Tom Donohue, U.S. Chamber Chief, on the Cuba Question

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Let me ask you about the election. Which candidate is most attractive to business?
We are vigorously engaged in the elections for the Senate and the House and for state Supreme Court justices. The Chamber doesn't favor a candidate in the Presidential election. Somebody's going to win, and we've got to deal with them, and they're going to have to deal with us. If I let this place get into Presidential preferences, we'd have a zoo around here.

Which candidate's immigration plan is most palatable to business?
To me that's clear: John McCain. The bottom line is we've got 77 million people getting ready to retire. We have farmers in California moving to Mexico to run their farms because they can't get workers. We run out of H-1B visas for high-tech workers in the first couple of months of the year. We have the lowest unemployment we've had in a long time, and many of the people looking for jobs live in places where there aren't jobs, and they aren't prepared to move. The argument that immigrants are coming to take American jobs doesn't carry a lot of weight. We have more jobs than we've got people.

What about the argument that health-care costs are so high because of immigrants?
We are a nation of immigrants. It is our single biggest strength. Our forefathers came here and, yeah, many of them came through Ellis Island, and it was legal, but a hell of a lot of them got here in all kinds of ways. I do think we need to protect our borders. You can write that down and underline it because we have challenges there. But if you try to come here from Mexico legally it could take 10 years, and we need workers. You send the 10 million or 12 million workers in this country home tomorrow—and I'm not saying give them amnesty—and this economy will absolutely crater, just stop. So we're going to continue to fight this thing. But three, four, five years from now it's going to take care of itself when members of Congress are getting calls every day, and their wives and husbands are getting calls, from nursing homes and assisted-living homes saying: "Come take mommy home." "What do you mean take mommy home?" "Well, we don't have people to take care of her."

Maria Bartiromo is the anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell.