The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Mad Cow Disease, the fears and realities, Margaret Warner gets two perspectives [Focus - Mad Cow Disease]; is immigration good for America [Focus - Alien Nation], Kwame Holman reports from Congress, Elizabeth Farnsworth runs a debate; and how should we remember Edmund Muskie? We get answers from two men [Finally - In Memoriam] who knew him well, former Senator George Mitchell and our own Mark Shields. It all follows the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The Federal Reserve Board decided today to leave interest rates unchanged. They did not issue a statement following their meeting in Washington. They do so only when they raise or lower interest rates. At the Capitol, The Senate Banking Committee held hearings on nominees for three Fed positions. Chairman Alan Greenspan has been nominated for a third term. President Clinton chose his budget director, Alice Rivlin, to be vice chairman, and economics professor Laurence Meyer to be a board member. Greenspan was asked the reason for not changing current interest rates.

ALAN GREENSPAN, Chairman, Federal Reserve Board: The simplest, Mr. Chairman, is to indicate that the economy seems at this particular stage in recent years to be running at a reasonably good clip and, indeed, judging from the state of the labor markets, clearly, the unemployment rate has been lower than it's been at any time in the recent past.

MR. LEHRER: Chairman Greenspan was also asked about a draft report critical of the Federal Reserve released yesterday by a group of Senators. The report suggested the Fed could spend less and return billions of dollars to the Treasury. Greenspan challenged that, saying the Federal Reserve was well run. There were Presidential primaries in California, Nevada, and the state of Washington today. Bob Dole was expected to win big over Pat Buchanan. The Senate Majority Leader already has more than enough delegates to win the Republican Presidential nomination. He worked on Senate business in Washington today. He told reporters Republicans, including Buchanan, should unite to beat President Clinton in the Fall.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: I would hope that if Pat Buchanan doesn't do well today, that he might reconsider, get behind my campaign, my candidacy, bring the party together, and go on to beat Bill Clinton. I thought that was why we were all running in the primary was to beat Bill Clinton, not to make it more difficult for the presumptive nominee to defeat Bill Clinton.

MR. LEHRER: One hundred and ninety-seven delegates are at stake today in California, Nevada, and Washington State. Back in Washington, D.C., today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered increased testing for Mad Cow Disease. The disease has infected beef that may have caused the deaths of at least eight people in Britain. A Department spokeswoman said U.S. inspectors already check all cattle to be slaughtered for signs of the disease. She said no new cases have been found here. The U.S. has banned the import of British beef since 1989. In Britain today, the National Farmers Union demanded the government slaughter a portion of the country's cattle. The union said it would calm public fears about Mad Cow Disease, also known as BSE. The Secretary of Health said yesterday such a step was unnecessary but in Parliament today, the political parties blamed each other for the crisis. We have more in this report from Hugh Pim of Independent Television News. HUGH PIM, ITN: "We're dealing with the BSE scare sensibly and rationally." That was the message John Major took to the Commons this afternoon, but he was soon embroiled in a bitter battle with Labor, Tony Blair mocking the behavior of Mr. Major's cabinet colleagues.

TONY BLAIR, Opposition Party Leader: His agriculture minister is speculating about the killing of 4 1/2 million cows, and now suddenly the health secretary appears to bristle with certainty and tells us that it's the public that's mad, not the cows. I have to say to him that this matter has been handled with quite mind- boggling incompetence.

JOHN MAJOR, Prime Minister, Britain: I would have thought that the right honorable gentleman and his honorable friends had done enough damage in the last few weeks to stop trying to create health scares by inviting responses from any minister that can only competently come on the basis of scientific advice.

TONY BLAIR: Does he not realize this country expects him as prime minister to take responsibility?

HUGH PIM: No, said Mr. Major. It was Labor from benches who were fueling public fears.

JOHN MAJOR: If they have undermined confidence to the extent that there is a serious problem, I believe the agricultural industry and the public will know precisely who to blame.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In Billings, Montana, today, two leaders of an anti- government militia group called the Free Men were arraigned in federal court. They were arrested yesterday on charges involving fraudulent checks and money orders. Agents are trying to persuade other fugitives at the group's compound near Jordan, Montana, to surrender peacefully. The group rejects the legitimacy of government. Neighbors said they are heavily armed. In Northern Arizona, a man-made flood raced toward the Grand Canyon. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt today opened the first valve at the Glen Canyon Dam North of the Grand Canyon. Eventually, 117 billion gallons of Colorado River water will be released over the next seven days. The artificial flood is designed to mimic natural flooding which occurred before the 33-year-old dam was built. The action is expected to restore fish and wildlife that once populated the area.

BRUCE BABBITT, Secretary of Interior: When I watched them build this dam back in the 60's, it never occurred to me or anybody else that it had any relationship at all to what was happening in the Grand Canyon 300 miles downstream.

MR. LEHRER: Three million people in nearby states rely on the dam for power and fifteen million people use water from its reserves. On another water story today, the U.S. Geological Survey said high levels of bacteria from human and animal waste were found in the Mississippi River. A study concluded the contamination was especially unsafe for swimming and other sports. Officials said insufficient treatment of sewage was responsible. Overseas today, Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto said he would renew the leases for American military bases on Okinawa. The governor of Japan's outermost island has so far refused to sign them, saying Okinawans are opposed to the U.S. presence there. A Japanese court yesterday authorized Hashimoto to renew the leases if the governor did not do so by Thursday. Nearly 30,000 U.S. troops are stationed there. A Navy spokesman said today the aircraft carrier Independence will leave the waters off Taiwan Thursday. It will return to its home port in Japan. The carrier had been sent to the Taiwan Strait to monitor Chinese military exercises. They concluded yesterday. The U.S. officials said the U.S. carrier Nimitz will remain in the area to conduct routine operations until further notice. Two prominent Americans died today. David Packard was the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard electronics giant. He died of pneumonia at Palo Alto, California. Packard and William Hewlett started their company in a garage in 1938, with $538. Last year, the Silicon Valley firm had 100,000 employees and $31 billion in revenues. Packard was 83 years old. Edmund Muskie died this morning at a Washington hospital. He suffered a heart attack while recovering from surgery. He was a Democratic Senator and Governor of Maine, a candidate for vice president and for president, and he served as secretary of state in the last year of the Carter administration. He would have been 82 years old on Thursday. We'll have more on Edmund Muskie at the end of the program tonight. Between now and then, we'll look at Mad Cow Disease and debate immigration reform. FOCUS - MAD COW DISEASE

MR. LEHRER: We do begin tonight with that Mad Cow Disease story. It is actually two diseases: one affecting cows, the other people. So far, both have been found mostly in Britain. The possibilities of it spreading have triggered new safety measures in the United States and around the world. Margaret Warner has the story.

MS. WARNER: These are British cattle afflicted with an illness commonly known as Mad Cow Disease. Over time, the disease rots the animal's brain. Its scientific name is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE for short. The disease struck the British beef and dairy industry in the late 1980's. Its incidence has now declined by 70 percent in Britain, but ever since that outbreak, the United States has banned beef imports from Britain, and Mad Cow Disease has never been detected in any herds in this country. This man, seen in a British home video, is suffering from another brain-rotting illness called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Ten cases of this disease have been diagnosed in Britain over the past two years. Just last week, a panel of British scientists that advises the government suggested a link between the two diseases. Here's what the British Health Secretary told Parliament about the scientific advisory report.

STEPHEN DORRELL, Health Secretary, Britain: [March 20] There remains no scientific proof that BSE can be transmitted to man by beef, but the committee have concluded that the most likely explanation at present is that these cases are linked to exposure to BSE before the introduction of the specified bovine offal ban in 1989.

MS. WARNER: 1989 is when the British government banned cattle feed fortified with animal innards. That statement by the health secretary touched off panic in Britain and triggered a ban on British beef by other countries in the European Union. But yesterday, the British government said its beef was safe and that it was not taking any new measures to control the cow disease in its own herds. Today, the U.S. Agriculture Department said it would step up inspections of U.S. cattle herds but said it had no reason to suspect the cow disease had spread here. Separately, the World Health Organization said it will sponsor a meeting of international scientists in Geneva next week to study possible links between the cow and human diseases.

MS. WARNER: For more on this story, we're joined now by Dr. Will Hueston of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he served on the advisory committee in Britain on looking into BSE, and Dr. Laura Manuelidis, head of the neuropathology section of the Yale School of Medicine. Welcome, both of you.

DR. WILL HUESTON, U.S. Department of Agriculture: Thank you.

MS. WARNER: Thanks for being with us. Dr. Hueston, explain to us exactly what is Mad Cow Disease, when did it first appear?

DR. WILL HUESTON: Well, this disease, which is technically called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, is a brain disease of cattle, and it is a new disease that was first identified in Great Britain in 1986. This disease over time causes the degeneration of parts of the brain of cows, so the cows start acting differently, oddly, show apprehension or aggression, or upward response to sounds and to changes in environment that beforehand were quite normal for them.

MS. WARNER: As we just saw in the video.

DR. WILL HUESTON: Yes.

MS. WARNER: Now, how common is this world wide, and where is it most common?

DR. WILL HUESTON: It's most common in Great Britain. 99.9 percent of all the cases that have ever been identified have been identified in Great Britain. They've had over 150,000 cases.

MS. WARNER: And what causes it?

DR. WILL HUESTON: It appears to be the result of the contamination of the animal feed that was provided to the cattle. So this animal feed contained rendered animal protein, in other words, recycled animal protein that contained the disease agent. Possibly it was the--an agent that causes a disease in sheep called Scrapey.

MS. WARNER: And I gather this is neither a virus nor a bacteria. What is it exactly? What's the nature of the disease?

DR. WILL HUESTON: Well, the nature of the disease is that this agent, and the agent is not completely characterized, causes a change in a normal brain protein, and that normal brain protein as it changes affects the way in which obviously the brain of the cow works, and that causes or leads to the behavior changes and also to these changes and ability to rise and some abnormal temperament.

MS. WARNER: And is there any way of detecting it before you see these behavioral changes in cows?

DR. WILL HUESTON: No. We have no test on the live animal. So what one does is watch the animals for changes in behavior over time, and then in Great Britain, any animal that is suspected to have this disease, BSE, is, in fact, euthanized and destroyed. And they look at the brain to confirm whether or not the--in fact, the animal was affected.

MS. WARNER: And I assume from that you're saying there's no cure or treatment?

DR. WILL HUESTON: No cure or treatment. Unfortunately, as a very sad consequence, it's always--once the cow becomes infected--it is a terminal disease.

MS. WARNER: Dr. Manuelidis, outline for us now the human disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, in the same way. Where is it most common? When did it first appear?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS, Yale School of Medicine: [Stamford, CT] Well, actually, it's been known for a long time, and it's a very rare disease. It usually only affects one to two people per million world wide, except certain people are more susceptible to the disease. Clearly, the--what's happened in England has shown that this is an infectious disease. This is not just a familial disease, although some people may be more susceptible to it. It's a degenerative brain disease that has a very rapid course. The problem is it has a very long latency, very much like HIV, so it can take years to be expressed, and meanwhile, animals and people can be infected with it.

MS. WARNER: Has the incidence increased at all anywhere in the world?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: Well, there's a focus in Slovakia that Carlton Gatiszek has written about, and that's again an infectious disease, is transmissible for cats. A number of cats have also become ill in England, about 70 as far as I know, and I think that the link between the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and the new human cases is on the basis of the fact that they're very young people now being affected. Usually only people who are over the age of 50 or so get this disease. And now you have a very unusual outbreak in people who are an average age of 27 years old.

MS. WARNER: I want to go back to the possible link, but first just tell me, you said earlier that in the human disease there were certain parts of the population more at risk. Who is that?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: Excuse me?

MS. WARNER: You said earlier that certain people were more at risk for getting the disease. Was this the age factor you talked about, or other things?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: Well, no, I think age is part of it, but I think there are certain people that have polymorphisms in something that's called the prion protein, some of us believe that probably this is a virus. Other people believe that this is a protein infectious agent. I think the proof is not there for either theory, but we know that there are people who have some polymorphisms.

MS. WARNER: Meaning what?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: Changes in their gene that they inherit that are more susceptible to this, so for instance, people who receive growth hormone who came down with the disease of the thousands of people who received contaminated lots of growth hormone, people who had these changes in their genome are more susceptible to the disease, although we're still seeing cases as far as 30 years after their exposure. Now, in England, in fact, most of the people have a very typical PRP profile.

MS. WARNER: What is a PRP profile?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: That's this particular protein. They don't have an unusual mutation in this protein, so it's--they're not really people whowould have a familial susceptibility.

MS. WARNER: I see. And that's what makes the British cases unusual, and--

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: The age and it's my understanding also the pathology and the clinical presentation are quite unusual. Apparently, the clinical course is unduly long, and also as far as I understand it, I haven't seen the primary data because, of course, the meeting was interrupted in Paris and their people went back to England, but apparently, there are a lot of placques in the brain. Now, these placques are very much like amyloid placques--

MS. WARNER: I'm sorry, your technical terminology I'm sure is leaving our viewers.

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: I'm sorry. There are--in Alzheimer's Disease you have these deposits of protein in the brain made by one main brain protein. Here you have another, which is made by a different brain protein.

MS. WARNER: Let me get Dr. Hueston back in this. Now, when the British--we just saw the British Health Secretary saying there was a possible link between these two. On what was that based? What do you think? Let me just ask Dr. Hueston, and I'll get back to you in just a minute. But what do you think is the likelihood that there is a link here?

DR. WILL HUESTON: Well, they have a Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in Great Britain, so they are monitoring the number of cases, and with this identification of this atypical form of CJD, they--

MS. WARNER: That Dr. Manuelidis--

DR. WILL HUESTON: That Dr. Manuelidis just explained, right--this atypical form, then the scientists advising the government were asked to go back and review these cases and review all the information about them to see if they could find any explanation for the atypical form. Unfortunately, unfortunately, they could find no identification with human growth hormone or any of the other known risk factors for CJD. Consequently, they came to government and said this is a new, this is a group of cases that shows some atypical clinical signs, some atypical brain abnormalities, and in the absence of any other explanation, we must evaluate whether or not there's a connection with this new cattle disease.

MS. WARNER: Dr. Manuelidis, what is your--your view of the likelihood of a link?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: I think most of us in this field, regardless of our views about the cause, believe that there's a very strong link and a strong likelihood that these cases were caused by an oral infection in the case of the young teenagers and maybe more direct infection in the case of the Avitar workers with infected bovine products.

MS. WARNER: From the period of time before 1989--

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: Right.

MS. WARNER: --when they changed the feed.

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: I should point out to you that the recent data that I've seen, BSE is not entirely eradicated, and some cases of BSE have slipped through.

MS. WARNER: Now--

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: I might mention one other thing. Dr. Hueston mentioned that when you see the clinical disease, in fact, that's fairly latent a disease, and you have the infection long before you see the clinical disease. So it's very difficult to recognize.

MS. WARNER: Now, Dr. Hueston, your--the USDA today announced they were stepping up testing here. What does that involve?

DR. WILL HUESTON: Essentially, it means revisiting our whole program as it relates to this disease in cattle. Now, I hope that your viewers are comforted by the fact that early when this disease was diagnosed or first diagnosed in Great Britain, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institute of Health, all working together, had been involved in looking at this disease since right after it was first identified in Great Britain. So we've had measures in place to prevent the entry of British cattle into the United States and to prevent any introduction of the agent through meat or products from Great Britain to the U.S.. And now we're re-looking at those. On the basis of this new evidence we're pulling together, again, researchers, industry scientists. We're pulling together CDC and NIH to make sure that we haven't missed something.

MS. WARNER: Dr. Manuelidis, briefly before we go, do you think there's any reason for Americans to change their eating patterns in any way?

DR. LAURA MANUELIDIS: Not at the present time, but I think what Dr. Hueston mentions about increased surveillance would be of great interest. I hope not.

MS. WARNER: Dr. Hueston, what about--anything Americans should- -

DR. WILL HUESTON: Well, I think Americans must recognize, we all must recognize that in choosing our diet that every dietary component has some risk, and we need to balance that risk. I've looked at all the data, myself. I'd make a personal decision. I was in Great Britain. As you know, I just returned last night. I had beef, British beef on the way home. I don't have any concerns about it for myself.

MS. WARNER: All right. Thank you both. We'll have to leave it there. Thanks.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the immigration debate and remembering Edmund Muskie. FOCUS - ALIEN NATION?

MR. LEHRER: Now on this California primary day a look at an issue that is hot there, immigration. Elizabeth Farnsworth is in charge.

MS. FARNSWORTH: In November 1994, Californians passed an initiative, Proposition 187, cutting off some health and social services,including access to public education to illegal aliens and their children. That initiative was put on "hold" by a federal court, but the vote helped set the stage for a national debate on immigration and major legislation in Congress. Kwame Holman reports.

MR. HOLMAN: California's border with Mexico provides entry into the United States for thousands of illegal immigrants every year. They cross rivers on foot, travel in the trunks of cars, and sometimes read head-long into traffic at official checkpoints hoping to get across. Once across, illegal immigrants have access to low-paying jobs, free public education, and are eligible for many of the same health benefits available to poor U.S. citizens. An estimated 43 percent of the nation's illegal immigrants are in California. Consequently, when the House of Representatives considered changing America's policy toward immigrants, California's congressional delegation dominated the debate.

REP. JOHN DOOLITTLE, [R] California: If our state is illustrative of anything, it's that illegal immigration is seriously out of control and consider these statistics that the California Department of Justice has provided: 98 percent of all illegal immigrants who are deported for committing felonies in California will eventually return to the state, and of that number, 40 percent will commit crimes again.

REP. XAVIER BECERRA, [D] California: In local communities, we have large immigrant populations or large populations of individuals, as I mentioned, like my parents who might look or sound foreign. There is a concern that some officials within the local law enforcement agencies may be a little bit too zealous.

MR. HOLMAN: Last Thursday, the House passed an immigration reform billby a wide margin, 333 to 87. It adds 5,000 agents to the Border Patrol, mandates building 14 miles of new security fence on the border South of San Diego. The bill simplifies deportation proceedings and imposes new penalties on people who try to stay in this country illegally. It also establishes a voluntary federal verification hotline for five states with large immigrant populations, allowing employers to check the resonant status of prospective employees. The bill prohibits states from offering federal welfare benefits to illegal immigrants and allows states to deny them public education. According to supporters of the bill, the new provisions will cut illegal entry into this country by half within the next five years.

REP. DUKE CUNNINGHAM, [R] California: Illegals should, if we can identify who they are, then we ought to give them a ticket out of here, out of this country. We ought to stop 'em at the border and if they're illegal in this country, I don't care if they're from China or from Ireland, with my national heritage, or whatever country, they ought to go back. And the only thing they deserve is a ticket out of here.

MR. HOLMAN: But what the House bill wouldn't do is change America's policy toward legal immigration. Texas Republican Lamar Smith, sponsor of the bill, had wanted substantial cuts in legal immigration.

REP. LAMAR SMITH, [R] Texas: A fundamental problem in our current immigration system is that more than 80 percent of all legal immigrants are now admitted without reference to their skills or education. 37 percent of recent immigrants lack a high school education compared to just 11 percent of those who are native born. Experts agree that this surplus of unskilled immigrants hurts those Americans who can least afford it, those at the lowest end of the economic ladder.

MR. HOLMAN: But a majority of members, led by Republican Dick Chrysler of Michigan, voted to knock out of the bill almost all provisions dealing with legal immigration.

REP. DICK CHRYSLER, [R] Michigan: Immigrants who go through all of the legal channels to come into this country should not be lumped into the same category as those who choose to ignore our laws and come into our country illegally. I agree with most of the illegal immigration reforms that are included in the bill, and I would like to vote for an immigration reform bill that cracks down on illegal immigration. But I cannot justify voting for drastic cuts in legal immigration because of the problems of illegal immigrations. These are clearly two distinct issues that must be kept separate.

REP. ANTHONY BEILENSON, [D] California: And the fact is, Mr. Chairman, that legal and illegal immigration are related, because they both affect the size of our country's population. And we are now letting too many people into our country. What Congress does with regard to both types of immigration will determine how many newcomers our communities will have to absorb, how fierce the competition for jobs will be, how much the quality of life in the United States will change in the coming decades.

REP. HOWARD BERMAN, [D] California: Eight out of ten Americans polled say deal with the problem of illegal immigration before you touch legal immigration. Legal immigration has been good for this country. Preserve that existing system. Don't tear it apart. Don't tell family unification apart.

MR. HOLMAN: Within the next few weeks, the Senate will consider two separate pieces of legislation dealing with both illegal and legal immigration. But at this point, the House has no legal immigration bill in the works, so any reform on that front is unlikely this year.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Here to discuss some of the key issues in the immigration debate are Cecilia Munoz, deputy vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights organization; Priscilla Labovitz, a Washington immigration lawyer; Harold Ezell, chairman of Americans Against Illegal Immigration and co-author of Proposition 187, the initiative designed to cut services to illegal immigrants in California; and George Borjas, professor of public policy at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Welcome to all of you. Mr. Ezell, why the big push for immigration reform? What is the problem, in your view? HAROLD EZELL, Americans Against Illegal Immigration: [Los Angeles] I think that our immigration policy must be in the national interest and up until now and the recommendations from the Commission on Immigration Reform, there's never really been a study made as to what is good--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Excuse me. That was the commission that you were on that came out with a study last year.

MR. EZELL: Yes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Headed by Barbara Jordan.

MR. EZELL: The Late Barbara Jordan, yes. And this commission made some very fair and balanced recommendations, and there's nobody on the commission to my knowledge that's against immigration. They're for legal immigration. And I don't think there's any debate over the issue that illegal immigration is not good for America.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But the push right now is because, in your view, both legal and illegal need reform, is that right?

MR. EZELL: I think that the issue of chain migration and the ongoing immigration queuing up of people who are not part of the nuclear family that makes the first entry into the United States under our immigration laws should not be considered as part of the removing and relocating of the family tree to America.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. Do you think there's a problem that needs to be fixed, Ms. Labovitz?

PRISCILLA LABOVITZ, Immigration Lawyer: We have a lot of problems, but I don't think this is the fix that would do it. When Mr. Ezell speaks of extended families or nuclear families, I don't think we're all using the same definitions. The legislation that's been proposed is described as reducing the immigration of extended families. However, current law says the only people who can come in are the--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Excuse me one minute. Before we get into legislation--we're going to deal with that later--is there a problem that needs immigration reform? Why is there such a push for immigration reform right now, in your view?

MS. LABOVITZ: Those are two different questions.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. Let's take the second question.

MS. LABOVITZ: Okay. I think there's a push right now because we have a lot of problems in our country. People feel insecure both in their homes and they feel insecure economically. They don't know what's happening, and these--those kinds of problems are very difficult to solve, and our leaders have had some difficulty with coming up with good solutions; however, it's a lot easier to propose something like Proposition 187, umm, and suggest that somehow if we reduce the benefits, we reduce the way--if we decrease the humanitarian--the humanity which we treat immigrants, that somehow our problems with go away, that if we could just get rid of these immigrants, then our economy would be on the road to, to new success. And I think the facts do not bear that out.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Borjas, what do you think about that?

GEORGE BORJAS, Harvard University: [Boston] I think we're having a debate over legal immigration for a very good reason. They have been certain trends over the last twenty or thirty years that have really had an impact on the way that immigrants fit into the U.S. economy. Most, most particularly, there has been a trend towards a less skilled immigrant force compared to natives. I mean, it's quite remarkable that a short time ago, only 26 years ago, the typical immigrant in this country actually earned more than natives. Today, it's exactly the opposite; immigrants earn a lot less than natives. So it's really a clear trend to skill level of immigrants as compared to natives. Now the reason that's important is because a less skilled immigrant flow essentially implies two things: One is it will have an impact on the earnings opportunities of less skilled native workers, and there is mounting evidence that, indeed, that is happening, and secondly has an impact on social services and the cost of social service in particular.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. I'm going to come back to that in some detail, but first, do you think we need to have immigration reform?

CECILIA MUNOZ, National Council of La Raza: I think there's a public consensus that we ought to control against illegal immigration, but that we ought to do it in sensible, reasonable, and effective ways. And the problem with this legislation is that its sponsors really overreached. By going after legal immigrants, they basically would be preventing U.S. citizens from reuniting in many cases with their own children because their children are over 21 years old.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But right now, all that's in Congress is a, is a bill having to do with illegal immigrants.

MS. MUNOZ: In the House, yes, that's--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Yes.

MS. MUNOZ: --right. And that bill is also--

MS. FARNSWORTH: So you're worried--you're now speaking about the, what might happen in the Senate.

MS. MUNOZ: Well, indeed, and even the House legislation--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Let's stay with the illegal question for a while. What do you think of the bill that the House has now passed and that the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed which has certain provisions that you saw in Kwame's report to deal with illegal immigration, beefing up the Border Patrol, bigger fence in San Diego, that kind of thing.

MS. MUNOZ: There are a lot of pieces of this bill which make sense, but unfortunately, on this bill, the sponsors also overreached in a couple of very significant ways. One, they added an amendment which would allow the states to deny education to undocumented kids, to throw kids out of school. When Californians voted for that provision, what they got themselves was protracted litigation of all kinds of battles in the courts, expensive battles in the courts. And it hasn't accomplished very much towards immigration control. By adding that provision, by creating a massive database for all workers in the United States, that's voluntary for employees but not voluntary for workers, I think the sponsors of this bill have overreached, have gone too far in ways which I think might jeopardize the, the passage of sensible, reasonable, effective immigration control legislation, and I think that's what the public is clamoring for.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think about that, Mr. Ezell. Yes, Mr. Ezell, what do you think about that?

MR. EZELL: Elizabeth, you can't have it both ways. You know, you can hear Cecilia talk about yes, we ought to control the border and yes, illegal immigration is wrong, but when you put anything concrete into a bill that says, look, we're not going to continue to educate every kid in the world that just gets here illegally or any way they can get here for the next 12 years after the first grade, we can't afford it, we can't afford to continue to spend like in our state $3 billion on the infrastructure to support illegal immigration.

MS. MUNOZ: I think the--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Ms. Munoz.

MS. MUNOZ: --the real question in California is can you afford to, really to throw kids out of school and to deal with the real costs associated with doing that? I mean, what does Proposition 187 get the residents of California, who want immigration control and who deserve effective and reasonable immigration control? They got themselves litigation, and that is not immigration reform.

MR. EZELL: Yeah, but I think that--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ezell, you helped write 187.

MR. EZELL: --Prop 187 got exactly what we were after. It got this issue on a national basis that you can look at the laws that were passed that would not have passed had there not been a Prop 187 in California.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Borjas, what do you think about the, the legislation that's in the House right now?

MR. BORJAS: I mean, I think if we're seriously trying to stop the illegal alien flow, we'll have to do something to penalize illegal aliens, themselves. But I think on top of that, we also have to worry about the employer sanctions aspect of this. I mean, so far, there's been very little attention paid to the fact that for the most part employer sanctions as they currently exist are really a joke. Very few employers are affected and unless we handle the employer side, I think that it's going to be very difficult to stop the illegal alien flow.

MS. FARNSWORTH: There are no employer sanctions in either the House or the Senate version of this bill so far, are there?

MS. MUNOZ: There are employer sanctions in current law, but what this bill really fails to do is to target employers who are deliberately hiring illegal workers because they don't have to pay them, because they know they don't have to pay them. And what this bill does, instead, is tell those employers, well, if you want, you can use a verification system to verify your workers. But does anybody believe that the sweat shop owners in Los Angeles are going to use--are actually going to use a verification system? These are folks who are hiring illegal workers on purpose because they don't want to have to pay them decent wages.

MR. EZELL: But, Cecilia--

MS. MUNOZ: We're not cracking down on those employers in this bill, and that's what we should be doing.

MR. EZELL: Cecilia, your group fought the employer verification system. Now, you can't have it both ways. I believe it's not the job of the employer to hire legal or illegal. It's the job of the United States Government to have a system that can protect an employer and the employee. And it can't be a voluntary system like we finally came to.

MS. MUNOZ: And the way to do that is to go after employers who are deliberately hiring and exploiting illegal immigrants. We're not targeting those employers in this legislation, and that's where we're making a mistake.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think about this legislation? You have written in the past about how many factual errors are made in talking about this discussion. Do you think the legislation so far is based on, on the right facts?

MS. LABOVITZ: I don't think it's based on reality. I think it's based on some of the hysteria that has been stirred up. In fact, legal immigration has dropped off; between 1993 and 1994, it dropped over 9 percent. The numbers of people coming from--

MS. FARNSWORTH: How about illegal immigration?

MS. LABOVITZ: Illegal immigration has, has not dropped, but we haven't made so serious an attempt to control it has been done in this recent, in this recent legislation. Umm, I think that the legislation that has--the legislations that have been proposed haven't looked so much at the facts as looked at what they think people want to see them saying in Congress. They want--they want to go on record as saying that they've had enough of illegal immigration and we're not going to put up with it anymore when, in fact, what their job ought to be is to figure out how to solve the problems in the country and sensibly regulate immigration but not cut back on the immigration of families, necessary workers, and to make the charge that immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans which are--and, in fact, I think somebody said, a lot of the jobs that we're talking about is competition for the very worst jobs that there are, and the real competition, I mean, the real struggle ought to be to restructure the economy so that we're creating the kind of jobs that everybody wants, that America's workers want, and move the focus from the other people who might be competing from those--for those few jobs.

MR. EZELL: George, do you believe that?

MS. FARNSWORTH: I want to talk about this job issue for a minute. Mr. Borjas, this is certainly one of the main arguments that, that you have referred to and other people have made, that immigrants are taking jobs that people in this country would take. Would you outline that argument, and then we'll go around on it.

MR. BORJAS: I just heard the argument that immigrants take jobs that natives don't want. Well, the correct statement really is immigrants take jobs that natives don't want at the current wage. If immigrants weren't here, natives wouldn't--and we still wanted those goods and services--the wage of those jobs would go up. In fact, there's really mounting evidence that a lot of the increasing wage inequality, particularly for high school dropouts or less educated workers in the 1980's, was due to immigration. As you know, there was a really sizeable increase in the wage gap between high school dropouts and the rest of the labor market, or particularly between high school dropouts and college graduates in the 1980's. And there's a few studies already that actually document that perhaps 20 to 40 percent of the increase in the wage gap or the decrease in the real wage of less educated workers can be traced directly to immigration. So I think the large scale immigration of unskilled workers that we saw in the 1980's did have an impact on the wage structure.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Borjas, let me ask you just quickly, what conclusion does this lead you to? I know that the Republicans have- -some Republicans have called for as much as a 30 percent cut in the number of people coming legally. Now, we're into the legal realm here.

MR. BORJAS: Right.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Would you support that? Do you think that's the answer?

MR. BORJAS: I think an answer will be that we have to worry much more about the large scale influx of less skilled workers into the country. We care about the less skilled workers already here, so I think unavoidably, one would want to bring in factors that include the skill of the worker in terms of letting people into the country.

MS. LABOVITZ: If we care about the unskilled American worker, we should educate and train the unskilled American worker. We shouldn't just prevent him from having to compete with people from abroad.

MS. MUNOZ: It's important to understand who the immigrants are that we're talking about. Legal immigrants are by and large the parents, the spouses, the kids of American citizens. I mean, those are the folks who are being cut in this legislation, and the sponsors were using a definition of family which didn't include our 21-year-old, 22-year-old children. That's inconsistent with the American family, and it doesn't particularly help us economically to tell Americans I'm sorry but your kids aren't really part of your family. I mean, these, these immigrants are not just numbers we're talking about here. We're talking about the closest family members of Americans who are the only people allowed in under our system. Those are the folks being targeted.

MR. EZELL: Elizabeth--

MS. FARNSWORTH: You want to weigh in here, Mr. Ezell?

MR. EZELL: Yes, I do. Elizabeth, very poll taken, particularly the Roper Poll of just a few weeks ago, said that 86 percent of Americans want less of a number of legal immigration. Of that 86 percent, 54 percent of those said they want it to be capped at 300,000. Now, I'm not proposing a 300,000 cap. I think on the one extreme you've got the moratorium. On the other extreme, you've got people like Priscilla and Cecilia that want to do nothing, just leave it alone. I say a moderate approach is let's get a number down that is in the best interests of America, not in the Immigration Lawyers Association or in La Raza or anybody else, but what's good for American citizens. 86 percent says our number is too high.

MS. MUNOZ: I suspect if you ask those 86 percent if they think that Americans ought to be separated from their closest family members, they would change their answer.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you think the number is so high because of economic insecurity, because people are worried that they're not going to get jobs, they're going to be laid off, and somebody else is going to get that job? Do you think that's what's happening?

MS. MUNOZ: Sure. And in fact, there's organizations and individuals running around trying to convince people who are worried about illegal immigration that they ought to be worried about all immigration. That's, in fact, what the sponsors of this bill did, and fortunately, Congress and the House was wise enough to separate the issues and, and to say people want and deserve reasonable reform of illegal immigration, and let's have a real debate to make sure that we get there, and we're in danger of not getting there in a sensible way, because the sponsors are overreaching.

MS. LABOVITZ: Proponents of reduction or elimination of immigration ask the questions in the poll. They ask: Would you like to see a cut in immigration and would you like a $300,000 cap--a 300,000 number cap? I seriously doubt that Americans have any idea about the exact numbers of people that are coming in. These are, these are cooked questions for--that are--that are designed to come up with answers that support a particular point of view which is that immigration is a bad thing, there's too many of them, and as Mr. Borjas said, there was so much immigration in the 80's. Yes, there was, but there hasn't been in the 90's.

MR. EZELL: Oh, there has.

MS. LABOVITZ: They're living on old statistics--

MR. EZELL: Come on.

MS. LABOVITZ: --in order to push an agenda.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I wish we could go on with this but that's all the time we have.

MR. EZELL: Elizabeth, let me ask you one question.

MS. FARNSWORTH: We have to go, Mr. Ezell. I'm sorry. We'll revisit this again. Don't worry.

MR. EZELL: All right. Thank you.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Thanks.

MR. BORJAS: Thank you. FINALLY - IN MEMORIAM

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, some words of remembrance about Edmund Muskie. The former Maine governor and Senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate died today at age 81. We begin with this report by Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: With his six foot four inch frame, low key manner, and wry humor, Edmund Muskie was often called Lincolnesque, and that made him an ideal vice presidential candidate for the ebullient Hubert Humphrey on the Democratic ticket in 1968. Still, it was a losing ticket. In 1970, Muskie's star rose when he responded in a nationwide speech to a divisive Republican campaign that attacked the patriotism of college students and Democrats.

EDMUND S. MUSKIE: [November 1970] In the heat of our campaigns, we have all become accustomed to a little anger and exaggeration. Yet, on the whole, our political process has served us well.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: After that, Muskie became the favorite to win the 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination. But being the front- runner for over a year proved difficult. During the New Hampshire primary, Muskie choked with anger and seemed to cry because of a couple of nasty articles in the "Manchester Union Leader." One article proved to be a hoax. The other attacked Muskie's wife. Muskie then attacked publisher William Loeb.

EDMUND S. MUSKIE: [February 1972] By attacking me, by attacking my wife, he has proved himself to be a gutless coward. And maybe I said all I should on it. It's fortunate for him he's not on this platform beside me. A good woman--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The episode came to symbolize the collapse of Muskie's Presidential campaign because of the perception that he was weak. Muskie then went back to the Senate and headed the powerful Budget Committee until President Carter tapped him to be Secretary of State in 1980.

EDMUND MUSKIE: [April 1980] You know, I never have been a stagnant kind of individual. I've been in the Senate 22 years. I'm still stimulated by the challenges that it offers, but here's a whole new arena in which to deal, whole new set of challenges, whole new kind of authority, a chance for growth, and how could I say no?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As Secretary of State from 1980 to '81, Muskie guided the successful negotiations to free the American hostages held in Iran. He then retired from politics and became a partner in a Washington law firm. Today he was remembered as a statesman.

MR. LEHRER: Now, the thoughts of NewsHour analyst Mark Shields, a former Democratic strategist who worked on Muskie's 1972 Presidential campaign, and George Mitchell, the former Senate Majority Leader who also worked for Muskie and succeeded him in the Senate when Muskie became Secretary of State. Senator Mitchell, how should we remember Edmund Muskie?

GEORGE MITCHELL, Former Senate Majority Leader: I think it's important in today's poisonous political process to remember Ed Muskie as a man who demonstrated that you can succeed in politics without compromising your integrity, that you can do well and be a good person at the same time. He was really remarkably successful in his legislative career. It's hard to think back now 25 years ago but there wasn't any environmentalism. There wasn't any national awareness, and there weren't any laws protecting the environment. He more than any other person and almost single-handedly created a national consensus for protectionof the environment, wrote and had passed the landmark environmental laws through the force of his own character, personality, knowledge, and skill. He rose to the highest or nearly the highest levels in American politics and still at the same time maintained a high sense of integrity.

MR. LEHRER: Where did the environmental interest come from?

SEN. MITCHELL: We're all products of our environment. He grew up in a small town in Maine that had a paper mill in it, that emitted a lot of waste into the water. He then went to a small college in Maine on the same river. I think he saw in his own lifetime the problems that existed. He became aware of it, gradually more and more. He serves as governor, got to tour our state, and then as he became a senator saw it throughout the country. And he combined very detailed technical knowledge with a practical sense of how to get things done. And so I think he was a superb legislator, but most importantly someone who as I said succeeded without compromising his high level of integrity.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, what would you add to that?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: [Tempe, AZ] I guess what I'd add to what George Mitchell said is this, Jim, that he was the last of the whales, the last of these great senators, legislative giants, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Warren Magnuson of Washington, Richard Russell of Georgia, John Stenis of Mississippi, Phil Hart of Michigan. Ed Muskie stood with them. Only Mike Mansfield, a former Senate Majority Leader, remains of that group. These were men who by their force of their intellect, their character, their skill, their personality, and their wiles were dominant legislative figures. Remember this, what George Mitchell just said, there was no legislative remedy for the environmental fouling that had been done by Americans to the land that we inherited. And Ed Muskie wrote those laws, and more important than what he did, and what he did was historically important, was how he did it. He forged a consensus, a unanimous consensus, this was a radical revolutionary- -

MR. LEHRER: Not just in Congress--

MR. SHIELDS: No.

MR. LEHRER: But you mean in the country.

MR. SHIELDS: I'm talking in the country. First in the Congress.

MR. LEHRER: Yes.

MR. SHIELDS: With Howard Baker of Tennessee and Jim Buckley of New York, and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky. He brought these radical proposals out of this committee with unanimous support, and then he forged this consensus in the country to the point where in 1995 as Speaker Gingrich revealed to Paul Gigot, and Paul talked about it in this very broadcast, the biggest mistake the Republicans made were trying to undo the environmental laws that Ed Muskie had largely written. I mean, that's the national consensus. He built that. That's an enormous achievement.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Mitchell, both you and Mark have said that he was a great legislator, that he--is he also the names that Mark just listed in the U.S. Senate--is he also on a list that includes Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, Robert Taft, and others who, who, who were of Presidential timber but didn't make it and if so, why not in his case?

SEN. MITCHELL: I believe he not only was of Presidential timber, but that he would have made a superb President had he been elected. Of course, he had faults. He was human like all the rest of us. He made mistakes, but first, he was, in my opinion, one of the smartest public officials ever. He certainly--

MR. LEHRER: Smart--

SEN. MITCHELL: Intelligent.

MR. LEHRER: What do you mean?

SEN. MITCHELL: Brilliant, intellectually capable of easy analysis of a problem, capable of coming up with practical solutions.

MR. LEHRER: Take in a lot of information?

SEN. MITCHELL: Oh, tremendous. He was really very, very smart, the smartest person I've ever known, period. Secondly, he had a good practical sense of how to get things done in a democratic society. Mark talked about that. Remember, in the environmental laws, he didn't just change the laws. He changed the way Americans think and the way they live. It would be unthinkable now for someone to suggest that we suddenly let factories and municipalities start dumping all their sewage into rivers, which we did for almost all of American history until he changed laws and changed minds and changed attitudes. So he was very significant. And he was an imposing personal figure. He was six feet four, powerful voice, big head, very imposing, and, and could be an intimidating figure. I think it's a tragedy for him personally but more for the country that he wasn't elected President.

MR. LEHRER: Why wasn't he elected President, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: Jim, before Ed Muskie, there was no Democratic Party in name. He and Frank Coffin, the former Congressman, former federal district judge, are the fathers, the parents of the modern Democratic Party. Remember this. Maine voted before any other state in the union. They used to hold their elections in September. In September of 1954, Maine, one of the two states that Alf Landon had carried against Frank Roosevelt, elected this young Polish, son of Polish immigrants, Catholic, Democratic governor. It electrified the country, it shocked the country. Ed Muskie went on from there to be elected, to be reelected in a landslide, the first Democrat ever popularly elected from the state of Maine in its history. What ill prepared him for a national campaign was that the very strength he brought to the legislative process, that of patience, perseverance, listening to the other side, tenacity, are not a premium in a presidential contested field, multi-candidate. That's where the sound bite, the quick jump, the ability to smooz and all the rest of it really count. Ed Muskie before 1972, when he ran for the presidency, had never been in a Democratic primary in his life. He had never run against other Democrats and competed for Democratic primary votes. I think that as much as anything, the very strengths that he brought to the Senate leadership that he's so historically demonstrated, were almost liabilities, as he sought the presidency.

SEN. MITCHELL: Well, I think there's another factor as well that has to be mentioned. The campaign to reelect President Nixon--

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

SEN. MITCHELL: --the Republican candidate that year--had a highly organized, well-distributed campaign of dirty tricks. It's come to be known as the dirty tricks campaign. That clip you showed earlier of New Hampshire was based upon, originated in a hoax fabricated by the Republican campaign to embarrass Sen. Muskie.

MR. LEHRER: They sent hundreds--I remember, in the Watergate hearings, they sent hundreds of pizzas to his rallies and weird things like that.

SEN. MITCHELL: Oh, hundreds of pizzas to the room in the middle of the night. What was sent to the rallies in Southern states, for example, were hundreds of manufactured phony cropped pictures of Sen. Muskie intended to inflame white Americans against black Americans and vice versa, false statements, just, just a terrible campaign, and it had an effect. They feared him. They undermined his campaign, and he lost--not that that was the only factor, but it was a significant factor.

MR. LEHRER: What about the crying incident, Mark? Did he cry or did he not cry, and how important was that?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, Jim, these are different times, obviously. I mean, when Ed Muskie came to the defense of his wife, Jane, who was unfairly and viciously attacked by one of the really ugly men in American political history, William Loeb, the publisher of "Manchester Union Leader," who did front-page editorials titled "Kissinger the Kike" and "Moscow Muskie," questioning the patriotism and loyalty of Sen. Muskie, but when he, when he attacked Jane Muskie, it was too much, and Ed Muskie came to her defense. Ed Muskie didn't come from a touchy-feely era. This was before Alan Alda and Phil Donahue and people--inner child speaking and all the rest of it--and he did. He filled up with emotion at that moment, and, and somehow men were not supposed to do that at that time. And, and I think it, it became for many a sort of a cause for concern of some sort.

MR. LEHRER: That he lost control or something. That was the word.

SEN. MITCHELL: Look, he did choke up for a minute, but think about this. In this election year, if a candidate publicly defended his wife against a scurrilous, untrue attack, and choked up while doing it, I'll bet you it would help the candidate.

MR. LEHRER: Win by acclamation maybe.

SEN. MITCHELL: Yes. So at least in that respect and in many others, Ed Muskie was ahead of his time.

MR. LEHRER: Right. And we'll just leave it there. Mark, Sen. Mitchell, thank you both.

SEN. MITCHELL: Thank you, Jim. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, the Federal Reserve Board left interest rates unchanged. Bob Dole was expected to win big in the California presidential primary, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered increased testing of domestic cattle for Mad Cow Disease. We'll see you tomorrow night with analysis of the California primary, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.