Mark Yorkly Many people, many citizens, and many illegal aliens all have a different opinion about what should be done.
In the early stages of our history, immigration was a topic of concern. It’s not that the new country wanted to close its borders to immigrants it’s that they wanted to ensure that the immigration policy would guarantee assimilation and good citizenship then and in the future.
Immigrants from all over the world, throughout our history, have contributed to the traditions and the greatness of the country they wanted to call home. The greatest influx of immigrants came through Ellis Island at the beginning of the 20th Century. There were Armenians, Eastern Europeans, Russians, Italians, the Irish and Poles, Chinese and Jews and many more nationalities that settled in our great cities. These new Americans became inventors and builders and worked in our great factories. They became parents, teachers and members of the clergy. Some went on to be great leaders of their time, but they all had one mission; that was to become an American, learn the language and become prosperous for the sake of their posterity. This was the story of immigration for nearly 80 years. This grew our country and our economy. It provided the threads to that great American quilt that was beginning to grow exponentially.
The very simple approach to immigration has been lost in the dialog, due to political correctness and pandering to voting blocks. As a Representative in Congress, I would work to enforce current laws and provide a path to citizenship based on the standards that our current laws require. If someone is here illegally and wants to become an American, they should go through the process that all others go through.
If an individual wants to become a citizen, they should be willing to abide by the timelines and what the law requires.
It doesn’t make any sense politically and economically to provide the same benefits and more to the illegal population, while our legal population gets far less. It doesn’t make any sense that other countries will jail and will make political statements by detaining and capturing illegal’s while the United States is afraid to question someone’s proof of citizenship in a sanctuary city.
If the President, the Congress and the Senate could promise the American people that they would not politicize the matter and do what is right to guarantee security, the economy and fair and equal treatment of the application process, our immigration policy would become the standard by which other countries would come to recognize.
I will fight to take the politics out of the debate. I will work toward eliminating the political lens by which this is being viewed today. I will start the conversation by talking about what the founders wanted and how our immigration policy used to work. We will soon find out that nothing has changed, except the people who have made it a political question instead of an American question of best practice.
If we can take the politics out of the debate and openly criticize those who can’t and force them to center on existing law and improve the process we can have a program that works for aliens, current Americans and most importantly our posterity.