Immigration Reform Needed in the USA
Shaking his head with feigned concern, he pompously laments, “Let’s not act prematurely. We can’t fix our massive immigration problem in this country until we pass comprehensive immigration policy reform.” Ever heard that claim? Tired of hearing it? It is a myth.
What it means, is “I will do nothing during my two (2) or six (6) year term of office to fix the problems. It is just too complex and controversial, so I will pretend that the problem is too large for any one person to tackle.” Standing behind the speaker is often a group of Congressional colleagues all nodding their heads wisely and affirming their spokesperson’s wisdom about the inability to solve such an overwhelmingly perplexing problem, usually accusing those from the other party of blocking their sincere efforts to help the nation.
Who is this wise individual? The “who” is irrelevant. It could be any representative or senator from either party for the last thirty (30) years. What it means is that nothing will be done. It is a stalling tactic designed to hide the representative’s lack of intestinal fortitude and action. What you are hearing is what democrats would call a “dog whistle” for unconscious bias disparaging real reform. The more politicians can bemoan the inability to enact “wholesale immigration reform,” the more they can put off real action and not risk losing votes in the next election. I believe we have had enough of such political posturing! I will go to Congress to solve problems and not to dodge them.
For decades neither republicans nor democrats have tackled such a momentous task, even when they have held majorities in the House and Senate, because they know the issue is so overwhelmingly complex, that no consensus would ever be possible on issues as wide ranging as work visas, social security benefits, voting rights, medical benefits, sponsorship, Dreamer status, claims of amnesty, global migration, drug running, cartel involvement, and the list goes on and on. Just use your favorite search engine and enter “immigration issues.” Then pour yourself a strong cup of coffee because you will be in for an exceedingly long night, as you wade through issue after issue, all of which would have to be addressed in any unreadable 1,000-page bill alleging to address such “comprehensive immigration reform.”
As your representative from our 5th Congressional district, I will fight this vapid rhetoric and political posturing and work step-by-step with like-minded colleagues on critical individual immigration issues. Many of them can be individually solved when rightly understood and researched. But we need to address them one at a time, not try to lump them into one huge untenable omnibus bill. Because you have a right to know how I will represent you on key elements of such reform, let me just address a couple in this brief blog.
At the top of my list will be security issues associated with immigration policy. Such issues are often mentioned anytime our open border is discussed by pundits, but rarely does anyone explain specific steps that must be taken to rectify the existing problem. If the recent terrorist attacks in Israel highlighted anything, they demonstrated with savage clarity what can happen when those filled with hate and inspired by evil intent are allowed to cross a border illegally and attack unprotected citizens. What is usually opined is that a country without borders is not a country. That is a fundamental geopolitical truth that has as a basic premise, the fact that any country has the absolute right to identify and defend its borders and determine who can enter or not enter. When one enters a country illegally, she or he should forfeit any rights granted to citizens. What many politicians in this country seem to have forgotten is that anyone allowed to enter our country should be of benefit to the USA or they should not be permitted to enter. That has always been our national policy in the past under more enlightened leadership.
The current Biden administration has ignored such international protocols, failed in its obligations to protect our borders, facilitated the massive influx of illegal cartel transported fentanyl that killed 73,654 citizens in 2022 alone (double that of 2019), and flooded our country with illegal immigrants in what many have called DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ human shell game, shuffling adults—often single males of military age—as well as thousands of unaccompanied children into state after state, often by bus or airplanes landing in private airports under the cover of darkness. Even the mayors of so-called “sanctuary cities”, such as New York City and Chicago are crying uncle and demanding national policy reforms. We should immediately reinvigorate the 2019 Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the Remain in Mexico Program. That was a program that actually worked.
Perhaps even more frightening are the over 1,000 so-called “got aways” per day in 2023—1.7 million in the last 2 years alone. We have no idea who they are or where they are from. We also do not know where they currently are or why they came. How many of them are Chinese Communist Party operatives, or members of Hamas, ISIS, or other terrorist organizations just biding their time until the right moment to attack. When they do, 9-11 will look like a poorly scripted soap opera in our rearview mirror. We need to assign ICE its primary duty of finding them and deporting them.
My first effort will be to fight to finish strategic portions of the border wall begun under the previous administration and team up with my colleagues in the House to obtain the use of our military to help US Customs and Border Protection control entry to our sovereign country. Their current number of 60,000 employees are routinely ill-assigned to act as Uber drivers, nannies, cooks, and housekeepers for people who should never have been let into our country in the first place. Such misuse of personnel must end, and I will work with like-minded colleagues to redirect any funding currently being used for such services to prevent new border crossers. I believe that any new funding by Congress must be used to stop further illegal entry, not to provide services to those who have already broken our laws. In that regard, I am in favor of increasing the pay and benefits for both our border control agents and the 17,000 ICE agents across the country. Increasing ICE by 5,000 agents will assist in rounding up and deporting those here illegally.
Throughout our history we have allowed non-citizen workers to enter our country to provide necessary labor for our farms and businesses. Arizona, Texas, and California are particularly dependent on such labor. The current system of work visas, however, needs to be reformed and brought into the 21st century. I will work to ensure that such reforms are implemented.
The third major aspect of immigration policy I am dedicated to reforming is curtailing the misuse of your tax money to provide cash payments, social security benefits, and Medicare benefits to those illegally entering our country and who never contributed a dime to such trust funds. These are not charities. These benefits are not granted at the largess of government, but are rights earned by American citizens who have paid into such programs during their entire working lives. I am also opposed to granting citizenship status to anyone entering this country illegally until at least ten (10) years of work history totally free of domestic abuse and other criminal charges and with a record of having paid federal taxes for the entire period. Implicit in that requirement is that until any illegal immigrant passes a Naturalization test that they may not vote in any federal election. As a corollary to those requirements, I am opposed to “birthright citizenship” and will work to end that current ill-conceived policy.
Comprehensive Immigration reform is an idealistic aspiration, but being a financial and legal realist, I know that such an approach to immigration is an ignis fatuus. Each individual aspect of reform, however, can be fixed and are capable of being dealt with in a bi-partisan way. Indeed, many of the necessary laws are already on the books, but have failed to be enforced by the Biden administration. I will work to change such disregard of our laws. These are my thoughts. I’d love to hear yours as well about the specific aspects of immigration reform that I can address as your representative in Washington.
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