Zoe Lofgren: “I think it is time to talk about illegal immigration when we talk about the Pombo amendment. We have talked a lot about…”

“I think it is time to talk about illegal immigration when we talk about the Pombo amendment. We have talked a lot about that in these last few days. Now we are talking about bringing in a quarter of a million agricultural workers a year, and we are saying that that will do nothing to increase illegal immigration. That is a ludicrous idea. As someone who worked in the immigration field for many, many years, I have been thinking as I have heard the rhetoric today, who are these people? Not the farmers, but who are the people that will leave their families behind for months at a time, come to America, work very hard in hot fields, picking crops for very modest wages? Who are these people? These are people who are desperate for a better way of life and they do not plan to go home. They will send their money back to their families so their families will have something to live on. I do not have anything against these people. I admire their courage. But I also know they will not go home. The 25 percent of the wages that would be withheld from these individuals is probably less than what they would pay to a coyote to come across the border today. So to think that we are somehow going to be remedying the problem of illegal immigration by bringing in a quarter of a million desperate agricultural workers a year is absolutely ludicrous.”