Dear Friend,
Thank you for contacting me with your position on immigration policy. It is helpful to learn the views of my friends and neighbors in Northern California, and I appreciate having your input.
There is broad consensus in this country that our current immigration policies are flawed. The immigration system is broken and we must take action. We should begin by strongly enforcing existing laws, securing the border, cracking down on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and devising a realistic way to deal with the 12 million people who are unlawfully in the U.S.
The debate about how best to address the problem of illegal immigration has been ongoing for quite some time and there are numerous proposals for alleviating the strain it puts on our borders and communities. However, I believe there are flaws in many of these plans to deal with illegal immigration. About two decades ago, when Congress last substantially altered immigration laws, the country saw a brief decline in the number of people entering this country illegally. Unfortunately, this was followed by a massive influx of illegal residents as desperate immigrants found ways to circumvent the new laws. We must ensure that the policies we enact now do not lay the groundwork for more unlawful entry in the future.
U.S. immigration policy must include new tools for law enforcement and the border patrol, as well as the funding they need to strongly enforce existing laws and secure the border. There are crucial steps we should take: we must increase the number of homeland security personnel guarding our borders and give them the resources they need.
Our border and immigration agents can't enforce existing immigration laws because of paltry funding levels and we should untie the hands of our men and women in uniform. We also should inoculate businesses from deceitful employees who falsify identification records by implementing a permanent program to verify worker immigration status. And we need to change the way we process legalization applications to clear the years of backlog and shorten turnaround time.
You will be pleased to learn I am an original cosponsor of sweeping immigration security legislation that will go a long way toward solving many of our nation's immigration problems. H.R. 4088, the SAVE Act of 2007, is a three part bipartisan immigration bill focused on enforcement of homeland security laws aimed at combating illegal immigration, terrorist immigration, and weapon and drug trade, while providing common sense protections for American workers and businesses. The bill dramatically increases funding for border security programs, the investigation of illegal immigrant and terrorist activities inside the U.S, and fully implements the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify employer and worker protection pilot program. E-Verify allows businesses to quickly and accurately determine the employment eligibility and immigration status of new employees, which protects employers and American workers from deceitful employees who falsify identification records.
I am also an ardent opponent of so called amnesty proposals that would naturalize large segments of the illegal immigrant population, but I have heard from many agricultural businesses, ranchers, farmers, high-tech companies, and small business owners in my district who not only would be damaged if the status quo continues, many of them would go out of business. This is something that I cannot support, but I believe we have some common sense options. As Congress considers future immigration legislation, I will factor your recommendations into my decision making.
Thank you again for sharing your views. I am proud to serve California's Eleventh District, and I am committed to working hard for you. If you would like more information about the issues I am working on in Congress, I encourage you to visit my website at www.mcnerney.house.gov.
Sincerely,
Jerry McNerney
Member of Congress
2007-12-07
09:52:26
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