Joaquin Castro: “You bring up a wonderful point, which is that you have got--we have, in our Nation, 10 to 15 million people…”

“You bring up a wonderful point, which is that you have got--we have, in our Nation, 10 to 15 million people, undocumented immigrants, who essentially are off the radar that we can't account for. And so a large part of this bill is bringing those people out of the shadows and making sure that we can account for their activities, making sure that they are paying taxes and that they are able to purchase health care insurance. Right now, as you know in Colorado, and certainly we know in Texas, when somebody shows up at a county hospital and they can't afford to pay for their services, their emergency services, all of us, as taxpayers, end up paying those bills, and that includes a lot of undocumented folks. And those services, of course, have to be provided. Everybody needs to be provided emergency services. So this would be a way to essentially bring them under the grid, understand who they are, and bring them into society's fold. Those are definitive benefits of the bill that we propose.”