Kinky Friedman Quotes

Ted Cruz supported a 500-percent increase in the number of H-1 visas, the guest workers that are allowed into this country, and Ted supports doubling the number of green cards.

The federal government secures the border; Californians decide how we want to treat our population. I think we need a vibrant guest worker program. If we have one, we're going to stop having a lot of issues at the border.

Secure the border; have an ID system that works. Have a guest worker system. And then, finally, hold businesses accountable. Once you do that, most of the chambers of commerce and those who are clamoring around immigration will take a deep breath and relax.

I disagree with those who want to shut down the H-1B Visa program.

I have long been a proponent of a guest-worker program between the United States and Mexico, and in particular I have proposed that Arizona would be an ideal location for a pilot project.

We can still find middle ground, truly secure our borders, deal with those already here and address our labor needs. But those who advocate giving current illegal aliens and future guest workers a special path to citizenship must compromise.

Business owners have made a strong case to me that they need guest workers. But none has suggested that these workers should be placed on a path to citizenship.

I do favor guest workers, H1B visas and student visas.

All the guest worker programs result in permanent settlement.

I think we need a vibrant guest worker program. If we have one, we're going to stop having a lot of issues at the border.

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.

How can we vote for a bill [S.744] that our own CBO says will reduce average wages in America for 12 years, increase unemployment for 7 years, and reduce per capita GNP growth over 25 years? A bill that will admit 30 million people to permanent legal status in the next 10 years? That will dramatically increase the annual immigration flow, and will double the guest worker flow?

Thirty years people have been asking for a lawful system of immigration to end this lawlessness, and government on both parties have refused to give it to them.

I happen to believe in immigration reform but I don't believe that that means that every person who has come into America should be able to stay.

In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. 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 try and make it to the word exactly what I said four years ago and what I said was that those who've come here illegally should not be given a special pathway, a favored pathway to become permanent residents merely by virtue of having come here illegally. That they should be in line with everybody - they should be given the opportunity to get in line with everybody else but they go to the back of the line.

Based on my experience as a prosecutor in Miami, illegal immigration is one of the most critical issues facing this country. As a prosecutor, I felt the burden of it. I think what's important... is for the state and the federal government and for local governments to work together to do everything possible to control illegal immigration in a comprehensive way.

I would just say it's not good for the country to have 11 million people here who we don't know who they are, where they're living. They're not paying taxes, but they're showing up in emergency rooms. They're driving up the cost of auto insurance 'cause they don't have driver's licenses and are getting into accidents. They're having children, which are US citizens. So, I mean, it's an issue that needs to be dealt with.

Immigration reform should mean something else entirely. It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens.

The truth is, the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants or however many there may be - and honestly we've been hearing that number for years. It's always 11 million. Our government has no idea. It could be 3 million. It could be 30 million. They have no idea what the number is.

Hillary Clinton is totally for open borders - there goes your country - which would mean the destruction of America.

We're being overrun by people who live in poor and corrupt countries who come to the USA to get work. But we got to regain our sovereignty, we're going to control our border, and there will be border security tied to the pathway to citizenship. There will be an earned pathway to citizenship. It will be available to everybody who works hard, pays a fine, passes a background check.

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.

Well, nobody's being deported - nobody - practically. And so what the people down there getting is the American government is telling us that you're not going to be able to stay. But, in fact, they're letting almost everybody stay. And so what they're trying to do is show that at least some people are going to get deported.

On top of that, illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year. And this is what we get. For the money we are going to spend on illegal immigration over the next 10 years, we could provide 1 million at-risk students with a school voucher, which so many people are wanting.