Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, Senator Scott's proposed amendment, to be clear, would create a carve-out for people based on the languages they speak. Now, unless their language skills are somehow part of the analysis determining whether or not they qualify for employment-based immigrant visas, I do not see that making a carve-out for particular languages would be consistent with our immigration rules or with principles of fairness or of equity. Amendments like this one that purport to carve out groups of people based on their nationalities or their ethnicities or their native languages are antithetical to the type of equitable change we have been pursuing with this bill for years. When we look at this, it operates quite broadly. He is trying to create a carve-out for people who are native speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian, Creole, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Hokkien, or Hakka, for those who have attained a master's degree or higher in the aforementioned languages, or for people who are spouses or children of the people on the aforementioned list. There are a lot of people who have been identified there. Interestingly enough, this doesn't include other languages. I haven't heard any principled basis upon which we could differentiate between those two.…”