Sandy Clark, CGCS said: No bill, especially something of this magnitude should be allowed to go anywhere until it has been read by every senator and congressman or woman. We do not need another multiple thousand page bill that must be passed so we can find out what is in it. Immigration Reform is too important. Slow down, eliminate ear marks and pork, put America first and come up with a bill based on actual benefit for our country. Border security must come first. Solving the problem without playing politics is the only way this will work. We saw the failure of the bill from Reagan's days and this bill appears to be the makings for the same thing. Amnesty now and border security never. No pork, no exemptions and certainly not total control by a political type like the head of the Department of Homeland Security. We need border security first, a major overhaul of our legal immigration system second, E-Verify immediately and a pork free bill that includes a guest worker program along with a long term pathway to first legal resident status and eventually citizenship. The country nor any state can afford the cost of the current program. No criminals allowed. Once you determine how many people fall into this undocumented status, determine how many want to become citizens and start from there. No promise to extended families, girl friends, boy friends etc. Go slow and do it right. What is the rush elected officials? Are you trying to conceal things you don't want the American people to know about?
I wonder if part of the rush is there is an election next November and before campaign season gets into full swing they want to show they actually accomplished something.
My question is how do we pay for the boarder security? I thought we were wanting smaller government? Will having documented workers paying taxes along with those that employ them provide enough funding for increased boarder security? Will savings from having documented workers who have health insurance and/or use medicaid help save money instead of having to pay emergency rooms for service? I have a question I don't know the answer to, when a documented worker or guest worker on a Visa works here, do they pay into social security even though in some cases they might not be getting any social security down the road when they retire (this I guess is more for true guest workers then those that want to stay and become citizens)?
Why the big deal to learn English? I don't think some of those immigrants coming from Italy learned English, now if they wanted to make more money and increase their skills they did learn English and become bilingual. Heck just think we force the immigrants from Mexico to learn English and then they have greater skills then us currently in America.
I will agree, don't load the bill with stuff that doesn't relate to immigration reform, but I think when we really look at the total immigration picture with security, boarder control, e-verify, health care, social security, and other items down the road, it is going to be a big bill.
I also think that those businesses that hire non-documented workers and skirt paying into the social security and payroll tax systems should be fined hard when caught. If businesses would hire documented workers, then wouldn't that fix most of the problem? (I know it probably isn't that simple).
Mel