If we're willing to accept unlimited immigration in order to keep wages low and corporate profits high, we should just say so and stop paying for all the immigration enforcement window dressing.
To the extent that our workers compete with low-paid Mexicans, it is as much through undocumented immigration as trade. This pattern threatens low-paid, low-skill U.S. workers. The combination of domestic reforms and NAFTA-related growth in Mexico will keep more Mexicans at home. It is likely that a reduction in immigration will increase the real wages of low-skilled urban and rural workers in the United States.
When you create an economy where you subsidize corporate profits through a welfare program and food stamps in order to keep wages low in some perverse pursuit of 'competiveness,' than you reap the fruits of the anger that you sow.
We've even lost the definition of immigration. "Immigration" today, if you listen to the left, equals anybody who wants to come into the country should be allowed. That's not what immigration is. That's illegal immigration, and we ought to all oppose it.
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.
Immigration policy is a complicated issue. Or perhaps one should say immigration policies are complicated, since we have many different immigration laws and practices which interact in complex ways.
The study titled 'Impact of Immigration on Wages, by Education Level, 1994-2007' found that increased immigration had an effect of lowering wages for earlier immigrants by an average of 4.6 percent. Running counter to popular perception is the finding that for native-born Americans, wages actually increased by 0.6 percent.
I believe that we should stop the immigration, the mass immigration from Islamic countries.
As president, I will fight illegal immigration in order to preserve an appropriate level of legal immigration. At the same time, I believe our system of legal immigration needs to be re-examined. As part of this re-examination, I support a modest, temporary reduction in the annual rate of legal immigration.
The time has come for a new immigration commission to develop a new set of reforms to our legal immigration system in order to achieve the following goals. To keep immigration levels measured by population share within historical norms, to select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society and their ability to be financially self-sufficient.
We should strengthen our immigration laws to prevent the importation of foreign wages and working conditions. We should make it illegal for employers to lay off Americans and then fill their jobs by bringing in workers from overseas. Any U.S. employer who wishes to hire from abroad - even for temporary jobs - should have to recruit U.S. workers first. And we should end the unskilled immigration that competes with young Americans just entering the job market.
Of course, our immigration system isn't broken. The enforcement of our immigration system is broken. The president Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and several in the Republican Party are trying to break the immigration system. The system itself is not broken; it's just fine. It's just being ignored.
Within just a few years immigration as a share of national population is set to break all historical records. The time has come for a new immigration commission to develop a new set of reforms to our legal immigration system in order to achieve the following goals.
When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following, amnesty, open borders, lower wages. Immigration reform should mean something else entirely. It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens.
We need to create a fair immigration process that ensures the wellbeing of all families and prevents the wrong people from coming to this country, that includes reforming ICE and immigration enforcement.
On immigration policy, I believe we ought to call an immediate halt, stop illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration back to about 250,000 to 300,000, to more easily assimilate the Americans who've come here in the last 30 years.
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.