Campaign Statements — Immigration

Sunday April 15, 2012

“I will try to do it in the first year.”

“I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term. I want to try this year. The challenge we’ve got on immigration reform is very simple. I’ve got a majority of Democrats who are prepared to vote for it, and I’ve got no Republicans who are prepared to vote for it.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Sunday April 15, 2012

“We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model.”

“We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country ... these are laws that potentially would allow someone to be stopped and picked up and asked where their citizenship papers are based on an assumption.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Friday April 13, 2012

“The Republicans have consistently demogogued the issues and have blocked action.”

“The only reason we do not have a law right now that has provided a citizenship not just for DREAM Act kids but for folks who are here, are law-abiding citizens, is because the Republicans have consistently demogogued the issue and have blocked action in Congress. This notion that somehow Republicans want to have it both ways, they want to vote against these laws and appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment when we have a nominee who said that Arizona laws—which allow those same kids with Latino surnames to potentially be picked up [and] asked for their papers—and then they come and say, ‘But we really care about these kids and we want to do something about it.’ That looks like hypocrisy to me.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Monday April 02, 2012

“Our immigration policies are upside down.”

“That is something that I will not just talk about in this campaign. This will be a priority of mine if I become president to make sure we finally reform our immigration laws step by step, secure the border, improve our legal immigration system, so we can keep people here and welcome people here who will make America a stronger nation.

My own view is our immigration policies are upside down. We make it very hard for people who have skills that we need — education and English-speaking and workplace skills — make it very hard for those people to come here and to stay here. On the other hand, those that don’t have any of those things are often times able to come either across the border or over-stay their visas and remain in this country indefinitely. So we’ve got it backwards.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |

Monday April 02, 2012

“He uses [immigration] as a political weapon.”

“[Immigration] has always been a priority for the President he chooses to do nothing about. Let the immigrant community not forget that, while he uses this as a political weapon, he has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“Easy access for legality and impossible access for illegality.”

“I believe you cannot pass a single large comprehensive bill, the 2,700-page kind of bill you described. I think you’ve got to go one step at a time.

The first step is to control the border. I don’t believe anybody who’s here illegally—and I talked last night, for example, with folks who are of Hispanic background from Nogales who are in the import-export business dealing with Mexico every day. They don’t want a border that’s closed, they want a border that’s controlled, that has easy access for legality and impossible access for illegality. And that’s the model that I think you can talk about in my community of any ethnic background in this country.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Newt Gingrich |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“We need to give law enforcement the opportunity to do…what Sheriff Arpaio was doing.”

“I’m not going to require homeowners to do E-Verify. I think that’s one step too far. But I think what we need to do is to give law enforcement the opportunity to do what they’re doing here in Arizona and what Sheriff Arpaio was doing before he ran into some issues with the federal government, which is to allow folks to enforce the law here in this country, to allow people who are breaking the law or suspicious of breaking the law to be able to be detained and deported if they’re found here in this country illegally, as well as those who are trying to seek employment.

This is enforcing not just upon the employer, but on those who are here illegally and trying to do things that are against the law, like seeking employment here.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Rick Santorum |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“As Arizona is finding out, you can stop illegal immigration.”

“I’ll also complete the fence. I’ll make sure we have enough border patrol agents to secure the fence. And I will make sure we have an E-Verify system and require employers to check the documents of workers, and to check E- Verify. And if an employer hires someone that has not gone through E- Verify, they’re going to get sanctioned just like they do for not paying their taxes.

You do that, and just as Arizona is finding out, you can stop illegal immigration. It’s time we finally did it.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“I think you see a model in Arizona.”

“I think you see a model in Arizona. They passed a law here that says—that says that people who come here and try and find work, that the employer is required to look them up on e- verify. This e-verify system allows employers in Arizona to know who’s here legally and who’s not here legally.

And as a result of e-verify being put in place, the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent, where the national average has only gone down 7 percent. So going back to the question that was asked, the right course for America is to drop these lawsuits against Arizona and other states that are trying to do the job Barack Obama isn’t doing. And I will drop those lawsuits on day one.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |