Noam Chomsky Quotes

The Immigration Act of 1924 closed our doors to virtually all non-European immigrants - a great wrong that was not rectified for decades.

[Tom Cotton] is known for his efforts to scale back legal immigration. Legal. He wants to stop legal immigrants from coming to this country. That's very popular in Republican politics .

The scandal isn't that refugees want to come to the United States. It's that Trump is abusing these aspiring Americans and closing our doors to them.

We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country.

President Trump has harnessed the fear and prejudice that have accompanied every wave of immigrants in United States history, and stoked those fears to further his own agenda.

Mexicans are deeply pessimistic that Simpson-Mazzoli can be enforced.

Cubans who arrive and can prove that they are refugees who are truly fleeing political persecution will continue to qualify as refugees. The only thing that I've asked for is to do away with automatic benefits granted to someone, basically, Cubans who come from Cuba, if it cannot be verified that they are refugees fleeing political persecution, so they will be treated the same way as any other immigrant who arrives in the United States, which is that legal immigrants in the United States don't have the right to any federal benefits for five years.

We can't go on forever with 11 million people living in this country in the shadows in an illegal status. We cannot forever have children who were born here - who were brought here by their parents when they were small children to live in the shadows, as well... What's changed, honestly, is that there is a new appreciation on both sides of the aisle, maybe more importantly on the Republican side, that we need to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

[Barak Obama] just said children who are Americans or legal residents, they will remain low priorities for enforcement - meaning deportation - as long as they've not.

I worked 30 years to try to restore respect for the rule of law because of Ronald Reagan's amnesty in 1986. And I don't want to let this go because somebody's heart got a little softer than it was before the election.

We for sure need to secure the border. I think we need to enforce the legal system. I'm not for amnesty, I'm not an advocate of the plans that have been pushed here in Washington... we need to find a way for people to have a legitimate legal immigration system in this country, and that doesn't mean amnesty.

We are going to enforce the law of America and strengthen immigration and customs enforcement with more resources and personnel to be able to do that, and then Donald Trump has made it clear. Once we have done all of those things, then we are going to reform the immigration system that we have in this country.

If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields to furnish them substance, while they will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands. I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude Jews for all time, your children will curse you in your graves.

I think [Donald Trump] will do something on immigration.

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.

By statute, Congress has given the president the authority to suspend immigration - any class of immigration if he deems it in the national interest.

There's no doubt that the Donald Trump administration, part of the red meat that he ran on from the first day when he announced his candidacy was a very extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric that he kept up through the whole campaign - the wall, deportation, more detention. And I think that that particular piece of red meat, he's going to throw out every once in a while and try to - of all the commitments that he's made, this is the one that is most disturbing, because it's one that he will try to fulfill through his presidency.

I think the immigration system we have now is terrible for the United States of America. We have a legal immigration system that does not work. It does not reflect the economic needs of this country in the 21st century. It needs to be modernized.

This is what everybody's forgetting about [Barak] Obama and his immigration law and his executive action and his amnesty on it, the Supreme Court decision. Immigration law is settled.

Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced. I have met with many of the great parents who lost their children to sanctuary cities and open borders. So many people, so many, many people. So sad.

I'm specifically talking about Bill Nelson which merely said to [Barak] Obama stop what you're doing because it's against the law. He's out there saying that today we're gonna start separating families from their children and start sending people home, and it's not happening.

I think people have good ideas on this. Clearly, we need to secure the border. Coming here legally needs to be a lot easier than coming here illegally.

The establishment of our new lawful immigration system then and only then will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain.

We have to deal with the 11 million individuals who are here illegally. The bill that Senator [Marco] Rubio put forward, I think is a great place to start.

Trump is going to secure the border. He's going to build the wall. He said Mexico will pay for it. And then he's going to take a look at who's here and decide - he's made this very clear - and decide, with his experts, what should happen.