Amnesty Quotations

You know, when President Reagan, who was one of my idols, granted amnesty to about three million illegal immigrants it was based on the fact that the borders would be secured. That didn't happen. It didn't happen during the Bush administration.

Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers.

These illegal aliens are criminals and we need to treat them as such. I'm not in favor of giving amnesty to anybody who has broken the law. I applaud what our Georgia legislature is doing in trying to crack down on this situation.

Growing up, I was a little hippie kid. I went to some good concerts... Amnesty International with Bob Dylan and Tracy Chapman... The best concert I ever went to was this one at the Cow Palace my freshman year in college on New Year's Eve. It was Pearl Jam opening for Nirvana opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers.

It's the publicity function of Amnesty that I think has made its name so widely known, not only to readers in the world, but to governments - and that's what matters.

I was filled with hate and anger. But during my trial, something decisive happened: Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and it was an unbelievable feeling to know that there is someone fighting for you on the outside. Amnesty's 'soft' approach made me seriously consider alternatives to revenge.

Writing is powerful. Whether it's a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.

After granting amnesty to illegals 20 years ago, we have gone from 3 million illegals to 11 million illegals. Our government has been fooled once by this amnesty argument, let us not be fooled again.

Our country will not stand for any political plan that includes amnesty for insurgents.

If there's amnesty leading to citizenship, I'm going to vote against it again.

And the bottom line is, is that they are illegal aliens entering our country. And we simply cannot sustain that kind of activity. Bottom line is it's a backdoor to amnesty and I don't believe the American people support that.

In income tax, there is no case for amnesty.

Amnesty is not the answer as it will only encourage more illegal immigrants to enter.

I think we should be pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person residing in the United States who has not committed a violent crime, with a special emphasis on keeping families together.

I'm still looking for the rules of what is and isn't pop music. I'm pop. I mean, of course I am. What isn't pop? There should be a pop amnesty where everyone reclaims it.

The United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme.

We women are constantly at war with our bodies, it is hard to find amnesty for ourselves.

Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

If you want a president to stop amnesty, to secure the borders and keep us safe, then support a candidate who has led the fight to stop amnesty to secure the borders and to keep us safe.

You cannot grant amnesty. If the American people see us granting amnesty they will never again believe in legal immigration. They will never again support it, and that's wrong for our country, bad for our future.

What he has consistently told the president, for several years now, is that if we do have some sort of guest worker program, it shouldn't smell, taste or look like an amnesty program.

No one believed [the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens] was tough enough on illegal immigration, and it didn't give enough flexibility on future legal immigration.

Driver's licenses & scholarships for illegals; not amnesty.

I'm not for amnesty. I've never been for amnesty, will never be for amnesty.

We thought we'd have more support than we did. Basically, they didn't want to have anything to do with us. They gave us no support, they gave our families no support, and it was hard for our families, not knowing who to turn to. So it was basically our lawyers and people like Amnesty that gave support to our families and helped them get through it.

There are works of fiction which seek to explain jihadi terrorists as the militant wing of Amnesty International. I don't buy that.

Low interest rates have served as a sort of amnesty for graduates with debt. We haven't seen what the real impact is of much higher levels of borrowing.

Many of the Mexican officials have talked about this Matricula card openly and stated that it was their way of getting around the Amnesty problem.

Militant kingpins will not be arrested as the process of granting general amnesty to militants is underway.

Medical amnesty is a good thing. They should always be thinking how to make the code better.

One of the things we're looking to see is what happens with the amnesty and who gets let go. It's a unique year.

People want to be in the tax register but are afraid of fines, penalties and interest from the past. The amnesty allows them an opportunity to come into the fold. Money is not the main reason we are offering the amnesty.

Only the amnesty leg 'worked.' That is, a lot of foreign lawbreakers got full amnesty, and it spurred a lot more mass illegal immigration. The 2 million residual illegal alien population of 1988 grew to 3.5 million in 1990, 4 million in 1992, 5 million in 1996, 7 million in 2000 and 10 million today.

But the U.S. Record, as assessed by independent organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, is reprehensible.

If Amnesty has concerns about torture then they will know better than a minister in Whitehall what is really going on, and we should listen to their concerns.

Give your kids an amnesty day. Tell them you want to see everything they write and all the pictures they post and promise that you won't get mad or punish them for it.

What we don't do is give amnesty and reward people for breaking the law.

Halloween is approaching, and this is amnesty in a costume.

The (1986) amnesty sent the word out around the world that if you can get to the United States, they will not get rid of you.

While countless Americans see their real wages falling, and are struggling to maintain a foothold in the middle class, Sen. Specter and President Bush are cooking up a plan that will lead to their marginalization. What they are trying foist upon the American public as 'immigration reform' will be a fraud-ridden amnesty and unlimited numbers of new guest workers to compete for the jobs American workers still hold. If this bill should ever be enacted, the America that most people know will become unrecognizable as a result of the most massive wave of immigration in history.

We're not talking about amnesty or allowing foreigners to take advantage of our welfare system. We're talking about plugging the holes in our borders, and at the same time protecting U.S. farmers and consumers. In fact, we don't think you can succeed at one without the other.

Amnesty, that noble word, the genuine dictate of wisdom.

The fact that the administration is even considering giving what amounts to an amnesty to a half-million people in the United States is incredible.

We will continue to push until we have full amnesty for immigrants.

The President is opposed to amnesty because he thinks it would encourage further illegal immigration and reward those who broke the law.

The recent, single-year influx of unaccompanied minors from foreign countries into the United States is a direct result of President Obama's policies of encouraging amnesty and failing to enforce existing immigration laws.

Bringing workers out of the shadows is simply another way of saying we should legalize illegal immigrants. That's amnesty for people who have broken the law.

Equilibrium is found when within the process there's "a good balance" between justice and peace, which makes it clear that there must be reparation for the society and for the victims and that amnesty or pardon cannot take in atrocious crimes.

There should be a path to earned legal status for those that are here. Not - not amnesty - earned legal status, which means you pay a fine and do many things over an extended period of time.

You need to go home and wait in line with everybody in their home. This is the pure amnesty question right here.

This is very much in the same spirit as a tax amnesty program and, hopefully, will yield millions of new revenue dollars for the city.

It's a matter of giving amnesty to 8 million people or giving amnesty to 12 million people. It's still amnesty to millions of people.

Nevertheless, Amnesty International welcomes today's actions, as even the seemingly minor details in these documents may help shed light on the secrecy surrounding the detainees' cases.

These people haven't served time for their crimes, and they're getting amnesty. We're being pushed aside. The ex-offenders should have got amnesty before any illegal aliens. Are there certain laws that certain people can break?

This is critical to both avoid the taint of amnesty for those who have broken the law, as well as preserve the flexibility of a guest worker program to fluctuate along with the needs of the U.S. economy.

That's all we can do, watch what happens and see who is out there. It's going to be interesting to see who's left after the amnesty deadline. Then things progress from there.

I oppose amnesty because I don't think people here illegally should get to go to the front of the line, ... But when we have hundreds of thousands of people standing at lines at embassies for the chance to come here and work in this country, laying pavement and picking lettuce in the 120-degree heat, I think we should come up with a system to allow for that.

If you do an amnesty plan every five years, people will hold on to their money rather than pay taxes, because they know they will be able to pay up without penalties. The fact that we had a successful amnesty last year argues that we should wait at least a decade or probably 20 years to have another.

In reality, the choices we have before us are amnesty and guest workers on the one hand -- which would amount to a massive sell-out of the American middle class -- and, on the other hand, a comprehensive enforcement effort that eliminates the reasons why people come and remain in the U.S. illegally. There is a whole smorgasbord of options available to enforce our immigration laws, yet the president is still claiming that there is only one item on the menu.

Illegal aliens should not be granted amnesty and a path to citizenship. This would be a slap in the face to all those who have followed the law and come to America legally.

If you say the word amnesty - the 'A-word,' so to speak - it's DOA. If there's even a hint of amnesty in my district, it's dead on arrival.

To say that Reagan teaches us that we should be against amnesty for illegal immigrants is to contradict what Reagan himself stood for - that he was in favor of amnesty.

We know that a ready amnesty tends to be an invitation to more illegal entries.

I think an amnesty program... which is what the president (George W. Bush) has proposed... those are reasonable proposals.

One of the things was to create a kind of amnesty environment.

I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer's gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.

I oppose amnesty, I oppose citizenship, I oppose legalization for illegal aliens. I always have and I always will.

It is a lie that to talk to Hispanics you have to talk about amnesty. Let me tell you, the only Hispanics that are in favor of amnesty are the illegals.

You can put some lipstick on the pig, but it's still a pig. ... Nobody's going to go home, he knows it, everybody knows it. It is an amnesty concentrate on the enforcement, Mr. President. Concentrate on the enforcement or it won't get anywhere in Congress,

The damage that the Domenici bill would do every aspect of life in America would be incalculable. In very short order, America would become a vastly overpopulated nation devoid of a middle class. The United States Senate owes it to the American public to reject this and similar amnesty and guest worker bills and focus on protecting our borders and the survival of the American middle class.

The House will not accept an amnesty program and is unlikely to go along with a guest worker program.

The devil is in the details' is an utterly reckless and irresponsible way to conduct public policy. The fiscal, social, environmental and demographic consequences of what the Senate is proposing would be staggering. In an effort to respond to special interest pressure, the Senate and the Bush Administration seem prepared to rush forward without any rational assessment of what it would mean for the future of the nation. We have seen where the 'devil is in the details' approach has gotten us in Iraq. The president and others pushing amnesty and guest workers have an obligation to think this one all the way through before acting.

I was no assassin. I got out during the amnesty because I had not committed any violent crimes.

The second one, the joint Truth and Friendship Commission, which we started now with Indonesia, that is the one that has been criticized; its terms of reference call for providing amnesty for those who cooperate in telling the truth. It does not lead to prosecution.

Amnesty International calls today on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal.

Amnesty has long held that there have been a number of very serious questions about the safety of this product that remain unanswered. Now, it seems like the tide is turning and more and more credible bodies are weighing in on the issue.

3 "amnesty" didn't mean rewarding illegal behavior.

I never understood whether the word 'amnesty' is correct or not. Maybe I am not very intelligent but I checked the dictionary to find the meaning.

...you're never going to have a legal immigration system that works if you grant amnesty.

I would vote against anything that grants amnesty because I think it destroys your ability to enforce the existing law

We already have immigration law, and it is being violated. Obama's executive amnesty is not the settled law. [Barak ] Obama's executive amnesty is outside the law, and that's why it's been stayed.

This is what everybody's forgetting about [Barak] Obama and his immigration law and his executive action and his amnesty on it, the Supreme Court decision. Immigration law is settled.

Anybody that brings up amnesty in this Congress, we need to just take the scarlet 'A' for amnesty and pin it on them.

Unprecedented amnesty in history of Georgia took place

Money has a certain kind of amnesty.