Speaker Biographies

Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 1994 and reelected in 2000. In 2003, Senator Kyl was elected to the Senate Republican leadership, serving as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. He also chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security and the Finance Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight. Before his public service, he practiced law at Jennings, Strouss & Salmon in Phoenix, and in 1985 served as chairman of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce.

Michael Barone is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report. Barone is the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. He is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again and Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future. Over the years, Barone has written for many publications, including The Economist, the New York Times, the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, National Review, The American Spectator, The American Enterprise, The Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph of London. He is a contributor to Fox News Channel and has appeared on many other television programs.

Steven A. Camarota is director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. Dr. Camarota often testifies before Congress and has published widely on the political and economic effects of immigration on the United States. His articles on the impact of immigration have appeared in both academic publications and the popular press, including Social Science Quarterly, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Campaigns and Elections, and The Public Interest. His most recent works published by the Center for Immigration Studies include: The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget; Immigration in a Time of Recession: An Examination of Trends Since 2000; Where Immigrants Live: An Examination of State Residency of the Foreign-Born; Back Where We Started: An Examination of Trends in Immigrant Welfare Use Since Welfare Reform; and The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993–2001.

Daniel T. Griswold is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. Since joining Cato in 1997, he has authored or co-authored major studies on globalization, the World Trade Organization, the U.S. trade deficit, trade and democracy, immigration, and other subjects. Griswold's October 2002 paper Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States was used in the Flake-Kolbe-McCain immigration bill in 2003, which President Bush drew upon in early 2004 as the basis for his guest worker program. Griswold has testified before congressional committees and federal agencies on immigration, the trade deficit, steel trade, and the costs of protectionism. Earlier in his career, he served as a congressional press secretary and the editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette. Griswold has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and other publications, and has appeared on C-SPAN, CNN, PBS, BBC, and Fox News Channel.

Roger F. Noriega is a visiting fellow at AEI, coordinating the Institute’s program on Western Hemisphere issues. Twice appointed by President George W. Bush (and confirmed by the U.S. Senate) and with a ten-year career on Capitol Hill, Mr. Noriega’s breadth of experience offers strategic vision and practical insight on the Americas. As assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Mr. Noriega managed a 3,000-person team of professionals in Washington and fifty diplomatic posts to design and implement political and economic strategies in Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Mr. Noriega coordinated complex and sensitive multilateral diplomacy in a thirty-four-member international organization to bolster OAS efforts to promote trade, fight illicit drugs, and defend democracy. Mr. Noriega has held various other positions, including senior policy advisor with the U.S. Mission to the OAS; many program management and public affairs positions with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State; press secretary and foreign policy advisor for U.S. representative Robert Whittaker (R-Kan.); and research assistant for the secretary of state of Kansas.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington and the Middle East.

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