Welcome, this is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday the 1st of March. I'm your host Anastasia Glova.

The immigration debate that stalled last year has picked up again after the Senate held hearings yesterday on comprehensive immigration reform.

Testifying at the hearings were Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary

Carlos Gutierrez.

I guess for the podcast today is the Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, Daniel

Griswold, who argues that the only lasting solution to illegal immigration will be to offer a legal

alternative.

You've read the transcripts of the immigration hearing held yesterday on

Capitol Hill. What were Chertoff and Gutierrez angling for in their

testimonies? I think what the administration was trying to accomplish today is to

demonstrate its commitment to comprehensive immigration reform.

It sent two of its heavy hitters on the subject up there, Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the

Homeland Security Department, and Carlos Gutierrez, the Commerce Secretary, and Secretary Chertoff emphasized all the things the administration has done in the past several

years to strengthen security at the border and how comprehensive immigration reform

including a temporary worker program and legalization of workers who are

here how that would make his job easier in securing the borders. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez, of course, emphasized the economic angle of immigration and immigration reform.

He pointed out to the Judiciary Committee that immigrants play a vital role in our economy.

They provide goods and services to Americans at lower prices and that enhances our standard of living.

He also pointed out something very important in this whole discussion about illegal immigration.

While the U.S. economy continues to create jobs for high skilled and low skilled workers, the pool

of Americans who traditionally have filled these jobs, which are Americans without a high school education, continues to drop.

In fact, he pointed out that from 1996 to 2004, we actually had a decrease of 4.6 million Americans in the workforce without a high school diploma.

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