Charles E. Schumer Quotes

I want immigration reform to pass, I want people to be able to come out of the shadows.

We have 11 million people in this country that need a pathway to citizenship.

One thing I think we have to do is to make sure that the undocumented workers who are living in America today, that they have to take responsibility. They've got to register, pay a fine, pay their back taxes, learn English and then get on a pathway in which they could have the prospect of being here legally.

Over a period of time, they [undocumented workers] can have a legalized status that allows them to live a life of dignity but not necessarily a path to citizenship, so as to not create incentives for future people that aspire to come to our country to do so illegally when they could come legally.

We are dealing with the question of the 11 million people paying their taxes, having a path to legalization and, then, ultimately, to citizenship. Tough issues but we are coming together and I think we can do it.

Well, I don't think it is amnesty to start with. Second of all, what do you want to do with them? That is the question in response. And third of all, it is a tough path to citizenship. You have to pay back taxes. You've got to learn English. You've got to have a clear record. You've got to get to the back of the line behind other people who have come here legally or waiting legally. So, i just reject that.

Just because they broke the law doesn't mean they're condemned forever to a twilight status. So, I think that most Americans, if these people who have come illegally, as long as they pay back taxes, pay a fine, learn English and get behind everybody else, that's a key element of it. And most Americans now realize we can't have 11 million people sit in the twilight - the shadows of America, forever.

There isn’t any sensible approach except to do what we need to do simultaneously—secure our borders with technology, personnel, physical barriers if necessary in some places. And we need to have tougher employer sanctions and we need to try to incentivize Mexico to do more and we need to create the environment in which we get people out of the shadows and then give them some earned right to legalization that will enable them to continue to work. If they’ve committed transgressions of whatever kind, they should be obviously deported. But that won’t stop it unless Mexico and their neighbors to the south actually let these hard-working people have a future in their own countries.

I do not favor or support, nor will I vote for, a pathway to citizenship for people that are here who've broken the law. I would support - after we have developed a secure border - a mechanism for allowing those folks to work here in America... Everything that we should do should be based on good, sound policy and what's right for America.

Illegal is not a race, it is a crime.

Mexicans are quasi-legal.

What the president is doing is flooding the job market with illegal immigrants that he is giving temporary work permits to. Not fair.

If you are in this country illegally, stealing a job from an American citizen, I'm going to do all I can to put an American citizen in that job and not somebody that has crossed our border, come into the country and violated our laws.

Illegal aliens have broken our laws, and they shouldn't be rewarded with amnesty and immediate legalization.

I don't believe in amnesty... What I have proposed is that we would come forth with a program that allows individuals to come forward and to plead guilty... They would have to pay a fine; they would have to go through a background check - some say learn English - and they would get learned legal status.

I supported this bill. I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.

I knew Arizona's SB 1070 would be controversial when I introduced it, but I did not expect the national immigration debate to revolve around a state law. While the anti-American open-borders Left attack me and the law as 'racist,' 'nativist' and their other empty smear words, the vast majority of the people of Arizona and America support the law.

We feel a pathway to citizenship would reward illegal activity, ... Amnesty encourages further illegal immigration.

We have to identify everybody that's here, and there's going to be an appropriate discussion in Congress on how to deal with an individual who has been here maybe for some long period of time. Amnesty is not on the table period. There will be no amnesty in the United States. We're a country of law and the idea that we're going to tell people that somehow or another that that's all forgiven is not going to happen. How we deal with them is a conversation. I don't know if I know all the answers. I want to talk to the American people.

For one, we very much need in any immigration bill - we need protection for people who are in this country and who have not become citizens, for example, that they are protected and legitimized and given permanent residency here. And we want to see some things of that kind added to the immigration bill.

Our message to the world will be this. You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country. That's right. People will know that you can't just smuggle in, hunker down, and wait to be legalized. It's not going to work that way. Those days are over.

We take care of illegal immigrants, people that come into the country illegally, better than we take care of our vets. That can't happen.

No path to citizenship. People that want to gain legal status, you heard Donald Trump say again and again, will have to leave the country.

If they [mexicans] cross the border, I think, and they are violating the law, then that word criminal does connect with that violation, so if they're violating the law, I guess you can call them criminals. We call everybody else criminals that violate the law.

There are 11 million people living in the shadows. I believe they deserve to come out of the shadows. The children who are brought here when they were children, they deserve that kind of consideration as well.