Alan Simpson: “I will tell you who should pay for the legal immigrant: the sponsor who promised to pay for the legal immigrant. This is…”

“I will tell you who should pay for the legal immigrant: the sponsor who promised to pay for the legal immigrant. This is not mystery land. This is extraordinary. How can we keep coming back to the same theme when the issue is so basic? If you are a legal immigrant to the United States, this is such a basic theme that I do not know why it needs to be repeated again and again and again. But I hope it will be dealt with in the same fashion again and again and again, because it is this: When the legal immigrant comes to the United States, the consular officer, the people involved in the decision, and the sponsor agrees that that person will not become a public charge. That was the law in 1882. We have made a mockery of that law through administrative law judge decisions and court decisions through the years, where it is not just the 'steak and the tooth,' as my friend from Illinois referred to, there is no steak and no teeth in it. And so, one of the most expensive welfare programs for the United States taxpayers is Medicaid.”