“[It is] one of the most complex and emotional issues of out time.”

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.’

There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.

We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.

What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.

We can certainly defuse the intensity of the anti-immigrant feeling if we can bring some reality to the discussion by showing that they are not using that many resources.

We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic. There is no way to improve upon that. But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny.

I never wanted to be run of the mill.

Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It’s tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny.

We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.

Let us heed the voice of the people and recognize their common sense. If we do not, we not only blaspheme our political heritage, we ignore the common ties that bind all Americans.

Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.

Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love.

If you’re going to play the game [politics] properly, you’d better know every rule.

…for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.

A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.

I appreciate the good work that senators in both parties have put into trying to fix our broken immigration system. There are some good elements in this proposal, especially increasing the resources and manpower to secure our border and also improving and streamlining legal immigration. However, I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship. To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally.

The only people benefiting from the status quo in immigration [in the USA] today are the people trafficking human beings across the border, and the people who are hiring illegal labor for cheap purposes.

I want immigration reform to pass, I want people to be able to come out of the shadows.

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity.

In the process we have created [a] privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals.

Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers solves two problems.

While we’re members of the European Union, we don’t have an immigration policy. We can’t have an immigration policy. It’s a charade for people to pretend we do.

We’re continuing to work to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands.