I moved into the army job last year is that the army has cut, to protect force structure, cut that procurement budget pretty substantially. And so that where you go for one, youve got that threelegged stool of the people, the equipment and the training that you do. And to you have to one of those other leg ares will need additional force structure for the recommendation. [inaudible] part of what we, i think when people first hear about strategy, their minds always wander to the air force and the navy. And whether or areas for the army, robotics, autonomy, different types of issue people dont necessarily need right away. Lucky for us bob bork gets back, got that right away. But there are tremendous opportunities and ways we can enhance capability for soldiers. If i can just ask one last question, mr. Secretary. You look for fulfilling the responsibilities, for young people, young women and men, their parents, families. They consider military service. What would you tell them why they ought to choose the army . I think, i go to basic training which is down at fort jackson a couple weeks ago and is, i always ask parents, part of the army is, to me the army is the force that is most connected across the country with the United States, with america, with the local communities. It was brought home and departed dramatically a week ago yesterday when i talked about my two uncles went to west point. A lot of people didnt connect the dots for the number of emails i got from all over, the current army today but other people as well who knew, or sort with one of those vocals. Thats what i would tell someone, because thats americas service. I think those industry would agree with you. I think we would also unanimously agree that we are proud to have you as our secretary. We need you now perhaps more than ever. We are glad you have taken on this responsibility, especially thankfully joined us this morning. Thank you. [applause] mr. Secretary, thanks a lot. That was terrific. General lamb, great job. As they would say down in the motor pool, totally gone, sarge. Okay, how about all the four stars present, either on active duty, guard, reserve, whatever and retired. The general is a senior veteran in the room, world war ii, korea, vietnam. When you get up close you will see two little stars. Is the real deal. Wounded in four wars, those three, and the cold war. Hes everybodys hero. How about it, nice and for the general. [applause] okay, thanks a lot, folks. Thats get the pictures taken so the chief undersecretary can go get more guidance. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] you can watch this again later today when he gets closer to our website. Go to cspan. Org. The Senate ForeignRelations Committee will meet focusing on fighting places. You hear from special envoy mcgurk. Live coverage at 10 eastern on our companion network cspan. Later live at 2 30 p. M. Eastern cspan3 will have a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on whether federal agencies are deemphasizing radical islam in combating crisis. We have this story from the hills website. The gop led, House Select Committee on benghazi will today release its final report about the handling of the 2012 terrorist attacks in libya. Yesterday democrats on the committee released their rebuttal ahead of republican report. That report aimed to refute allegations expected to be made by trey doughty in what democrats have long claimed as a partisan witchhunt. We are issued our own report today because after spending more than two years and 7 million of taxpayer funds over the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history, its long past time for the select committee to conclude its work, democrats said. For americans including ambassador Christopher Stevens died in the militia attacks at a diplomatic facility in nearby cia and next in benghazi, libya. That story from the hill today. Now a look at the role immigrants play in the labor force. This is about an hour 15 minut minutes. Welcome everybody. Good morning. How is everybody doing . Thank you for coming out on the monday. We really appreciate. My name is theresa brown. Im the director of immigration policy project year at the Bipartisan Policy Center. I want to welcome you to our event today discussing the release of our report, culprit or scapegoat . Immigrations effect on employment and wages. For those of you who are new to the bpc, our mission is to actively seek to combat the best ideas from both parties to promote health, security, opportunity, and really tackle some of the biggest and thorniest issues that america is facing. Our process is to bring together very strongly interested parties on the issue to hash out the ideas, the constructive clash, if you will, and bring policy solutions to the table to analysis, negotiation and advocacy. Some of the analysis, some of the stuff you hear about the Immigration Project here at bbq started in 2013. Our Immigration Task force is cochaired by former governor ed rendell, former Governor Haley barbour, former secretary and assistant and michael chertoff. Are task force has issued a series of statements and reports on immigration over the last soldiers and is actively working on policy recognition that we believe can take the debate to the next level postelection with the new president and a new congress. I want to thank you very much for joining us today. This event is being live stream online. When we get the audience q a i will ask you very much wait for the microphone to audience members of this live stream came to you. Please take where youre from and ask a question. We prefer you to questions rather than statements, to keep them short and sweet so we can get as many people as question that they would like. We invite you to interact on facebook and twitter during this event. Our hashtag is bpc lives. You can also tweet us at bpc underscore bipartisan on twitter. As and when it knows by now immigration has been a key issue in this election cycle. One of the ongoing debate issues is the role of immigrants in our labor force. Are immigrants taking jobs from americans . Our immigrants lowering wages are helping us fill labor shortages and expand our workforce at a time when it would otherwise be shrinking . A report issued today, and the author will present a summary of the findings, direct some of this issue to ask a to have the perspective. Somewhat big talk about a report but also their own perspectives. We will be taking questions later in the program and again if you are watching on the live stream enjoyed to ask a question, use hashtag bpc live and we will be able to get those questions up to the moderate. Also want to thank cspan for recording this event so it will be broadcast on cspan played on this week i think. Without further ado i will introduce our senior policy analyst to talk about our report. Thank you. Thank you, theresa and thank you all for coming out this morning. Over the past several decades americans are becoming increasingly detached from the labor market. This trend has been particularly pronounced among nativeborn americans. Since 2000 employment has declined by six Percentage Points among nativeborn americans. Among foreignborn individuals it has declined by just two Percentage Points. Opponents of immigration are quick to look at this trend and use this data as evidence that immigrants are displacing native born workers. That restricting immigration will therefore boost nativeborn employment. This argument makes superficial sense, it is also my misguided as it fails to consider several other factors that influence employment trends. This is evidenced by the fact that despite diverging employment rates, unemployment has remained roughly on par between native and foreignborn individuals over the past 15 years. And is basically diverge by what amounts to a rounding error. Why has this occurred to . How can implement such a strong divergence but unemployment remain on par . This is due to the fact that were as important measures the percentage of the Publishing Holding a job, unemployment looks at those who are both out of work and actively seeking employment. So what this tells us is that nativeborn americans have left the labor force for other reasons. Namely, to retire, introduce a billy or go back to school. So as you can see this is the percentage point change in these three activities over the past 15 years, it among nativeborn americans its increased by close to two Percentage Points, or as for foreignborn individuals these activities have increased between zero and one percentage point. So as you can see nativeborn individuals are increasingly leaving the labor force for these reasons. Why has the trend but more pronounced among nativeborn . Our Research Points to the fact that nativeborn workers can do far more flexibility and options at their disposal to pursue these other activities. Take retirement, for example, to our Research Shows that nativeborn americans can do far more punitive wealth and they are more likely to qualify for Social Security benefits upon retirement. So the median nativeborn married couple 86574 has about 10 times more in Financial Assets than the median immigrant couple. And then nativeborn workers didnt have spent longer in the labor force than foreignborn, which generally allows them to qualify for higher monthly Social Security benefit. With regard to School Enrollment, foreignborn individuals face more barriers, language barriers and also barriers with regard to legal steps that can prevent them from enrolling in higher education. With regard to disability, nativeborn individuals are far more likely to qualify for federal disability benefits, namely the supplemental security income, ssi is generally limited to nativeborn individuals. So we crunched the numbers and we found that is nativeborn individuals over the past 15 years exhibited the same rate of change in retirement, disability and School Enrollment as foreignborn individuals, this employment gap narrows. So basically these three factors explain the vast majority of the employment difference between native and foreignborn workers over the past 15 years. Another common refrain among opponents of immigration is that immigration depresses the wages of nativeborn americans. And while its true that foreignborn workers conduct of our prevailing wage that nativeborn workers, the research is ultimately next on the impact immigration has on wages. So our Research Shows that wages have less to do with immigration and more to do with skills, education, and industries that tend to employ foreign and nativeborn workers. So native and foreignborn individuals tend to be employed in different industries, and we identified seven industries that collectively employ around 50 of nativeborn workers and an additional seven industries that employ around 50 of the foreignborn workforce. We found broad differences generalized differences between these industries. For example, the Construction Industry employs around 9 of the foreignborn workforce but just 4. 5 of the nativeborn workforce. On the flipside management occupations employed around 12 of the nativeborn workforce but just 8 of the foreignborn workforce. This is a trend that has persisted for at least the past 15 years. And in general these nativeborn industries, thats a lot better than the foreignborn industries on average at around 50,000 per year compared to around 36 36,000 per year. Opponents basically restrict immigration, then wages in these fourport invisible increase and we will be able to narrow the employment gap and boost employment for nativeborn workers. We dont know if this is necessary the case because and it has to do with skills. So on average 50 of the occupations and the nativeborn industries require at least a bachelors degree compared to just 6 in the foreignborn industries. So this basically tells us that the wage differential there is more a product of skills and Educational Attainment as opposed to the presence of immigrants. Ultimately, out analysis showed in the absence of immigration it is unclear that nativeborn americans would flock to jobs in industries that employ high levels of foreignborn workers. Since nativeborn americans tend of higher levels of education and can more easily exit the labor force, as we saw earlier, that might be less of an incentive to accept a lesser skilled lower wage occupation when you can retire or go back to school. This is shown in the data. Several foreignborn industries are currently reporting severe labor shortages. Even as nativeborn employment has decreased in recent years. So the big examples are construction and agriculture, and commonly foreignborn industries. The Construction Industry reported a shortage of over 675,000 workers in 2015. The agriculture industry saw a 20 decrease in fieldworkers over the past decade which has led to around 3 billion per year in lost revenue. In the absence of immigration this problem would likely be exaggerated which would hinder Economic Growth and double to improve the Labor Market Outcomes for nativeborn americans. At the end of the day immigration is needed to plug these labor shortages. In addition immigration can benefit of nativeborn workers by increasing demand for goods and services which leads to Economic Growth and can lead to additional employment opportunity. Our findings indicate immigration is a vital ingredient for dynamic American Economy. Immigrants do not harm the nativeborn workforce. They complement and enhance the. That sums up my research on the topic so thank you again for joining us and enjoy the rest of our program. [applause] all right. So you heard our take on this, but for some alternative takes we will introduce our panel and asked them to come up and then you were welcome to come up now. I will introduce our moderator for today. Our moderator is tim fernholz, reported with course which is mobile Business Online suntech writes about politics, Economic Policy. Hes a host of actual the podcast. He was a political reporter here in d. C. So he knows the area pretty well before he moved to los angeles as a Business Editor at good magazine. I will let trying to introduce the panels today, and thank you very much. Thank you. Can anyone hear me . Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you, theresa, for organizing this panel. I am here from courts, a global news site where i cover politics at the past couple of years that has been covering a lot of immigration related issues, release a lot of rhetoric about immigration. The question really is one of the rhetoric matched up with what is actually happening in the economy and the people. Thats what were going to talk about here today. We had a really good panel. Immediately to my left is daniel costa. To his left is David Dyssegaard kallick, director the Immigration Program at Fiscal Policy Institute and then finally last but not least we have dowell myers, a professor at the university of southern california. Welcome, guys. To start off, understanding the question of what immigration as a negative or positive impact on u. S. Workers and the u. S. Economy, there is actually, despite a lot of heated arguments about this between politicians, a pretty good consensus in the Economic Policy world. I wonder, david, if you could lay out some of the points of agreement and then we can get into disagreements. Sure, thanks. That was a nice report. Reinforces a lot of the things that we understand about whats going on as well. I would say if you read the newspapers you might have a different sense of how much discriminate there is among economists. If you spend your time reading the economic journals. You would have i was a very broad consensus among people who are very often. Against each other with real differences at the overall growth in income as a result of immigration, and overall benefit to you is one workers, that theres a particular benefit to women workers and their some negative impacts on men with less than a High School Education although at the same time a shrinking number of them. So i would say the obvious questions to me would be how to benefit from those overall good things about immigration and to try to figure out a way to address the question about whats happening to people who may be this vantage. Rather than acting as others they discovered about whether theres a negative impact. In what way . One way to do that against us to talk about the paper, daniel, you interest in the comparison between the different Labor Force Participation rate for native workers, for Foreign Workers but i think you want to complicate the discussion a little bit. I want to commend bpc for doing a great report that was valuable. It was convincing to me in showing the reason for the divergence in Labor Force Pa