Tom Carper

It is not going to be simple, as Senator Carper said. It is not going to be a short-term thing.

You have somebody good here. I do not think you want to let her go.

People are afraid to be successful in business, because if you are, you will get extorted, and if you do not come across with the money, you will get killed.

We have law enforcement officers that are corrupt in too many cases. In too many cases, the judges are corrupt.

We spent about a quarter-of-a-trillion dollars over the last decade enforcing our immigration laws

It's hard to remember that your job was to drain the swamp when you are up to your eyeballs in alligators.

Thank you for encouraging us to hold this hearing.

I put myself as a parent in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and I live in one of those communities with a lot of violence, not much opportunity, much chance for an education to get a job.

If we had taken that approach with Colombia some 20 years ago, a country I visited earlier this year, it would be a failed nation today instead of one with a vibrant economy that has become a strong ally of ours.

This is a shared responsibility. This should not be all on America's shoulders.

How do we get to the people and change that mindset?

As Chairman Carper noted, it must be a shared responsibility.

The Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill more than a year ago.

I am dismayed to hear some of our colleagues suggest that the answer is to cutoff funding for these countries.

I believe that the United States, along with Mexico, Colombia, and along with many others, need to do a better job of helping Central American countries help themselves.

These people are desperate.

I believe this is a mistake. I truly hope they will reconsider this decision.

This is a humanitarian crisis, one that the Administration and Secretary Johnson are taking extremely seriously.

The key to almost the success of any entity I have ever come across, whether it was government, business, athletics, church, schools, is leadership.

Colleges should be accountable for their graduation rates and how much debt they are putting their students in.

We do not create jobs. We help create a nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation.

What you need to do is look at the billions of dollars that we give directly to colleges and universities, over $10 billion a year, and say, here are our priorities, here are our standards.

I think basically the status quo is not working. We have been pouring more money, pouring in more spending, more tax benefits, and, as you have experienced firsthand, tuition is going up and up.

I think the more we can provide opportunities for competition and for students to have the availability of online and other sorts of new services, I think that will begin to ratchet down costs and I think give people the kind of options…

I can say with some certainty that my wife and I understand that the cost of higher education has risen quite a bit, although this report is in the media this week that suggests maybe not as much as we had thought.