Speech #1090134982

The answer is no. In fact. if you read the bill. you will discover there has been a studied and carefully carried out plan to conceal how many people will come in under the temporary guest worker programs when. in fact. what they mislabel as a temporary program is in fact a permanent worker program that leads on a direct path to citizenship in fairly short order. I am talking about the future immigration programs in the bill here. I am not talking about the other 11 to 20 million illegal aliens who may claim amnesty under this bill. If we are going to do a comprehensive plan. why dont we think first and foremost about what our Nation needs. what the implications are for immigration. how it has enriched us in so many ways in the past. how many wonderful. decent people come here. But we also need to ask ourselves. what are the limits of immigration? What are the aspects of it that could be better handled? We need to think these things through in a careful. legitimate way. focusing on the legitimate national interests of the United States of America. because it is not our policy and cannot be the policy of any nation to allow immigrants into their nation solely on the basis that it is good for the immigrant. I dont want to be harsh about this. I am not being unkind. We want to have immigration. I will support an increase in legal immigration over the current levels if it is a reasonable increase focused in the right direction and promotes the interests of the United States. We will have more coming in. but we need to ask the question of how we should do it. who should be allowed to take advantage of the limited number of slots we can legitimately bestow on those who come here. It cannot be their choice. but there seems to be talk here that reminds me of entitlement talks. rights talks. that someone in a foreign nation around the world has some sort of right to come to America. an entitlement to come to America. that we cannot deny them.