John Hope Bryant: “Mr. Chairman, what is really at stake in the consideration of the Chrysler-Berman amendment is whether we are going to…”

“Mr. Chairman, what is really at stake in the consideration of the Chrysler-Berman amendment is whether we are going to do anything meaningful with regard to numbers in this whole debate. The fact of the matter is that legal immigration accounts for about 1 million people a year coming into the country. Illegal immigration, which we all want to stop, accounts for about 300,000 a year. If Members are concerned, as I am, about the fact that in about 4 years we are going to have twice as many people in this country as we had at the end of World War II, and by the year 2050 we are going to have 400 million people, it is conservatively estimated to be that, and we do not want to see our country have that many people in it, and I do not, then we have to stand up and face the need to deal with the question of legal immigration, because that is where the numbers are. If we do not, we will have skipped that opportunity to really deal with the problem, and we will then have a situation where there will be a bunch of Members going around there beating their breasts, talking about how tough they got on illegal immigrants, but they avoided the tough question where the interest groups are putting the pressure on everybody; that is, the question of legal immigration. Mr. Chairman, I submit to the Members, that is not in the national interest.”