Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the fact of the matter is, as the gentleman well knows, we put a cap on this program to make sure that there was a limitation because of the fact that with only 17,000 using it right now, we know that there are far more people than that out there who would utilize it, who are utilizing illegal immigrants right now. Therefore, we wanted to make sure that we had every encouragement on growers to have every effort made to recruit U.S. workers. And they are going to have to make every effort to recruit U.S. workers if, as they say, they use a half a million illegal immigrants right now. So the 100,000 cap is, I think, a very, very stringent cap, but also we have to make the program usable within that cap. Obviously, with 17,000 legal workers and a half a million illegal workers, we do not have a reasonable program right now. So let us modify the program, make some improvements, and still protect U.S. workers.”