Financial Access for Immigrants: Learning from Diverse Perspectives - Keynote Introduction

Remarks by Bruce Katz
Director, Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy

Financial Access for Immigrants Conference
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
April 15, 2004

Introduction

Good evening folks.

First of all, thank you all for joining us for dinner. My name is Bruce Katz and I'm the director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and first of all I just want to thank Michael Moscow and the whole team at the Federal Reserve Bank for putting together what I think is a terrific conference and a conference that really has hit the right time in this issue to pull people together from the research community and the practitioner community and the banking community.

I particularly want to thank Audrey Singer of the Urban Center staff and Anna Paulson of the Federal Reserve Bank staff for really putting the heavy lifting in here on the intellectual side of the equation and identifying the topics and identifying the speakers with obviously help from other people in both institutions so again, for Audrey and Anna thank you very much.

Last thank you, we obviously could not do this without the support of some friends and partners and the Pew Hispanic Center, Roberto Suro is here. The Kaufman Foundation out of Kansas City, Missouri. They have really... they paid for our dinner and they paid for the gathering.

It is an immense privilege for me to introduce a friend and a mentor, Henry Cisneros, as our keynote tonight. I worked for Henry for four years, it felt like 10 or 15, actually as his chief of staff when he was secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

You've heard the phrase before, this man needs no introduction, that obviously applies to Henry but I'll review some of the reasons why we thought it was so critical for him to be the keynote speaker tonight; as many of you know, the secretary was mayor of San Antonio for four terms in the 1980s, and for any of you who have visited that city, you have seen the dramatic affect on the physical landscape that has had and on the economic and social life of that city. If you haven't been there you should go. As many of you also know, Henry was the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the first Clinton administration and many of the initiatives that really he pursued during that period of time; the transformation of public housing, the commitment to homeownership, the deep commitment to fair housing and to community reinvestment, the insistence on quality and integrity in everything the department has done are really playing out now, you know. If you travel around the city of Chicago in particular or any of the other major cities in metropolitan areas of the United States you'll really see the fruit of the labor that went on in that portion of the 1990s.

I think of all these initiatives have really had a profound, positive impact on the country, in particularly the city, but it takes time as you all know with housing and urban development to really see the results. What many of you maybe do not know is after leaving HUD Henry was the head of Univision and given the topic of today and part of the consumer market that we are talking about obviously, many insights from that experience and since leaving that role he's been the founder and chairman of American City Vista which has as its mission, its objectives, its goal is to focus on home building in the central neighborhoods and metropolitan areas particularly in the Sun Belt and in California.

I think more than any other reason however, why we asked the secretary to be the keynote tonight; he's been an articulate voice for competitive cities and revitalized neighborhoods and strong families for a long time, he's been a thoughtful voice for tolerance and diversity and acceptance in our country. He's been a thoughtful voice on the role of markets and the role of wealth building, and, finally, he's been a passionate voice for the notion that all Americans should have equal access to the economic and financial mainstream so they could achieve their true potential, so with that, it's an absolute pleasure to introduce Henry Cisneros.