Xavier Becerra: “if I can just say to the Members who are here and to the Speaker, who just finished with his remarks, all you have to do…”

“if I can just say to the Members who are here and to the Speaker, who just finished with his remarks, all you have to do is go to the community colleges, the night schools for adults, the community-based organizations that are doing this at their own cost, and you will see that every night the rooms are filled with people trying to learn English. They are turning people away. There are 18-month wait lists. There are 50,000 people being told you will have to come back at a later time, because they are trying to learn English. It so happens that this Congress chose to cut funds for English as a second language for those who are trying to learn English. Make sense out of that. What we see is that for the first time in this Nation since 1924, we have an amendment on immigration that would give a preference to a certain group of people, and what we are doing is we are limiting, we are crunching, we are narrowing those who can come into this country. With this amendment what we are saying is we really only want those who sound like us, who can speak like us, and it is unfortunate, because for the longest time and through this diversity program that is being attacked, we are trying to make sure that we give folks from every part of the world a chance. Unfortunately, this amendment will make it difficult.…”