NDN Blog

Yesterday Simon briefed the House New Democrat Coalition, a group of 51 Members, on immigration reform and border issues. I wanted to share with you the Power Point we developed for the briefing. If you are interested in learning more about some of the issues at the heart of our current immigration debate this is a great place to start.

The presentation is called, “Immigration Reform: How The Landscape Has Changed Since the House Last Voted in 2005 - Our Border Is Safer, Our Immigration System Is Better and Mexico Is Modernizing and Growing.” You can find it here.

To learn more about the topics discussed in this presentation, be sure to read Simon’s recent Huffington Post Op-ed, “The Border is Safer, Our Immigration System is Better;” see our round-up of our most important work on these issues; and stay in touch with us via our website, 21border.com.

Your Daily Border Bulletin is up! Today's stories include:

Sen. McCain, “guardedly optimistic” on a pathway agreement: Three Republican senators working to craft immigration legislation in the gang of eight downplayed a report that they had reached an agreement on a pathway to legal status. The Chicago Tribune reported on Monday that the eight senators “have privately agreed on the most contentious part of the draft: how to give legal status to the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.” While the senators broadly said that giving legal status to the country’s undocumented immigrants remained a top priority as laid out in their proposal unveiled earlier in the year, they denied any details had been finalized

Time is running out for Labor and Business: For months, business and labor leaders have been negotiating over a crucial aspect of immigration reform — how to handle future flows of lesser-skilled workers. But the next few weeks may determine whether the two sides can reach an agreement that could prove crucial to the greater effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. Both sides have already agreed to a common set of principles, including the creation of a new visa for lesser-skilled workers who come to the U.S. for year-round work. At present, no visa category provides for that type of immigrant worker.

GOP’s Steve Pearce and The Latino Vote: Rep. Steve Pearce is the rarest of Republican Party officeholders, a very conservative Anglo who keeps winning elections from a predominantly Latino electorate. As the national GOP seeks to improve its dismal standing with Hispanic voters, the 65-year-old former oil man has some advice. “You just have to show up, all the time, everywhere,” he said, during a recent barnstorm tour of his district, which sprawls across the southern half of this border state. “Most Republicans don’t bother. I do. I bother.

NDN and the New Policy Institute released the following statement after increased press coverage of what we consider to be an increasingly undemocratic Senate:

"In the last few days national reporters in several major newspapers have been discussing a subject the team at NDN/NPI has recently researched and published – how the changing demography of the country is worsening the “small state bias” of the Senate, and weakening our democracy.  As The New York Times’s Adam Liptak's article "Smaller States find Outsize Clout Growing in Senate" spurred dialogue on Twitter and coverage from other reporters like the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, we wanted to release a refresher on our previous research. 

NDN's Simon Rosenberg and researcher Leslie Ogden studied the subject extensively and have published several pieces, including Ogden's op-ed "Another Reason to Reform the Senate" from April of 2012, and a collection of resources featuring a video presentation of Ogden's research on demographic shifts and Senate's imbalance from a panel titled "Renewing our Democracy." Additionally, Simon has analyzed the political ramifications of this democratic imbalance in his post, "Leaving the Reagan Era Behind" from December 2012 that posits the disparity has paralyzed immigration reform, gun control measures, and gay marriage legislation, among others. In a companion essay written last fall, Simon used the increasingly undemocratic nature of Senate to call for a political reform agenda that would renew our democracy. 

Rosenberg explained that he is "pleased this issue of the fundamentally undemocratic Senate is gaining attention in the press. With population and demographic shifts, the Senate has grown increasingly unrepresentative of the American electorate." As fifty percent of the U.S. population is concentrated in only nine states, these citizens are "inadequately represented in the upper chamber," especially as "the other fifty percent of the population is awarded 82 Senators." 

He also noted that states with more concentrated populations are "generally more diverse" than sparsely populated states, and tend to have younger constituents. Accordingly, this system pulls the Senate to represent not just specific states but disproportionately represent certain demographic groups."

As the topic of the distinctly undemocratic Senate has garnered increased attention in the press, we wanted to repost a piece from NDN's spring '12 researcher Leslie Ogden. She previously published this op-ed in the Tufts Daily covering Senate's small state bias, and is worth revisiting as we think about our representation in government: 

"The list of reasons why Americans feel their politics are broken is long and growing. Here’s one of many: The U.S. Senate, which due to the way the U.S. population has grown and settled, has developed a “small state bias” so grave that it is on the verge of becoming an undemocratic institution. The issue is serious enough that it has become necessary to question whether major reform of Congress, and particularly the Senate, is needed.

According to the 2010 census, it is now the case that half of the United States’ population lives in just nine states, with the other half of America living in the other 41 states. While the voters in these top nine states have equal representation in the House with 223 Representatives (the other half has 212), in the Senate it is a different story. Because of this population distribution, the half of the U.S. living in the largest nine states is represented by 18 Senators. The other half of the country living in the other 41 states has 82 Senators, more than four times as many. You don’t have to be good at math to see how much less representation in Congress those living in the big states have today.

Let’s take a closer look at this dynamic by examining California. With a population of about 37 million, California has more than 66 times the population of the smallest state, Wyoming, which has 563,626 people. California has 53 Representatives, and two Senators; Wyoming, one Representative and two Senators. So despite having 66 times the population of Wyoming, California has only 53 times the number of Representatives and an equal number in the Senate.

Furthermore, the four smallest states combined have eight Senators, giving California only a quarter as many Senators as Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming, even though California has 14 times the population of these states combined.

In creating our bicameral legislative system, the founding fathers attempted to balance the issue of big/little states by creating a House whose representation was based on population and a Senate based on proportionality. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explains his intent to create a “mixture of principles of proportional and equal representation,” particularly “among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, [in which] every district ought to have a proportional share in the government.” In essence, to create an equal vote that is a “constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States.”

However, due to the growth of the number of states in the U.S. and the migration and expansion of our population, the big/little state balance in the Senate has become approximately one-to-four, creating a “small state bias.” This small state bias is additionally exacerbated by the proportional allocation of Congressional seats, which immediately gives each state one Representative, regardless of population. This means that while California has more than 66 times the population of Wyoming, as we saw, it only has 53 times more Congressional seats. Therefore, even in the House, large states do not receive the proper amount of representatives because each state is automatically allocated a Congressman, regardless of the mathematical proportion. The net result of this is that smaller, more rural and less demographically diverse populations in the U.S. have exaggerated influence in Congress today.

Where this small state bias becomes undemocratic is on issues that affect large and small states very differently. Immigration reform is a good example. Most of the new migrants who have come to the U.S. in this last wave of very heavy immigration have ended up in the large states. Seventy percent of Hispanics, for example, reside in the top nine most populous states. The states where most recent migrants and their families live have somewhere between 20 and 30 Senators representing them in Congress today even though they have a majority of the U.S. population. The other states, with a minority of the U.S. population, have between 70 and 80 Senators representing them. Despite the fact that poll after poll show that a clear majority of Americans support “comprehensive immigration reform,” it has been extremely difficult to get it passed through Congress in recent years. The voices of the majority who support immigration reform are wildly underrepresented in the current design of our Congress.

At a time when societies around the world are working hard to improve their own civic institutions, it would be a welcome sign for the world’s most important democracy, the United States, to help inspire this process by updating and renewing its own."

Your Daily Border Bulletin is up! Today's stories include:

Border Fences and Immigration Politics: The border barriers rise out of the Pacific Ocean, climb craggy California peaks, streak across Arizona desert valleys and meander through cattle ranches and fields of sorghum and citrus in South Texas. Tall steel fencing separates border communities. Camera towers and bright rows of stadium lights aim at smugglers’ enclaves in Mexico. Migrants seeking out traditional crossing routes find them blocked, and many give up.

Obama meets with faith leaders to discuss comprehensive immigration reform: President Barack Obama emphasized the need to get immigration reform accomplished this year in a meeting with a diverse group of faith leaders at the White House on Friday. Religious leaders that attended the meeting said the president spent more than an hour with them, and after making a few remarks at the top of the meeting he let each group discuss their priorities and problems with comprehensive immigration reform. During the discussion, these faith leaders said, Obama made it clear that he wanted to see a bill on immigration reform in the next 60 days.

President Obama to nominate Thomas Perez as new Labor Secretary: President Obama intends to tap the nation’s top civil rights enforcer as the new secretary of Labor, a choice seen Sunday as an opportunity to raise the department’s profile as the White House tackles immigration reform. The expected nomination of Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, would make him the only Latino in the Cabinet at this point in Obama’s second term.

As you've seen by now, the numbers are in for the February jobs report and it's very positive news.

-236,000 new jobs on payrolls in February than in January

-National unemployment is down to 7.7%, the lowest unemployment rate since December of 2008 - the last month of the Bush Administration.

-Wages jumped while the underemployment rate dropped significantly as well.

-14,000 new manufacturing jobs in February. This positive trend contributed to this eyepopping stat: Manufacturing has added over half a million jobs over the last 37 months, the most for any such period since 1986

-With February’s great numbers, job growth has now averaged over 200,000 a month since November. 

Although there’s clearly more work to be done to get where we want to be, there is no doubt that February’s jobs report indicates the recovery is gaining momentum.

Your Daily Border Bulletin is up! Today's stories include:

Survey shows support for immigration reform growing among Republican voters: A new blockbuster survey by the noted Republican survey research firm McLaughlin and Associates reveals a stunning reversal of opinion by Republican voters on the issue of immigration reform. Where once there was hardened opposition to such legislation, a national sample of 500 self-described likely Republican voters shows broad support now emerging for the measure. Asked about an immigration reform proposal that would “grant illegal immigrants legal status and a green card and then, after a wait of several years, they could apply for citizenship if they pay back taxes, pay a fine, learn English and have no criminal record,” Republicans were supportive 66 percent to 30 percent.

The Dilemma Over Immigration Reform: High-Skilled vs Low-Skilled Workers: For years, the phrase “immigration reform” has meant two things for Republicans: a contest to see who could be toughest on the 11 million people living in the United States who aren’t supposed to be, and a flood of proposals to fortify the nation’s borders. For Democrats, the term has meant some form of legalization for undocumented workers and an easier mechanism for getting into the country legally. That’s still true to a great extent. But in the time since Congress’s last encounter with the issue, business leaders have been raising concerns about a deficit of high-skilled workers. And that’s transforming how the immigration debate is playing out.

Schumer: No standalone bill for high-skilled immigrants: Senator Charles Schumer, a member of a bipartisan group crafting comprehensive U.S. immigration reform, urged technology firms on Tuesday to stop lobbying for a standalone bill on high-skilled immigrants, saying such narrow legislation would not pass. “You will not get a bill unless there’s a full immigration bill,” the New York Democrat said at an event hosted by the Internet Alliance lobby group. “The best thing you can do now is not lobby on the high-skilled end.

NDN and The New Policy Institute, President and Founder Simon Rosenberg will be speaking at the Tri Lateral Border Issues Conference at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona.

With the recent issuance by the Department of Homeland Security of the Northern Border Strategy a number of border issues have been framed that this symposium will examine in the context of Canada-United States-Mexico trade and security.

The symposium will bring together academics, practitioners, business groups and government officials from the three NAFTA countries to examine and evaluate cross-border trade challenges to the Arizona business community.

Setting the Stage - The Issues

Simon will be speaking on a panel which will examine the three nation’s efforts to work simultaneously on robust programs of border security and international trade in the current context of political transition in the U.S. and Mexico as well as the ongoing and much broader discussions on the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Chair                  

David Fransen, Consul General of Canada, in Los Angeles

Panelists     

Thomas d’Aquino, Canada Co-Chair, North American Forum and CEO, Intercounsel Ltd.
Roberta Jacobson, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Department of State
Sergio Alcocer Martínez de Castro, Undersecretary for North America, Secretariat of Foreign Affairs

Respondent

Simon Rosenberg, President, New Policy Institute

Daily Border Bulletin is up! Today's stories include:

Immigration is priority No. 1 for Janet Napolitano: Immigration reform is the “No. 1” legislative priority for the Department of Homeland Security this year, trumping cybersecurity issues, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday at a POLITICO Playbook breakfast. “…I would say, frankly, that our No. 1 priority in terms of legislation is immigration,” Napolitano told POLITICO’s Mike Allen at a breakfast marking the 10th anniversary of the agency.

Rick Perry calls agency move “federally sponsored jailbreak:” Texas Gov. Rick Perry is blasting the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement’s release of illegal immigrants to offset automatic budget costs, calling it a “federally sponsored jailbreak.” “Aside from allowing this federally sponsored jailbreak to occur, ICE has also failed to provide any information regarding the number of detainees released, their countries of origin, locations where these individuals have been released and the reasons they were detained — despite repeated requests from my office,” the former GOP presidential candidate said in a public statement on Monday.

Jeb Bush flip-flops on a pathway to citizenship: In late January, Jeb Bush wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he seemed to endorse a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and criticized members of his own party who think “illegal immigrants should return to their native countries and wait in line like everyone else.” He argued that, for most illegal immigrants — those without a relative in the country and without access to the limited number of work-based visas — “no line exists.” Discussing his new book “Immigration Wars” on NBC’s Today, he confirmed that he only favors a path to legal residency, not citizenship. “Our proposal is a proposal that looks forward,” he said. “And if we want to create an immigration policy that’s going to work, we can’t continue to make illegal immigration an easier path than legal immigration.”

In Tuesday's edition of The Hill, NDN's Simon and I penned an op-ed titled "America the Violent? No More." The piece investigates the claim that America has a caustic "culture of violence." However, the rate of violent crime in the US has plummeted over the past two decades, and is half of its peak in 1993. Violent crime and murder rates in many urban areas continue to fall at remarkable and encouraging rates.

From the piece:

"This precipitous decline in violent crime in the U.S. over the past 20 years needs to be seen as one of the truly great public policy achievements of the post-World War II era... The assertion by some that there is a rising tide of violence in the U.S. just isn’t true, and it serves to obscure a truly great societal achievement brought about by our law enforcement officials, politicians and courageous community leaders across the country." 

Ultimately, we conclude that "it is clear — if you want to reduce the rising tide of gun violence in the U.S., you have to focus on the new, much more permissive availability of guns themselves and their enhanced lethality. As we move forward in this debate about gun violence, the focus needs to be on the real guns killing and injuring Americans of all kinds — not the fictional ones in our movies and our games."

Simon has supported common sense steps to lessen gun violence in other pieces and appearances. He sparred with Fox's Neil Cavuto on the topic in this video clip and in this blog post to our site earlier this year.

Fareed Zakaria holds a similar position. The Washington Post also ran an interesting article comparing video game expenditure with gun-related murder, which can be read here. This article in the Atlantic contains some interesting statistics certainly pertinent to the gun violence debate, and this blog post over at Monkey Cage also served as a jumping-off point for our research. Other pieces that were used in our research include this piece by Suzy Khimm in the Washington Post, this article in Scientific American arguing that there is a great deal of data showing wide scale use of video games has significant benefits for kids (behind a paywall), this long story from Sunday's Washington Post which is a must read for anyone wanting to make sense of the generation long decline of violent crime in the US.

To read the NDN round-up on gun violence, click here.