Mark Helprin Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

I support secure borders both north and south and I support a guest worker program for those here today illegally. Labor and skilled workers are critical to our Texas economy.

I'm in favor of immigration but we also need rules.

We must make immigration a legal, orderly process to eliminate this issue, not further criminalize it.

Enforcement is the long overdue step to protect our Nation from external threats in a time of war. And then once we do that, we can effectively discuss a guest worker program.

Should we attempt border security first, which I believe we should, we still need to face the fact that comprehensive reform is necessary. This must include a guest worker program and dealing with the 11 million people who are here today that are contributing to our economy.

The Republican Party looks at massive immigration, legal and illegal, as a source of cheap labor, satisfying a very important constituency.

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

The reason we have to close the back door of illegal immigration is so that we may keep open the front door of legal immigration.

Immigration has made free white laborers more easy to be procured.

The system is broken …. We must secure our borders. But we have to have a way of matching willing workers with willing employers and have a way for people to do the jobs that Americans don’t seem to want to do…. But I don’t believe that we are going to take people who have been here for 40 or 50 years and ship them back where they came from…. As long as there is a demand for workers, workers will come.

You can’t fix legal immigration until you fix illegal immigration.

I think the key to getting rid of illegal immigration, no matter where its coming from, is that you need to have a good legal apparatus for immigration.

I am in favour of migration; I simply want to control the numbers.

We need the federal government to assert their supremacy over the immigration issue and make it clear to state legislatures, cowboy cops, and the American people that the federal government is in charge and effectively enforcing and regulating immigration.

UKIP believe that immigration can be an extremely positive thing. But it has to be controlled.

Exit checks are absolutely critical to monitor if those who come into the U.S. on visas actually do in fact leave the country when their visa is up.

We should have no immigration at all for a certain time. Then we can look again.

The immigration flows have to be controlled. We have to know who comes into Italy. The problem shouldn't be left to oversized, dysfunctional, nongovernmental groups.

For too long the U.S. immigration system has focused on accepting low-skilled immigrants. Basic economics tells us that the surge of low-skilled workers depresses wages and harms the prospects of American workers.

We believe in immigration, but we don't believe in mass immigration.

Congress has an obligation to make controversial decisions on how to handle undocumented immigration. Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have refused to take the tough votes on the issue for decades. Whether it's been to take advantage of cheap labor or for political purposes, both sides are guilty.