Because the truth is, today's immigrants, as they have for generation after generation, work the longest hours at the hardest jobs for the lowest pay, jobs that are just about impossible to fill.
Luis Gutierrez
Mr. Speaker, our Nation depends on immigrants' labor, and I hope we can create an immigration system as dependable as they are.
We need legal immigration as an alternative to illegal immigration and a way of getting the millions of unauthorized immigrants already here to get legal and get in compliance with our laws.
DACA is a lifeline for individuals who have grown up in the U.S. but who lack immigration papers.
Too many people fought too hard to make sure all citizens of all colors, races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities can vote to think that not voting somehow sends a message.
We cannot be a pro-immigrant party only when it is convenient.
We watched the U.S. citizenship immigration services web site in March. They had six million, two hundred thousand hits, and two million people downloaded applications for citizenship. So what we're doing is attempting to help people in that process.
I am a senior Democratic Member of Congress whose parents were born in Puerto Rico and for whom Puerto Rico self-determination has been - and remains - a central issue of my congressional career.
In the immigration debate, some things are constant. They never change. One is that opponents of immigration reform will use it as a wedge issue and will blame everything from unemployment to rising health care costs on immigrants.
Appeasing Wall Street is to be expected from the GOP who do little to hide their true intentions and their defense of the wealthiest financial institutions and interests.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has been clear that deporting young people who have lived in the U.S. for years and were brought here through no fault of their own as children should not be the targets of deportation.
In the public debate, while commentators and critics have targeted immigrants with blame and bullying, our nation's immigrants have simply kept on working, kept on contributing, and kept on hoping for a solution.
The immigrant blame game is constant. Cynical politicians believe it drives poll numbers; cynical commentators believe it drives TV ratings.
Are we going to go out and arrest and detain and deport 11 million people? Nobody would argue that that is what we are going to do, because we have never demonstrated the political will to do that, nor have we ever committed the requisite resources to do that.
Legal immigrants have been an engine of economic growth, innovation, and entrepreneurship on this continent for longer than we have been a nation.
Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase.
Mr. Speaker, Americans want, need, and rightfully expect Congress to protect them from the prying eyes of identity thieves and give them back control of their Social Security numbers and personal health information.
As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 billion and $140 billion in Federal, State, and local taxes.
If I saw someone in need and I did nothing, I'd be defacing my own humanity.
The pro-life, pro-family Republicans are now pro-neonatal detention and deportation. It isn't enough to drive out the people not born here; now they want to drive out the ones that were.
I am a strong supporter of President Obama and was the first national Hispanic elected official to endorse him, and I want him to be reelected in 2012.
Obama the President needs to stand up for what Obama the candidate and what Obama the Senator and what Obama the Chicago community organizer stood for and lead the Congress towards reform.
I was the first Latino member of Congress to support Senator Obama's candidacy. For quite a while, I was the only one.
Uncertainty and fear and ignorance about immigrants, about people who are different, has a history as old as our Nation.
It is not new or unusual for the real Americans, meaning those immigrants who came to America a little bit longer ago, to fear the outsiders, the pretenders, the newcomers.
And they do those jobs not because they want to take away anything from America, but because they want to give their skills, their sweat, their labor, for a better life and to help build a better America, just as those who came before them.
And let us not forget the Social Security system. Recent studies show that undocumented workers sustain the Social Security system with a subsidy as much as $7 billion a year. Let me repeat that: $7 billion a year.
According to the study, approximately 16.7 million U.S. workers born in Latin America had a combined gross income of $450 billion last year, of which 93 percent was spent locally.
According to the Privacy Rights Center, up to 10 million Americans are victims of ID theft each year. They have a right to be notified when their most sensitive health data is stolen.
The underlying part of any comprehensive immigration bill is family unit.
We need to build bridges between the LGBT community and the larger immigrant community. In the end, the bigger the tent we build, the more successful we'll be.
We need to decouple the movement for comprehensive immigration reform and justice for immigrants from the legislative process and from the Democratic Party process. They are too linked.
If you are brown, black, Asian, or anything other than an English-speaking, highly-trained technician, the Republican Party doesn't want you here.
Republicans will criticize whatever President Obama does because that is what they do.
We should be clear that we prefer a system that allows people to come to the U.S. with visas, not in the hands of smugglers.
We should encourage people who have lived here peacefully for years to earn legal status over time.
We must stand on principle and practicality, and we should be very clear that a policy aimed at driving out 10 or 11 million people is not a good one.
The Democrats cannot say that we stand with immigrants if that secretly means we only stand with immigrants in odd-numbered years or when southern Democrats complain.
The American people are much more practical than Republican lawmakers on equal pay, on the minimum wage, on same-sex marriage, and on basic civil rights.
While jobs, education, and healthcare rank among the top issues for Latino voters, immigration is a threshold issue.
If you are opposed to immigration or support strictly punitive immigration measures, you cannot even start a conversation about other issues with most Latino voters.
On Tuesday 26 July 2011, I was arrested in front of the White House along with a dozen other pro-immigrant advocates and clergy. We sat down on the sidewalk in front of the White House with a banner that read 'One Million Deported Under President Obama' and refused to move when the police ordered us to.
Ending the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program was a serious mistake that will harm the United States and will spark a national political crisis.
Punishing individual immigrants who are deeply embedded in American communities is not the mandate Trump was given when he was elected.
I was arrested twice in demonstrations in front of the Obama White House in the push for DACA.
I have never pretended to be a legal scholar, but when scores of lawyers are lining up to agree with the Supreme Court that the president has the power to make choices when it comes to whom to deport and whom to let stay, then I tend to agree with them.
U.S. v. Arizona is a landmark case not just because of the constitutional issues related to who regulates and enforces immigration, but because of its civil rights implications, too.
We believe that the way you dress and the shoes you wear are not probable cause for questioning or arrest.
We are saying that when our nation targets law enforcement efforts at someone's appearance or what neighborhood they live in or what job they do, it is not living up to our nation's basic ideals.
I understand the frustration provoked by our broken immigration system. But 50 state immigration policies are just a recipe for more chaos.
