- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of State of Affairs with Steve Adubato has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with a very important conversation about immigration with Amy Torres, Executive Director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

Amy, good to have you with us.

- Thank you so much, Steve, for having me.

- Put things in perspective.

We're taping at the end of June 2023.

What is Title 42 and where is it today?

- Sure, Steve.

So it's certainly not lost on me that today's conversation is happening on World Refugee Day.

We are in June, which is Immigrant Heritage Month.

And I think it's really important to understand that colloquially, we sort of use words like refugee and asylum seeker to describe people who are fleeing for their own safety, right?

Trying to protect themselves, trying to protect their loved ones.

But, it's really to important to understand that in US immigration policy, these words, refugee, asylee, they're actually very restrictive, coded definitions that change over time.

And we saw that with Title 42, right?

There was a real restriction on the internationally-recognized right to asylum.

There were barriers put in place that made it very difficult to file for asylum.

And we saw it again when Title 42 ended and the Biden Administration proposed their own new restrictions that, in many ways, went further than Title 42 to make it even more difficult to file for asylum, to come to the US, and stay here and seek safety.

I think we've heard a lot over the last few months about a border crisis or a migration crisis, but really what we're facing in the United States is a policy crisis.

We have a deeply broken immigration system that means that it's more difficult than ever to try to come to the United States and even more difficult once you're here to be able to legally stay here.

- But Amy, can't we have both a crisis at the border and a terrible situation in terms of immigration reform, which has not happened, regardless of all the rhetoric around it?

Can't we have both?

Aren't there both situations?

- I think it's one and the same.

It is a crisis of border policy.

Look, I'm a Rutgers student.

My first internship was on Ellis Island in the Immigration History Museum, and it may surprise many folks to hear that US policy right now for immigration is more restrictive than it's ever been.

When folks say things, like, "My family came here the right way," or even, "I came here the right way," over the last 15 to 20 years, we have a radically different change in how we define migration.

So whereas in that golden era, you really only needed to buy your ticket on a ship, right, or a boat.

That's all you needed.

You didn't need an employer to sponsor you.

You didn't need existing family members to sponsor you.

There weren't caps on families for how many people they could sponsor.

Those are all the reality of our immigration system today.

And if you were to fail your interview or if there were to be any issues in your application process, you can now, under the new Biden policies, be banned from applying again for the next five years.

And look, it's every single facet of our immigration system from entry at the border, all the way to applying for naturalization.

In New Jersey alone, at the end of 2022, there were over 41,000 backlogged naturalization cases.

41,000.

That's nearly the same size as this year's graduating class at Rutgers.

So we're really looking at a whole system failure to address these issues.

And we see it manifest, yes, at the border, but we also see it manifest when people fall out of status because they're applying for things that don't get processed in time because, again, from top-down, the system is broken.

- Amy, what do you think the implications are when someone who is an illegal immigrant, someone here who is not here through the legal process, is involved in a crime and there is appropriately so significant media attention?

Now, some media organizations have a propensity to cover those cases however they choose to cover them.

Someone might argue disproportionately.

That being said, to what degree do you believe that contributes to and what else contributes to what is clearly an anti-immigrant sentiment in this country?

- Yeah, I think let's start there, Steve, because I think the anti-immigrant statement is holding hostage this larger conversation about what it means to seek justice, seek belonging, to include people in the United States.

I think it all gets so wrapped up in this conversation that is, in many ways, engaging in the root of that discriminatory conversation is a losing battle in itself.

We should recognize, and it is the case, that we have a criminal legal system that deals with criminal cases and we have an immigration system that deals with immigration cases.

But what actually happens is the immigration system feeds off of holes and gaps that exist in our criminal legal system so that people can be denied due process.

Let's say I go out to party with friends on a Friday night and someone tries to start a fight with me in a bar and accuses me of assault.

If I am not a US citizen, ICE could look at me and say, "Look..." - Tell everyone who and what ICE is, please, Amy.

- Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

So ICE could say, "Look, you've been charged," regardless of whether you have an attorney, regardless of if the charges are dropped, regardless of anything that happens, even if you're found not guilty, right?

Or if you're convicted and served your sentence, you can be deported or you can be detained.

So essentially, what they're doing is undermining our existing criminal legal system by trying to rip folks away from the due process laws that we have in hand.

But I think what is actually another part of this conversation, Steve, is people talk a lot about trafficking, they talk about concerns with smuggling.

Those are very real and valid concerns.

But if you care about trafficking, stopping trafficking, stopping smuggling, you should care that restrictive immigration policy actually increases the opportunities for those folks who are trafficking folks in, exploiting people, smuggling.

In some languages, they're called coyotes; in some others, they're called snakeheads.

It increases the opportunities for those folks to take advantage of people who are legitimately seeking safety and have fewer, and fewer, and fewer opportunities in the US to do so.

- Real quick on this.

There are governors in places, Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis in Texas and Florida and others who have proactively, assertively put immigrants, those who are coming in on buses and ship them to places around the country.

Talk about it.

- You said it yourself, Steve.

These are governors who are chartering their own private planes, their own buses, they're purchasing their own tickets.

It's governors, heads of individual states, many of whom have 2024 political ambitions.

It's governors that are making this decision.

It is not the federal government, right?

If we were to truly be seeing this like border crisis or these words that they're using, like overrun, overwhelmed, right?

We would see the federal government step in, but it's not.

It's individual governors who are exploiting people at the most vulnerable point in their lifetime for political gain.

They are taking people, often selling them false promises, and then it's not that they're sending them to any old place.

They choose places that they think will score them political points: sanctuary cities, places like outside the Vice President's home, Martha's Vineyard.

There's all of these places that they think are gotcha destinations to prove their own points that are also often deeply rooted in racism about what they think is happening with immigration.

The truth is, since Title 42's end, there has not been a meaningful increase in folks that are applying for asylum at the border.

And so, we're seeing these people who are, again, at very vulnerable moments in their lives being exploited for political gain.

- Amy, let's continue the conversation in a future segment.

It's complex, it's important, and it's not going away.

Amy Torres, Executive Director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

Thank you, Amy.

- Thank you so much, Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by Peter Rosario, President and CEO of La Casa de Don Pedro based in Newark, New Jersey.

A terrific not-for-profit organization.

Peter, good to see you, my friend.

- Good seeing you as well, Steve.

Thank you for having us.

- We put up the website, tell everyone what La Casa is.

- So, La Casa de Don Pedro is the largest Latinx led agency in the state of New Jersey.

We're proud to celebrate 50 years of mission-driven visionary service around three central pillars, early childhood, tantamount to this discussion.

Healthy homes, which is lead abatement, lead remediation, utility assistance, and a lot of other weatherization work that we do.

And finally, community empowerment, which is our pillar that we really believe in fostering self-sufficiency on a pathway to black and brown excellence for all Newark residents.

- You know that we're very much involved in the childcare issue in terms of creating greater public awareness around affordable, accessible, quality childcare.

Our initiative, the website will come up, Reimagine Child Care.

The state of childcare in mid, as we tape this, 2023, particularly in urban communities and the community that you serve, disproportionately Latino, Hispanic community in Newark.

- Incredibly fragile, probably even more fragile than it was at the height of the pandemic.

I think we're really concerned about the ability to operate programs after the stabilization grants, after the extra reimbursement rates end in December, and we have not heard a cohesive plan from the state on how, we don't need to stabilize childcare.

We need to reform childcare delivery in the state once and for all.

So, it's very fragile.

And I think, I'm already closing three centers come September, and I think there's gonna be more unless the state really comes up with a comprehensive plan to reform childcare.

- Peter, what happens when you close those centers?

What happens to the people, to those children, to those parents, and to the larger community?

- We destabilize communities economically.

I think the challenge with the childcare debate that I think we're all falling short on is this is economic justice, this is environmental, this is economic development, and this is workforce development.

And right now we flippantly think that when a childcare center closes, that's just a social service program closing.

It really is less people getting back to work.

And we are on a drastic state of unemployment all across the state, and this is how you can get people back to work.

And I really want to change the conversation in terms of economic development and getting people back to work.

- Shift gears, Peter, what is the Praxis Test?

You're calling for the removal of the Praxis Test when it comes to the list of teaching certification requirements for early child education.

What is a Praxis Test?

- So, it's a standardized test.

It's basically like the SAT.

So there's two components to it, a core component, and then whatever subject you're certified in.

For early childhood, it's a P3 Certification.

Last year the state did a pilot program, but they only removed one of the Praxis exams.

I think we need to remove both because it's a systemically, just like all standardized testing, it is not reflective of your ability to do the job, and it holds back black, brown, and increasingly, white teachers.

You may not know the Praxis in your home, but if you talk to anyone who's trying to be a teacher and has left the profession, or has decided to find another career change, they well aware of the barrier that the Praxis is, and it would immediately open up- I would've been able to fire five teachers immediately, and I wasn't able to hire any of them because of the Praxis.

- Well, where did the whole idea for this test come from?

- It's part of the Department of Education's requirements to become a certified teacher in the state of New Jersey.

- To what degree-?

You know, it's interesting, when it comes to maternal health, you and I were in a meeting recently together talking about urban, particularly Newark healthcare issues, and the issue of maternal health came up.

And the first lady, Tammy Murphy, has been very involved in this issue.

I'm gonna connect it back to childcare, early childhood.

She's been outspoken, she's been a leader when it comes to maternal health.

To what degree do you believe the Murphy administration is committed to and understands the issues you're talking about right now?

Not just the Praxis Test, but early childhood, quality, accessible, affordable childcare?

Please, Peter.

- Again, I think it's an A for effort.

I think it's a B- to probably a C+ in terms of coordination and execution.

We have the New Jersey Economic Development Authority who issued an RFP for capital grants.

We're still waiting for those dollars.

A lot of us didn't apply because there was a lot of confusion on the rollout.

We're still waiting on the answer for what's gonna happen to enrollment versus attendance.

And, you know, I think the time has come to really develop and call for public hearings on reimagining early childhood, the pathway for mothers and for children from prenatal to five.

I can't, it sounds hyperbolic, but I can't be more candid about it.

- But, Peter, hold on.

State Senator Teresa Ruiz, who comes, actually, who's a leader in the senate, leader in the legislature, a leader when it comes to early childhood education and childcare, who also is from the community that you serve.

She's been a leader in this regard, and has a package of legislation to do a lot of this, no?

- Absolutely.

Senator Ruiz is one of the biggest champions in this fight.

But I think even she would say that she's trying to piecemeal and carve out different wins, and she's probably had more victories than anyone else.

But, again, when the system is fundamentally broken, carve-outs is not enough.

And I think we really have to look at, I'll give you a perfect example.

We have these CCVC, Community Care Voucher Center slots.

There's only 3,000 in the state.

Essex County has 800 of them.

These are the slots that get people back to work.

They don't fall under the traditional definition of a subsidy, but that's 3,000.

Think about how underemployed we are in this state.

That should minimally be 15 to 25,000 slots to get people back to work.

And it's not an expense, it is getting people back to work, and it makes the economy move again.

And we need to get people back to work and moving.

- Peter Rosario, President, CEO, La Casa de Don Pedro.

Peter, thank you, my friend.

Appreciate it.

We'll continue this discussion.

- Thank you so much.

- Stay with us, we'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- All right, folks, everything we wanted, needed to know, didn't know where to ask about AI, artificial intelligence.

Dr. David Bader, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Data Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology, one of our higher ed partners.

Doctor, good to see you.

- Good to see you too, Steve, I'd love to talk about AI.

- Good, 30 seconds or less, what the heck is it?

- AI is a fantastic tool that can learn a lot from data and then be able to help us by using that data to improve our lives.

- Okay, got it, you got a bunch of people around here in our production team freaking out, asking the question, "Am I going to lose my job to AI?"

How do you talk to those folks?

Including, by the way, I'm worried about myself too, go ahead.

- You're not replaceable, Steve, so you have nothing to worry about.

- Good.

- But AI certainly is going to change the workforce, many of the introductory level jobs that we have are where we can learn and repeat that process, maybe AI will assist those folks.

We already see that happening in a number of sectors from driving cars to writing and places where it is really a repeatable task.

But, otherwise, I think in much of the workforce, AI will be an assistive technology.

AI is going to help us write better, it's going to help us reason better, and it's really exciting to be able to use that in day-to-day practice.

- You know, Doctor, I appreciate everything you're saying, but there are some involved in the business of AI who have said publicly in testimony, before Congress, there'll be a whole range of hearings as we move forward because Congress and the Government is trying to figure out their role in all this, there are those in the AI industry or people involved in AI who say, "You know what?

We're worried, we're concerned about the parameters of AI, the limits of AI, the regulation of AI, and frankly, the potential dangers, please talk about it.

- That's a fantastic conversation to have.

And I think because AI is being developed at such an accelerated pace, we've seen changes in the last six months that we haven't seen in the course of humanity that there is some concern to think about it and to make sure that it's regulated properly.

And I think those discussions will take place.

It may be for the next year or two years where we figure out, how do we have more responsible AI?

How is it used correctly?

How does society as a whole talk about AI and accept its uses?

So it is a conversation that's very important but I'm optimistic that those will be errors that will be worked out in (garbled).

- Finish your point, I'm sorry, 'cause I'm about to ask you about elections and misinformation, so go ahead.

- So with AI, again, it was just six months ago that ChatGPT dropped and had over a hundred million users in it its first month, testing out this new generative AI.

And so, that conversation is just starting around the country and around the world as to how we want to use these new tools that we have.

Of course, like anything that's new, we have to figure out, what are the boundaries on it?

How can we use this in a responsible fashion?

What do we have to understand about the risks whether it's used in a courtroom, whether it's used in medicine, whether it's used in education?

So we have to understand those things, and like any new technology, time will help work out those details.

- So let me lay this out for you, and I need your reaction to it.

So the graphic will come up on the screen right now for a series we've been doing for years called "Democracy at a Crossroads" for a lot of reasons.

But now, let's talk about elections, information, credible, legitimate information to voters before they vote, and AI.

If AI, if artificial intelligence has the ability to have Joe Biden or Donald Trump or anyone else running for major office to not actually use a quote from them directly, but put a 30 second spot together on broadcast and a whole range of social media, digital platforms, in which it manufactures what that person said or did and puts it out as information for voters to decide before they vote, but it's false, it's been manufactured through AI, it's misinformation, how the heck do we manage that?

- That is a real threat, and I agree with you, that's one of the biggest concerns that we have with upholding our democracy and understanding information and disinformation.

There are many bad actors out there who are working on that right now that that's happened in the past, and I think AI enables that to happen at an even greater rate going into the future.

So we have to combat that.

I think that takes some work in cybersecurity.

For instance, what we do at New Jersey Institute of Technology and the great universities around the state of New Jersey are working on ways to detect, to combat it, and also to prevent that type of disinformation from spreading.

So humans naturally believe video in ways that it is more natural than, say, printed text.

And so, when you see a video, it's very natural to believe that it's real.

And this generative AI, as you mentioned, can generate real voices, real imagery that is nearly impossible to detect from the original.

But since it's generated, we do have algorithms that are able to understand that it is a fabricated image and to be able to detect and and flag that.

But it's gonna take a lot of hard work.

Both sides are going to escalate and we'll have to get better and better at preventing that disinformation.

- Let me ask you this because a lot of what you're saying leads me to this question.

I'm a student of leadership, we do a sister program with my colleague, Mary Gamba, called "Lessons in Leadership", and I've been researching, thinking about and have to write about in the near future the subject of artificial intelligence and leadership, meaning, what does AI mean for the leaders of today and tomorrow?

What do you believe it means to those of us in leadership positions, particularly those of us who wanna be better at this leadership game?

- AI offers this fantastic ability to learn what information is important, for instance, to understand best practices, to understand areas that we may not have had expertise in previously.

So as a leader, we may want to understand a current issue or particular topic.

And I think that's where AI really shines to be able to help inform, to be able to help provide information in a way that's targeted not to the masses but to target you individually, to a way that you like to get that information as well.

So AI really has the ability to impact individuals, to be personalized, and to really give you a capability of understanding to augment your memory, to augment your knowledge in ways that haven't been seen before.

So I'm very optimistic with leadership, we'll see benefits to having AI all around us in all of the actions that we take to understand policies, to understand impacts of decisions and so on.

- This is the first of many conversations we're gonna have about artificial intelligence.

One of those conversations will also be about AI and income disparities, and the fact that different people have different access to technology in certain forms.

Dr. David Bader, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Data Science at NJIT, one of our higher ed partners.

Dr. Bader, thank you so much for joining us.

- Great to talk with you, Steve.

- I'm Steve Adubato, we gotta learn more about AI, see you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato Is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let'’s be healthy together.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

Valley Bank.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

Choose New Jersey.

NJ Best, The North Ward Center.

And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by NJBIZ.

- At the Turrell Fund, We know childcare creates transformative early learning experiences for young children, and helps families succeed.

Childcare is essential for the economy, driving financial growth and sustainability across all sectors.

The Turrell Fund envisions a New Jersey in which every infant and toddler has access to high quality, affordable childcare In order to grow, develop and thrive.

Our children are our future.

For more information, visit TurrellFund.org.