Quotes About Immigration Laws

#1. If we are to believe that our immigration laws simply have no value, as our current policies would have us believe, should we then simply throw them all out, the entire lot of immigration law? I hope not.

John Linder

#2. Enforcement alone does not work. Unless we address the gap between our immigration laws and reality, illegal immigration will not stop and the situation on the border will continue to be chaotic.

Harry Reid

#3. If America is a nation of laws as we proclaim, then our immigration laws are part of the package.

Ted Nugent

#4. When states like Alabama and Arizona passed some of the harshest immigration laws in history, my Attorney General took them on in court and we won.

Barack Obama

#5. Even if we didn't have a single person in the USA in violation of immigration laws, we'd still have to do immigration reform, because our legal immigration system is broken. It's not good for anybody.

Marco Rubio

#6. If you don't control the borders, it doesn't matter what immigration laws you have.

Thomas Sowell

#7. Illegal immigrants make a rational choice when they decide to violate our immigration laws. They weigh the costs, including the risks of getting caught, against the benefits of a better life.

Jan C. Ting

#8. People have a pathway to citizenship right now- It's to abide by the immigration laws, and if they have a family relationship, if they have a job skill that allows them to do that, they can obtain citizenship.

Bob Goodlatte

#9. The recent, single-year influx of unaccompanied minors from foreign countries into the United States is a direct result of President Obama's policies of encouraging amnesty and failing to enforce existing immigration laws.

James Lankford

#10. More and more Americans are asking about the price that we have to pay when Wal-Mart comes into a community, treats workers poorly, violates immigration laws and squashes small businesses.

Anthony Weiner

#11. Education is the gateway to the American Dream. But today our immigration laws make higher education - a virtual requirement for financial security - out of reach for more than one million undocumented students.

Wendy Kopp

#12. On the one hand we publicly pronounce the equality of all peoples; on the other hand, in our immigration laws, we embrace in practice these very theories we abhor and verbally condemn.

Emanuel Celler

#13. The American people don't trust the Federal Government to enforce our immigration laws, and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we first prove to the American people that illegal immigration is under control. And we can do that. We know what it takes to do that.

Marco Rubio

#14. Why do we start immigration in 1965? Guess whose idea it was? Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy, 1965, we needed to reinstitute the immigration laws. It wasn't based in humanity, although that's the way it was sold. It was rooted in registering voters.

Rush Limbaugh

#15. Congressional mistakes have dramatically increased immigration through a series of what I believe were ill-advised actions going back to 1965 when the basic notions of our immigration laws were revised. In 1990, Congress opened the floodgates by passing a 35-percent increase in legal immigration.

Ronald Reagan

#16. Our Nation's immigration laws are disrespected both by those who cross our borders illegally and by the businesses that hire those illegal immigrants.

Steve Israel

#17. How many thousands of lives would be saved if we enforced our immigration laws, our guns laws, and our drug laws? Public safety is not being held hostage by the 'gun lobby,' but by the open borders lobby and the anti-law enforcement lobby.

Jeff Sessions

#18. In other words, under Attorney General John Ashcroft, the FBI, the INS and the Department of Justice are so out of control that they have actually begun to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

Ann Coulter

#19. We have never had the will to enforce the immigration laws. What you see is what you'll continue to get.

Charlie Munger

#20. There is no quick fix for illegal immigration. But only when we achieve better control of our borders and better respect for our immigration laws can we give meaning to the discussion we need to have over reforming the numbers, categories, and procedures for legal immigration into the United States.

Jan C. Ting

#21. Arizona did not make illegal, illegal. It is a crime to enter or remain in the U.S. in violation of federal law. States have had inherent authority to enforce immigration laws when the federal government has failed or refused to do so.

Russell Pearce

#22. Their lands as a result of our actions (and inactions), our governments will build ever more high-tech fortresses and adopt even more draconian anti-immigration laws. And, in the name of

Naomi Klein

#23. The U.S. immigration laws are bad - really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name.

Bill Gates

#24. We must do everything in our power to keep families together, and to use common sense in our immigration laws. Children deserve better than to lose a parent because of an inflexible law.

Jose Serrano

#25. In the absence of a limitation on local enforcement powers, the states are bound by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution to enforce violations of the federal immigration laws.

Russell Pearce

#26. If our government has a policy, any political subdivision, that limits or restricts the enforcement of our immigration laws, we will sue them! And that suit will be $5,000 a day every day until that policy is changed! This law will be enforced.

Russell Pearce

#27. There was reference made to our leaders being stupid. It's not a question of stupidity. It's that they don't want to enforce the immigration laws. That there are far too many in the Washington cartel that support amnesty.

Ted Cruz

#28. Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

Thomas Sowell

#29. Washington, D.C. is what is broken, not the immigration policies. We have good laws. We have people suffer every day because of government's failure to enforce the law and be respectful to the process we have. We have a pathway to citizenship already in place.

Russell Pearce

#30. If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

George Will

#31. Our country, our people, and our laws have to be our top priority.

Donald J. Trump

#32. If you have laws that you don't enforce, then you don't have laws. This leads to lawlessness.

Donald J. Trump

#33. Laws are getting passed in states like Alabama that basically would punish American citizens who are 'harboring' people. Since the federal government hasn't been able to muster or to get comprehensive immigration reform passed, states are taking it upon themselves to police and enforce laws.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#34. Laws ostensibly directed at undocumented immigrants inevitably affect the treatment of lawfully present immigrants and citizens who share the ethnic, racial, or national origin characteristics of undocumented immigrants.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram

#35. One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all - apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection?

Christopher Ryan

#36. Quite simply, federal laws already on the books aimed at stopping the flow of illegal immigration must be enforced. Furthermore, states must be given the resources necessary to confront the problem, which includes strengthening the border patrol.

Allen West

#37. Therefore, if we are a Nation of laws and a Nation of immigrants, immigration should occur within a legal framework, not through the machinations of illegal schemes and scams that threaten our national security.

J. D. Hayworth

#38. There is overwhelming bipartisan support outside of Washington that we need to finally secure our borders, enforce our laws, and stop the problem of illegal immigration.

Ted Cruz

#39. Our laws guarantee all students the right to a K-12 education, regardless of their immigration status.

Wendy Kopp

#40. most well-meaning and generous Parisians were aware, in general, of the laws restricting the lives of their Jewish cohabitants but had convinced themselves that the government was only trying to control immigration and "terrorism.

Ronald C. Rosbottom

#41. I will continue to enforce all the laws, including illegal immigration. Nothing changes.

Joe Arpaio

#42. The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization.

Grover Cleveland

#43. Let's face it.., our current [immigration control] system is like a busy intersection without a traffic cop: sure there are laws on the books, but absent enforcement, there are too many accidents.

Ronald Reagan

#44. [...] equality and nondiscrimination norms should play a greater role in assessments of both federal and subfederal immigration law. As such, we view certain restrictionist laws with greater skepticism than integrationist efforts.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram

#45. Congress is the appropriate place to make laws about our country's immigration policy; it is not something that the president gets to decide on his own.

John Barrasso

#46. These are people - I'm for immigration - legal immigration. I've been an immigration attorney. But people who have come to our country and violated laws, we should not be providing full health care services.

Joe Wilson

#47. This is the sheriff you're talking about, with a gun and badge that enforces the law. Nothing is going to stop me from cracking down on illegal immigration as long as the laws are there.

Joe Arpaio

#48. The current practice of extending U.S. citizenship to hundreds of thousands of 'anchor babies' must end because it creates a magnet for illegal immigration into our country. Now is the time to ensure that the laws in this country do not encourage law-breaking.

Steve King

#49. Extending amnesty to those who came here illegally or overstayed their visas is dangerous waters ... We are a nation of laws, and I will evaluate any proposal through that matrix.

Jim Sensenbrenner