Political Quotes

“Thank you, Judge Poe, for the time. And I also wish to thank Chairman Conyers as well as Chairwoman Lofgren of the Immigration Subcommittee and Lamar Smith, the ranking member on the full committee, for your efforts in this regard, especially your diligence in getting this to the floor today. I also, Madam Speaker, want to thank the many adoptive families, members of the international adoption community and others who have worked behind the scenes to spur action today. Thanks to this outreach of so many concerned Americans, Congress is finally doing the right thing here to help as many as 1,200 voiceless and vulnerable Haitian orphans and their adoptive American families. We can now give these new families, who have endured so much heartbreak and tragedy, the comfort of knowing that their children's legal status is now in good order. Many of us received heartbreaking calls for help in the wake of the January 12 earthquake. American families in various stages, as we have heard, of adopting Haitian orphans feared for the safety and the security of their children. Extraordinary work was done swiftly to evacuate these children and unite them with their new families on U.S. soil. Yet instead of coming here as fully adopted U.S. citizens, these children arrived under a legal status known as humanitarian parole.…”