If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.

We want to be in control of our lives. Whether we are jungle fighters, craftsmen, company men, gamesmen, we want to be in control. And when the government erodes that control, we are not comfortable.

We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done.

Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.

[It is] one of the most complex and emotional issues of out time.

The Commission endorses prevention as the principal strategy to use in deterring illegal entries. We applaud the efforts of innovative Border Patrol leaders such as Silvestre Reyes with Operation Hold the Line in El Paso. Operation Hold the Line demonstrated that a strategic use of personnel and technology can combine at our land border, as it has for many years at our airports, to reduce unauthorized crossings.

What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.