Legal Residency Quotes

As a legal matter, my mother is an American citizen by birth.

What I'll say is that Cuban-Americans don't have to deal with the same immigration issues as other nationalities because of the 'wet feet, dry feet' policy. For Cubans, one year after you touch United States territory, you can become a legal resident.

There should be a path to earned legal status for those that are here. Not - not amnesty - earned legal status, which means you pay a fine and do many things over an extended period of time.

[Barak Obama] just said children who are Americans or legal residents, they will remain low priorities for enforcement - meaning deportation - as long as they've not.

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.

We [Americans] really need a system that comprehensively looks at the fact that we need these workers in the United States, we need to be able to provide a pathway to citizenship. We need to be able to allow them to be here legally and to do the work that they are doing and that we need.

There should be a pathway to citizenship - not a special pathway and not no pathway.

We should encourage people who have lived here peacefully for years to earn legal status over time.

I say to all who are legally here, that you will be welcome to stay.

I believe that the Cuban Adjustment Act must be re-examined.

The Supreme Court has only granted citizenship to the children born to legal immigrants, not illegal.

I got my green card and everything through my work, even before marriage or anything like that, so you really have to follow the rules and do everything the right way to be able to accomplish that, so it was big... I had my green card for so long.

We do not support an automatic pathway to citizenship.

I'm a Canadian citizen, but I do have a green card.

But I also want to give them a pathway so that they can earn citizenship, earn a legal status, start learning English, pay a significant fine, go to the back of the line, but they can then stay here and they can have the ability to enforce a minimum wage that they're paid, make sure the worker safety laws are available, make sure that they can join a union.

One thing I think we have to do is to make sure that the undocumented workers who are living in America today, that they have to take responsibility. They've got to register, pay a fine, pay their back taxes, learn English and then get on a pathway in which they could have the prospect of being here legally.

No path to citizenship. People that want to gain legal status, you heard Donald Trump say again and again, will have to leave the country.

You follow the law. Every few months, you need to fly back to Europe and stamp your visa. After a few visas, I applied for a green card and got it in 2001. After the green card, I applied for citizenship. And it was a long process.

I think the American people are gonna be reasonable with what do you do with someone who has been in this country for 10 or 12 years who hasn't otherwise violated our laws - because if they're a criminal they can't stay. They'll have to undergo a background check, pay a fine, start paying taxes. And ultimately, they'll given a work permit and that's all they're gonna be allowed to have for at least 10 years.

It just struck me as obvious that a state has the right to restrict its welfare benefits only to those people who are U.S. citizens or are visiting the state legally.

Undocumented people have been targeted for years now. Even under the Obama administration, there was a really large number of deportations of undocumented people. Trump has just taken that policy and ratcheted it up several notches. He's made it much more intense. We've had situations where people who would have been covered by the Obama administration, people who had been promised a path toward legal residency, had that taken away. I did not imagine that. I could never have imagined that happening.

I think that anybody who works and pays taxes ought to have a right for citizenship.

We have 11 million people in this country that need a pathway to citizenship.

I absolutely believe that those who come here illegally should not be given favoritism or a special route to becoming permanent residents or citizens that's not given to those people who have stayed in line legally. I just think we have to follow the law, I think that's the right course.