Thank you, for contacting me to share your concerns about immigration reform. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Like you I believe we need to reform U.S. immigration law and policy. If Congress is going to solve this problem and move beyond the failed stragedies of the past, a new, broader framework is needed. "Enforcement only" approaches have been tried for the past 20 years and have failed to slow immigration flows, in part because the federal government frequently turns a blind eye to violations.

As you may know, Senator Arland Spector of Pennsylvania introduced legislation that reflects an enforcement plus approach to fix America's broken immigration system. The sector proposal is bipartisan, comprehensive, and most importantly, provides a workable framework for reform. From an enforcement perspective, the Specter proposal contains a combination of health border enforcement initiates. It would create a virtual wall long our borders by, among the things, using fencing and physical barriers with where appropriate, dramatically increasing number of border patrol and interior enforcement agents, make a anti-crime to build, fund or use unlawful unlawful tunnels, and increasing penalties for evading immigration officers and smuggling. And critically, a gets tough on employers to higher illegal immigrants. In the Specter proposal also realistically addresses situation of the 11 million immigrants currently working and living in the U.S. illegally by establishing in multistep process that will bring these people out of the shadows. The specter proposal does not proposed amnesty. Instead undocumented immigrants must come forward and register, passed background and medical checks, pay a have defined, pay me back taxes the mail, stay inhalation civics, remain employed, and wait their turn in line.  In this would take six years, at a minimum, to earn a chance at permanent residence, and 11 years to earn citizenship.

Despite bipartisan judiciary committee support for the specter proposal, opponents block the proposal from receiving end up or down vote in the full Senate. An alternative to the specter bill, proposed by Senator Chuck Hegel of Nebraska and Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, is now under consideration. Please be sure that has Congress continues to look at immigration policy and examines the Hegel/ Martinez bill, I will keep your views in mind.