Howard Berman Quotes
This is not the 1890's. We can't have open borders any more.
Howard Berman, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, CA), Interview, PBS American Interest, March 15, 1989
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was referring to the proposal to erect a fence between Mexico and the United States to stop illegal immigration.
The United States policies at the time encouraged tens of thousands of foreigners to study in America—especially mathematics, science and engineering. Then after they graduate we expel them despite the fact that we have a great labor shortage of these technical skill areas. The result is that the American economy lags in one of its most important areas, high technology for lack of qualified people to fill the jobs. Larger American companies then set up operations overseas and hire many of the people who we kicked out, so they do not pay any taxes to America. The best and most ambitious of these American trained foreigners, then start their own businesses abroad, create many jobs that never benefit Americans and then sell to America competing with American firms. New York City alone had tens of thousands of open jobs at very high salaries for which there were no Americans to fill while the New York schools had trained enough foreigners to fill the jobs, but our national policies forced the best and the brightest to leave and compete with us.
between Mexico and the United States The first non-PRI President in over 70 years.
Ironically, where national quotas have been used in American immigration policy, it has rarely been used to keep nationals of countries with which we were having difficulty, out. In almost all cases, the national quotas have been used to discriminate against racial and religious minorities in America. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, Mormons and Jews have been the most frequent groups targeted. Even when we were in the midst of the Cold War, American policy was to accept immigrants from the Soviet Union and Cuba enthusiastically.
Not all segments of the Republican Party perceived that they needed immigration reform. Some greatly feared more non-whites coming into the country and ending the traditional majority of whites. After the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was passed, almost all the racist Democrats of the “solid South” switched to the Republican Party and the last thing they want is to allow the 11 million mostly Hispanic and/or Black undocumented immigrants to become citizens and vote.
Howard Lawrence Berman is an American attorney and retired politician who served as a U.S. Representative from California from 1983 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state's 26th congressional district until redistricting and 28th congressional district until losing his reelection bid—which both encompassed parts of the San Fernando Valley—for respectively ten and five terms.
