So this is not going to be a free ride. It’s not going to be some instant amnesty. What’s going to happen is you are going to pay a significant fine. You are going to learn English. You are going to … you are going to go to the back of the line so that you don’t get ahead of somebody who was in Mexico City applying legally. […]
Now, it only works though if you do all the pieces. I think the American people, they appreciate and believe in immigration. But they can’t have a situation where you just have half a million people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it.
Barack Hussein Obama, March 18, 2009