Todd from Los Angeles asks………  What’s your postion(s) on immigration?

The topic of immigration first and foremost is a national security issue.  Every soverign nation has the right to know who is entering and exiting its borders.  Most have severe penalties for breaching their borders, while the United States has taken a lackadaisical attitude towards our borders and it has to stop.  We need to secure our borders with an actual fence and where there are entry points have the technology to ensure that we know who is actually entering and that they have the right to do so. 

In addition to physically securing our borders, we need to be sure that we require all those that would like to legally immigrate to America do so follow the proper legal channels.  We also need to be sure that we do the appropriate background checks to ensure we are not allowing anyone in with a criminal  history or ties with terror orgainzations. 

While the above seems rather simple, we have not had the political will to appropriately secure our borders.  If we stop providing so many incetives for people to enter our country illegally, it would reduce their desire to come here.  For example, all employees should provide proof of citizenship and we need to have punitive penalties on employers, so if they get caught, the penalties are so severe it’s not worth the risk.  We should stop providing free k-12 education and no”in state” tuition for college to non-citizens.  We also need to stop the practice of if you are born here you are automatically a citizen and you and your entire family get to stay, even though you are not legal citizens.  If we also stop providing free heatlhcare to non-citizens, we can dramatically reduce the cost of healthcare by reducing the use of our emergency rooms as clinics and only use them for actual emergencies.

Don’t get me wrong, my views are color blind.  I don’t care where you are from.  Nor do I care whether you cross the northern or southern border. If you are not a legal citizen, you are not entitled to the same rights and benefits afforded to American citizens.