Issue Position: Illegal Immigration

Issue Position

Even though most illegal immigrants are hard-working, decent people who are doing the best they can for their families under difficult circumstances, we just can't afford to subsidize the education, health care, housing, transportation and general living expenses of every impoverished person who comes to this country illegally.

We have to tighten security at our borders.

We can and should bill the federal government for the costs that the taxpayers of California are bearing for public services to illegal immigrants.

We can and should stop allowing illegal workers to receive checks from the IRS for refundable tax credits, a loophole that allowed 2.3 million illegal immigrant tax filers to receive $4.2 billion in tax "refunds" in 2010, according to the report of the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration.

We don't have to deport families who have put down roots in our communities, but we certainly can and should deport criminal illegal aliens who are a threat to public safety.

Deportation is not a perfect tool to enforce our immigration laws. Our government's decades of failure to secure the border has created a difficult situation: illegal immigrants and American citizens in the same families. Perhaps we should consider a program to offer assistance to illegal immigrants who voluntarily agree to return home. We can't have a policy that everyone is welcome to stay in the United States if they can just manage to get here illegally, but that doesn't mean we have to be insensitive to the millions of decent people who have come here seeking a better life.

To make sure the federal government hears the concerns of Americans on this issue, a constitutional amendment that would give the states concurrent power to enforce immigration law should be proposed by the state legislatures if Congress and the president refuse to enforce the law

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