American Principles in Action’sAmerican Principles in Action’s

1.) Secure the Border Extend double fencing to all areas along the southern border, where illegal crossings can potentially occur, to attain effective and realistic operational control of the border.

2.) Enforce Immigration Law at the Workplace

Mandate all businesses use the federal employment eligibility verification system, or E-Verify, to ensure only citizens and individuals with legal status are employed.

3.) Fully Implement an Entry/Exit Registry

Utilize a biometric tracking system of foreign nationals to ensure they depart the country by the time their visa expires.

4.) Ensure Employers Can Hire Foreign Workers If Needed

However, only allow this in situations where the employers cannot find American workers first.

5.) Provide a Path to LegalStatus for UndocumentedImmigrantsAfter steps 1, 2 and 3 are executed and not earlier than January 21, 2017: provide legal status to undocumented immigrants – including individuals who entered as minors or so-called “dreamers” – after they pay a fine and back taxes.

5 Point Conservative Immigration

Plan

A Conservative Piecemeal Approach Proposed to the 114th United States Congress

How We Put Americans First While Welcoming Immigrants

While border security has improved, our southern border remains far from secure. In 2014, apprehensions along our border with Mexico totaled 479,371, with 332,457 of those taking place in the Texas section of the border. The reality is that the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas is practically lawless and not under the control of the border patrol. Border fencing, specifically double-layer fencing , along with manpower and technological assets, works to stop and/or deter illegal entry. Yet, since the Secure Fence Act of 2006 less than 50 miles of double-layer fencing has been built. Double-layer fencing should be built along the 700 miles where the law mandates fencing and extended to other areas not contemplated by the law where illegal entry is possible. This would drastically reduce the number of illegal entries, which would translate into a substantial reduction in the number of apprehensions along the border.

Furthermore, operational control of the border should not be unrealistically defined as the capacity to detain 100% of those who try to enter illegally. This is quite impossible to accomplish. A more realistic target is 90%.

Most immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally do so for work. If we ensure they cannot find a job if they lack legal status, we will remove the main incentive for entering the country illegally. The document-based protocol that most U.S. businesses currently follow to check the employment eligibility of a worker, however, is very ineffective. Applicants are merely required to attest that they are eligible to work and submit copies of documents and information like social security numbers, green cards and state-issued driver’s licenses. Employers only archive those documents having no way to prove their authenticity. As a result, fraudulent documents and information, such as fake social security numbers and green cards, are regularly used to game the system.

E-Verify, on the contrary, provides much needed reliability and accuracy. It is a government run internet-based system that verifies the authenticity of the documents submitted against records from the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm the employment eligibility of the applicant. It’s free and quick, and usually provides results in a matter of seconds.

40 percent of undocumented immigrants do not enter the country illegally, but come legally and overstay their visa. It is very difficult for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to go after these individuals and detain and remove them, since there is no way of knowing who has returned before his visa expired or overstayed. While we currently take down the biometric data of foreign nation-als at points of entry, we do not have an exit registry to record when they leave the country. A biometric exit tracking system would perform this function, identifying most visa overstays for ICE.

After steps 1, 2 and 3 are executed and not earlier than January 21, 2017: 1) implement a market-oriented guest worker program that allows businesses that cannot find American workers to recruit and temporarily bring into the country as many unskilled agriculture and non-agriculture foreign workers as they may need; 2) substantially increase the quota of H1-B visas for foreign professionals with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), as well as the number of green cards available to STEM students; and 3) allow foreign STEM students who are offered employment here to remain in the country while they adjust their legal status.

Border security and domestic enforcement should be a priority, but once we have dealt properly with these challenges we must address the underlying reason for our immigration problems: the need our economy has for foreign workers. A great number of U.S. businesses cannot find American workers for certain types of jobs, usually in the extreme poles of the labor market: high-tech jobs that require advanced degrees, on one end, and labor-intensive manual jobs on the other. Americans are simply not going for these jobs or in many cases there are no Americans of working age to do them. Either way, filling these jobs is vital for companies to grow and create good paying jobs for working Americans.

Yet, despite this demand, we do not have enough work visas to bring in the foreign professionals and workers we need, and the guest worker programs currently in existence are so over-regulated and costly that employers simply do not use them. This is the reason why unskilled migrant workers come to the U.S. illegally. They do not have a legal route to enter legally, while they are pulled here by the magnetic forces of the U.S. economy and labor market.

After steps 1, 2 and 3 are executed and not earlier than January 21, 2017: provide legal status to undocumented immigrants – including individuals who entered as minors or so-called “dreamers” – after they pay a fine and back taxes. They would be allowed to remain and live in the U.S., but they will not have a special path to citizenship that gives them priority over other immigrants who are applying for citizenship through proper legal channels. Undocumented immigrants with significant criminal records, including serious felonies and repeated misdemeanors, will not have access to legal status and will be removed from the country.

We cannot deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, nor should we want to. The immense majority of undocumented immigrants are good, hard-working people that contribute to our economy and our communities. Many have been living in the shadows for decades. They did, however, break the law to come in or stay in the country. They should, therefore, not be rewarded with a special path to citizenship. That would be unfair to the hundreds of thousands who wait in line to come here legally, wishing to reside in the U.S. permanently and become citizens.

After we have secured the border and toughened up interior enforcement, we should then provide undocumented immigrants a path to legal status, short of citizenship. They would, of course, have to pay a penalty and back taxes. This does not mean that we would close the door to citizenship to them, but we would require them, if they want to naturalize, to get in the back of the line and follow the process under current law to first acquire lawful permanent residency (a green card) and then eventually become a citizen of the United States.

“We must guarantee the security of our national territory while, at the same time,

we welcome the foreign workers our country needs to grow the economy and

create good paying jobs for working Americans."

— Alfonso Aguilar, Executive Director of the American Principles in Action's Latino Partnership and former Chief

of the U.S. Office of Citizenship under George W. Bush.

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