Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor because I have been listening to some of the discussions of my colleagues about the immigration reform bill that is before the Senate. As I have said before, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts. I have heard references, time and time again, to 1986, the last time immigration reform legislation was passed. This is not 1986. Selective memory loss seems to be at work in the Senate today, so I wish to respond to some of these claims made by my colleagues. On one hand, critics of the immigration bill keep harking back to the Immigration Control Act of 1986, commonly known as IRCA, arguing we haven't learned the lessons of 1986. On the other hand, they insist on their slogan of securing the border first, before a legalization process can begin. But if there are lessons to be learned from 1986, there are just as many to be learned from the last 10 years in which ``enforcement first'' has been the mantra of Congress's immigration policy, with disastrous results. First, with respect to 1986, the overriding lesson learned from that bill was that if we don't deal with the reasons people come to the United States, we don't solve the problem. A promise to end illegal immigration ultimately could not be fulfilled because the 1986 law did not address the question of future immigration flows.…”