Political Quotes

“Madam President, reserving the right to object. This is not the right way to get at the fentanyl problem. This gives the Secretary permission to shut down all asylum seekers from a country on the basis of any type of drug, no matter how much is in possession, how frequently that drug is possessed, what country they are coming from. We are calling for essentially a complete shutdown of the asylum program because there might be fentanyl somewhere. But it also gives the Secretary authority to stop asylum seekers coming from any country for any drug at any scale. Now, title 42 authority is a serious thing. It is a blanket authority to block anyone presenting themselves for asylum. We have seen the horrific images in Ukraine. We know between 4 and 5 million people are already refugees, and we know that the United States, as the indispensable Nation, wants to take a leadership role in accommodating these refugees in Europe and, if necessary, in the United States. People presenting themselves for asylum, escaping their dangerous home country--that is actually part of the American dream. That is, in a lot of ways, how many of us arrived, right? There may not have been this statutory framework, but the principle involved was not just that you came from some other place far away to make a better life for yourself--sometimes it was that, but sometimes it was to escape the pogrom, as was the case with my grandparents, from Kyiv to Odesa, actually to Canada, and then to Hawaii.…”