Mr. Speaker, our Nation depends on immigrants' labor, and I hope we can create an immigration system as dependable as they are.
I have only one loyalty and that's to the immigrant community.
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.
I will argue until my last breath for a pathway to citizenship that is quick and efficient because I want to end this chapter. I want to end it...But let me say, conversely, I am as committed as any Republican to ending illegal immigration as we know it...They want to end it. So do I.
The Congress talks and talks and talks and talks, but doesn't act. I'm going to continue to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to bring about comprehensive immigration reform.
So given that reality, let us not cast that all of the problems and ills of our society are somehow upon the immigrants who have come to this country.
The next step has to be the necessary step. It's always to put the immigrant community and the civil rights movement ahead of partisan politics.
It is so difficult to, day in and day out, hear these incredibly painful stories of the destructive nature of our broken immigration system.
The politics, policies, the President [Barack Obama] and the American people are all pointing in the right direction to fix our immigration system and pass legislation this year.
Uncertainty and fear and ignorance about immigrants, about people who are different, has a history as old as our Nation.
I have traveled to Florida, I have traveled to Georgia, I have traveled to California, you and I both know that there are millions of undocumented workers that work hard, sweat soil every day to put the food we eat on our table. That's not a myth, that's a reality. Why don't we let them come with visas to this country so that then we don't have people using that border.
Nothing happens here in this building, in the House of Representatives, if there's no demand from outside the Capitol.
The underlying part of any comprehensive immigration bill is family unit.
I think the real, fundamental problem that the Republicans have is, 'How do we get meaner, how do we get nastier with immigrants, so that we can take a smaller group,' now apparently led by Senator Cruz - I mean, maybe he's gonna be the next Speaker of the House. Because it's quite clear that Mr. Boehner has no control over this conference.
I mean, the greatest laugh I always get is, if darkness, right, just overwhelms the Earth one day and Obama had the key to light, he says, "I have a bill that will bring sunlight," they'd rather live in darkness than have him bring the light.
There is this kind of sense in the immigrant community, first we were going to do immigration reform, but then 9/11 happened.
