Immigration beyond political repercussions

>>> my question is why the armies of talk radio won't rise up and inundate the switchboard on capitol hill and kill this the way they killed mccain-kennedy?

>> the last election changed everything and texas . texas is a state that will soon be in play. maybe not now, maybe '20, '25, thereafter. if we lose texas , we lose the presidency for the remainder of my lifetime and my children's lifetime. so the demographics are changing. we've got to go back to the bush numbers in terms of getting hispanic votes. we don't want to see that. so that empowers rubio and other republicans, the business republicans -- like i said earlier, there are two republican parties . one is more business centric, and the other is movement conservatives, grass root tea party people. the business conservatives will be on board with the immigration bill , but you will see push-back from movement conservatives.

>> i think it's more than just demographics and elections. i really do think there is a movement now, whereas in there wasn't before. in 2010 when we lost the d.r.e.a.m. act, when we lost -- we fell five votes short of passing that. we lost that. we lost the legislation.

>> five votes short of overcoming the filibuster, we should note.

>> with you we won. we won the collins. we won the faxing. we have never won that before.

>> in terms of the metrics of how many calls were coming in. you won that.

>> there's a movement on social media . dreamers are able to change, to stop deportation using social media . we're able to mobilize a tremendous amount of people and quickly.

>> has the restrictionist infrastructure demobilized, is it less funded? is it less activated? is it just that essentially the base of the republican party do what their elites say, which is you've got to go along with this or lose elections?

>> i do think the grass roots shares a lot of the same concerns.

>> about electoral viability?

>> that the party elite has about electoral viability? i think that does impact things in certain ways. i also think that the past six years of somewhat stepped up enforcement, having reduced illegal immigrant in-flows has -- and reduced the numbers present in the country, has made it recede somewhat as an issue, that the salients of the issues wasn't as high as it was in 2006 / 2007 to a lot of republican voters.

>> where do you think the president is on this? i think this is one of those things where, like we said at the beginning, you can imagine a wide spectrum of results inside the details of that bill. it's going to come down to who is really in there fighting and saying across this line, no more.

>> right.

>> and i'm curious where you think the president is going to be on that.

>> i think he's going to -- i think we've yet to see everything come about. he's going to wait. he's going to see what proposals come about. he said he's going to take action. he'll put forward his own piece of legislation. meanwhile, he's going to be talking about the country with these issues, helping to mobilize people. to me the game is outside the bubble of washington. it really is. the dreamers very important. business people who get it that you need to have in-flows, but you also have to have a good stabilized economy and a work force . i agreed with the previous discussion we had on the panel regarding training. you have 11 million people here. people should be trained up for the high tech jobs. if you need people to come in to do ag and maybe other service sector jobs, we ought to be able to make sure there's enforcement, that these people don't drive down pagwages, that just before they come in from mexico or latin america or asia, those wages are going to be sub -- they're going to create another cast of workers. that can't be done. those are our principles that the president and most others would like to see that there's fairness and justice. this is a moral issue for many people. we didn't even say moral all the time we've been on the panel. it's a moral issue.

>> but he did. i was proud to hear the president talk about this is not politics or policy. we're talking about real people . we're talking about our families. what the president has to do is to set some markers.

>> we're going to see where those markers are. i want to give you this. people should keep their eye on chuck schumer , who's taken a very big lead on this, and there's a lot of folks around this in the immigration reform movement who are a little worried about what exactly he's willing to give away, whether he just wants a deal that he can sign off on or whether he's going to fight for those markers. so people should keep their eye very closely attuned to senator chuck schumer from my home state of new york about what kind of role he's playing in these negotiations. what did we