Immigration Reform

Floor Speech

IMMIGRATION REFORM -- (House of Representatives - September 17, 2008)

(Mr. BACA asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I'm here on behalf of immigrant families who otherwise would not have a voice. There are those who insist that undocumented immigrants have broken the law, that they are criminals, but what image do you get when you hear that someone is a criminal? Your image is of a murderer, of a thief, of a drug dealer, of someone who intensely wants to hurt another person.

These families who are wrongly called ``criminals'' come to the United States without the intent to hurt anyone. Yet there are anti-immigrant attacks that continue to say otherwise. What happened to the Ten Commandments? to love thy neighbor?

There are those who say that these families should play by the rules. The rules now are to form a line and to wait many years and to pay a huge fine, but the reality is the immigration process is so complicated that some of us would have a difficult time getting through it. We need comprehensive immigration reform to address the 12 to 14 million people in the United States to play by the rules and to also fix this broken system.

I urge my colleagues to support comprehensive immigration.

Source