Intelligence Squared US

TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2011

DON’T GIVE US YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES

About This Debate

America, built up by the hard work of its immigrants, now finds itself home to an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. The federal government, even under the reform-friendly tenure of President George W. Bush, has been unable to find the consensus to overhaul our country’s immigration laws. Both the Dream Act and an Arizona statute requiring police officers to detain anyone they suspect to be illegal, has brought the debate back to the forefront of national politics. Are immigrants taking American jobs, or, does immigration help our economy? And is there any difference between low-skilled and highly-skilled immigrants and is it time to honor this distinction?
* Motion language and panelists subject to change

The Panel

For The Motion

  • Kris Kobach
    Kris Kobach
    FOR THE MOTION
    Kris Kobach
    Is the secretary of state for Kansas and former professor of constitutional law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He served as counsel to Attorney General John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, where he led Department of Justice efforts to prevent terrorists from exploiting gaps in U.S. immigration controls. Kobach is well known nationally for his role as co-author of Arizona’s SB 1070 illegal immigration law and has litigated some of the most significant immigration-related cases in the country.
  • Tom Tancredo
    Tom Tancredo
    FOR THE MOTION
    Tom Tancredo
    Is a former Republican congressman from Colorado (1999-2009). He sought the 2008 Republican nomination for President of the United States with the intention of forcing the immigration issue into the debate. In 2010, Tancredo ran as the Constitution Party's nominee for governor of Colorado. Tancredo served as the Secretary of Education's regional representative under Presidents Reagan and Bush, and founded two not-for-profit education organizations, the Rocky Mountain Foundation and the American Legacy Alliance.

Against The Motion

  • Mayor Julián Castro
    Mayor Julián Castro
    AGAINST THE MOTION
    Mayor Julián Castro
    Is the 36-year-old mayor of San Antonio, making him the youngest mayor of a Top 50 American city. In 2001, at the age of 26, Mayor Castro became the youngest elected city councilman in San Antonio history. Throughout his tenure in public service, he has championed a vision of economic growth and a top-notch quality of life for all San Antonians. In 2005, Castro founded the Law Offices of Julián Castro, PLLC, a civil litigation practice. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University with honors and distinction in 1996 and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2000.
  • Tamar Jacoby
    Tamar Jacoby
    AGAINST THE MOTION
    Tamar Jacoby
    Is president and CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation working to advance better immigration law. She is the author of Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration, and editor of Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American, a collection of essays about immigrant integration. From 1989 to 2007, she was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Before that, she was a senior writer and justice editor for Newsweek and the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page (1981 – 1987).

Moderator

John Donvan is a correspondent for ABC News Nightline. He has served as ABC White House Correspondent, along with postings in Moscow, London, Jerusalem and Amman.

Poll Results

Pre-Debate Poll Results
16% For | 54% Against | 30%

Post Debate Poll Results
35% For | 52% Against | 13%

Debate Media

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Point/Counterpoint

For

  • While corporations benefit from the cheap labor illegal immigrants provide, American citizens are left with depressed wages and higher taxes to cover illegal immigrants’ use of government services.
  • Amnesty only rewards illegal behavior and punishes anyone who has gone through the process of entering legally.
  • The majority of illegal immigrants are here today for economic opportunity and this leads to a lack of assimilation that is essentially destroying the ideas and ideals that bind us together as Americans.
  • We need to enforce the laws that we have and secure our borders. The Center for Immigration Studies has used the government’s own numbers to deduce that simple, consistent law enforcement can reduce the number of illegal immigrants to half within five years.

Against

  • You can’t wish away the millions of illegal immigrants who are already here, and prohibition has already shown the difficulty in enforcing unrealistic law. They must be given a path to becoming legal.
  • We must increase our immigration quotas. Even in this economic downturn there is a need for both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, and as the economy improves, this need will grow.
  • We need to help immigrants assimilate and we cannot underestimate the appeal of American values and our democratic way of life.