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It is critical to distinguish the reform that the public seeks from the deceptive package of measures that the immigration lobby is peddling. We feel it time the nations largest immigration reform organization speak out about true comprehensive immigration reform.

The evidence that illegal immigration and mass immigration are harming our country is overwhelming and irrefutable. Congestion, environment, crime, health care, education the costs are too high for the American family to continue to bear.

Since immigration burst on the scene as a major national issue some 20 years ago, the term reform has been associated with those who believe that large-scale illegal immigration is a serious problem and overall levels of immigration need to be reduced. Weve been educating the public for the last 25 years on the need for true and comprehensive reform, so when it comes to defining reform, weve written the book on it. Opponents of these reforms claimed that a problem did not exist and therefore reform was unnecessary.

Recently the political winds have shifted. As opponents of reform learned that the majority of the public were pro-reform, they changed their tune and have tried to wrap their defense of unchecked illegal immigration and record levels of legal immigration as being reform measures when, in fact, they are measures that will deform our already broken system.

True comprehensive immigration reform, as FAIR the nations largest immigration reform organization and the overwhelming majority of Americans believe it to be, must adhere to this set of immutable principles:

Any level of illegal immigration is unacceptable, and current legal immigrant admissions of about one million persons each year are entirely too many. Any measure that increases either illegal or legal immigration violates this principle. Immigration is a discretionary public policy. Its primary purpose, since our founding, is to advance the interests and security of the nation.

The 1986 amnesty was a failure; rather than reducing illegal immigration, it led to an increase. Any new amnesty measure will further weaken respect for our immigration law. Therefore, all amnesty measures must be defeated.Laws against illegal immigration must be enforced, if they are going to act as a deterrent. Redefining illegal aliens as guest-workers or anything else is just that: a redefinition that attempts to hide the fact it is an amnesty, not reform.

Immigration policy should not be permitted to undermine opportunities for America's poor and vulnerable citizens to improve their working conditions and wages. The need for guest workers must be determined by objective indicators that a shortage of workers exists, i.e., extreme wage inflation in a particular sector of the labor market. The current system accepts self-serving attestations of employers who seek lower labor costs as protections of American workers. True reform requires an objective test of labor shortage demonstrated by rising wages to attract more American workers.

Employers who knowingly employ unauthorized workers are the magnet that attracts illegal entry into the U.S. These employers are complicit in the illegal alien cartel activity of smuggling, trafficking, harboring, and employing and must be punished. We must reform the current system by enforcing employer sanctions and fully punishing employers who break the laws of this country. These punishments will be fines, jailing for repeat offenders, and loss of corporate charters.Employers who knowingly or unknowingly employ illegal workers must be weaned off of their growing use of such workers by assuring a level playing field for all employers and demonstrating effective enforcement actions against employers who continue to exploit illegal workers. No U.S. industry has jobs in which there are no American workers. If illegal workers are decreased over time, wages offered will rise to attract back more American workers. Real shortages, as noted above, can be met with short-term temporary foreign workers.

The Basic Pilot Employment Verification program must be made mandatory and at no extra cost to employers.

Effective immigration enforcement on the border and the interior of the country requires that staffing, equipment, detention facilities, and removal capabilities be adequate to fully meet current needs. The measures needed to identify and remove illegal aliens will also remove the ability of potential terrorists to operate freely in our country as they plot the next catastrophic attack on our people.

Reforming the refugee and asylum system means returning to the original purpose and definition of the program: any person who... is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion....America must honor it responsibilities to protect people who are fleeing true political persecution as defined by U.S. and international law. Efforts to expand those definitions to include all forms of social persecution invite massive fraud and endanger the security of this nation. Similarly, treating aliens illegally residing in the country the same as foreigners on legal visitor visas for purposes of the Temporary Protected Status designation is illogical and a form of amnesty that must be ended.

We must restore moderation to legal immigration. Beginning with the recommendations of the Jordan Commission in 1995, we need to restrict immigration to the minimum consistent with stabilizing the U.S. population.Overall immigration must be reduced to balance out-migration, i.e., about 300,000 per year while still permitting nuclear family reunification and a narrowly focused refugee resettlement program. A moratorium on all other immigration should be immediately adopted pending true comprehensive immigration reform. We should abolish the extended relation preferences.

There should be no favoritism toward or discrimination against any person on the basis of race, color, creed, or nationality.All admission of immigrants should come within a single, stable ceiling which is periodically reviewed on the basis of a reasoned, explicit goal of achieving population stability. We should abolish special preferences such as the Cuban Adjustment Act.

7 Principles (252 KB)

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7 Principles of True Comprehensive Immigration Reform ...

By Kathryn Brown

Raleigh, N.C. Representatives from the construction, hospitality, farming and seafood industries sat down with U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis in Raleigh on Monday to share their concerns about possible immigration reform.

Tillis has been hosting a series of roundtable discussions with New American Economy,a coalition of business leaders and mayors working toward comprehensive immigration reform, to get different perspectives as Congress once again tries to tackle U.S. immigration policies, which have proved nettlesome for decades.

"What were really trying to do is connect to the individual impact, the impact on employers. I think it's really trying to make this real," the North Carolina Republican said.

Richard Gephart said many of the workers at Gephart Building Company are undocumented, but his business couldn't survive without them.

"They build our houses. They pave our roads," Gephart said.

The self-described political conservative said he can't get on board with the Trump administration's immigration plans, noting chants of "build the wall" and "ship them out" make him sick with worry for his workers.

"I have one [worker] who is raising three wonderful girls, all on the honor roll, all born here legally," Gephart said. "The father was not born here legally, and he really worries about driving home every night that he's going to be picked up and sent back."

Business leaders said the red tape required for visas for immigrant labor is often too overwhelming and too expensive. Like Gephart, others expressed concern that stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws will hurt their companies.

"There is a great nervousness not only on the part of the farm workers but the employers as well because these people are vital to the success of these farms and businesses," said Larry Wooten, president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau.

Tillis said his efforts to hammer out a compromise in Washington, D.C., will include solutions, such as pairing tighter border security with a revamped work visa program, that make many in the industries that rely on immigrant labor nervous.

"Were going to propose things that push people out of their comfort zones, but it's absolutely necessary to get those votes in the middle that I think exist," he said. "Until we start coming up with these policies that are balanced, that address the legitimate concerns from either side of the aisle, then we're going to be at the same place 40 years from now if we don't have somebody step up and be willing to take the kinds of political hits in the interim work products that are necessary for you to get something done."

Many in the room said they didn't expect to agree with Tillis, but they left feeling surprisingly satisfied.

"I think I was encouraged," said Jennifer Dionne of the American Seafood Jobs Alliance. "The fact that Sen. Tillis is willing to look at pairing certain issues together and taking this at bite-size chunks and not trying to fix all of it at once is probably the only way we're going to get this done."

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NC business leaders appeal to Tillis on immigration reform :: WRAL ... - WRAL.com

New York Times

Is It Possible to Resist Deportation in Trump's America? New York Times During the Obama years, most immigrant rights organizations focused on big, idealistic legislation: the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration reform, neither of which ever made it through Congress. But Puente kept its focus on front-line battles ...

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Is It Possible to Resist Deportation in Trump's America? - New York Times

Patch.com

Cheshire Students Debate Immigration Reform Patch.com Using high-touch technology on tablets provided by the Institute, students took on the role of U.S. Senators and worked together to build and pass a bill renewing the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013.

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Cheshire Students Debate Immigration Reform - Patch.com

A couple of politically tone-deaf GOP congressmen, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), have introduced the State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, a proposal aimed at allowing individual states to set up their own guest-worker programs. My concept of border security includes a robust guest-worker program, Johnson declared. Its going to be a whole lot easier to secure the border when youre not having to clamp down on people coming here to seek the opportunities that America provides.

While the federal government would still control the issuance of visas, states would be granted the discretion to admit guest workers for as long as three years, after which their visas could be renewed.

Johnsons proposal allows each state to issue visas to as many as 5,000 workers, and draw from additional pool of 250,000 visas based on the states population relative to its percentage of the nations total population. The House version reduces those numbers to 2,500 and 125,000, respectively.

In addition, states could increase their caps by 10% in any year where 97% of their sponsored guest workers comply with their visa requirements and stay out of the black market. Any year a state missed that target would engender a 50% cap reduction. A state missing its target for four years would be suspended from the program for five years.

To make the proposal more palatable, participating workers would be barred from accessing welfare state benefits, such as ObamaCare or the Earned Income Tax Credit, and granting citizenship or permanent resident status to these workers would be prohibited. Workers would be able to change jobs, ostensibly as protection against possible abuse, but would be required to seek other employment only in the state that issued the visa, unless states formed compacts allowing workers multi-state employment access. Violators would lose their status and be subject to deportation.

Unsurprisingly, champions of comprehensive immigration reform are extolling the proposals virtues. Columnist Shikha Dalmia hails the great upside of an approach that would sidestep the messy politics in Washington that have long made sensible immigration reform well nigh impossible. The libertarian Cato Institutes David Bier applauds an approach in accordance with Americas long tradition of federalism in almost every other policy area, one that has the potential to increase support for immigration across the country, allowing America to set aside harmful protectionism and move closer to an economically competitive system.

At what price? We begin with the American Lefts dream of unassailable power, underscored by the reality that the 500,000 guest workers who could enter the country on renewable three-year visas per year would be allowed to bring with them their spouses and children who would not be counted as part of the cap. Under Johnsons proposal, this would allow more than a million people to enter the country annually a country in which more than half of illegal aliens overstayed their visas rather than crossed the border.

Enter birthright citizenship. As the law stands now, the hypothetical American-born child of state-based guest workers would be granted immediate U.S. citizenship and access to federal benefits, National Reviews Fred Bauer explains. At the age of 21, a U.S. citizen can sponsor his or her parents to become permanent residents and, eventually, citizens.

As the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes, those citizens would overwhelmingly support Democrats. The enormous flow of legal immigrants into the country 29.5 million from 1980 to 2012 has remade and continues to remake the nations electorate in favor of the Democratic Party, a 2015 CIS report stated. A follow-up study by the University of Marylands James G. Gimpel confirmed that assessment, revealing, Each one percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of a large countys population reduces the Republican share of the two-party vote by nearly 0.6 percentage points, on average.

Add incrementalism to the mix. As Bauer warns, it wouldnt be long before Democrats would demand that guest workers and their families have access to at least some federal benefits, health care likely chief among them, even as they would smear Republicans as cold-hearted and anti-immigrant for resisting.

Bauer further notes the horrendous optics ripe for leftist exploitation, including tenements swollen with guest workers and their beleaguered families and tearful U.S. citizens waving goodbye to their guest-worker parents, who have to leave the country because theyve lost their jobs. He also worries about the diminishment of civic health attached to a large class of residents who are viewed purely as economic resources with no stake in American society.

If that sounds familiar, its because America abided a similar arrangement once before it was called slavery.

Hot Air columnist Jazz Shaw focuses on security, warning that though the H-1B visa program is exploited by large companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign counterparts, its also one of the only ways to find out if someone is no longer complying with the rules or is in an overstay situation. This proposal would engender a red carpet invitation to abuse the visa system and disappear into the crowd.

Regardless, Johnson remains wedded to the prevailing and demonstrably false assertions driving ideas like this. We have a shortage of workers in all different areas of the economy, he insists. We need to recognize that a one-size-fits-all federal model for visas or guest workers doesnt work.

No, we need to recognize that, as is so often the case, government is determined to fix a problem on the wrong end. If there is a shortage of high-skill American workers in certain fields, it makes far more sense to reform a failing educational system that churns out Americans ill-equipped to compete in the 21st century economy.

As for the jobs Americans refuse to do, the notion that government would simultaneously underwrite millions of able-bodied dependents who refuse to work (or believe that certain work is beneath them) and the additional economic costs that attend themselves to accommodating millions of guest workers and their families is utterly absurd.

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revealed 17% of the American labor force is foreign born. For the 25 million workers added to that work force between 1996 and 2016, the percentage rises to nearly 50%.

What percentage of foreign workers constitutes critical mass? One that adversely affects not only the economic future of millions of Americans but the nations societal and cultural ethos as well?

I had thought that the current agenda for any sort of immigration reform was pretty clear following the last election cycle, Shaw writes. There would be no discussions of amnesty or any other priorities of liberals and open borders advocates until the border was secure and progress was being made on getting at least the worst offending criminal illegal aliens out of the country. Apparently I was mistaken.

Once again, the publics foremost immigration concerns, as in national security and the Rule of Law, are being ignored by Republicans still pushing comprehensive immigration reform by any subterfuge necessary.

They would like to pretend the 2016 election never happened. But it did. And they ignore its mandate at their own peril.

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Government & Politics Comprehensive Immigration Reform Subterfuge - Patriot Post