Political Quotes

“If the Senator would yield further for a question--and this notion that the Chinese in the United States are all suspect spies, is it really--is that the point you want to make? Is that really the point you want to make? Do we have background checks involved here? Do we have screening involved here? We are all intent on keeping America safe, but to categorize a group of people as all potential spies--and, therefore, they are going to all be fed to the lions of Beijing if they are returned--seems to me to be fundamentally unfair and not consistent with what America has learned about immigration. There were suspicions in World War II about all those people coming from Europe, and they were turned away, many of them to their death. We can't make that mistake again. If there is any suspect person, there is a way to determine that with screening, criminal background checks, and the like. So the 6,700 who are here, we were told at the hearing--I think you were there; it may have been a minute or two before you arrived--one of them is a student of Georgetown, for example, who now has a price on his head from the Chinese Communist Party, and the question is whether we are going to force him to return into imprisonment. I don't think we want anyone who is suspected of spying on the United States at all, but to dismiss all of these people as possible spies doesn't sound to me-- does it sound to you?--as consistent with who we are as a people.”