How you compare
Barack Obama shares a 100% similarity with your beliefs on Immigration
I strongly support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants
"There are legitimate concerns on both sides of the debate. I have met countless Americans who are worried about the constant flow of illegal immigrants not because they are racists or xenophobes, but because they fear that this influx of low-skill workers threatens to depress wages that are already too low. They also rightfully expect their government to control our borders. At the same time, it is both unproductive and untrue to tag as 'amnesty' any proposal that would put the undocumented on a path to earned citizenship, since the bill we're debating would penalize those who broke our laws with steep fines and require them to start their quest for citizenship at the back of the line.... It is also unrealistic to believe that we could actually find and deport all 12 million immigrants, when we don't even know who or where they are."
"This is where we do have a very real difference with [Republicans]. I believe that we can be a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. Now, there is no doubt that we have to get control of our borders. We can't have hundreds of thousands of people coming over to the United States without us having any idea who they are.... I also believe we have to give a pathway to citizenship [to immigrants who are already here] after they've paid a fine and learned English."
"We are not going to ship back 12 million people, we're not going to do it as a practical matter. We would have to take all our law enforcement that we have available and we would have to use it and put people on buses, and rip families apart, and that's not who we are, that's not what America is about. So what I've proposed... is you say we're going to bring these folks out of the shadows. We're going to make them pay a fine, they are going to have to learn English, they are going to have to go to the back of the line...but they will have a pathway to citizenship over the course of 10 years."
"Millions of undocumented immigrants live and work here without our knowing their identity or their background. We need to strike a workable bargain with them. They have to acknowledge that breaking our immigration laws was wrong. They must pay a penalty, and abide by all of our laws going forward. They must earn the right to stay over a 6-year period, and then they must wait another 5 years as legal permanent residents before they become citizens. But in exchange for accepting those penalties, we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and step on a path toward full participation in our society."
I support a temporary guest worker program
"[W]e must also replace the flow of undocumented immigrants coming to work here with a new flow of guestworkers. Illegal immigration is bad for illegal immigrants and bad for the workers against whom they compete. Replacing the flood of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security, raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans."
Voted YES on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which established an immigration guest-worker program