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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.