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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles, with your host, David Axelrod.

When you talk about the challenges to our democracy, you have to start by looking at the challenges to our economy of rapid changes

and changes, brought by technology. And no one's thought more about this than Congressman Row Cana, a brand new member of Congress, from Silicon Valley, who has made his business to travel the country, talking about the transformation of the economy, the changes in the nature of work.

And what we need to do is a country to adapt to them so that the largest number of people get the opportunities they need.

Congressman Cana came by the Institute of Politics the other day and we sat down to talk about this and his own really interesting story.

Congressman Row Cana, first of all, welcome back to the University of Chicago. I know you cut your teeth here, your academic teeth here, some in the 90s, so welcome back. It's good to see you.

It's good to be back. I had lunch at Medici, I didn't know it was still around.

Yeah, oh yeah. Now that's an institution. For those of you who come to Chicago, the Medici on 57th Street,

you've talked about your story as kind of a classic American story. Share your story with us, your family story.

My parents came here in the 1960s, my father came to study chemical engineering at Michigan. Then he went back to India, got married to my mom.

They came, my mom came over in early 1970s. I was born in Philadelphia. Why did they come over?

They came over for opportunity for education. I mean, my dad was there was much better chance back then to have a great education here.

As you remember, in the 60s, when he came, there was Sputnik and the sense that we wanted people with an engineering or science background.

It was the simplest thing to come. We got a student visa early on. Then when he worked at a chemical engineering company, got a green card.

We really were opening open to people in science. It was also after the civil rights moment. Before 1965, there were very few Indian Americans or Chinese Americans.

It was really the civil rights moment that led to the immigration reform act of 1965, that open immigration to Asia.

The obvious question is about where we are. Now, I was really dismayed to read about the precipitous decline in the number of international students who were applying to American colleges and universities.

I think 40% was the number in the current class of students who were applying for admission. What is the impact of that?

One, it's not having the best and brightest come to the United States. That's one of the things that make us great as opposed to the Ming dynasty in China that didn't have diversity of people from around the world.

Our uniqueness was we really attracted talent from every part of the world. Now, those folks are just going to be creating jobs and starting companies in other places.

It also diminishes in some sense American leadership. One of the advantages we had is people looked up to America because so many folks knew someone who studied here or had an influence on our ideas.

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