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

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.

As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 billion and $140 billion in Federal, State, and local taxes.

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.

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

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.

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.