Political Quotes

“last week I gave remarks on the floor that pointed out that promises made that the immigration bill before us was a significant move toward merit-based immigration and away from chain immigration--I dealt with that subject. I am not aware that any of my comments have fundamentally been disputed. The fact is that 30 million people will be given legal status as an immigrant on a pathway to citizenship over the next 10 years--that 30 million is three times the current legal flow of 1 million a year, which would be 10 million a year. It would triple the number of people put on a path to permanent legal residence and citizenship. Only 2.5 million of those would be admitted under this new, small, actually weak, merit-based section of the bill. This is nowhere close to the truly effective and popular merit-based immigration system which Canada adopted a decade--maybe more--ago and which is being followed and adopted in other developed countries around the world. Evidence has also been introduced that nonimmigrant guest workers-- that is, those who come not for immigration, to be a citizen and be permanent, but come to work for a period of time and return home--that group of workers will double under the legislation that is before us over current law. All of this is at a time of persistently high unemployment and when virtually all serious academics, economic experts agree that such a huge flow will depress wages of our middle-class workers and increase unemployment.…”