You said if John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Eugene O'Neill were trying to enter the United States today, they would have to enter illegally.

Now, my understanding of the law of supply and demand, if we have a high demand for labor, why haven't the wages gone up more than 1 percent, or even fallen for low-skilled workers?

I think it is one of those simple realities.

The current 'law is not adequate to prevent the immigration of criminals, nor is it sufficiently effective' to deport criminals. That is still the truth today, isn't it?

Americans do believe in immigration. They do affirm immigrants that are here. They do not hate immigrants.

The American people are rightly concerned. They saw what happened in 1986, and they are rightly concerned that we may make that mistake again.

Whose interest are we representing--the United States or the person who would like to come?

We need to tighten up a number of things from enforcement to actually the how we handle the amnesty portion of the bill and how we do future immigrations.

We passed an amnesty and made a promise in the future that we would have enforcement, and it never came.

I think it would be a big mistake for him as a matter of principle out of some fanciful idea that he could not support a lawful system and appeal for votes.

I think the American people don't feel good about a protest that says we don't have to comply with American law.

I'm not impressed. That's not -- I'm not going to now line up and say, oh, great, we've got a compromise and this is going to be the law.

He was one of the most fabulous witnesses we've ever seen before the Judiciary Committee.

I think you make a good point.

We might as well be honest with one another and talk about it.

Who are they? Who is NCIC?

I agree that that would be a very, very important thing, Mr. Chairman, that having been a Federal prosecutor...

I have not supported to date the President's policies.

You would not dispute, would you, that if local law enforcement calls about one or two individuals that they think may be in violation of Federal immigration law, that there are not sufficient Federal agents to come and get them or spaces…

I am worried that while we are not looking at some sort of retrospective amnesty, as occurred last time...

Senator Zell Miller and I have introduced a bill called the Homeland Security Act.

I am reluctant to support any proposal that provides a major change in our immigration law.

Have you formulated a system so that as of today and in the future, that when an order of deportation, removal gets entered that that immediately goes in the NCIC?

This thing, when you do not have local police participating; there is no place to put them; people are being released on bail, just immediately run off again instead of being deported.

Sadly, I must say that we are further away from where we need to be than most of us want to admit.