Featured Speaker: Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ)
Welcome and Introduction by: John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund
Brief remarks and Q&A moderated by: Tamar Jacoby, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute
As Congress wrestles to deliver immigration reform that works for Americans and immigrants alike, communities across the nation look to leaders from both parties to deliver meaningful and realistic immigration reform.
On Wednesday, June 27 from 9:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Manhattan Institute will host Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) to give us her perspective on the current legislative debate. Gov. Napolitano is someone who confronts the issue of undocumented immigration from ground zero of the immigration debate: her home state of Arizona. She will talk about her vision of immigration reform and why it is important for Congress to enact meaningful legislation now.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 Program: 9:45am to 11:00am Admission is free.
National Press Club Ballroom 529 14th Street NW Washington, DC 20045 Map & Directions
Nearest Metro: Red Line to Metro Center
To RSVP, please email John Neurohr at [email protected].
For more information, please call 202-741-6246.
Biographies
Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) Named one of America’s Top Five Governors by Time Magazine, Janet Napolitano has led Arizona into a new era of prosperity and record growth. The former U.S. Attorney and Arizona Attorney General, Gov. Napolitano was re-elected to her second term in 2006 with the most votes in state history.
When she took office in 2003, Arizona faced a billion-dollar deficit; through smart management, she turned that deficit into a record billion-dollar surplus, without raising taxes—proving that you can be fiscally responsible while investing in the future.
She’s fought for the issues that matter—quality schools, affordable health care, sensible economic development, and a government that is run efficiently and responsibly.
She’s also a national leader in addressing illegal immigration. She was the first to call for the National Guard at the border at federal expense, and today thousands of National Guard members from around the country are stationed at the border providing critical support to the Border Patrol. She’s led the effort to redesign Arizona’s ports of entry to better detect illegal cross-border activity and has deployed new technology to track stolen vehicles that transport illegal immigrants and drugs on Arizona’s highways. And she’s been a leader on national security, creating a state-wide law enforcement intelligence center and opening the first state counterterrorism center in the country to keep our communities and borders safe.
Gov. Napolitano is the Chair of the National Governors Association—the first woman in history to hold this position.
John Podesta
John Podesta is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund and visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Podesta served as chief of staff to President William J. Clinton from October 1998 until January 2001, where he was responsible for directing, managing, and overseeing all policy development, daily operations, congressional relations, and staff activities of the White House. He coordinated the work of cabinet agencies with a particular emphasis on the development of federal budget and tax policy, and served in the president’s cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council.
From 1997 to 1998 Podesta served as both an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff. Earlier, from January 1993 to 1995, he was assistant to the president, staff secretary and a senior policy adviser on government information, privacy, telecommunications security, and regulatory policy. Podesta previously held a number of positions on Capitol Hill including: counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas A. Daschle; chief counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee; chief minority counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Podesta is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Knox College.
Tamar Jacoby
Tamar Jacoby is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where she writes extensively on immigration and citizenship. She is a leading conservative voice in the media and elsewhere in favor of immigration reform, and works to organize the center-right behind reform proposals taking shape in Washington.
Her 1998 book, Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration (Basic Books), tells the story of race relations in three American cities—New York, Detroit, and Atlanta. A more recent book, Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American, was published by Basic Books in February 2004. Jacoby’s articles and essays have been published in a variety of periodicals, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, The New York Review of Books, Dissent, and Foreign Affairs.
In addition to her published writings and media commentary, in the past few years she has been working behind the scenes in Washington to help develop immigration policy, writing policy papers, testifying in Congress, and working with a range of congressional offices.
Before joining the Manhattan Institute, from 1987 to 1989, she was a senior writer and justice editor for Newsweek, and between 1981 and 1987, she was the deputy editor of The New York Times op-ed page. Before that, she was assistant to the editor of The New York Review of Books.
A graduate of Yale University, she has taught at Yale, Cooper Union, and the New School University. She lives in Washington, D.C.