Republicans and Democrats agree that this should be done, $2.5 trillion. I happen to think it's double that. It's probably $5 trillion that we can't bring into our country.
If immigration reform passes, it'll be a big victory for sanity - nobody really believes it's healthy for a country to have millions and millions of undocumented noncitizens living in the shadows. But it'll also be a sign that the Republican Party has gotten tired of letting the Tea Party push it around.
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.
That's an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it's no good. Why? Because as long as it's illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don't qualify for social security, they don't qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don't qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They're hard workers, they're good workers, and they are clearly better off.
What I think you are going to see is with DACA being gone, it gets rid of the magnet of drawing people over here, thinking they are going to come in and get amnesty.
I believe the Visa Waiver Program, it essentially is the soft underbelly of the visa system. Now we have 35 countries in it. We have 16 million people coming in. I believe the overstays still run about 40 percent of the undocumented population. In other words, there's 40 percent that you really don't know where it came from is what I'm trying to say. And I've always suspected people come in on a visitor's visa and they just decide to stay, and that's a large part of the undocumented population.
They say there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. But if you ask a Native American, that number is more like 300 million.
With these 11 million people here illegally, let's have them registered, know who they are, those that are her paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process towards application for citizenship.
We must make immigration a legal, orderly process to eliminate this issue, not further criminalize it.
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.
Some people say these aren't huge numbers, but let's also remember that our job here is to make sure this doesn't turn into a new route for ever-increased illegal migration, so I want to stop it now as much as I possibly can.
Over a period of time, they [undocumented workers] can have a legalized status that allows them to live a life of dignity but not necessarily a path to citizenship, so as to not create incentives for future people that aspire to come to our country to do so illegally when they could come legally.
There are 11 million people living in the shadows. I believe they deserve to come out of the shadows. The children who are brought here when they were children, they deserve that kind of consideration as well.
In the United States everyone is an illegal immigrant - everyone except the people in Indian Reservations. This is an immigrant society.
Those who enter the country illegally violate the law.
You know, the eleven million people living in the shadows, I believe, they're already American citizens... These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard alone eleven million undocumented aliens are already Americans in my view.
Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently live within our borders. That's 11 million people living in the shadows whom we know next to nothing about.
We have 11 million people said to be in our country illegally. Forty percent of them are said to have overstayed their visa. Do we know where they are?
It's different when you talk about immigration in the abstract... It's very different when you sit in front of a family, and [undocumented] children who grew up in this country, and who go to the same school you once went to... They thought if we only enforce the law, people will self-deport... It's not going to happen. The solution is not the status quo, or deportation when you're talking about breaking up families.
It's not like Mexicans have an illegal immigration organ in their body and at 14 kicks off a hormone and shows them how to come to the United States illegally. It's a question of desperation for a vast majority of them.
A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.
The estimated 11 or so million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. This is what Mr. [Donald ] Trump promised back in November.
After ensuring border security, I then would normalize the status of 11 million undocumented citizens so they can join the work force and pay taxes...I would normalize them at a rate of about two million per year.
We need to be talking about things like the DREAM Act. We need to also be talking about e-verify. We also need to be talking about border security.
...the mayor should not be advancing a policy that encourages [illegal] immigrants to think of New York City as their safe haven.
