Mitt Romney Quotes

Our message to the world will be this. You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country. That's right. People will know that you can't just smuggle in, hunker down, and wait to be legalized. It's not going to work that way. Those days are over.

If someone comes here illegally, we owe them absolutely nothing.

We must make clear that if you come here illegally, you will be sent back home.

The reality is that there's heartbreak and tragedy that has struck American families because people that came into this country illegally are now involved in criminal enterprise and activity. We don't have the resources or the will to deport them systemically.

End illegal immigration.

I want people to know that I am tough on illegal immigration and we are working to provide needed border security.

My policy will be to detain and deport every illegal alien who is apprehended in this country. And we'll do it with an expedited hearing process so that millions of illegal aliens are not released into the general population with some hearing date down the road.

When you talk about the problem of illegal immigration, people are angry and polarized. When you talk about the answers, the debate gets a little different.

...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.

You try turning up in America without documents, without a visa, without a passport; you'll be treated as very, very much illegal.

It is our hope that in future discussions with the Mexican government, you will encourage Mexico to do its part to address illegal immigration rather than encourage their citizens to illegally enter the U.S.

The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition.

One way to sensitize Washington to the illegal alien problem is to make them pay for it.

Illegal immigration undermines legal immigration.

The simple answer to the illegal alien problem is to secure our boarders and enforce the law.

Thirty-five to forty percent of the people who are not lawfully present in the United States entered the country legally – through student visas, visitor visas, business visas, visa waivers. All of these people entered the country legally, so securing the borders really doesn’t affect that aspect of illegal immigration.

Immigrant rights are civil rights.

The key here is to be fair to the 11 million [illegal immigrants], starting with the [2 million younger illegals] ‘Dreamers'....I’ve stopped letting 30 percent of the people who are mad about immigration determine how I behave. To those who feel like you should deport [younger illegals], boy, I couldn’t disagree with you more…. To the people who object to this, I don’t want you to vote for me because I cannot serve you well.

Americans are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal immigrants entering this country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by our citizens or legal immigrants, and the public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal aliens who try to take American jobs, and by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.

The federal government is responsible for addressing how to address the status of the estimated 9 to 15 million people who are in the country illegally, but local and state law enforcement can be helpful partners in that regard.

I do not support amnesty. I do not support driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants.

In 2019 folks were coming across the border and were sitting down, they were sitting down waiting for Border Patrol to come up because they knew they would be released within a matter of hours if not days into the interior of the U.S. and that was the goal.

There's no way without real evidence I would ever send the National Guard to the border.

As the son of legal immigrants to America who came from India, I support stronger border security for our nation as well as deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes.