Yes to Immigration, No to Amnesty

I'm all for immigration. Our nation was founded by immigrants and has succeeded because of the efforts of immigrants throughout the years. I believe we should allow as many people who want to become citizens of this great country to come and be citizens (i.e., I am against immigration quotas). However, I believe that immigration needs to be controlled to a certain degree. Obviously people who want to be citizens here need a background check to ensure that we are not importing criminals. Immigrants should receive a medical overview and terminal and long-term ill people should not be let in to be a burden on this society. Immigrants should be able to prove that they will be productive members of society by showing they have education, skills, and work ethic. We don't want to increase our welfare rolls or our Medicare rolls with people from another country. This is just common sense.

However, if a person from another country wants to come to America and join this great society in a productive way, then I am all for it and say let as many in as possible. I just want them to come in a legal and orderly fashion.

The HOT TOPIC of the day is the "Comprehensive Immigration Bill Compromise." It continues to baffle me how elected officials could be so out of touch with the American People. If there is an issue that unites many Americans it is the fact that 85% of the people in this country do not want to grant any kind of legal status to the 12-20 million illegal immigrants in this country. Yet, the elected elite officials continue to try and force this issue down our throats.

Here is my "Comprehensive Plan":

1. Secure the border. And I mean secure it. I want a wall 15 feet high, twenty feet deep running across most of the border. Place agents on the wall every 1000 feet. Create a "virtual" fence using Predator Drones, Satellites, and other technologies. If China could be the Great Wall of China without modern machinery, then we certainly can do it. The wall should be fully completed in 5 years.
   
   
2. Make it virtually impossible for corporations and businesses to hire illegal aliens. The fines for hiring illegal citizens should be so high that the expected profit from cheap labor should make it a "no-brainer" for businesses to not do it. Sure a few would take a chance of not getting caught, but there should be jail time and multi-million dollar fines for the owners when they are caught.
   
   
3. Make it virtually impossible for landlords to rent to illegal aliens.
   
   
4. To accomplish two and three the Federal Government must make an easy, web-based application that allows for the confirmation of the legality of somebody. Yeah, it will be expensive. Yes, it will be hard to maintain and confirm the legal status of 300 million people. But, just put the IRS on it.
   
   
5. Clarify the 14th Amendment so that natural citizenship of a child flows from his mother. Whatever Mom's citizenship is, so is the child's. Obviously, though, we can't make this retroactive, so we have to do something with all those children born in America to illegal immigrant parents who are American Citizens. My plan there is to allow these children to have dual citizenship in America and their country of origin.
   
   Anytime an illegal is rounded up for deportation, the child would be sent back to the country or origin with his parents. He will have an opportunity to decide on one of those citizenships after they turn 18 and before they turn 25. If he has not pro-actively chosen American citizenship by the time he is 25, then the American citizenship for him would be dropped.
   
   
6. While we can not logistically deport 12 million people, I firmly believe that we won't have to. If we make it impossible to find work or a place to live (i.e., it is a hostile environment for illegal aliens), many of them will find their way back home without help.
   
   
7. Anytime an illegal alien is discovered by law enforcement or hospital workers or anything like that, they are given basic treatment and then deported within 7 days.
   
   
8. To ensure that the jobs that need to be done get done, a stringently enforced Guest Worker Program would be set up. There is a way to insure that anyone in this country to participate in such a guest worker program would not stay here once their time is up. It's really very simple. You don't pay them. You pay a private agency that has arranged for them to be here. When their time is up, the money is gone.

   Let me explain. There is necessarily going to be some government involvement in this program, but we can keep it to a minimum. You set up some employment agencies that specialize in obtaining guest workers for U.S. businesses that need the extra or seasonal help. These employment agencies are hired by and paid by the private businesses who need the workers. They obtain the workers from foreign countries and provide for their transportation to their place of employment in the U.S. as well as provide for their housing, food and medical care while here.
   
   The employer pays the agency for the workers, and then the agency pays the workers. When the temporary guest worker assignment is over, the employer stops payment to the agencies and the money to the guest worker dries up. We would need harsh -- extremely harsh -- penalties for any employer that tries to pay a guest worker directly. Under this system the agencies are responsible for transportation to and from the U.S. and making sure the workers get paid. These agencies, of course, would work under strict federal regulatory supervision.

   The key to this ... and the key to removing any suggestion of amnesty ... is that all guest workers in this country must sign up for the program in their home country, not here. All ID cards for guest workers must be issued ONLY in that worker's country.
   

9. Remove all federal dollars from "Amnesty Cities and Counties" until they get their act together and cooperate.
   

So, I have outlined an expensive, yet simple plan, to handle the immigration issue without amnesty. There should be no reward of "paths to citizenship" or automatic "legal status" to people who break our laws to be here. If we aggressively enforce this program for 5 to 10 years, I am confident we could have a handle on the illegal issue.

Only after the Government has earned our trust as being willing to enforce our borders through the consistent enforcement over a long period of time, we could talk about removing immigration quotas and streamlining the process to get people here legally.