Immigration reform hot topic in election

UPDATED 10:13 AM CST Feb 09, 2016

Immigration is one of many hot topics in this election year, especially for GOP candidates looking to join the Senate.

Incumbent Sen. Richard Shelby believes there is no immigration reform without putting on the breaks. "We've got to stop people just coming into this country, look at the president bringing people in from Syria and everywhere else unvetted.

Syrian refugees are a major concern for Shelby: "The FBI director said we can't check their backgrounds, there's no way. He's going to bring them in this country. We're going to have terrorist attacks just like France had. It's just a question of when. The president, he's just off the mark."

Challenger John Martin says reform isn't what is needed: "We need to enforce the laws we have now. Right now, the administration isn't enforcing the laws, congress is not checking if the administration is doing their job correctly. We would say the immigration system is broke, it's not broke, it's just that we're not enforcing it."

Fellow challenger Shadrack McGill says there are times that call for caution on just who comes across the border: "I wouldn't say comprehensive reform, but definitely taking a hard look at our vetting process. Obviously America has a lot of immigrants and we've allowed immigrants for years, but under the circumstances and under the challenges we face with ISIS and extremists then we need to be very cautious of who we let into our gates so to speak."

Candidate Jonathan McConnell sees himself as a man of vision and "laissez faire" on immigration threatens his vision for our country: "Well, right now first and foremost we have to secure our border. A nation without borders is not a nation at all and allowing people to be able to travel back and forth across our southern U.S. border is a security risk and a national security issue. It's not just an immigration issue. I think immigration is something we've been working on for for two to three decades, we're not solving it. We have got to go up there and put both Democrats and Republicans at the table and put our heads together and actually move forward instead of continuing with a lot of illegal immigration continuing to happen."

Marcus Bowman, another GOP Senate candidate, believes we're stalled because congress is biting off more than it can chew: "I think the word comprehensive is a part of the problem in America and up in Washington, D.C. They take issues they want to pack into one bill. I would try to shy away from anything that is comprehensive and try to focus on bite size solutions. I mean obviously we have border security so we should just have a bill about border security. Obviously, we need to have a process for bringing in refugees probably, we need to stop bringing in refugees immediately until we have a certain process in place to make sure we're bringing in the right people for the right reasons."

http://www.wvtm13.com/politics/gop-s...eform/37898396