...On Immigration Reform

Unfortunately I believe that the prevailing view on immigration reform in the Republican Party is unrealistic and simplistic. Every nation undergoing a prolonged economic expansion has needed a significant immigrant population to meet it workforce requirements. The vast majority of illegal immigrants in the United States came here to improve their lives and contribute positively to society. Given that their are an estimated 20-30 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States with nothing to return to in their native countries, it is entirely unrealistic to expect them to simply pack up and go home before being eligible for U.S. citizenship. Such a policy would devastate our economy by leading to an abrupt shortage in our workforce not to mention the resulting human catastrophe of displaced, unemployed people. Besides, many of the jobs that employ these workers are low paying jobs that U.S. citizens are unwilling to take. What we need is a comprehensive policy that provides the U.S. with its needed workforce, provides stability and security for those workers, and collects taxes sufficient to cover the services that these immigrants consume while at the same time providing this nation the border security needed to ensure that terrorists and drug-traffickers are kept out.

The first step must be to dramatically improve the work visa program needed to adequately bring needed workers to this country. The program must not only be able to provide sufficient numbers of workers but must be nimble enough to bring them here in a timely fashion to meet the needs of our ever changing workforce requirements. Illegal immigrants already in the U.S. should be rapidly enrolled in this work visa program. Employers hiring illegals without a work visa should be aggressively pursued and fined. The work visa program should be designed to provide immigrants with long term stability to promote family and community among this population.

Once we have a well functioning work visa program in place we can aggressively begin securing our border. The reason this is not the first priority, although the first steps can be undertaken simultaneously, is that we can not shut off the supply of immigrant workers until we have a program in place to provide our country's needed labor force. To secure our southern border we should continue building a fence adequate to prevent easy border crossing, strengthen the border patrol, and move military bases closer to the border. Part of the military mission and training should be to secure our border.

All immigrants with a work visas should pay taxes sufficient to cover their usage of social services, education, national defense, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, and national infrastructure. In other words, they should pay the same taxes that U.S. citizens pay. They should have access to their social security savings just like U.S. citizens. However, since few of these immigrants are home owners and thus do not pay property taxes to support county and city expenditures, i.e. public education, they should pay an additional tax to cover this expense.

To provide this population with long-term stability and to reward positive contribution to society, a pathway to U.S. citizenship should be developed. After ten years of successful work visa employment and with tax payments sufficient to support their consumption of government provided services, these individuals should be offered full U.S. citizenship. The necessary tax payments will vary from individual to individual and family to family, i.e. a single working individual will require fewer tax payments than a family and a family with one child will require less than one with four children. Immigrants serving in the U.S. armed forces or in under served areas of public service should be offered a shorter period to full citizenship. Immigrants committing felony crimes should be denied pathway to citizenship.

Only by developing a plan to realistically solve the problem of illegal immigration by creating a nimble, robust work visa program, a pathway to citizenship, and securing our border will we be able to create a sustainable, workable solution to provide our great nation with its needed labor force.