Immigration Bill Quotes

It is the purpose of the majority of the Immigration Committee to encourage assimilation, yet this bill has already done more than anything I know of to bring about discord among our resident aliens.

For one, we very much need in any immigration bill - we need protection for people who are in this country and who have not become citizens, for example, that they are protected and legitimized and given permanent residency here. And we want to see some things of that kind added to the immigration bill.

The immigration bill is going to pass. We're going to have a bill. It's going to get through the Senate. I think the fundamentals are there and the foundation is strong and the bill is going to happen. The House is going to be trickier, but I think it's going to happen there too.

The immigration bill - the new immigration bill - [Bill Clinton] has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.

When I lived in California, 1984 to '87, it was a Republican state. Sacramento where I lived was 73% Democrat voter registration, when I got there. It was in the sixties when I left. We had amazing success in converting Democrats in Sacramento. But Pete Wilson, Ronald Reagan, all people elected governors and so forth, it's only been with the advent of the 1986 immigration bill that we lost California, if I might say, and now it's just gone so far left they're seriously talking about seceding.

The underlying part of any comprehensive immigration bill is family unit.

You're not supposed to be admitted to America if you're likely to be a charge on the public - if you're going to need government aid to take care of yourself ... It [2006 immigration bill] failed because it did not do what it said it would do... End the illegality first. Then we can wrestle with how to treat compassionately people who have been in America for a long time.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, the co-author of the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill, has said the failure of that bill was a function of the lack of an ID card system.

We've come to a basic agreement, which is that first, people will be legalized. In other words, not citizens, but they’ll be allowed to work, come out of the shadows, travel. Then, we will make sure the border is secure. And we have specific metrics that are in the bill. I’m not going to get into what they are...

[on compromise immigration bill] This is fundamentally flawed in its current form, and I would oppose it. We need bipartisanship, but we also need legislation that is compassionate. I’m not sure this is.

There will never be a bill without a pathway to citizenship signed by the president...And in turn there will never be a pathway to citizenship without a new immigration system replacing the current one.

A massive immigration bill has no chance of becoming law.

This [Gang of Eight bill (S.744)] is far, far too many low-skilled workers that are going to take jobs and pull down wages of people unemployed and underemployed right now.

I really wish that we had passed a comprehensive immigration bill because that would've really helped our country.

Stephen Miller did one thing: He simply recited common sense. This is a common sense immigration bill. If there was ever a piece of common sense legislation, this is it. In this case, what Stephen Miller did was nothing more than common sense, and yet it was interpreted - it went right over their heads, the White House press corps, not just Jim Acosta and Glenn Thrush. It went over all of their heads because they didn't understand what he was talking about, either because of the fog of hatred they have for Donald Trump and his administration, or they are just ignorant.

It is vitally important that we implement immigration reform. We need a bill that strengthens our borders and protects this nation, but that also makes it simpler for good people to become Americans.

People come here to get educated. What's happening now, we educate them and once they have their degrees, we send them home. What this immigration bill does will allow them to stay and work, they will enter the U.S. workforce, and they will become taxpayers. This plan is about legal education.

I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on healthcare, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill.