Paul ryan, epa administrator scott pruittnd later hhs secretary tom price, among others. Thiss live coveraghere on cspan2. Thank you for pinchhitting for Peter Robinson who was quite ill, couldnt travel. And then the yoga and the jog this morning. There were people there and they did a great job. So good. In addition to welcoming you today, after yesterdays tacked program and i know many of you took note of the fact that we took no breaks went straight through. Our intention is to the same today. Where the couple scheduling changes. As you knows our panel here is kellyanne conway, we are switching her time. She had a meeting at the white house. I asked them to change it because of our schedule. [laughing] but they said no. But our panel to decide that it would be able to switch the time and come right in early pics i appreciate that. There will be a couple of other things during the day possibly might have a break regard bunch of things happening as you all know with the Health Care Bill and some of the other people who are coming later in the day. I have a day job which is the reason why they are on our panel. I will try to accommodate them in the schedule as best we can. So that might be a break here or there was maybe five or ten minutes, but otherwise were going to run right through in the schedule yet. So enjoy. Thank you. Spirit thanks a much, lindsay. My name is reihan salam and dimethyl at the National Review institute. We are here today to discuss immigration policy. Immigration policy has emerged one of the most contentious issues in the country at large but also as one of the most contentious issues on the political right. Im jointer today by three very distinguished panelists. We have the Immigration Policy Council at the niskanen center. Mark krikorian, and heather macdonald, the thomas smith fellow at the manhattan institute. Thanks for joining us, guys. So our goal for this panel today is to really clarify some of the disagreements within the right on immigration and also to look ahead to poteial federal immigration legislation, what it might look like, what it ought to look like. So first ill just start i talkg at the distinction between legal and ilLegal Immigration. I would say for the last 2030 years or so this is been considered the most important crucial distinction in immigration policy and its been a big source of the controversy around comprehensive Immigration Reform efforts. Mark, youve argued the distinction between legal and ilLegal Immigration is it necessary the most important immigration policy question spirit absolute. Obviously it matter significantly in that Illegal Immigrants are illegal. So its not that theres no difference. Its just that almost all the concerns other than the rule of law and kind of basic order issues that we talk about with regard to ilLegal Immigration also apply to ilLegal Immigration. Their Something Like three times as many legal immigrants as they are illegal aliens. If you are issues with regard to assimilation, with regard to public services, impact on education, all that stuff, theres really not that much difference. If you have an illegal immigrant, if you have a legal immigrant, if you havent illegal immigrant with only an eighth grade education and give them a green card, you wont have anything education. Its not like in the wizard of oz where you give the scarecrow the diploma and he starts quoting pythagoras. So we have focuseday too much in my opinion on the illegal, the illegality. Its not that it is not important. Its just an easy way to a lot of and frankly even just regular people to avoid thinking about the broader issues of immigration and focus just on the illegality. Kristie, they gang of eight bill looked as though it was inevitably going to pass. The was an enormous amount of confidence. People have been working on copperheads of immigration from under the Bush Administration and a similar package was being pushed in the obama years as well. What went wrong on your perspective . I think the part of what went wrong is that while there were a fair number of people within the middle of both parties willing to work under chiffons and willing to talk about some of the changes in the bill, the bill ultimately ended up being sort of a bandit. It really wasnt a true solution to a lot of the problems we have in immigration. And this time around ideally a good reform bill or a package of bills which is much more likely to happen is going to have the support of not only the middle portions of each political party, but it will also have the support of President Trump as well and thats going to make a big difference. Thats basically, i dont disagree but i think theres an underlying problem that explains why both bushes amnesty push back and 2006seven failed as those of the gang of eight, and that is a basic trust gap, that people dont come nobody believes the promises that if we legalize Illegal Immigrants today we will enforce the tomorrow. Its the old with the and pop by what he says im glad you pay tuesday for a hamburger today, and he gets to hamburger and he never patient. Thats what happened in 1986 where we had amnesty in exchange for promises of enforcement that were not kept. So this is essentially based on the same idea. Amnesty now in addition to increasing immigration. And we promise to enforce the law down the road. Nobody believes that. Had there, there some early indicatis that over the short tenure of President Trump weve seen a marked decrease in the number of unauthorized entries in the United States. Are there any lessons we can take away from that . Yes. Law enforcement works. The rule of law matters. You send signals for better or for worse come you sent a signal when youre not enforcing the law that we allow our immigration policy to be determined by people outside of the country in their decisions to come in. And when you announce that, in fact, you going to take the role of all seriously, people respond. This is a message we learned in new york city with policing. That should be understood by every police chief today, that whether you decide to enforce the law or not, you do change behavior. And certainly one of the greatest travesties that we are experiencing today and that i applaud President Trump for focusing on so relentlessly is a sanctuary city movements. Where you have bigcity Police Chiefs who should know better, betraying everything they understand about lawbreaking in order to coddle the ilLegal Immigration lobby. And so they are saying it doesnt matter that it illegal alien has committed a lowlevel crime, we are going to prevent ice from even making an inquiry about that illegal alien criminal. That is a constitutional violation of the highest order for the locals to defy federal authority this way, but it also undermines the public order, the sense of cities being in control, that bigcity Police Chiefs otherwise understand. Tell me about your sense about the recent change in priorities, visavis Immigration Enforcement. Do you have a same view as heather or do you see things definitely . Slightly different way. Enforcement is a huge part of Immigration Reform. Absolutely has to be but you also have to consider why people want to come to the United States and address those issues. We are constantly going to see people want to violate our sovereign borders to come into work. If we can Better Change our guest Worker Programs and some of the other reasons people try to violate our border sovereignty, we can focus more on collecting the criminals that are hiding in our cities, making sure that there are not drug traffickers running across the border. But that has to work handinhand. Market, i do want you to respond but have another followup question for kristie. This is a little unrelated but there is a group of mexican pharmacy government officials and lawmakers which is expressly talked about coordinating with unauthorized mexican migrants in the United States and encouraging them to essentially try to defy deportation orders and what have you, giving them various kinds of guidance, to help them work around the use Immigration Enforcement. I wonder if you believe these efforts aid the cause of advocates have increased illegal integration or do you think they handwritten . I think anything that violates the rule of law is a hindrance. Whether or not that lot law neeo be changed is a separate discussion, but we should not be advocating for anyone to violate the law. Market . I wanted to respond. In effect and im simple find it but in effect we need legally that way they will not come in illegally. The fact is theres no practical limit for the number of people who would want to come to the United States. Obviously in the virtue it would be 10 million people, but over time there are hundreds of millions of people abroad who would move your if they could. Its not just dependent on labor market demand, because, frankly, living in the streets in the United States beats living in a hot in much of the world. So my point here is we can never meet the demand for immigration to the United States severed by increasing numbers and thereby eliminating ilLegal Immigration but it just, it cant work that way. Were going to have to have limits and well have to enforce the limit. I completely agree. We need to have limits and we will probably never meet the demand of all the people want to enter the United States. 100 agree, but thats where lawmakers coming to make sure that the limits that we have in place makes sense for the United States and for he mentioned reasons abroad as well. And that we set smart limits on these policies so that we can set an amount of people to come in that makes sense rather than sort of coming up with these arbitrary numbers that havent really serve any purpose. Just to pick up on this theme, i wonder, isnt it fair to say that what might make sense, for example, lowwage employers might be different from what makes it so the perspective of taxpayers who are concerned about safety net benefits and what have you . If you want to see the future of the country, if we retain the immigration status quo now, i invite you to go to my home state of california. Because it is on the vanguard of the radical demographic change that has occurred, thanks to what is virtually an open borders policy that favors mass, low skilled immigration. California used to be the leader in education from k12, that we were in the 50s and 60s, california led the nation in the quality of high school graduates. Today it resembles a seven backwater like mississippi, alabama or arkansas, with all due respect to those wonderful states, but they are not necessarily at the top of the educational heat. A third of all california eighthgraders lack the most rudimentary math and reading skills. California spends endless amounts of redistribution of tax dollars to try and close the achievement gap between hispanic and white students, and it has not budged since 1990. Hispanics are massive users of Public Health care, Government Health care, and accordingly, the biggest supporter. They were the biggest support of obamacare. So the usual discourse that you hear from, more the proimmigration open borders lobby is that theres a benefit, and economic benefit to all types of immigration. Failed to note the difference between high skilled and low skill and failed to take into account inevitably of the taxpayer cost of supporting efforts at the education level, criminal justice costs we are creating a second underclass. The incarceration rate of mexicanamericans jumps eightfold between the first and Second Generation to equal that of blacks. And it ignores the healthcare cost. So yes there is a large welfare component to low skills immigration that is really taking into account. You mentioned earlier on documenting immigration. Generally speaking my understanding is that you mention immigration is refugee immigration. I noticed a striking fact from migration policy institute, mpi observed in fact, children are refugee immigrants are somewhat less likely to live below the poverty line that none refugee immigrants. And yet in principle none refugee immigrants are meant to be held to the standards that are supposed to become selfsufficient. What do you think about that question you think they merge some kind of imbalance between refugee and none refugee immigration . I think you have to consider that, the differences between refugees and every other immigrant category. Certainly these people are coming from areas where they may been in refugee camps with the previous decade pick you to consider that spirit you expecting too much much poor which is why i found it surprising that among more poor if not more so. Often i think some of the difference, let me explain because refugees often come over with the families. They have a strong sense of family. They initially offered a lot of resettlement and assimilation services that are very beneficial to them, including english as a second language services. That often aids in their ability to kind of work into their have immediate access to safety nets whereas other for most visas. And then you often see once the children going to school they can aid in the Family Learning english, kind of navigating the u. S. Healthcare system which is very complex. They tend to do very well. They reenergize a lot of sense in your estate spirit just to be clear, again, i guess in principle in law and correct me if im wrong is a distinctive between refugee immigrants come we assume that they are helpless to assume arguments or assistance and nonrefugee immigrants, and yet none refugee immigrants appear to be heavily reliant on the safety net. Kenny tells a bit about that . Not to get too much into the weeds here but what theyre finding is the Adult Children of refugees are not the children of the refugees where getting now. They are the children of cubans, the emmys and russian. In other words, part of this is a function of where the refugees came from and a level of education when they got here. So we lookin look at the childrn earlier wave of refugees, and todays refugees are dramatically different in their human capital. I want to talk about what we know about safety net reliance for nonrefugee immigrants. There is a five year limit, yet most lawful immigrants in the country have been in the country for longer than five years. We look at the Census Survey that does the best job at getting at use of welfare. And what we found was that among welfare understood for any means tested program, not Social Security which is not means tested but food stamps, medicaid, tanf, et cetera. What we found was that about half of all families headed by immigrants, legal or illegal, are using at least one Welfare Program. Basically what it boils down to is the less skilled immigrants cannot earn enough to feed their own children in the United States. This is a pretty basic, a basic fact that has to be taken into account when making immigration policy decisions. As heather was talking about, what we are doing or what we have been doing after decades is advertising the benefits of low skilled immigration that restaurants and landscapers and other people use by keeping their wage costs down, then socializing the cost and everybody else. This is why the National Academy of sciences just last you did this magister stoo study on immigration to what they found was net immigration as a small positive effect on the economy, but that small positive effect as to important caveats. One is it comes from taking wealth from the poor and getting it to anybody else. Because the people who compete with immigrants are worse off. Everybody else is slightly better off and yet the second point that that Small Economic benefit is totally wiped out by the extra social source spirit i have a question first for heather. There was for a very long time consensus among libertarian minded thinkers and now that is being challenged in lots of interesting use of ways but the consensus that large scaled less skilled immigration would be just fine if we did not have a safety net, and extensive safety net, p read it. Although it occurs the recent debate over obamacare a program that is fact, quite young thiandsaw been on the books arey short amount of time its a difficult to reverse this recent and quite modest extension of the social safety net. Do you believe thats plausible that were going to dismantle the larger social safety net in the United States in the near future . I dont, i dont think that the aclu and others will go away in the future. So there going to be pressing the notion that everybody is entitled to government support. So i dont think its likely, but even so if we carry out that thought experiment and say that the importation of poverty, of multigenerational poverty that is occurring with mass low skilled immigration is not met with government programs, im still not certain that its a net benefit, because you still have people who are not advancing, that are not necessarily adding to the nations ability to compete. Social capital matter. Culture matters. And the usual trick is when people are talking about more immigration is to invoke obviously hes an immigrant that we write to bring in a kiss. Skiing. They were phd his mathemat