Political Quotes

“sometimes we screw up, and when we do, we need to take steps to fix it. When we passed the illegal immigration reform bill, that put on to the INS the requirement to develop a system for documenting every alien entering and leaving this country by October of 1998. We put in place a system that could not work, that will not work, and that threatens commerce on both borders. This is about delaying the effective date of that one year, and I believe we will even have to take additional steps, as outlined by the gentleman from New York [Mr. LaFalce] and others. Let me just show you North Dakota. I represent this State. It is a State that shares one of the longest borders with Canada in the entire country. It is absolutely vital to our commerce, more than $50 million of commerce to North Dakota coming back and forth every year, 2 million border crossings in North Dakota alone. This has not been a problem. What the people back home cannot understand is, when Congress makes a mistake, we all make mistakes, but why can we not fix the mistake before people get hurt? I have got letters here from small businesses all across the State of North Dakota. Now, they are not involved in any of the high stakes and the high rhetoric about the immigration reform. All they know is, they need the daily flow of commerce like they have had it. Please, please, do not hurt North Dakota's economy on a mistake that we did last year.”