We can continue to attract the best and the brightest from around the world says Obama

Updated on: Thursday, May 02, 2013

US President Barack Obama said that the country's immigration reform, currently underway, should be able to attract "the best and the brightest" people from across the world "in a legal fashion".

"We should make sure that we are cracking down on employers that are gaming the system", Obama said at a White House news conference.

"We should make the legal immigration system work more effectively so that the weights are not as burdensome, the bureaucracy is not as complicated so that we can continue to attract the best and the brightest from around the world to our shores in a legal fashion," he said.

Obama said he has been impressed by the work that has been done by the Gang of Eight, the bi-partisan group of eight Senators.

"The bill that they produced is not the bill that I would have written. There are elements of it that I would change, but I do think that it meets the basic criteria that I laid out from the start, which is we've got to have more effective border security, although it should build on the great improvements that have been made on border security over the last four to five years," Obama said.

"We want to make sure that we've got a pathway to citizenship that is tough, but allows people to earn, over time, their legal status here in this country. The Senate bill in some cases, not in the ways that I would, but it meets those basic criteria.

"And I think it's a testament to the senators that were involved. They made some tough choices and made some tough compromises in order to hammer out that bill," he said.

We can continue to attract the best and the brightest from around the world says Obama

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