Immigration System Overhaul; Banning Chocolate Milk
CHETRY: We just want to clarify a story that we brought you earlier regarding who favors Sarah Palin. Gallup Poll did a study -- did a survey and asked GOP voters. They say that the majority of Sarah Palin voters, only -- only 9 percent of GOP supporters who say they're picking Sarah Palin graduated from college and only 7 percent were in the highest income brackets. They say the opposite was true for Mitt Romney. That more of the people who supported Mitt Romney in the GOP actually had college education and were in the highest income brackets.</s>ROMANS: Interesting. All right. Meanwhile, the president on top of his agenda today: immigration reform. The president is going to speak this afternoon. He's going to be using a trip to the U.S./Mexico border city of El Paso, Texas, as his backdrop. It's his latest push for an immigration system overhaul. He's been trying to boost public support in recent weeks. And you've been hearing chatter from both sides, both sides of this debate. Actually, there are many sides of this debate. Actually there are many sides to this debate, but people who want stricter enforcement of laws and people who also want to see comprehensive immigration reform. They've been saying they feel like the White House is making moves to make this an issue again.</s>VELSHI: Let's go to the White House. CNN's senior White House correspondent Ed Henry joins us live from Washington. Ed, this has been, boy, it's on again and off again. What are the real prospects of immigration reform at this point?</s>ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's a great question, Ali. I mean, if you listen to the president, he's very optimistic. He's been having a lot of private meetings in recent weeks, trying to get the ball moving on Capitol Hill. But you're right, previous presidents have pushed this before, only to see it fall apart. It's a very divisive issue, very emotional issue. We've seen that play out in the state of Arizona, for example. But I think the case the president is going to make today along the U.S./Mexico border and Texas is that basically he's made a down payment on border security sort of reaching out to conservatives. Pointing out that since 2004, an initiative started by the Bush administration now continued by the Obama administration, they've doubled the number of U.S. border patrol agents. They've tripled the number of intelligence, analysts along the border, to secure that border as best they can. And now he's saying let's have more comprehensive reform to follow up on that, have a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Here's how the president put it just a couple weeks ago. Take a listen.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I strongly believe that we've got to fix this broken system so that it meets the needs of our 21st century economy and our security needs. I want to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, to enforce our laws, and also to address the status of millions of undocumented workers.</s>HENRY: Now you know, obviously he still has to deal with critics and skeptics who say the border is still not secure enough, that that's only been a small bit of progress and also others who, you know, make these arguments that basically illegal immigrants are going to come in. They're going to get citizenship. They're going to take jobs away from other Americans and the bottom line is, it's interesting, yesterday the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as you know, not always a friend to this White House, battle with them on a lot of issues. Put out this memo yesterday and fits in with what Christine has been talking about all week with the boomers, basically it's going to be immigrants who are going to replenish the American work force over the next few decades as more and more baby boomers retire. You're going to need to replenish the work force and that the Chamber of Commerce again is making the case that it's going to come from immigration.</s>CHETRY: And the president hasn't had the easiest road with the Hispanic community. How will that play as we head into 2012?</s>HENRY: What was fascinating overhanging all of this, of course, is the 2012 election. Take a look at how pivotal Hispanic voters have been in the last few elections. Look at 2004, George W. Bush was making a big pitch for Hispanic voters. Democrats only got 53 percent of the Hispanic vote. Then you go to 2006, the midterms when Democrats took control of Congress, they got 69 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2008, Barack Obama elected, they got 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. It dipped in 2010, down to 60 percent. A lot of Democrats nervous about that and there's been some people saying analysts basically look, that's because the president promised as a candidate to get comprehensive immigration reform on, got very little progress in the first two years. So Hispanics have moved away from Democrats in 2010. You have to be careful, though, to just assume that Hispanic voters are voting just on this one issue of immigration reform. Sure it's an important issue to Hispanic votes and as well as a lot of other voters. But Hispanic voters are worried about high gas prices. They're worried about job security. So immigration reform is going to be a piece there, but this president obviously knows Hispanic voters are also going to be looking at what he's done on health care. What he's done on the economy and what he's done on those high gas prices.</s>CHETRY: All right, Ed Henry this morning. Thanks so much. You can watch the president's speech right here on CNN. We'll be bringing it to you live, 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time this afternoon.</s>ROMANS: Even President Bush tried to do this, really wanted to do this and it really devolve once this got to Congress and the competing interests it -- comprehensive immigration reform is very, very difficult.</s>CHETRY: It almost derailed John McCain's primary candidacy.</s>ROMANS: We have done it pretty much every 10 years since the 1920s and you still keep having to fix the immigration system so it has to be done right and has to be done for the ages. And that's something that Congress hasn't been able to do yet. So try it again.</s>VELSHI: Let's talk about the weather. It's been relentless in the Midwest and south this spring and now we're going to start to have hurricanes to worry about.</s>ROMANS: And since the government will have another way of alerting people they may be in the danger zone. Imagine getting a text message.</s>CHETRY: That's right. Well, joining us now with the latest on the flooding, the recovery in the south and also to talk about this new emergency alert system is Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate. Great to see you in person, by the way. I know that you've had a busy several months. We've been talking about the tornadoes, the devastation there in the Midwest and now this flooding. What are your biggest concerns as you watch this unfold, the Mississippi set to crest today in Memphis?</s>CRAIG FUGATE, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Again, watching what the Corps of Engineer has done to prevent overtopping of the main levee system. You know, we're getting a lot of flooding from backing up rivers. But the important thing is that main line levee system that it stays intact and that's why the corps has been exercising all of their tools to keep it from happening.</s>VELSHI: Are you -- by the corps exercising all of its tools, more people, some more people, will be in danger. Some will be saved from danger now and others more in danger. From your perspective as FEMA, what's better, what's worse?</s>FUGATE: Well, you got to remember this is how the system was designed. You cannot change the system.</s>VELSHI: Right.</s>FUGATE: And now you're reaching record floods. You have to go back to the '30s and '20s before the system was built. So this is how the system is designed. I think people are going to look back and go are there other options such as increasing the amount of green space to allow areas to flood more naturally than the channels. But this is how the system is designed today under maximum flood threat and so you have to protect the major urban areas by exercising those spillways and floodways.</s>CHETRY: They did have to take an extreme measure. It's not the way it works for them to have to blow up levees. I mean, that's less than ideal, right?</s>FUGATE: But that was the design. That if you reached those critical points where you can could fail and flood out cities you would flood farmland, individual homes and those were tradeoffs made in the system design. So it is working as designed, but it's also under record flood levels. So they've never had to exercise all of these things at the same time. And again, when you're talking about towns like the city of Memphis, we have flooding there because the rivers are backing up. But the main line levee system is protecting the city from the Mississippi flood.</s>ROMANS: These record April tornados, in parts of the south. Also this flooding, two major spring time disasters at the same time, how are the agencies handling, you know, going from one to the other and cleaning up one, while the other one is still unfolding?</s>FUGATE: Well, you know, you have several states like Tennessee and Mississippi, they're dealing with both the tornadoes and now the flooding, but I think that's the strength of our system. We built our systems upon local governments responding with state and federal assistance so there's a lot more resources that are available to these events that are almost occurring simultaneously.</s>CHETRY: I want to ask you about this system because this is interesting. You're rolling it out today, this emergency notification system that basically is tied into cellphones called personalized local alerting networking or plan. How does it work? How would it work in this instance?</s>FUGATE: All right, you're familiar with the emergency alert system that comes across the TV screens when there's a tornado warning issued, but we're a mobile society. How many of us are listening to radio or television when these alerts come out. Just like you guys are already moving towards mobile platforms this gives us the ability with the cooperation of the carriers to actually alert your phone where you're at, not, you know, a lot of people sign up for alerts, but for their hometown. But what if you're travelling? So when these tornadoes struck, even if you were from out of town, your phone would get these emergency notifications of a tornado. So this is really the idea, we're a mobile society, so let's build the tools that wireless carriers have agreed to cooperate in, so that we can alert your phone where you're at when a warning is issued.</s>VELSHI: And it's automatic, you don't have to opt in.</s>FUGATE: You don't have to opt in. You don't have to sign up. In fact, your option is you can -- if you don't want to get these opt out. But your phone, new phones come online starting with the high- end phones, but hopefully as the carriers have been aggressive in meeting and exceeding their deadlines that more and more people as you get new phones will have this feature built in.</s>ROMANS: Craig Fugate of FEMA, thank you so much for joining us. Best of luck to you.</s>FUGATE: Thank you.</s>VELSHI: All right, chocolate milk, it could be banned from Los Angeles school menus starting this fall. Many school districts have already done it, by the way. Now the superintendent of the nation's second largest school district says he plans to push for the ban over the summer. By the way, not just chocolate milk, strawberry milk too. Many nutritionists are split on the issue. Some say the benefits of the flavored milk, the fact that the child is getting milk outweighs the harm that's done by the added sugar content.</s>CHETRY: That's right and it brings us to our question of the day. Should chocolate milk be banned in schools? We want to read some of your feedback. Overwhelmingly, by the way, people said I don't think this is a good idea. John Prescott wrote not only does my daughter's school not have chocolate milk anymore, but only drink 1 percent milk. The result of this, my daughter drinks her milk at lunch maybe a third of the time. She hates it. How is this helping anyone? They need to stop trying to raise my child. Joseph Calabretta says that school isn't the big problem. Chocolate milk in moderation is a good thing and loved by people of all ages. The overweight kids are getting fat at home. Here in the south, parents make string beans with fat backs or biscuits with milk gravy for breakfast and every meal they deep fry steak and call it chicken fried steak. Come on, my son eats school food and is 90 pounds. It's what's going on at home.</s>ROMANS: Joseph is making me hungry. Kris on Facebook says, before banning chocolate milk they should balance the rest of the offered choices. Chicken nuggets or pizza would not be my choice for healthier food.</s>VELSHI: I should tell you, we like to balance out the responses. The responses we're getting are not very balanced.</s>ROMANS: We have one who said -- only one person who said ban it.</s>VELSHI: It wasn't overwhelming. It was like fine I'm OK with it.</s>CHETRY: Yes, the other thing everybody seemed to comment on or a lot of people said, it's not just what they eat, but it's the fact there's not enough PE. There's not enough movement, like the kids have to just get out there and start running and moving more.</s>ROMANS: There are so many other things to fix in the schools. I mean, any ounce of efforts being wasted on chocolate milk is an ounce of effort not being done for other things.</s>VELSHI: When a police officer pulls me over speeding, don't you have criminals to catch. We have criminals and we have to stop people for speeding.</s>ROMANS: And we need to meet our quota and budget for the year.</s>VELSHI: What do you think? E-mail us, tweet us, go to our blog, and find us on Facebook. We'll read more of your comments later on in the show.</s>ROMANS: Well, Magnet School in Connecticut, one of the best in the country, in fact, we know the principal.</s>CHETRY: That's right. They may be shut down because there are not enough Caucasian children. We'll explain the controversy coming up.</s>ROMANS: Also our very good friend, Alina Cho is going to drop by with her story about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art is showcasing the fashion collection of Alexander McQueen. She's got a backstage pass. We'll give you a peek.