U.S. Making Mistake Of Not Able To Retain Talented People: Obama

"There will be criteria in terms of who it is that is able to apply, get legal residence, get a work permit, and maybe ultimately go through citizenship. But that's going to be through a legal process of legal immigration. That's not going to be one that is resolved with respect to somebody who has been undocumented. Those are two different circumstances," he said.

"Part of what we can do through the comprehensive immigration bill is speed up our legal immigration system. A lot of people end up being forced through the undocumented pool because the legal process is so bogged down, so bureaucratic, so slow, oftentimes the allocations of quotas from different countries don't reflect the modern world," he said.

"So one of the things that the Senate bill originally did was really change that in a smart way and it would have speeded things up. That's why we still have to get this bill passed and we're still going to have to put pressure on it."

Obama said America is strong because of generation after generation of immigrants who embraced the ideals of America and then fought for those ideals, and fought in wars to defend the country, and built companies that employed people, and helped to build the railroads and the highways.

"All the things that we take for granted in this country, those were built by immigrants. We're all immigrants. That's who we are," he added.
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