The federal government must regain control of immigration policy by controlling our borders, improving record keeping for visas, requiring businesses to comply with legal hiring practices, and introducing legislation that will allow working immigrants to follow a clear and fair process.

Those who simply say, “We cannot reward bad behavior”, do not understand the complexities of placing the burden of immigration enforcement on state and local governments. The concept of “rounding up” 17 million immigrants would be another costly and ineffective response to the problem that would be passed on to local property taxpayers and local law enforcement.

I propose that we:

• Invest in border and port security.

• Promote an effective e-verify system for employers and raise penalties on employers who ignore the law.
• Create a payroll deduction system for workers who are earning citizenship status that would shift the burden from the general fund to cover immigration enforcement. They pay for the cost of their processing, a paycheck at a time!
• Enforce the laws and when a person who is arrested for a serious crime is found to be here without proper immigration status, he should be deported.
• Evaluate federal support for local schools which have been financially impacted.