Immigration Quotes - Page 24

Today we are in a situation in which the free movement of people can have enormous, monumental dimensions, and I don't think that any country in Western Europe or in America can any longer adopt the idea of totally free movement of people. I t would simply overwhelm their social facilities, their societies and create migratory dynamics on the scales of tens and tens of millions of people. That simply is not practical.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Country, Thinking, Europe

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On immigration policy, I believe we ought to call an immediate halt, stop illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration back to about 250,000 to 300,000, to more easily assimilate the Americans who've come here in the last 30 years.

Pat Buchanan

Believe, Years, Lasts

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Our laws were not designed to accommodate three or four thousand refugees coming here per day. Our laws were designed for people to be screened in a foreign country, carefully catalogued, and brought here a few at a time. This just didn't happen.

Jimmy Carter

Country, Law, People

United States. President (1977-1981 : Carter), Jimmy Carter, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1982). “Jimmy Carter”

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I'm sometimes asked why it is that for 30 years we seem to have trouble in the United States enforcing the rules against illegal immigration, and I'll tell you what the answer is. The answer is that when the television cameras turn off and the spotlight moves to something else, there are a host of interest groups and advocacy groups who work very, very hard to make it difficult to enforce these rules. I'm not commenting adversely on their motivation, but I can tell you the effect of all of this is to wear down the ability of an agency to enforce the law.

Michael Chertoff

Motivation, Moving, Agency

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The fact that we have not had a terrorist attack in this country in the last six years is not a cause for complacency or a time to celebrate the end of the struggle. The threat is not going away. The enemy has not lost interest. ...Fundamentally, we're in a struggle about ideology. Terrorists want to remake the world in their own image and it is the image that is intolerant of the kinds of institutions that we cherish.

Michael Chertoff

Country, Struggle, Years

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So people have to decide. Do they want to have the security? Do they want to continue to plug the gap [in border security] that GAO has identified and recognize that there will be some costs to doing that? Or do we want to make sure that business isn't hampered and that people can move back and forth readily, and recognize that, if we don't put some barriers in place, we're going to wind up with dangerous people coming into the country?

Michael Chertoff

Country, Moving, Wind

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We don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective...We haven't been able to require every employer to enter a system in which they check the work status of their employees and determine whether they're legal, and without that, we don't really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that's truly effective. And that would be the single greatest additional weapon we could use if we're serious about tackling this problem.

Michael Chertoff

Country, Law, Would Be

Transcript: Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff on 'FOX News Sunday', www.foxnews.com. July 1, 2007.

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How can you raise the level of consciousness on this? How can you get the federal government to take the responsibility? Florida does not have a foreign policy. This is a federal policy or absence of federal policy. It's so clear that we're not being treated fairly. We have to come up with a solution. It hurts your head trying to figure out what to do.

Lawton Chiles

Hurt, Responsibility, Florida

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There are some benefits [that illegal aliens] clearly ought not have...[including] health benefits and welfare benefits and others that serve as a magnet attracting people here from other countries.

Henry Cisneros

Country, People, Benefits

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[Illegal immigration] costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money. And it's unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills. It's also unfair to a lot of people who have waited in line for years and years in other countries to be legal immigrants.

William J. Clinton

Country, Years, People

William J. Clinton “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton, 1995, Bk. 1, January 1 to June 30, 1995”, Government Printing Office

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Our immigration policy is focussed in four areas: First, strengthening border control; second, protecting American jobs by enforcing laws against illegal immigrants at the workplace; third, deporting criminal and deportable aliens; fourth, giving assistance to states who need it, and denying illegal aliens benefits for public services or welfare.

William J. Clinton

Jobs, Law, Giving

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It simply doesn't make any sense for us to have illegal aliens in our custody in our courts and then let them go back to living here illegally. That's wrong and we should stop it.

William J. Clinton

Custody, Aliens, Should

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Our policy is guided by the principle that we will keep unauthorized aliens out of the United States, welcome legal immigrants, and protect refugees from harm. Our solutions rely on working in partnership with States and communities.

William J. Clinton

Community, Principles, United States

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We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

William J. Clinton

Self, Years, Law

State of the Union Address, millercenter.org. January 24, 1995.

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All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

William J. Clinton

Country, Jobs, Numbers

William J. "Bill" Clinton's State of the Union address, millercenter.org. January 24, 1995.

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In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

William J. Clinton

Self, Years, Law

William J. "Bill" Clinton's State of the Union address, millercenter.org. January 24, 1995.

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I recently spoke with Barbara Jordan of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, and I increasingly believe we need a system to verify employment eligibility. The Commission's recommendation of a national registry may be the way to go.

William J. Clinton

Believe, Reform, Needs

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What we did with deeming rules were designed - it was designed to keep costs from coming on to the government that should be borne by families of immigrants who actually have incomes and can afford to pay.

William J. Clinton

Government, Income, Cost

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We can't afford to lose control of our own borders or to take on new financial burdens at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care and the education of our own people.

William J. Clinton

Jobs, People, Borders

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...the fact [is] that our borders leak like a sieve: those things cannot be permitted to continue in good conscience.

William J. Clinton

Borders, Facts, Leaks

Clinton, William J. (1994). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1993”, p.1196, Best Books on

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To the extent that our workers compete with low-paid Mexicans, it is as much through undocumented immigration as trade. This pattern threatens low-paid, low-skill U.S. workers. The combination of domestic reforms and NAFTA-related growth in Mexico will keep more Mexicans at home. It is likely that a reduction in immigration will increase the real wages of low-skilled urban and rural workers in the United States.

William J. Clinton

Real, Home, Skills

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It is a commonplace of American life that immigrants have made our country great and continue to make a very important contribution to the fabric of American life. But...under the pressures we face today, we can't afford to lose control of our borders, or to take on new financial burdens, at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care, and the education of our own people. Therefore, immigration must be a priority for this administration.

William J. Clinton

Country, Jobs, People

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The California proposition [Prop. 187] is one I would agree with. That's the easiest way to put it.

Bob Dole

California, Way, Props

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As president, I will fight illegal immigration in order to preserve an appropriate level of legal immigration. At the same time, I believe our system of legal immigration needs to be re-examined. As part of this re-examination, I support a modest, temporary reduction in the annual rate of legal immigration.

Bob Dole

Believe, Fighting, Order

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Yet when the blood of the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American. And when I think of how we learned this lesson, I wonder how we could have unlearned it.

Bob Dole

Dream, Morning, Father

"Text of Robert Dole's Speech To The Republican National Convention August 15, 1996". www.cnn.com.

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