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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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