Lois Capps: “I thank my colleague from California, Tony Cardenas. And, yes, I do have a letter that I will share, but I want to…”

“I thank my colleague from California, Tony Cardenas. And, yes, I do have a letter that I will share, but I want to discuss the matter in general first and thank my colleague for organizing all of us to be here to address a topic that is of central importance to our State of California and the entire country. I join my colleagues in strong support for comprehensive immigration reform. We honor the many contributions that immigrants have made to our country during Citizenship Day this week, but we cannot forget the millions of immigrants left behind by our broken immigration system. These are the immigrants who contribute to key sectors of our economy. They are such a vital part of agriculture, housing, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, tourism, engineering, technology, and on and on. These are hardworking people, immigrants who often face separation from their families, lower wages, and face the fear of deportation; and this forces them to take their skills often to our competitors at great disadvantage to our own economy. We can all agree that our current immigration system is not working. It's holding back our country and our economy, and now is the time to fix it. While I've been traveling in my congressional district, I've heard personally from business sectors of our economy on the central coast of California that are hurt on a daily basis by this broken immigration system.…”