Immigration: Recasting the Debate

October 3-5, 2007

A three-day conference on U.S. immigration featuring major public figures and leading immigration policy experts and scholars.

Keynote Ray Marshall, former Secretary of Labor in the Carter administration. Introduction by President Nathan O. Hatch. Q-and-A session follows speech. Recorded October 3, 2007. Approximately 75 minutes.

Session 1

Introduction by David Coates. Panelists: Michele Wucker and Mark Miller. Moderator: Peter Siavelis. Approximately 85 minutes.

Session 2

Panelists: Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Luis Fraga and Gary Segura. Moderator: Alejandro Manrique. Approximately 80 minutes.

Session 3

Introduction by President Nathan O. Hatch. Panelists: Gordon Hanson and Alejandro Portes. Moderator: David Coates. Each part approximately 30 minutes.

Session 4

Panelists: Marisol Jiménez McGee and José Isasi. Moderator: Peter Siavelis. Approximately 85 minutes.

Session 5

Panelists:Patricia Fernández Kelly and Margaret Taylor. Moderator: Katy Harriger. Approximately 85 minutes.

Session 6

Panelists: Robert Rector, Daniel Griswold and Ross Eisenbrey. Moderator: David Coates. Approximately 95 minutes.

Closing

Introduction by President Nathan O. Hatch; Keynote address: U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (’78); Closing remarks: David Coates, Peter Siavelis. Approximately 40 minutes.

About the keynote speakers

Ray Marshall Ray Marshall currently holds the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, and is president of Ray Marshall, Inc., a research and consulting firm. He served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has held positions in the New Commission on the Skills of the American Economy, the Industrial Relations Research Association (national president 1976-77); the National Alliance of Business; and the American Economic Association and Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the boards of the National Center on Education and the Economy (chair) and the Economic Policy Institute. He has served on a number of task forces and commissions concerned with labor and economic policy and on the boards and audit committees of several corporations and foundations. He is the author or co-author of over 30 books and monographs and approximately 200 articles and chapters, including, Getting Immigration Reform Right, recently published in Challenge.

Mel Martinez Mel Martinez is a United States Senator from Florida, a Republican, a Cuban American and the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George W. Bush. Born in Cuba, he arrived in the U.S. at age 15. Senator Martinez earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Florida State University and went on to practice law for 25 years. Today, Senator Martinez serves in the U.S. Senate and sits on the Armed Services committee, the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee, and the Energy and Natural Resources committee. He also serves on the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging.

About the panelists

Ross Eisenbrey Ross Eisenbrey is vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Washington, D.C. He is a lawyer and former commissioner of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. He is co-author, with Jared Bernstein, of the recent EPI paper Breaking the Immigration Deadlock.

Patricia Fernández Kelly Patricia Fernández Kelly is senior lecturer in the sociology department and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. She is co-editor of the recently published Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America (Penn State University Press, 2005) and NAFTA and Beyond: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Global Trade and Development (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2007).

Luis Fraga Luis Fraga is associate vice provost for faculty advancement, director of the Diversity Research Institute, Russell F. Stark University Professor and professor of political science at the University of Washington. He is co-author of the recently published Multiethnic Moments: The Politics of Urban Education Reform (Temple University Press, 2006). He is also one of six principal investigators of the Latino National Survey (LNS), the most extensive state-stratified survey of Latinos living in the United States.

Daniel Griswold Daniel Griswold is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Studies. Since joining Cato in 1997, Griswold has authored or coauthored major studies on globalization, trade and immigration, including Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States (Cato, 2002) that was used in the design of the Flake-Kolbe-McCain immigration bill in 2003.

Gordon Hanson Gordon Hanson is the director of the Center on Pacific Economies and professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego. His current research examines the international migration of high-skilled labor, the causes of Mexican migration to the United States, the consequences of immigration for labor-market outcomes for African-Americans, the relationship between business cycles and global outsourcing and international trade in motion pictures. His most recent book is Why Does Immigration Divide America? Public Finance and Political Opposition to Open Borders (Institute for International Economics, 2005).

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. Her past research has focused on the intersections of gender and Mexican undocumented immigration and settlement, transnational families and the changing meanings of family life, and the informal sector, particularly the realm of paid domestic work. Her book,Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (2001) won six awards, including the 2001 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Most recently, her research has examined how Muslim, Christian and Jewish activists use religion to advocate for immigrant rights.

José Isasi José Isasi is chief executive officer of Que Pasa Media Network, the largest Hispanic communications company between Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, with three Spanish language newspapers and seven Spanish language radio stations covering the state of North Carolina. He is also chairman of the board for Makin’ It Work Pronto! a Hispanic marketing and communications company located in North Carolina that works with clients internationally, nationally and regionally to effectively communicate with Hispanic consumers. He has recently been recognized as one of the 50 most influential national Hispanic media executives.

Marisol Jiménez McGee Marisol Jiménez McGee is the advocacy director and a registered lobbyist for El Pueblo, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group based in Raleigh, N.C. She is a graduate of Loyola University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mark Miller Mark Miller is the Emma Smith Morris Professor of Political Science and International Relations in the department of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. Among his many publications, he is the co-author of the widely cited The Age of Migration (third edition, Palgrave and Guildford, 2003).

Alejandro Portes Alejandro Portes is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Among his many publications, he is the co-author of Immigrant America: A Portrait (third edition: University of California Press, 2006). He is past president of the American Sociological Association.

Robert Rector Robert Rector is senior research fellow, domestic policy, at The Heritage Foundation and the author of (among other reports) America’s Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty and Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States (Heritage Foundation, October 2006).

Gary Segura Gary Segura is professor of political science and adjunct professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington. He was (with Luis Fraga and four others) the co-principal investigator of the Latino National Survey, a national poll of 8,600 Latino residents of the United States conducted in the fall and winter of 2005-2006. Among other scholarly outlets, his work has been published in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science and Journal of Politic,Ó and his work has been funded on five occasions by the National Science Foundation.

Margaret Taylor Margaret Taylor is professor of law at Wake Forest University School of Law. She teaches courses in immigration law, legislation and administrative law, and torts. Taylor’s research focuses on immigration detention policy and the deportation of criminal offenders. She has testified on immigration detention before Congress and the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.

Michele Wucker Michele Wucker is co-director of The Immigrant Voting Project and director of the Program on Citizenship and Security. Most recently a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at The New School in New York, she is the author of the recently published Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right.

Hilary Claggett Hilary Claggett is Senior Editor, Potomac Books.

Film Director: Dan DeVivo Dan DeVivo graduated from Harvard University in 1999 with a bachelor of arts degree in social anthropology and spent several years honing his documentary filmmaking skills in New York City working on several projects including, Counting On Democracy, which documents Florida’s 2000 election scandal and Refusing To Die: A Kenyan Story, which chronicles Kenya’s struggle with post-colonial dictatorship. In 2004, he partnered with Joseph Mathew to co-direct and produce Crossing Arizona, which was an official selection at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The film has earned a prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award and the Munich Film Festival’s “One Future” Prize.

Conference co-chairs

David Coates David Coates holds the Worrell Chair in Anglo-American Studies at Wake Forest University. He previously held personal chairs in political economy, and labor studies, at the universities of Leeds and Manchester in the United Kingdom. He has written extensively on labor politics, comparative political economy and, more recently, U.S. domestic and foreign policy. His latest book, which includes a survey of the current immigration debates, is A Liberal Tool Kit: Progressive Answers to Conservative Arguments (Praeger, 2007).

Peter Siavelis Peter Siavelis is Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Chile. He is the author of The President and Congress in Post-authoritarian Chile: Institutional Constraints to Democratic Consolidation (Penn State Press, 2000), and numerous articles and book chapters on Latin American electoral and legislative politics. His current area of research focuses on political recruitment and candidate selection in Latin America.