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Ok, the USA is a nation of immigrants. My grandparents were not born in this country, yet both of my parents were able to go to college and almost all of their children did as well. Many of my cousins also went to college too. A few of my siblings have advanced degrees. Not bad for a family living in small-town North Dakota, if you ask me. I like immigrants with this caveat – legal immigrants. In fact, I worked for a company that was founded by a foreigner that hired both foreigners and US citizens. To my knowledge, each was in the USA legally and I have no reason to think they were not. I count them among my friends. These people were Egyptian, Israeli, Turkish, Chinese, Australian, Swedish, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Indian and from the USA.

But there are a few problems. Some would-be immigrants have been taking advantage of our country’s good nature. Our free public education for anyone, our free medical care for anyone in need, our country’s capitalistic ideals and our historical love for immigrants (US citizenship is available to anyone born on USA “soil”).

Now onto the thoughts … what ought to be changed to remove the incentives for illegal immigration and honestly to make that immigration difficult or impossible.

• Change the citizenship requirements such that only children born of parents (2) here legally are automatically USA citizens. Children born from a single citizen can stay, but only become citizens upon turning 18 and passing the normal citizenship exam. Children born here my illegal immigrants are exported with the parents to the parent’s country of origin.
• Remove the health care incentive. Triage is provided to all, but once stabilized, illegal immigrants are deplored to their country of origin.
• Remove the education incentive. If you aren’t here legally – parents and children, public education at any level is denied. That’s primary, secondary, and colleges, period. English as a second language classes are removed from all public institutions. Private schools are free to do as they like, of course, provided that no public funds are provided for those programs.
• Remove the ability to be employed illegally. Fine heavily any company who employs anyone here illegally. Make the law have a penalty clause, say $50k per person (inflation adjusted) and have a significant amount of the penalty be turned over to any non-government person, here legally, to encourage disclosure of illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa.
• Remove the ability to rent or sell property to illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa. Fine heavily any company or person who provides housing to anyone here illegally. Make the law have a penalty clause, say $50k per person and have a significant amount of the penalty be turned over to any non-government person – here legally, to encourage disclosure of illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa.
• Remove the ability for illegal immigrants to own a US-based company or do business from inside the USA with our companies. No bank accounts with addresses outside the USA, no PO Boxes. This will be a difficult element to craft so that foreign businesses aren’t penalized, but people in the country illegally are prevented from gaining access to our banking system.
• Remove the ability for illegal immigrants to have a State provided drivers license or other identification documents. Fine countries that provide diplomatic paperwork beyond the “normal” number required for a diplomatic purpose. International drivers’ licenses are probably fine, unless abused.
• Remove the ability for money earned in the USA to be sent easily out of the country. Tax at least 25% of cash sent overseas that is sent outside the banking system by non-corporate accounts when 1 side isn’t a USA-based company.
• Any illegal uncovered by any government entity must be deported. If they are found committing a crime – immediate deportation and the laws of their country for the crime should be applied, provided it is a crime in the US state too. Anyone not here illegally should be rewarded for turning in someone here illegally.
• Bill for services to originating countries. The countries that help their people illegally get into the USA should be sent a bill for every hospital visit, every prescription drug, and every hour of public schooling provided. If they refuse to pay for the use of our infrastructure services, we freeze their banking accounts and apply tariffs against trade with those countries products.
• The current ability for citizens to sponsor their family for immigration needs to be carefully revisited.
• Requirements for immigration should include the ability to write and speak English to some defined level, perhaps speak at a 1st grade level and write at a 4th grade level? Language is our culture and different languages fracture our combined culture. Sadly, I’m afraid we need a law that states English is the official language for all government paperwork.
• Enact the [[FairTax]] system. This method of revenue generation hits anyone here illegally with additional consumption taxes since they wouldn’t receive the rebate meant to offset taxes for food every month.

Ok, what happens with all of these items deployed? Housekeeping, lawn care, and other menial jobs now cost more. As wages for these jobs increase, more and more legal immigrants and lower end households will take those jobs. When a lettuce picker earns the same as a truck driver, we’ll know that lettuce is properly priced. Teenagers will also learn about hard work – I washed dishes and my friends worked detasseling corn. Hard work both, but wages will increase due to the removal of the underclass that are illegal immigrants.

I’m realistic. The people here illegally already need to become legal or leave. With the road blocks listed above, folks here illegally will have a very hard time and anyone that gets caught housing/employing will . There needs to be a way for them to stay, but it must not be easy. Based on the age of the person, their wife, and number of children, a scale – not progressive – needs to be determined whereby they pay their back social security taxes, their back Medicare taxes, their back income taxes and all other taxes (state, import, etc.). The path should be towards legal immigration, not rewarding folks who are already here that broke the law when they entered. Basically, these payments should be high enough to encourage folks already here to leave and come back legally, within the quota for their country.

Some of these ideas are really terrible, even scary. There has to be a better way, but we need to make it difficult and unprofitable for anyone or any other country to support illegal immigration into our country. Perhaps some other thoughts will hit me over the next few days.

Summary: legal immigrants help our country and reinvigorate our capitalistic society. We like legal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are a drain on our society and destroy the belief in fair play that our country stands for. Jumping out of line isn’t fair.

We aren’t at war today, but soon, we will be from the inside.

Boortz has some interesting thoughts on immigration too

Being elected President of the USA is serious, not a popularity contest like in High School. This seal reminds me of the honor required for this government office, in particular.

1. Taxation – [[Fair Tax]]
2. War on Terrorism – how do you negotiate with people that want you dead? You don’t.
3. [[Term Limits|TermLimits]]
4. Energy Policy – [[Thoughts On Energy]] Ethanol is a waste; Coal, Solar, Wind with government incentives; why isn’t drilling happening in ANWR, Alaska? Popular Mechanics Article
5. [[Campaign Contributions]] – if you can’t vote in an election, then you shouldn’t be allowed to give money
6. Health Care – More competition; posted costs for all work; less government interference; shopping across state lines and small biz/individuals placed into the same insurance "Group" so they don’t get screwed by insurance rates.
7. Immigration – Fair is fair; no reward for breaking laws
   [[Thoughts on Immigration]]
   *[[Shortage of HiTech Workers in USA?]]
   **[[Saxby Update on Immigration August 2007]]
8. [[Education]] – School Choice
9. Abortion – ProLife/ProChoice
10. Tort Reform – loser pays to prevent lawsuit abuse

Ok, the other Senator responded to my Thoughts On Immigration that I forwarded to his office. The response follows:

Dear Mr. P:

Thank you for contacting me regarding immigration reform. It is good to hear from you.

Illegal immigration is a problem in this country that must be solved. I became involved with the immigration reform bill because it was clear to me that this issue touches the lives of Georgians on a daily basis. Moreover, I believe the people of Georgia elected me to represent them and to work constructively to meet the difficult challenges facing our nation.

From the early development of this legislation, I fought for the inclusion of a border security first provision. I felt strongly that this issue should go to the floor of the Senate for a free and open debate with all Senators having the opportunity to offer amendments and have them voted on. That has not happened. For that reason and because certain amendments have been adopted that make the bill unacceptable, I cannot support the bill in its current form.

Due to the tremendous response from Georgians, I am now convinced that many people do not believe our government will enforce the border security provisions in the legislation. Therefore, Senator Isakson and I communicated to President Bush that Congress must pass, and he should sign, a supplemental appropriations bill to fully fund the necessary expenditures to secure our borders.

I will continue to approach this issue by tackling border security first and separately from any other immigration measure and I will oppose comprehensive reform unless and until that is done. That is why I voted against cloture twice on the immigration bill.

This is the most important domestic issue facing our nation today. The Senate should not limit the traditional amendment process or the custom of unlimited debate. We should take as much time as necessary to openly and thoroughly debate the bill.

Immigration reform is a process and we are nowhere near the finish line. The President and Congress must work together to secure the border first. Once this is done , we can work to resolve the collateral issues. I believe we can get there, but we are not there yet .

High Tech Workers Unavailable in USA? …. Here’s a legal team describing the techniques to ensure they comply fully with the law, yet don’t select a US worker who is qualified. This lets them get a cheaper, H-1b visa worker.

Summary from youtube:
Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Many of my friends started here on H-1b visas … my beef, isn’t with the workers from foreign countries, rather, it is with the employers and our elected representatives who tweak the system to allow these abuses.

Lou Dobbs did a story on this too.

Ok, one of my Senators responded to my Thoughts On Immigration that I forwarded to his office. The response follows:

Dear Mr. P :

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Senate debate on comprehensive immigration reform. I appreciate hearing from you and appreciate the opportunity to respond.

Many have asked why I became involved in a process to work towards a comprehensive reform bill in the Senate. I did it for two reasons. First, in my travels throughout the State of Georgia in the past three years, I had heard loudly and clearly from Georgians that they wanted us to end illegal immigration in America right now, plain and simple. We cannot leave it for future generations to solve. And second, quite frankly, the 2006 elections changed the landscape in Washington and put Democrats in charge of the legislative process. Had I not sat at the table and fought for conservative principles, Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi would have had the votes to pass last year’s horrendous Senate bill and send it on to the President. I could not let that happen. Therefore, I stood strong with other conservative colleagues in the Senate and worked towards a process by which we could to start the immigration debate in the Congress.

I started this process seeking to accomplish three main goals in this debate – to truly secure our borders, to prohibit a new pathway to citizenship and to stop the current climate of amnesty whereby millions of illegal immigrants are breaking our laws and facing no punishment for doing so. As a result of a severely flawed immigration law passed in 1986, some 12 million to 20 million immigrants have been allowed to enter this country illegally and remain indefinitely. They work tax-free, get free health care in our emergency rooms and educate their children for free in our schools. Our nation’s policy today is amnesty, and it must end.

The immigration bill we debated for the past two weeks differed dramatically from the one signed into law in 1986 and it is also very different from last year’s Senate bill. The 1986 law granted amnesty but failed to secure the border, and our country has been paying the price ever since. Last year, the Republican-led Senate repeated the same mistake of 1986 by passing a bill to grant legal status to illegal immigrants without securing our nation’s borders and without imposing any punishment for those here illegally. I voted against that bill last year because it was amnesty and because it failed to secure the border.

This year, I led an effort to ensure that any proposal contain the essential foundation for successfully reforming our immigration system – a requirement to truly secure our borders first before any reform of our temporary worker system takes place. This became known as the "Isakson trigger," and it mandated that Congress must fund, put in place and make operational true border security before any temporary work program could begin. As it currently stands, the bill states that border security must include at least 20,000 border agents, 31,000 detention beds, four unmanned aerial vehicles, 105 radar towers, and 300 miles of vehicles barriers. In addition, a minimum of 370 miles of the fencing mandated in last year’s Secure Fence Act must be constructed. I firmly believe that these security measures would finally provide comprehensive border security and would ensure that we have operational control of our southern border.

The final, key piece of my trigger was a biometrically secure identification card that will allow employers for the first time to instantly verify whether an immigrant is legal. Employers today must guess whether documentation provided by immigrants is fraudulent or not. A biometrically secure ID would replace this guessing game with certainty and would hold employers accountable with much stricter fines for hiring illegal workers.

Although opponents of the bill have suggested that there was nothing worthwhile in this bill, I would suggest that it contained several critical and necessary changes to fix our broken immigration system. It would have secured our borders first. It would have ended our current system of amnesty. It contained no new pathway to citizenship and would have forced illegal immigrants to go home before they could be eligible for a green card or for citizenship. It would have ended chain migration. It would have given employers a fraud-proof system to verify whether workers are legal. It would have forced immigrants to learn English. These are the kind of conservative Georgia principles that I brought to the table and fought for and was able to include. Even though these principles were included, I recognized it was still an imperfect product and that is why I worked through the amendment process to make it even stronger.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Bingaman to limit the temporary worker visa quota for the proposed Y-1 visa to a "hard cap" of 200,000 per year. The bill as originally drafted provided for 400,000 Y-1 visas for the first year, and that number could have risen to 600,000 in following years. This amendment passed and that number was instead capped at 200,000.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Graham to impose mandatory jail sentences for those who crossed the border illegally after being deported – at least 60 days in jail for the first offense and no less than two years for the second offense. Everyone needs to know that America is changing its immigration laws, and that if you break our laws, you will lose your freedom. This amendment passed.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. McCain to require illegal immigrants to pay back taxes on their earnings for the time they had been in the United States . This amendment passed.

I cosponsored and voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Coleman to close a loophole in existing immigration law to allow local law enforcement to acquire information about the immigration status of a person they have probable cause to believe is not lawfully in the U.S. There are several "sanctuary cities" around the United States that have prohibited their law enforcement to inquire about a person’s immigration status. In certain cities, a person can be charged and even tried without the local authorities ever inquiring about whether the person is in the United States legally. The amendment would make it clear that state and local governments may not prohibit their law enforcement from checking a person’s immigration status when they have probable cause to believe that the person is in the United States illegally. Unfortunately, this amendment failed.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Hutchison to prohibit anyone who worked here illegally from obtaining social security benefits based on earnings obtained while here illegally. This amendment passed.

I cosponsored and voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Inhofe to require that English be declared the national language of the United States . It also provided that the English language is the default language for government communication, and that no person has a right to have the government communicate in any language other than English, unless "specifically stated in applicable law." If an exception is made, then only the English language version of any government form can have legal weight.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Demint to require that temporary workers maintain a minimum level of private health insurance to keep them off public assistance such as Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately, this amendment failed.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Sessions to prohibit anyone who is not a green card holder in the United States from being able to take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit. This amendment passed.

I voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Cornyn to permanently bar about 635,000 "alien absconders," or immigrants who have received deportation notices, from obtaining visas. Unfortunately, this amendment failed.

I also voted to defeat all cloture motions designed to cut off debate on the immigration bill. The Democratic leadership in the Senate refused to allow up or down votes on additional Republican amendments that would further strengthen this bill. Among these critical initiatives that I supported but was not allowed an up or down vote on was an amendment mandating spending for border security as well as an amendment to require illegal immigrants to return home in order to participate in the Z visa program. The Democratic leader’s refusal to allow votes on these additional amendments was unacceptable.

As I have said throughout the debate, I would reserve judgment on the final bill until deliberations were complete on the bill. At the time the Democratic leadership moved to end debate on the bill, it was my view that this bill was not good enough yet for the people of Georgia .

I recognize the lack of trust that a majority of Georgians have in the federal government’s ability to follow through on its promise to secure the border. For that reason, I recently sent a letter to the President calling on him to use his emergency funding powers to fully fund the border security measures in this legislation as well as all outstanding border security measures that have previously been passed but not yet funded .

I have been working hard to address the number one domestic issue in the United States . I will continue my efforts because I believe it is absolutely critical to our state and to this nation that we secure the borders and restore credibility to our immigration system.

Thank you again for contacting me. Please visit my webpage for more information on the issues important to you and to sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely,
Johnny Isakson
United States Senator

Latest update from my Senator Saxby Chamblis …

Dear Mr. Pxxxx :

As we continue to think about immigration reform and securing our borders, I would like to update you on the Senate’s latest actions.

Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced a twenty five step plan to increase security at America ’s borders, strengthen interior and worksite enforcement, streamline existing temporary worker programs, crack down on employers who hire illegal workers, and enhance worker verification mechanisms.

Also, the Senate passed H.R. 2638, the fiscal year 2008 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act. This bill included a unanimously adopted resolution that Senator Isakson and I introduced, that calls on President Bush to send an emergency supplemental spending bill to Congress to fully fund border security and interior enforcement activities.

This bill included an important amendment, which I cosponsored, to authorize and provide $3 billion to secure our southern border. The funding will be used to achieve full operational control over the entire U.S.-Mexico land border, by constructing 300 miles of permanent vehicle barriers and 700 miles of border fencing, deploying four unmanned aerial vehicles, installing 105 ground-based radar and camera towers, and obtaining the facilities and resources necessary to detain up to 45,000 aliens per day on an annual basis. Moreover, it will provide for the hiring, training and deploying of 23,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents.

Immigration reform is the most important domestic issue facing our nation today. The President and Congress must work together to secure the border first. Once this is done, we can work to resolve the collateral issues. I believe we can get there, but we are not there yet.

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.sentate.gov . Please do not hesitate to contact me if I may ever be of assistance.