Mr. President. it is a very misleading statement. What the people who say this are talking about is not legal immigrants who stay here and somehow become illegal. they are talking Instead about students and tourists who had the right to visit America legally. They never were legal immigrants in the classic sense. They had the legal right to be here. but they were not legal immigrants. These are students. tourists who come here legally. and then who stay and do not leave when they are supposed to leave. That is a huge problem in this country. But it is not a problem of legal immigrants. These people who are creating this problem were never legal immigrants. By definition. Mr. President. legal immigrants are people who are allowed to stay. Legal immigrants by definition are here legally. They are not the problem. Mr. President. this is also an important source of confusion on the question of whether immigration is rising rapidly. Some people claim. for example. that legal immigration is skyrocketing. They base their contention on INS numbers that include as legal immigrants illegal immigrants who are made legal by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Mr. President. if you take the total number of legal immigrants and subtract those that were illegal before the 1986 act. you find that legal immigration has been holding at fairly constant levels. That is what the facts are. Let me just give an example. Mr. President. In the 1990s. we have had about 2.8 immigrants for every 1.000 Americans. Is that a lot? Well. we could judge for ourselves.
Keywords matched
Immigration illegal immigrants immigrants immigration