are currently paying deserve the opportunity to be american, the opportunity to be part of this country because the contribution continues to be made. From that perspective, my experience is one that i hope we will see repeated many times over as this process continues and below passes as we hope will be the case. We mentionhe things that when we started off is that our view of citizenship has changed in this country over the years. I know you touched on this in your research. We were talking before this panel started about the idea of a statute of limitations on lawful presence in this country. There used to be that at one point. You could be here unlawfully but you would only be for a certain amount of time and that statute of limitations would pass. If you can tell us a bit about that and how that informs the debate today. Most people dont know this before the 1920s, from the late 19th century through the 1920s, if you were here unlawfully, depending for what reason, between onefive years, theres a statute of limitations. Even after restrictive laws were passed to the 1920s and you had the beginning of illegal immigration people dont realize is that before there were restrictions, there were really no illegals. Everybody was legal or almost everybody was legal. Even after restrictions were passed and you start to see a growth in the number of thecumented people, both department of labour which is responsible for immigration and even the Justice Department later passed down a ways to legalize peoples status because they understood you cannot have an accretion of People Living in the shadows. Even though there was no more legal statute of limitations or executive agencies, they found ways to legalize people. I want to add that mostly they legalized people from europe who were undocumented. This goes back to the question of race. Racism has always been a part of how citizenship has taken different forms for different groups of people. Secondknow the phrase class citizenship comes out of that. After slavery. In my book, i talk about a concept called alien system or alien citizenship. Byill illustrate that to you way of a personal story which ensure every person in this or of asian descent knows this story. You meet somebody and they say where are you from. Jersey. , i am from new they say, no, where are you really from . In their mind, i am not a citizen. I am a foreigner because i am of asian descent. That is a legacy of a long period of exclusion policy where asians were barred from entering the country and barred from naturalization. That that not end until the 1950s. These things have a Lasting Impact of even though i was born in this country and my parents who were immigrants naturalized, they can after world war two, there is still a lasting thisral the fact were to day, Asian Americans the assumption is that everyone is a foreigner. The same goes for latinos and mexican americans even though the majority of people of mexican descent in this country are not immigrants. And certainly not illegal immigrants. 1 3 of mexican born people in this country are naturalized citizens. There is a racism involved where there is an assumption that every person of mexican descent is illegal and that is not true. That is the power of this kind of thinking. A legalcitizenship has meaning which we should not underestimate the importance of the legal status of citizenship. Votehing is the right to and two, the right not to be thrown out of the country. Those of the only two things that legally citizenship makes a difference. Those are not trivial matters. Every person in this country whether you are a citizen or not as subtle rights under the constitution. That is also very important. Discussion,rnings if one thing we cant take away is that historically, immigrants have always been able to become citizens. In, work and if you naturalize you can. The one exception was asians and then people here without status. Youlegalize people now but deprive them of the last step, the right to make the last step to full citizenship. We will create a different kind of country where you will have a permanent secondclass corporate people. I think that is a very dangerous road for us to go down. That is something of like to throw out there to which every one of the ones to answer. We haveuestion of this Immigration Reform bill and the senate that passed this june. That would create a pathway to citizenship or to a green card the would end up taking citizenship 13 years and theyre talking about in the house a bill that would take 15 years. Is there a point where these kind of extensions and delays for citizenship become a second class citizenship in itself . If someone said 30 years, would that suddenly be a problem . How we draw the line . Have we already overstepped it with legislation that is out there . Think about the people that are 6065. Does that mean for them . 60 and you are adding 15 years and youre 75. I think thats where this marriage of the paper itself and what it means, being able to vote, being able to have certain rights that citizens have. And those that have to wait and then period come into play. In my mind, it is a little bit scary that this debate has become about that how long somebody should wait, this punishment and reward system that has been put into it. It is not a debate about humanity and it is not a debate about wanting to welcome people into the country and wanting to have a system that works so you dont have 11 million People Living in the shadows. Theied not to get into debate and i try to talk about the merits of being able to give people the ability to show it is allegiance but also their integration, the full integration into the country. That is, to me, what citizenship is. A lot of the people who are green card holders do not become citizens but they are still part of the country, they are still part of the nation, they are still contributing members. Time that has been given, 1315 years, is just part of a false sense that we have where we want to punish people for doing the wrong thing and want to make sure that people feel the punishment and that we dont look at youre touching giving away things are giving handouts to people. People have to learn. It is this self righteous kind of mentality. I see it in politicians every day when they are deciding and creating leesburg laws which they feel so holloway. They dont realize that these law reasons the change. 100 years ago in 1920, just prior to that. I am actually thankful for all of you for being here and that we are having this discussion. This is the discussion we need to have in order for us to move forward with real Immigration Reform. What we have in the senate, i dont believe it is real Immigration Reform. There is a lot of great things and a lot of bad things. I could stay here to talk all day about this but even the way we have reworked a point system, we are creating human beings to be a commodity of this nation, not so much being part of this nation. Let me ask you a quick question. In your personal experience, what would it have meant to add a decade on to your path to citizenship . If all law had been the one they are trading today, how would that have changed your life . The issue for me and my family at the time was less about full citizenship. It was about the legal status first. That is the key step. Once you have your green card at once you have legal status in this country, you basically have every right of being a citizen with the exception that you cannot the votes. At that point, it becomes one level of appreciation that you have for the ultimate benefit of citizenship. In my case, i took a long time to do it and it was not because i did not wanted or because i did not value it. It was simply because of other issues related to more practical things in my life. I think getting people legalized is key but when you limit someone i had the ability to become a citizen after i went through the bureaucratic process you have to go through. Momentstimation, from by i was legalized, to put that restriction on people today is crazy. My father is not a u. S. Citizen. He is 85 years old and the only reason he is not a u. S. Citizen is because he could not speak english well enough to be granted citizenship. He tried it twice and failed each time. Now it does not look like he will get it. My father cry over the fact that he was not a citizen and could not get that citizenship. For some people, there is an enormous amount of meaning that carries. I am not suggesting that it did not carry that meaning for me. It was something that was there for me and developer of if i had a restriction of time, probably would have been unhappy and would have been upset that i could not do it. To punish to people, them again so they can feel there was a cost to be paid for this, and agrees is a violation of the law as it is often framed, i think is ludicrous. You want people to do to build your buildings, cut your grass, wash your car, to clean your dishes, to do all the isngs that the labor force already doing with undocumented workers . Recently in austin, texas, there is a new formula one race track that was built, an absolute beautiful wonderful thing. 90 of the people doing it work migrant workers. I dont know their legal status and i never passed but those are the ones who did it and it is a state of the art world class track. Who else would have done it . Assuming they are undocumented, do they not deserve the right to have their status modified and not deserve the right to become citizens . Someone has decided arbitrarily theyve got to pay this price of time and, hopefully, you are alive long enough to see the benefit of citizenship. It makes no sense. Agree wholeheartedly with what has been said but i want to point out that the key difference between 1986 law and was being proposed now is that in 1986 people got a green card. In this proposal, it is not 13 years of citizenship, it is tenures to a green card of being in this strange you cant work here but you dont even have a green card. It is really limited and i think that as a long time of punishment. Tois punishment and it is keep 11 Million People from bolting for 1315 years. From a cynical point of view, that is what it comes down to not a voting for 1315 years. Thiskind of unfairness of long wait is important but what needs to have our attention is the new temporary worker visa and the point system. These are entirely new ideas. They have not gotten enough attention because the 11 million deserve our attention and concern. Andcalled future flows i dont like that term of flow which is technical and reduces people to something that is not inan the idea is that order to not have the undocumented labor emigration in the future, they will have this temporary visa where you can work three years and renew it wants and then you have to leave. Theoretically, you can apply for a green card under the new point system but then you are competing with everybody else who has applied and that is still a limited number of visas. Either you will have a new road to undocumented status, people dont leave and dont get in and dont get a green card for the point system and you will have then a kind of revolving population of workers who do not have legal full legal status. They have no green card and they have no hope of ever getting to citizenship. Of a realcreation permanent secondclass group of people without even the chance of a green card. The point system, i think will require a lot of scrutiny. It is not clear yet how many points the idea that rather it being based on search and family status, you get points and the more points you get, you get a green card. Canada has the system. If you have 1 million, you get enough points and you can get in right away. The last on a point system was proposed in 2008, if you had 1 million or an advanced degree, you spoke english well, youve got points easily. If you are not skilled and did not have a College Education and you had a Family Member in this country, you would not have enough points to get in. It is not clear yet how these points are going to be allocated and yet people with low skills, would never have i hope to get in on the point system. There is a thinking it will be more possible than in past proposals but i think this is something everybody has to Pay Attention to it. You set up a system where you have temporary of labour with no hope of getting a green card except the right point system and if that system is biased to people with education or capital, then we are said dog were setting up a very different kind of political situation in our country. Then we will really have a permanent underclass of workers. Think this is something people dont realize. Yes, it is not right to ask people to wait 13 years but theres a whole other thing going on. In 13 years youll have another mass and i dont think we have paid enough attention to that. Let me ask a question based on the comments on congressman becera. It is the idea that immigration authorities could really go after whoever does not legalize. In his words, these are the people selling your kids drugs, these are terrorists and do you have a reaction if an emigration bill like this past, is there a fear there could be some people who dont qualify that immigration authorities will go after the more seriously . Politicsk that was that we heard. I dont know. I think that will go after the people with temporary visas to see if they are expired or not. That is the corroding of our system and how we see human beings. There are two terms that i dont like that we use a lot. In our little talking points and lists that we used to get people to understand. One, people say children who were brought here through no fault of their own. Are is where the children the innocent people, the victims who is to blame . The parents. The evil parents. The criminals. That is the second term that i dont like that people use. I am not a criminal. Criminal, we have been using it in such light terms were currently, the Administration Says that 70 of the people that they had deported from the 1. 7 million are criminals. The first question is who are the other 30 . Crimes oftantly, what these people done . What have they created or what was their reasoning for deporting them . Sometimes it is as simple as being called and asked on their an absconder, a fugitive of the law. This was a person given a notice by an immigration judge to present themselves to start their immigration case. A lot of times people dont go because they moved and they never receive their notice. The notice could have gotten lost in the mail or people just were afraid and did not have an attorney and did not go. People we are calling criminals. What will happen when everybody is showing them the new number that says from the current immigrant population we have that are not documented or unauthorized in the country, one out of four of those are not going to be able are going to be able to get through this 13 year path. One out of four. What will happen to the other three . Are we going to label them as criminals because these were the other percentages . Are these but less deserving ones . Going back to the point system, the other day with friends, we took the point system test. We did it. Getsee how much we would right now currently and we did with their parents when my parents came originally to the United States and put in a different scenarios. Our little study showed that it of 37les under the age with a certain amount of money and a certain amount of education were the ones that were at the top. The ones that were going to be let in. If you were a woman, if you were over the age of 37 and if you were poor, forget it. Areare the people we fighting for . Who are the three out to four . C of people who leave their farms because we have nafta that now sell corn and subsidized corn in mexico and these farmers . All of their lives, their education is farming. Nobody knows how to farm like they do or how to grow corn. They were the ones that got pushed appear. People from places like guatemala who do not even speak spanish. They speak a mayan language. They are here cutting the chicken that we eat, plucking the chicken, working in chicken farms and are doing a job that i could never do. That is something you have to do standing at a conveyor belt. What will happen to the people who are going to be left behind and whats going to happen to this note immigration system we will do which further degrades and corrodes the way we look at our community as criminals. It is very scary and as an activist and advocate for this that were fighting for, sometimes i dont even know how to move forward. I know the sense of urgency. For the nexte couple of days, i will be going home finally this week, i have to go work and to what the fact that my parents and my sister that a deportation order over their heads that every year we have to figure out how to keep them here in the United States. That is the sense of urgency, that is the sense of reality see in our community. What are the stakes . It is citizenship and what were asking for is it the cost of corroding our immigration system further . What we arenship, asking for, is that a portion of the population good enough or is that the trade off that we want to do for the rest of the people . That will be left behind . Those are the questions that i am asking myself. When you ask me best, this comes to mind. There is the argument against legalization of people. Two things people frequently say that it would be a magnet that would draw more people to the u. S. And then you sometimes hear people say where do you draw the line . Do you tell the whole world they can come to the u. S. . I want to know if you have thoughts for that. Is there a place where you would draw the line or out that how should that be done in an immigration policy sense . Think it the things i is ironic about a lot of the opposition to legalization or to raising the ceiling and immigration is a lot of the opposition comes from people who consider themselves free market supporters. But they do not trust the Labour Market to regulate immigration. All of the fencing that was put on the mexican border, all the Border Patrol we heard about the increase all of the technology that is down there. What stopped immigration from mexico was the 2008 recession. That is what stopped it. Now it is starting to go up again because the economy is doing better. Personally, i believe we should not regulate borders. I think people have no control