Alan Simpson: “I think America's greatness has been created, generation after generation, by driven self-selected individuals who came…”

“I think America's greatness has been created, generation after generation, by driven self-selected individuals who came here as legal immigrants. We can think of names such as Albert Einstein, from Ohio, someone like George Olah who came here from Budapest in 1957 and taught at Case-Western Reserve, and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1994. The original bills as introduced actually said to people like Einstein and Olah, "Get lost, you can come to the U.S., but only if you jump through a whole bunch of bureaucratic hoops from the State Department and the Labor Department." A lot of these provisions were, in fact, changed in committee. Mr. President, I think we really do not need to be making it any harder for these talented, energetic people to come and help us build our great country. In fact, Mr. President, we became the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world by doing exactly the opposite--by encouraging them to come.”