Alan Simpson: “I think what happens in issues like this is you establish a degree of trust. You may have your own views, but we do not…”

“I think what happens in issues like this is you establish a degree of trust. You may have your own views, but we do not lay snares on each other. That is a very important part of legislating--to establish trust, and then you get in there and belt it around and then you move on. That is what I do and have always done in 30 years of this work. I have been in some that are much, much more intense than this particular one. However, I do have to comment on the one thing that keeps coming back like a theme. Oh, then I wanted to say that there is one group the Senator left off of that list, the American immigration lawyers. You would not want to leave them off the list. They have messed up more legislation in this area than any living group, and they will continue to do it forever. This is their bread and butter. The bread and butter of the American immigration lawyers is confusion. And when you try to do something, you use families, children, mothers, sons and daughters, and violins. That is the way they work, but they never give us many other options, nor do the opponents ever give us many options. What priorities would you, I say to the opponents, like to take away if you do not raise the numbers? If you do not raise the numbers, what priorities of the preference system would you reduce? You cannot have it both ways.”