Issue Position: Immigration

Issue Position

Issue Position: Immigration

The time is long overdue for Americans to work together on comprehensive immigration reform.

For four years I lived in Houston, ground zero for illegal immigration, and learned that it was a problem that no one was willing to address. As a result, during the years of the Bush Administration, illegal immigration increased by 40%.

Today we must tackle this crisis, with all urgency.

We must work to secure our borders, by funding new technologies and providing border checks with additional personnel.

We must not provide Amnesty to those who are living illegally within our borders and reward their initial wrongdoing.

However, it is unacceptable that we only enforce our laws against immigrants themselves, rather than cracking down on the companies that hire them. We must make it a priority to administer and enforce strict fines on companies that hire illegal immigrants.

Given a chance to punish the businesses that knowingly rely on labor performed by illegal immigrants, Congressman English in 2005 voted to protect such employers.

He failed to support an amendment that increased fines on those businesses, and instead voted for an amendment to set caps on monetary penalties.

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