Because you take the best and brightest out of these countries and keep them here in the u. S. , then where does that leave them back home . Thats a counterdevelopment strategy. So in the short run remittances are a plus. They diminish over time as immigrants have been here more than ten years. Their remittances drop off. Probably because their parents back home have died at that point and so they have les sip yents at home. What about the brain drain . That would be a negative for foreign development. Theres been some study between western europe and eastern europe. Theres a brain drain in the way youre talking about but theres also the return migration and people bring new skills back to the countries at least potentially depending on what the country is. We know it promotes trade because they have trade connections. The trade potentially. Theres no doubt what youre saying is the case, that this is by far the biggest source of foreign aid if you want to keep it that way, these remittances. And also we dont do a lot of foreign aid to the im always amazed when you look at the polls that show what percentage of the budget people think is going to foreign aid and its like 15 of the budget must be going to foreign aid when its less than 1 . I think it would be smart for us to do foreign aid and that would address some of the problems in places like it if we do it well, which is another question i have. In places like Central America so you dont have people feeling like they need to flee from very dangerous situations. That would be a better scenario than us benefiting from their coming here. I think i a proposal like michael clemenss would completely depend on how you manage the new migration flows. If you did something akin to open borders where theres a very large influx, all of a sudden, i would worry it would become a tool of corporate exploitation to lower bajz having all these new workers all at once. If would have to be garage sxl done in a fair way where people were coming in at market wages and not being used to undercut wages. So now we have a few minutes left before we get to q a. Im going to ask you that each respond to one final question from me and then feel free to add any concluding remarks you have. It seems like the discussion were having right now is pretty divorced from the political rhetoric as we mentioned. If there is one sort of fact or concept, theres not enough hair pulling as far as im concerned. If theres one fact about immigration in the u. S. That you could impress into the mind of every member of congress, what would it be . Ive got my ready answer. You go first. I would start with whats happening with the nativeborn, by the way. Impress on them the severity of the baby boomer retirements and how you cant bring replacements all in one year. Youve got to bring them in steadily. Right now its about do i like immigrants, do i not like imgrants. Forget immigrants, what about us . If we need immigrants it changes the entire attitude toward immigrants. I dont think were conscious of what we need. I dont think this is a fact that would change a lot of minds but its so absent from the kind of conversation were having is imdprags immigration is much more defense than people recognize. You have a lot of people in the higher skilled brackets and a lot in the middle as well. Its that there are reasons for focusing on each of those in various ways but i think to step back and say we have a tremendous diverse obviously also in terms of where people come from. Educational backgrounds. Cultural backgrounds. Its very exciting and very good for the vibrancy of the country and vitality of the economy. I think theres a tendency to zero in quickly on what about those mexican men working in construction and not talk about jamaican women working in child care and the accountants, disproportionate numbers of accountants who are immigrants as well as Silicon Valley and all that. Its a much more and actually just your point about high skill and low skill before, the large majority of immigration is family unification. Its not economic in any they dont have those kind of higher skilled or lower skilled. Its not because of economic visas. And you know, we do very well with that in the United States. We could improve it. We con leave so much on the table in terms of ways we could benefit from immigration. And certainly we could improve our immigration system significantly. But somehow the country has managed to benefit nonetheless even with all of the problems and the lack of reform. I would say i would tell the members of congress that we really, really are lacking and need more and better data on immigration to improve the quality of the debate. Better longitude nall data. Better data on temporary worker programs. We have hardly any. Its difficult to assess whats going on with immigration, what the impact is on wages and unemployment. Its really tough. Whats happening from the debate and the rhetoric. And that serves to increase the influence of powerful lobby groups who are pushing to deregulate the immigration system so they can disempower migrant workers. Well do some q a now. If youre watching the live stream, i guess you can tweet at us. Dpclive. And theyll give us your questions. Before we go to the room, we do have a question online, and it is for daniel and it concerns the great construction worker dispute. This is from drew edwards whos a reporter with the Construction Labor report. She asks, Construction Industry employers insist theyre having a hard time finding workers. Like you said, theyre some of the biggest proponents of guest worker programs. Besides increasing wages, what else can these employers do to astrakt more nativeborn workers to construction occupations . Invest more in training and apprenticeships. Training in apprenticeships has really, really, you know investment in that has decreased over the years. Thats really it. There are going to be programs in place for when that isnt enough. But thats something thats been completely neglected. Work with labor unions in order to improve those efforts. Do we have questions in the room . We have one right here. We have the mike coming. If you could just say your name and your affiliation and make sure to ask a question in a brief period of time. Im Mitzi Wertheim with the naval postgraduate school. My question is where are the jobs . And the reason i ask is i met way young man who works for Silicon Valley. Didnt go to college. Earns 100,000. I said whats your job . He said to eliminate work. Thats part of it. My concern is how do we get people like you to think about the whole question of employment as a holistic issue, not just this narrow piece over here . Because it is so incredibly complicated. Just telling us one small piece of the story doesnt help us understand in terms of what needs to be done. The question is how to think more broadly about employment . But i want you to communicate it in a way the general public can understand it. The Vice President last week were going to try. Last monday was giving a speech. And he said we need people to think like wise men and communicate in the language of the people. So i ask you all if you would be willing to do that but think about these complex problems in a holistic way and how will you make that happen. Okay. I cannot field that one but maybe one of you three can . Actually, its interesting. The three of us i think are not particularly focused on immigration and are more general Economic Policy institute and fiscal policy institute. I certainly think a lot about those questions of overall employment and actually not we happen to be the one arm of both of those groups that look at immigration issues. I think that those are i think there are good questions. I think the my answers i guess would be that i think there needs first of all i think there is job growth and there are relative unemployment rates. There is this question that kenny raises about whats happening with people who are out of the labor force but not looking for a job. So there is some growth. But i think there could be much more. Theres an idea there might be Slower Growth going forward. How do we do Something Like that . To me invest in education, invest in infrastructure. I think there needs to be countercyclical investment now to make sure how do we make sure were stimulating demand. Theres clearly an absence of demand thats from consumers. Thats the reason for the lack of growth. Those would be my i dont know if that meets joe bidens criteria for being communicative enough. And i dont have any answer to how do you make that happen. But i think those are the big issues. I would just say that the Central Economic challenge of our time is getting wages to go up. Capital share of income chabz xhapz to workers has record highs after the recession. Theres a number of things we can do as david said, invest in infrastructure and increase unions and make better laws and rules so more people can collectively bargain, things like, that but its not easy. In the language of the people the more you pay people the more they spend. The beauty of capitalism is its a circular system. And youll get Economic Growth and more job growth if you pay people more money. Not the richest people but the poorest people. Because the poor people will spend everything they get and the rich people will save it or do other things. Do we have another question . Gentleman in the back. Im Paul Donnelley with Morrison Public Affairs group. And ill confess to being a little disappointed because this has been a very sophisticated discussion about economics but a little too simple about immigration policy itself. It wasnt till the very end that dr. Kalick mentioned most immigration is based on family, and most of the discussion has been as if all immigration is the same. In fact, permanent and temporary legal and illegal. Its all economics. And we can talk about it that way. Dr. Myers mentioned that in about a month the National Academy of sciences is going to do a new report on the Economic Impact of immigration as i understand it. They did one about 20 years ago, which concluded that immigration is a net but small benefit to the American Economy as much as 10 billion a year in a 14 trillion economy. In other words, a dime. If youve got 140 bucks in your pocket. It seems to me, and im a green cards not guest worker guy. Thats my bottom line on all immigration issues. Its a very simple question for you. Why would we ever want more people with fewer rights . I kind of feel like we did say i dont think we do want that. I think we want to have a system of immigration that does respond to the American Economy needs. And i think as well as humanitarian and other reasons. And i think certainly daniel and i both said and i dont think youre going to disagree. I think people who come as immigrants with full rights and who are planning to stay here is better for the American Economy than i mean than people who come with temporary visas and are forced to go back afterwards. There will always be some. You want people to sign on the dotted line and say you want to stay forever. That seems to me like what we benefit from most and what we should be encouraging rather than discouraging. If theres any role at all for temporary phone workers program, you can go through every single visa category and talk about numerous, countless cases about trafficking and wages not being paid. If theres any role for that, it has to be in a way where somebody comes a very short period of time and provisionally is able to selfpetition fire green card to stay permanently. But it would be better to assess where labor shortages are and the people we bring in, just have them on a direct path to a green card which eventually can mean citizenship if they want it. Im with my copanelists on this. I will also admit to being chagrined when i heard david say reunification. I realized we never mentioned that. It wasnt part of the Economic Analysis that people do. They dont distinguish really. H1b is clearly not part of family reunification. Its unique in the u. S. In canada and australia they dont do it that way. Theyre more jobsoriented. Or refugees. But thats the american tradition. Its been a longstanding one. But back to my point earlier about Immigration Reform every 20 years, and its a different time today than it was 20 years ago. When the last National Academy of sciences report was done in the 1990s it was responding to a very different immigration climate and economic climate. Immigrants today are much better educated than they were back then in the 90s. And the cost and benefits to immigrants has shifted accordingly in the current period. I dont know what the exact calculations are in our report because its so long i cant remember the numbers. Im not supposed to remember them yet. But it tries to follow our report tries to follow what was done before in a similar way but with improved methodologies and with more updated contextual information. Weve learned a lot over the last 20 years i think. From what they did before. Cant convince you to give us an exclusive preview here today . One of the biggest issues that i think is plaguing our committee is what is the answer. What is the conclusion. Its 12 chapters. With lots of stuff. And we know the media will take one point and that will symbolize the whole report and yet its a diverse report. We dont have a lot of debate among us. A lot of agreement, but many facets. And i really like what david said earlier about the diversity of immigration being a key point to take away. That is a key point. They stereotype it by one figurehead they have in their mind. And the figurehead they have in their mind i wont say who it is but that person is disappearing or has disappeared or has gone negative in the last five years, and yet it still is a big enough feature in some peoples minds, i dont want to say whose mind but they want to build a wall against this figment of imagination from the past. They make policy too much on the past ten years, remembering what our conventional wisdom is accumulated from the last 20 years. I should say im a demographer but i also teach in a policy school. So i think about the intersection of these things a lot. To get agreement among a committee you have to go to a common denominator. Choosing something thats old, thats just how it works with community. Some new idea wont win the day unless its a shocking new thing like a major earthquake, something major. Like brexit. No, i didnt say that. Actually, i do want to bring up brexit because theres a sense that was driven by eus immigration policies and i think a lot of people, probably far too many people are looking at brexit and saying are there implications for the United States . We were talking about this a little bit before the panel. But do you see any lessons from brexit or from the uk eu immigration system that apply here in. I hope not. I mean, so one thing i guess you could say is in the news today and yesterday is a lot of second thoughts or people who are saying some things and starting to backtrack and say oh, wait a second, peel theres not quite the same negative impact we said it was go to be, it looks like it does have economic consequence thats are going to be a problem for us. Maybe were not best off by being walled off from the rest of the world, that we actually benefit from the trade that we do in europe. So i mean, i guess i do think at the very broad level that the United States like england, like United Kingdom remains that, benefit from being engaged with the world and in the back and forth. But i think it is also a fairly different context. I would say i guess the one lesson i saw was i thought it was completely wrong to blame immigration for any real negative impacts in britain. I dont think theres evidence of it. But the immigration argument for brexit got a lot of momentum from the fact the government was wrong a couple of times about what they thought was going to happen. Well, first when the eu expanded they thought only tens of thousands of new work grertz eu were going to come in. It ended up being half a million. David cameron spent ten years saying was going to get net migration down to the tens of thousands. Its never even come close to that. It gave a sense to the public that this government isnt able to adequately manage migration and so the system lost some credibility and there was a lot of angry people who voted for brexit. I think the lesson for the United States is we should have a more transparent immigration system because vague more transparent immigration system with good evidence and data and a commission thats studying whats happening with immigration will lead into creased credibility of the system which in turn will lead to increased public support for immigration. It is also interesting to see, if you look at the map of the voting across the united kingsd m, the places where theres been immigration, David Cameron was promising it to be lower, the places where there has been a lot of immigration they were voting for being in the eu. It was the places left behind for the overall economy where theres not a lot of immigration. In fact theres urban a lot of immigration because its in the more rural areas that are not part of not benefiting as much from the modern economy. In the u. S. The gallup poll data do show that in counties where theres no immigration or very little immigration, those are the ones are the respondents are most likely to say that immigrants come here for a free ride, not to work, because they have no idea what immigrants really do. Whereas in immigrant counties where people know how hard they work, they have a very different attitude about immigrants because theyve seen them. But everybody gets to vote in america, even those who live in counties where they dont know about whats going on but they vote on information given by political opportunists who try to terrorize them about some imaginary freeloaders or something. Were all up here talking about how brexit is a bad thing and i think we all probably agree that it is. But there was another part of the argument that didnt get much attention in the