Conference on U.S. Immigration Reform, with Special Reference to New York City
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The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) in cooperation with The Levin Institute, SUNY CONFERENCE ON U.S. IMMIGRATION REFORM, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO NEW YORK CITY 3 March 2011 Speaker Biographies MR. EDWARD ALDEN is the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, specializing in U.S. competitiveness. His expertise includes U.S. immigration and visa policies, U.S. trade policy and the impact of homeland security policies on U.S. economic competitiveness. Before joining the Council, Mr. Alden was the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times, writing on U.S. economic issues, trade policy and homeland security. Mr. Alden was also a senior reporter with the Vancouver Sun specializing in labor and employment issues and the managing editor of the newsletter Inside US Trade, widely recognized as the leading source of reporting on U.S. trade policies. He has won several national and international awards for his reporting. Mr. Alden has done numerous TV and radio appearances as an analyst on political and economic issues, including News Hour with Jim Lehrer, McLaughlin Group, NPR, the BBC, CNN and MSNBC. Mr. Alden holds a master's degree in international relations from the University of California, Berkeley, and has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of British Columbia. He was the winner of numerous academic awards, including a Mellon fellowship in the humanities and a Macarthur Foundation graduate fellowship. MR. JAGDISH BHAGWATI is University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT (1991-93), Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO. He has served on the Expert Group appointed by the Director General of the WTO on the Future of the WTO and the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the future of UNCTAD. Professor Bhagwati has published more than three hundred articles and has authored or edited over fifty volumes; he also writes frequently for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times, as well as reviews for The New Republic and The Times Literary Supplement. Professor Bhagwati is described as the most creative international trade theorist of his generation and is a leader in the fight for freer trade. His most recent book, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004), has attracted worldwide acclaim. Five volumes of his scientific writings and two of his public policy essays have been published by MIT press. The recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, he has also received several prizes and honorary degrees, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star). A native of India, Professor Bhagwati attended Cambridge University where he graduated in 1956 1 with a first in Economics Tripos. He then continued to study at MIT and Oxford returning to India in 1961 as Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and then as Professor of International Trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to MIT in 1968, leaving it twelve years later as the Ford International Professor of Economics to join Columbia. He is married to Padma Desai, the Gladys and Ronald Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems at Columbia University and a scholar of Russian and other former socialist countries' transition problems. They have one daughter, Anuradha Kristina. MICHAEL J. BLOOMBERG is the 108th Mayor of the City of New York. Born on February 14, 1942 in Boston and raised by middle class parents in Medford, Massachusetts, he was taught at an early age the values of hard work and civic responsibility. He attended Johns Hopkins University, where he paid his tuition by taking loans and working as a parking lot attendant during the summer. After college, he went on to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 1966, he was hired by Salomon Brothers to work on Wall Street. He quickly rose through the ranks at Salomon, where he oversaw equity trading and sales before heading up the firm's information systems. His work with information systems gave him a window into how technology could create competitive advantages. When Salomon was acquired in 1981, he was let go from the firm. With a vision of an information company that would use emerging technology to bring transparency and efficiency to the buyers and sellers of financial securities, he began a small startup company called Bloomberg LP. Today, Bloomberg LP has over 285,000 subscribers to its financial news and information service in over 160 countries around the globe. Headquartered in New York City, the company has more than 11,000 employees worldwide. As his company grew, Michael Bloomberg started directing more of his attention to philanthropy, donating his time and resources to many different causes. He has sat on the boards of numerous charitable, cultural, and educational institutions, including Johns Hopkins University, where, as chairman of the board, he helped build the Bloomberg School of Public Health into one of the world's leading institutions of public health research and training. Already deeply involved in civic affairs, he officially entered public life in 2001, when he entered the race for Mayor of the City of New York. His election came just two months after the tragic attacks of 9/11, a time when many believed that crime would return, businesses would flee, and New York might never recover. Instead, Mayor Bloomberg built on the spirit of unity that defined the city after the attacks and led New York to a faster and stronger recovery than anyone had expected. In his first term, Mayor Bloomberg cut crime 20 percent; created jobs by revitalizing neighborhoods and attracting new investment; unleashed a building boom of affordable housing; expanded parks and worked to revitalize the waterfront; implemented ambitious public health strategies, including the successful ban on smoking in restaurants and bars; and expanded support for arts and cultural organizations. In addition, fulfilling a campaign promise, he won control of New York's schools from the broken Board of Education, and began turning around the nation's largest school district by raising standards and holding schools accountable for success. As a result, graduation rates have increased by more than 20 percent, and reading and math scores have both risen to record levels. In 2005, Mayor Bloomberg was re-elected by a diverse coalition of support that stretched across the political spectrum. In the first half of his second term, while balancing the budget and driving unemployment to a record low, Mayor Bloomberg took on a number of new challenges. He launched innovative programs to combat poverty, encourage work, and help people acquire the skills they need to build careers. He began a far-reaching campaign to fight global warming and give New York City the cleanest air of any major U.S. city. And he co-founded a bipartisan coalition of 15 mayors - which has grown to more than 500 mayors - to keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals and off city streets. When the 2008 financial crisis hit and the national economy entered a serious recession, the Mayor launched a Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan to bring the City through the downturn as quickly as possible. That plan has helped New York City avoid the level of job losses that many experts had 2 forecast and that other cities experienced. After winning re-election in 2009, the Mayor launched new initiatives to support small businesses, "green" the city's buildings, help families avoid losing their homes to foreclosure, improve public health, and continue making the safest large city in America even safer. He also launched the "Partnership for a New American Economy," a coalition of mayors and business leaders from across the country that will make the economic case for sensible immigration reform. Mayor Bloomberg is the father of two daughters, Emma and Georgina. MR. JONATHAN BOWLES became director of the Center for an Urban Future in 2005 after serving as the organization’s research director for nearly seven years. During his 12 years at the Center, he has written extensively about key economic trends facing New York and its five boroughs, the importance of diversifying New York’s economy, the value of small businesses to cities and the economic challenges facing the middle class, the working poor and those on the city’s margins. The reports and commentaries he has authored, from a widely acclaimed 2007 study about the impact immigrant entrepreneurs are having on cities’ economies to a report about what Staten Island should do to grow and diversify its economy, have been covered in publications ranging from The Economist to The Washington Post. In 2008, he served on Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Small Business Task Force to examine the threats facing mom and pop retailers in the borough. In 2006, City Hall News named him one of 35 “Rising Stars” Under 40. In 2005, Time Out New York named him “New York’s Finest Troublemaker.” Before joining the Center, he worked as research director for former New York State Senator Franz Leichter and spent time as a freelance journalist. He lives in Queens with his wife and his two kids. MR. JOSEPH CHAMIE is currently Director of Research at the Center for Migration Studies, New York, and Editor of the International Migration Review.