Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Quotes

In the last 15 years, only 500,000 jobs have been created per year. So from a long time ago, every year 700,000 Mexicans have only three routes to take: migration, the informal economy and the path to antisocial behavior.

Illegal immigrants all too often swell the ranks of organized crime.

Rather than improving the wealth of their own nation, the Mexican government encourages its poor to come to the U.S. and send money home.

In my family and in my community, I see people struggling with drug addiction, with poverty and the effects of generational poverty; I see people struggling with lack of access to healthcare.

I think the guys who are sort of infantry in Somali piracy are not unlike low-level drug dealers in urban areas in America, who see it as, you know, not having many other options. I think it comes down to money and needing to survive.

You're in a situation where you have limited education opportunities, you don't have any money, you can't get a job; what are you going to do? You're going to go back to this criminal network that you actually made while you were in prison.

An estimated 9,000 American citizens are killed every year by illegal aliens. That's 25 American citizens per day killed by illegal aliens, averaging 12 by stabbings and shootings and 13 by DUI and related crimes.

Never again should Ghanaians have to resort to dubious means to get to, or live in, foreign lands, simply to make a living.

Without economic growth and job creation in Mexico, we won't be able to confront the migratory phenomenon.

Bonnie and Clyde grew up in absolute poverty. They didn't go to school or have any money; the only way they could figure out how to get ahead was to steal. The banks were foreclosing on everyone's homes. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to that struggle.

As the number of available jobs has decreased in border states like Texas, cities halfway across America have begun to see an influx of illegal immigrants in search of employment.

We cannot get control of our borders until we do something about… a man or woman who is making 50¢ an hour in Mexico and can make 10 bucks an hour and the United States for a job that Americans will not do.

Thousands of Americans die at the hands of illegal aliens every year. Every murder, every rape, every violent gang crime committed against Americans by illegal aliens is an utterly preventable crime.

Poverty causes crime.

…it would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living, instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for it.

Viciousness and prejudice flow from economic dislocation, and in turn feed it.

What everyone has always wanted in this country, what most came here for, was to get away from all those others who smell bad, are sleeping in a shanty, and are eating fatback and are going to loaf tomorrow because there is no job to go to.

We have the ability to shut down the flow of remittances to Mexico from illegal aliens working in the United States.

You have extreme poverty and high crime and you have to admit that the governance of the Kabul regime has been poor and has been losing its popular legitimacy. You have a corrupt police force, not to mention homelessness, joblessness. The problems are huge.

The children of those people [long term unemployed] have less education, earn less, have higher unemployment. The problems are visited upon the children

If you want to get into the United States, the best way, I believe, is to ride the network. There is no convergence between, say, the criminal networks and the Islamic extremist networks.

I saw what the Depression was doing to my students. Often they could get no jobs, or jobs which were wholly inadequate. And through them, I began to understand how deeply political and economic events could affect men's lives. I began to feel the need to participate more fully in the life of the community.

No level of border security, no wall, doubling the size of the border patrol, all these things will not stop the illegal migration from countries as long as a 7-year-old is desperate enough to flee on her own and travel the entire length of Mexico because of the poverty and the violence in her country.

The root causes of the gang culture lie right across the policy spectrum - but they can all be found in the same areas geographically: worklessness; family breakdown; educational failure and addiction.

I agree that we need to have real temporary foreign workers, who are working in the fields, picking fruits.