immigration reform

First and foremost, we must treat all people as fellow human beings. I support legal immigration. I admire and welcome those who come to our country legally and go through the process to become American Citizens. Our nation is better as a result of legal immigration. 

I understand completely why people throughout the world want to come to America. Regardless of what the haters say about America being a systemically racist country, people of every race, ethnicity and culture know that America holds the promise of freedom, opportunity and the best hope for their families. 

Unfortunately, we cannot afford to allow everyone who wants to come to America to enter. Our national debt is approaching $30,000,000,000,000 and growing by billions (and sometimes trillions) each year. It should be obvious to everyone that we are not meeting our current financial obligations to the people already living in our country. Our children, grandchildren and generations to come, will pay a very high price for our over-spending. If we can’t afford to provide for the people who are already here, why would we continue to allow others to enter illegally? 

Any comprehensive immigration plan must be a bipartisan effort. As your representative in Congress, I will look for other members from both parties who are willing to work together to find solutions which protect Americans, the economy and jobs, while treating law abiding people who want to come to America with dignity and respect.

However, before we can fix our broken immigration system, we need to secure our borders. Here is my 5 point plan for securing the border: 

1. Finish the wall.
2. Use technology, like electronic surveillance and drones, to monitor the border.
3. Reinstate the previous administration policies such as “remain in Mexico” while applying for asylum; eliminating catch and release and implementing greater penalties for repeat offenders.
4. Aggressively prosecute those who over-stay their visas.
5. Provide border patrol agents with the resources to do their jobs. 

Once our borders are secure, we can then fix the broken system by doing the following: 

• Continue to strengthen measures to control our borders – turn off the illegal flow of people coming into our country. This is a matter of national security. A country that does not control who is coming in, puts the security of its citizens at risk.
• Reform the laws, regulations and procedures for applying for legal immigration. Our country can benefit from allowing individuals and families to become American citizens if they can add to our economy. The legal immigration system should be merit based, giving applicants credit for such things as English fluency, having a trade or technical skill, personal savings, and advanced degrees so these individuals may become assets to their communities and prosper in our country.
• Modernize and update our current system. Too often, deserving people must wait years for approval. This delay is one of the reasons so many people attempt to enter illegally.
• Allow the DACA children to remain in the United States as long as they make progress toward earning citizenship.
• Develop a simplified legal status verification system that allows employers to know whether a prospective employee is in the United States legally and then sanction employers who hire people here illegally.
• Immediately end chain migration, visa lotteries and vacation-birth citizenship.