Immigration Reality: Former DHS Chief Tells Critics Of Immigration Reform To "Get Over It," Warns Against Being "Arrogant"

Former DHS Chief Tells Critics Of Immigration Reform To "Get Over It," Warns Against Being "Arrogant" - FoxNews.com: "The nation's first homeland security secretary said Tuesday that critics of immigration reform need to 'get over it,' and warned that Americans shouldn't be so 'arrogant' as to believe that 'everybody that comes across the border wants to be an American citizen.'

Speaking at Georgetown University to celebrate the eight anniversary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, former secretary Tom Ridge said he hopes 'sometime in the future' the U.S. government takes a serious look at immigration policy 'in general,' even though “it's the third rail of contemporary politics right now.'

"At some point in time you've got to say to yourself, 'We're not sending 12 million people home,'” the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania said. “Let's get over it. ... We're not going to send them home, so let's just figure out a way to legitimize their status, create a new system, and I think that will add more to border security than any number of fences we can put across the border."

Ridge offered two key steps for immigration reform, the first being, "Don't think that everybody that comes across the border wants to be an American citizen. I don’t think you should be that arrogant," he said. "A lot of them just want to come up here to work lawfully and go back home." Ridge's successor, Michael Chertoff, offered similar sentiments, saying "most people who come across the border are not coming to do harm to the us, they're coming across the border for jobs."