Bill Clinton Quotes

People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.

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.

Any immigration policy carries costs and benefits and that policies differ in the ways in which they distribute these costs and benefits among the native population.

We're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay. And the reason they're going to pay and the way they're going to pay, Bob, is this. We have a trade deficit now with Mexico of $58 billion a year. The wall is going to cost $10 billion a year. That's what it's going to cost. It's going to be a powerful wall. It's going to cost $10 billion.

We can't afford to lose control of our own borders or to take on new financial burdens at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care and the education of our own people.

In 1923 there were no government benefits for immigrants except one: Freedom!

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs America's taxpayers many billions of dollars a year.

[Illegal immigration] costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money. And it's unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills. It's also unfair to a lot of people who have waited in line for years and years in other countries to be legal immigrants.

If it is orderly and lawful, immigration is good for our economy.

The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them.

Immigration is not an issue that I read about in the newspaper or watch a documentary on PBS or CNN. It's an issues I've lived around my whole life. My family are immigrants. My wife's family are immigrants. All of my neighbors are immigrants.

By finally enforcing our immigration laws, we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions and billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everyone.

There are some benefits [that illegal aliens] clearly ought not have...[including] health benefits and welfare benefits and others that serve as a magnet attracting people here from other countries.

Congratulations on your job at the bank! Yes. You work for the bank. After taxes, your largest expense is your mortgage and credit-card debt.

Our new immigrants must be part of our one America. After all, they're revitalizing our cities, they're energizing our culture, they're building up our economy. We have a responsibility to make them welcome here, and they have a responsibility to enter the mainstream of American life. That means learning English and learning about our democratic system of government. There are now long waiting lines of immigrants that are trying to do just that. Therefore, our budget significantly expands our efforts to help them meet their responsibility. I hope you will support it.

How would the US be different today if people coming off the boat were greeted with a welfare check instead of a shovel?

The people who have destroyed the health care system are also in line to destroy other aspects of our economy, the job market, immigration and amnesty.

It is my firm belief that it will be in the interests of the United States, especially our economic interests, to pursue comprehensive immigration reform.

When Obama boasts that it will be a huge boon to the economy to give amnesty to millions of low-wage workers, who won't pay income taxes but will need a lot of government services, remember: Obamacare was supposed to save money, too.

I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.

I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign. In my opinion it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.

Ironically, in the full-fledged transfer society, where governments busy themselves redistributing income by means of hundreds of distinct programs, hardly anyone is better off as a result.

The Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid.