Look, everybody's evolving, i remember when Hillary, when the children first came to the border, and Hillary said, 'Oh they can't just show up, they have to be sent back home.' She's not there anymore. You remember when Hillary, what was it, in 2008? Yeah, it was 2008, and they asked Hillary a question about driver's licenses for the undocumented. And she was paralyzed.

Luis Gutierrez

Categorized in : Politics

Mr. Speaker, our Nation depends on immigrants' labor, and I hope we can create an immigration system as dependable as they are.

Luis Gutierrez

dependable immigration labor

I have only one loyalty and that's to the immigrant community.

Luis Gutierrez

immigration community loyalty

Because the truth is, today's immigrants, as they have for generation after generation, work the longest hours at the hardest jobs for the lowest pay, jobs that are just about impossible to fill.

Luis Gutierrez

hardest-job generations jobs

I will argue until my last breath for a pathway to citizenship that is quick and efficient because I want to end this chapter. I want to end it...But let me say, conversely, I am as committed as any Republican to ending illegal immigration as we know it...They want to end it. So do I.

Luis Gutierrez

pathways immigration want

The Congress talks and talks and talks and talks, but doesn't act. I'm going to continue to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to bring about comprehensive immigration reform.

Luis Gutierrez

reform immigration sides

It is so difficult to, day in and day out, hear these incredibly painful stories of the destructive nature of our broken immigration system.

Luis Gutierrez

immigration broken stories

So given that reality, let us not cast that all of the problems and ills of our society are somehow upon the immigrants who have come to this country.

Luis Gutierrez

our-society country reality

The politics, policies, the President [Barack Obama] and the American people are all pointing in the right direction to fix our immigration system and pass legislation this year.

Luis Gutierrez

president people years

Nothing happens here in this building, in the House of Representatives, if there's no demand from outside the Capitol.

Luis Gutierrez

demand building house

The next step has to be the necessary step. It's always to put the immigrant community and the civil rights movement ahead of partisan politics.

Luis Gutierrez

next-steps community rights

The underlying part of any comprehensive immigration bill is family unit.

Luis Gutierrez

units immigration bills

I think the real, fundamental problem that the Republicans have is, 'How do we get meaner, how do we get nastier with immigrants, so that we can take a smaller group,' now apparently led by Senator Cruz - I mean, maybe he's gonna be the next Speaker of the House. Because it's quite clear that Mr. Boehner has no control over this conference.

Luis Gutierrez

real mean thinking

Uncertainty and fear and ignorance about immigrants, about people who are different, has a history as old as our Nation.

Luis Gutierrez

different ignorance people

I have traveled to Florida, I have traveled to Georgia, I have traveled to California, you and I both know that there are millions of undocumented workers that work hard, sweat soil every day to put the food we eat on our table. That's not a myth, that's a reality. Why don't we let them come with visas to this country so that then we don't have people using that border.

Luis Gutierrez

hard-work country reality

There is this kind of sense in the immigrant community, first we were going to do immigration reform, but then 9/11 happened.

Luis Gutierrez

reform immigration community

I mean, the greatest laugh I always get is, if darkness, right, just overwhelms the Earth one day and Obama had the key to light, he says, "I have a bill that will bring sunlight," they'd rather live in darkness than have him bring the light.

Luis Gutierrez

light keys mean

We need to build bridges between the LGBT community and the larger immigrant community. In the end, the bigger the tent we build, the more successful we'll be.

Luis Gutierrez

lgbt-community successful bridges

It is not new or unusual for the real Americans, meaning those immigrants who came to America a little bit longer ago, to fear the outsiders, the pretenders, the newcomers.

Luis Gutierrez

real littles america

And let us not forget the Social Security system. Recent studies show that undocumented workers sustain the Social Security system with a subsidy as much as $7 billion a year. Let me repeat that: $7 billion a year.

Luis Gutierrez

subsidies security-systems years

According to the study, approximately 16.7 million U.S. workers born in Latin America had a combined gross income of $450 billion last year, of which 93 percent was spent locally.

Luis Gutierrez

latin america years