Rand Paul Quotes

We feel a pathway to citizenship would reward illegal activity, ... Amnesty encourages further illegal immigration.

I appreciate the good work that senators in both parties have put into trying to fix our broken immigration system. There are some good elements in this proposal, especially increasing the resources and manpower to secure our border and also improving and streamlining legal immigration. However, I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship. To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally.

I am confident - very confident - that if I help solve this problem in a way that we won't have 20 million illegal immigrants 20 years from now, not only will I get re-elected, I can look back and say I was involved in something that was important.

People will know that you can't just smuggle in, hunker down and wait to be legalized. It's not going to work that way. Those days are over.

We are dealing with the question of the 11 million people paying their taxes, having a path to legalization and, then, ultimately, to citizenship. Tough issues but we are coming together and I think we can do it.

We went 60 years or more with no immigration, folks. It can be done. The only reason that it started up again, Ted Kennedy started bellyaching about it in the mid-sixties, and then that led to Simpson-Mazzoli 20 years later, 1986, amnesty for about 3.9 million, and we were told that would be it, never again, and of course now we're where we are.

Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society and are a basic part of our work force. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status. At the same time, in so doing, we must not encourage illegal immigration.

Every time anybody in Washington talks about legal status, amnesty, anything of that nature, it becomes a magnet that lures people in quickly into the United States.

Thirty-five to forty percent of the people who are not lawfully present in the United States entered the country legally – through student visas, visitor visas, business visas, visa waivers. All of these people entered the country legally, so securing the borders really doesn’t affect that aspect of illegal immigration.

We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.

I do believe that if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty, that you undermine the respect for the law and encourage more illegal immigration into America.

We have to do immigration reform while the pro-deportation crew is still reeling.

Extending amnesty to those who came here illegally or overstayed their visas is dangerous waters...We are a nation of laws, and I will evaluate any proposal through that matrix.

Importantly, in several years when we have accomplished all of our enforcement and deportation goals and truly ended illegal immigration for good, including the construction of a great wall, which we will have built in record time. And at a reasonable cost, which you never hear from the government.

Our immigration law sucks, and we need to redo the whole thing, comprehensive immigration reform. And what that's gonna be is anybody who wants to come and vote Democrat, we're gonna send 'em a limousine and bring 'em in.

A special pathway to citizenship is off the table... when I talk to members of the group in the Senate, they're saying that we're both saying the same thing.

I will argue until my last breath for a pathway to citizenship that is quick and efficient because I want to end this chapter. I want to end it...But let me say, conversely, I am as committed as any Republican to ending illegal immigration as we know it...They want to end it. So do I.

Donald Trump's laid out a plan to end illegal immigration once and for all in America. We've been talking it to death for 20 years. Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine want to continue the policies of open borders, amnesty, catch and release, sanctuary cities, all the things that are driving wages down in this country.

Waiting for a long-term solution to immigration reform will not make Americans safer.

We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

I think comprehensive immigration reform while securing your border and dealing rationale with 11 million is the only way we're going to solve this problem.

We have never had the will to enforce the immigration laws. What you see is what you'll continue to get.

I'm going to deliver a detailed policy address on one of the greatest challenges facing our country today, illegal immigration.

The effort to combine the general population of this country with the current burgeoning numbers of illegal immigrants is outrageous, simply outrageous.

I think we need a real plan, which is why I have offered a much more specific approach to securing the border, fixing the legal immigration system and addressing illegal immigration.