Mark Krikorian Quotations

Tom was like an Old Testament prophet crying out in the wilderness, and finally people are starting to listen.

What's next? Are they going to buy them bus tickets to Chicago? It's clearly a bad thing for Mexico to be encouraging illegal immigration.

Low-skilled Americans suffer something like an 8 percent reduction in their wages because of low-skilled immigration.

I think it's going to implode. They're trying to do too much.

I thought at times in the first half we were a little bit sloppy but in the second half were we able to develop a nice rhythm to the game. In the second half we put together some nice attacks, which made it a little easier for us to defend. This feels good right now. We played some decent soccer. We think we have some pretty good pieces but we know it will be about hard work, dedication and discipline if we want to continue to have success.

US-Visit is not going to screen out people with terrorist intentions from Western Europe who aren't on our radar screen.

There clearly seems to be a higher profile for immigration this year nationwide.

There has never been a public opinion poll that indicates Americans want more immigration. Obviously, if the public were asked ... they'd say no to doubling legal immigration.

But the point is that we have to make it progressively harder for illegal immigrants to get a job and we have to begin somewhere.

There's no question that illegal immigration, that unskilled immigration of all kinds, is a losing proposition.

the right approach because it focuses on enforcement first.

These young players coming out of their clubs and high schools want to know they have a chance to get to their national teams (by playing here). We felt we could say that with all certainty before, but now it makes the claim even stronger.

There were players on the Olympic team like Abby Wambach, Shannon Boxx and Heather Mitts who were not on the national team right out of college,

(Assistant coach) Erica Walsh has done one great job with the defense. I thought our back four was very organized. Ali Mims was solid in the net and the team defending was very good. Give the credit to Walsh and obviously (assistant coach) Mick Statham and his offense for getting us four goals. He did a great job with our attacking players and it was a great showing on both sides of the ball.

For five years President Bush has been talking about the war on terrorism. But it's all offense and no defense. And immigration control is the most important defensive tool in this kind of conflict.

Consumer spending by immigrants isn't creating specific benefits for Americans who are here. It's actually a big loser because the benefit from that spending isn't that great, and the cost it exacts from taxpayers is actually enormous.

The administration hasn't given any detail. They're not interested in passing it. They're just interested in talking about it. In the software business, they call this vaporware. They don't want to offend this side or the other side, so they punt.

It was a mistake, it was never actually even needed.

This is just a symptom of a larger problem: the lack of enforcement of immigration laws.

I'm not sure what about this guy is conservative anymore. He appointed a couple good judges and that was it and he almost blew one of those chances.

I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly the newcomers and returning players have combined on and off the field. I am very happy with the team's attitude and mentality. The kids generally seem to really like each other. That is important. We have the foundation of a pretty good team.

And they are much more skeptical of the very idea of having immigration limits, whereas the public - again, independents and Democrats, as well as Republicans, although not necessarily all in the same proportions - have a much stronger sense of the American government and American law having responsibility to Americans specifically rather than to people around the world. So the polarization is up versus down, not really right versus left.

But it's more an up-versus-down issue because the research has shown that opinion leaders, whether they're elected officials, journalists, business leaders - it's academics, religious leaders - they have dramatically different views on immigration. A

The interesting point is that the polarization is not so much among the public, although there's some of that. The polarization on the immigration issue is really between the elites and the public. In other words, this is not so much a right-left issue, which it is partly.

In enforcement, you always have to have both a focus on the really worst actors - you know, gang bangers, in this case, drug dealers, that sort of thing - but also routine enforcement because think about, for instance, the IRS. They don't say, OK, well, if you're not a money launderer, it doesn't matter whether you fill your tax return out right or not. They have both. They go after the really bad actors and they have a kind of general, routine enforcement

But the question is - are we deporting a couple hundred people for show or are we actually making a serious effort to remove everybody who's got a final order of removal? When I say enforcement theater, what I mean is a kind of pretend enforcement.

Well, enforcement theater is OK if it's reality theater. In other words, obviously, you want to make it clear, you want to make people see that the law is being enforced.

Well, nobody's being deported - nobody - practically. And so what the people down there getting is the American government is telling us that you're not going to be able to stay. But, in fact, they're letting almost everybody stay. And so what they're trying to do is show that at least some people are going to get deported.

But the other audience, I think, is people in Central America because since last summer, they've been running ads down there - the United States government has - don't come, it's dangerous. You will be immediately deported. That's literally what it says in Spanish.

There's definitely a huge gap between the elite and public perceptions on immigration.

Assimilation is really a psychological process where you come to identify with a new country as yours. The ease of overseas travel and information access interferes with that.

Well, because we're talking here about people who've been ordered deported and the administration has done nothing about actually making sure that they go home. This is theater, I think, for two audiences - one probably for the American public to some degree, to make it seem as though the administration is taking this renewed surge of Central Americans seriously.

The effects of illegal immigration aren't that different from those of legal immigration —an illiterate Central American farmer with a green card is just as unsuited for a 21st-century economy as an illiterate Central American farmer without a green card.

Of 472 civilian occupations defined by the Department of Commerce, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six occupations account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Many jobs often thought to be overwhelmingly done by immigrants are in fact majority native-born: 51 percent of maids are U.S.-born, as are 63 percent of butchers and meat processors, and 73 percent of janitors.

By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.

The House won't go along with any bill with any amnesty. We're not going to end up with a bill on the president's desk.

The league really helped our national team out.