Greetings Sir,
What has happened to this great country of ours? I am a citizen who is extremely troubled by what I see happening in this country. I proudly served for 12 years in the United States Navy fighting for the freedoms of the American Citizen and the beliefs that I thought were reflected in the U.S. Constitution. At that time I was a proud American, always very proud to announce that I was a United States Citizen, defending my beliefs in conflicts such as Beirut, Panama, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield.

But, I am sorry to say, that today, I am almost embarrassed to say that I am an American. What has happened to this great country of ours? At one time we were the greatest civilized society in the history of the world. Looked up to by all nations across the globe, today, it seems, we are the laughing stock of the world, seen as weak and un-decisive. We can’t even control our own issues much less influence those of other nations.

Before you is this immigration reform issue. All that I and the majority of the American citizenry are asking is that you enforce the law.

In 1986, The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, created sanctions prohibiting employers from knowingly hiring, recruiting, or referring for a fee illegal alien workers. To deal with the growing population of resident illegal aliens, Congress gave an amnesty to those illegal aliens who could show that they had been resident for some time (over three million of them)and created “employer sanctions” making it illegal to knowingly hire illegal aliens. (Sound familiar?)

The 1990 Act “ImmAct90” The Immigration Act of November 29, 1990, increased total immigration under an overall “flexible cap” of 675,000, to consist of 480,000 family-sponsored, 140,000 employment-based, and 55,000 “diversity lottery” immigrants. Categories such as immediate relatives remained unlimited by the cap. It also revised all grounds for exclusion and deportation, significantly rewriting the political and ideological grounds. The 1990 Act increased the level of legal immigration by roughly 40 percent. One obvious change made by the 1990 Act was the addition of a “visa lottery.”
Congress passed this bill to deter illegal immigration by better protecting the borders and by better detecting and removing illegal aliens from the U.S. (What happened?)

1996 Immigration Act “IIRAIRA” The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, established measures to control U.S. borders, protect legal workers through worksite enforcement, and remove criminal and other deportable aliens. It also placed added restrictions on benefits for aliens. (So what happened?)

These ‘reforms’ that you speak of are nothing new. The existing laws just need to be enforced. But, these too will fail if you do not address the border issue and begin true enforcement of existing laws.

‘Citizens’ across this country are being denied their constitutional rights and non citizens are being protected as if they fell under the protection of the U.S. Constitution. Across this country Citizens are trying to organize counter protests and are being denied permits by their city governments being told that ‘they’ feel that such counter-protests could incite violence. Yet, illegal immigrants are given carte blanche. Illegals in this country want all the privileges of being a citizen and none of the responsibility. Illegals carry our flag through the streets and halls of our schools as if it were theirs. Yet when citizen students bring our U.S. flag to school, they are being told that it can’t be permitted. WHAT IS HAPPENING?!!!

Proposals for "guestworker" programs that would allow millions of foreign citizens to work in the U.S. guarantee that U.S. taxpayers will get the short end of the stick:

Guestworkers displace American workers and lower American workers’ wages and working conditions in certain job sectors.

Guestworker programs are a drain on the tax system.

Guestworkers rarely go home.

Any guestworker program that involves “earned legalization” is an amnesty, a reward for law-breaking that is vociferously opposed by the American public.

Whenever the government has empanelled experts to examine the idea of expanding existing guestworkers programs—such as the Commission on Agriculture Workers (1992), the Commission on Immigration Reform (1995), and the joint U.S.-Mexico Bi-National Study on Migration (1997)—they have recommended against them, citing negative impacts to wages and working conditions in the affected industries.

The U.S. has had large-scale guestworker programs before. Prompted by war-time manpower shortages and continued out of convenience, the Mexican Contract Labor Program in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s—better known as the Bracero program—brought millions of Mexicans to work in American agriculture.

This large-scale guestworker program resulted in increasing dependence on foreign labor, encouraged illegal immigration, and so severely deteriorated wages and working conditions for domestic farmworkers that it was branded a national shame and discontinued.

Many Mexicans who worked in that program stayed on illegally when the program ended. The result has been the institutionalized lowering of wages and working conditions in seasonal crop agriculture, as well as a dependence on cheap labor rather than investment in mechanization.
History shows that “guestworkers” rarely go home.

Why would we expect the participants in a new guestworker scheme to leave at the end of their participation in the program? If they can become legal aliens, they will stay, and if they can’t, they are still likely to remain. After all, many of them will have already lived here as illegal aliens before participating in the program. What enforcement mechanisms will ensure that they don’t simply remain as illegal aliens after their legal participation in the guestworker program is over? No “partial withholding of wages” will convince them to go home when they can continue to earn more money by staying in the U.S. illegally.

These people obviously have no regard for our laws, why would you even consider ‘giving’ them citizenship?

They have broken our laws just by coming or staying here illegally. This speaks volumes to me about their character as human beings.

Please vote no on any amnesty / guest worker provisions and demand that ICE and DHS start enforcing our laws.