William B. Richardson Quotes

If you can’t control your borders, you can’t control immigration. And if we can’t control immigration, there is no way re can reform immigration.

As long as there are jobs waiting in our country, there is no way we can stop illegal immigration at the borders.

We do not control our borders. We don’t know who is coming across and we don’t know what is coming across.

The voters in my district, and around the country, have demanded that Congress get a hold on the influx of illegal immigrants and tighten the security around our borders.

Madam Speaker, it is time to halt illegal entry into this country. It is time to halt the flow of illegal drugs and weapons into this great Nation, and it is time to secure our borders.

We are not going to build a pressure in Mexico. We're not building walls to retain our people.

This is not the 1890's. We can't have open borders any more.

The simple truth is that we’ve lost control of our own boarders.

Because of Congress’s failure to act, States like Arizona have no choice but to take a strong action to discourage the further flow of illegal immigration through our borders.

I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall,

We have two borders--one with Mexico and the other with Canada, I've done a lot of looking, but I have never seen an illegal Canadian .... Canada has a sound, stable economy, and that's what you need to solve the border problem. That that's why a wall by itself will never work.

One nice thing about the benefit of long experience with la frontera is that we in Texas don't have to run around getting all hysterical about immigrants. The border is porous. When you want cheap labor, you open it up; when you don't, you shut it down. It works to our benefit - it always has.

It's very contrary to the notion of what America is to imagine that we can stop migration.

This issue of border security is not about, about ethnicity. I sit there on occasion with 10 or 12 sheriffs from my district, many of which are Democrats with last names like Reyes, with last names like Herrera and Lucio. And they are crying out for border security as well. So again, this is not an issue about being anti-Mexican.

As the American public continues to focus more intensely on illegal immigration and securing the nation's borders, the number of members of the House Immigration Reform Caucus continues to grow.

Well, you know, I think in conversations with members of the Senate and others, they all recognize that the issue of immigration is important. It's important to our nation, it's important to our public safety, it's important to our security, it's important to our economic well-being moving forward. And it's not something that's going to go away.

If this Nation really wants to create an effective border security policy, we need to have a debate that includes a discussion about actual solutions to our problems, which means taking all of the political grandstanding and baiting out of the equation.

Every town has become a border town and every State has become a border State.

Protecting national security amounts to looking for needles in a haystack. The work becomes more difficult if the haystack is larger. Restricting immigration generally, and illegal immigration in particular, limits growth in the haystack, and supports protection of national security.

There is no question that we must do more to secure our borders - but how we go about securing them is also important.

We all learned in kindergarten that the beginning is a very good place to start. As we have this debate on illegal immigration and illegal entry into this country, let's begin at the very beginning by sealing the borders to this great Nation.

House Republicans want to pass a strong border security, illegal immigration bill. We want a bill. There is no ifs, ands or buts about it.

Homeland security is a joke if we don’t have border security.

Neither party wants to do anything about the immigration problem. The Republicans want the cheap labor. The Democrats want the votes.

You can’t have open borders and win the war against terrorism at the same time.