Howard Berman: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ms. Lofgren, the chairman of the subcommittee, for bringing this legislation to the floor.…”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ms. Lofgren, the chairman of the subcommittee, for bringing this legislation to the floor. For 30 debate-time minutes we have heard the other side's arguments, and so many of them have been filled with scare tactics and blatant inaccuracies. We have been working on this bill for nearly a decade. We have recently made a number of changes to make clear our intentions about who the bill should cover and who it shouldn't. Nearly every speaker on the other side has used the term ``amnesty.'' Think about that. Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty. If you say it enough, you can scare a lot of people into being against this bill. We are talking about a group of people who didn't do anything wrong. They didn't possess the intention to commit a crime or to cross the border illegally. They were brought here. This is a universe of people who deserve special consideration because the absence of wrongdoing is so clear. And for that you use the term amnesty? That's outrageous.”