Greg in LA
06-16-2013, 07:07 PM
A week or so ago Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate went on TV and challenged anyone to a debate that the Senates comprehensive immigration reform bill was not amnesty. Here is Ryan's response to my letter. It's amazing to see his use of every cliche ever used. In my response I couldn't let his deception go
unchallenged.
Dear Greg:
Thank you for contacting me regarding your thoughts on immigration reform. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me on this important issue.
You raised some interesting and insightful points regarding this issue. The vast majority of Americans agree that our current immigration system is broken. What we have right now is de facto amnesty – meaning there are currently 11 million immigrants living undocumented and without legal status in the United States. Because these immigrants are here undocumented and as a result, outside the scope of the law, we often do not know who they are or in what activities they are engaged. In addition, there are immigrants who attempt to come to this country by legal means and find themselves wrapped up in endless paperwork and bureaucracy, and in turn, ultimately live in the United States unauthorized. Additionally , our current immigration laws are not enforced. The result of these failures is a system that encourages people to break the law, and punishes those who follow it. It is clear that our current immigration system is not working, and America deserves better.
There are deeply held views on all sides of this issue, and rightly so. We are a nation of immigrants and people continue to flock to our country in pursuit of the American Dream. The Census Bureau assumes net immigration – meaning legal and illegal – will total 68 million immigrants by 2050. The non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies points out that these future immigrants plus their descendants will add an estimated 96 million residents to the U.S. population, accounting for three-fourths of our population growth from 2010 to 2050. Immigration to the United States shows no signs of slowing. Rather than continue down the same broken path, we instead need to implement a real, long-term solution to fix these problems. We need a system that modernizes our immigration laws, adheres to the rule of law, and ensures those who want to play by the rules can get ahead. We need a system that is accountable, efficient, and effective.
With that in mind, I believe there are four principles of reform: First, we need to secure the border. That should be our first priority. We cannot have a safe and secure country without a safe and secure border. Second, we need to enforce our laws so we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Right now, we encourage people to break the law, and we punish people who follow it. We need to reverse this practice. Third, we need to let immigrants who want to contribute to the economy come here legally. We need a guest-worker program, and we need to attract the best and brightest to our shores. Fourth, we need to offer people a path to earned legalization and a chance to earn citizenship. We should welcome anyone who is willing to take that pledge and who shares that commitment to our country, but we must also ensure fairness to those who have followed the law.
Through stronger border security laws and enforcement of our laws, we will be able to stem the flow of illegal immigration and restore the rule of law. We must ensure that our law enforcement officials have access to the resources, including technology and manpower, needed to enforce the laws already on the books and protect our borders to help stop the smuggling of drugs, arms, and humans. Securing the border is the first step to develop a realistic solution to fix our country's broken immigration system. Without improved and ongoing border security, all other steps to achieve immigration reform will be rendered less effective.
We must also implement a modernized system to track the entry and exit of tourists, foreign students, diplomats, temporary workers, and others who come to the United States with a legal, temporary visa. Currently, visa overstays are estimated to account for 40 percent of the current 11 million undocumented population here now. In an age of national security threats and transnational terrorism , we need to know who is in our country and ensure they are adhering to the law and obeying the limitations of their visa. This requires a modernized process to track the entry and exit of visa holders.
We also need security in the workplace. This is why we need an employee verification system that allows employers to easily and accurately verify an employee's legal status in a timely manner. The faulty and cumbersome verification process we currently have continues to provide incentives for the use of fraudulent documents and puts many at risk of identity theft. Any verification system should be safe, secure, and immediate. In order to keep illegal immigrants from finding work in the United States, we need to give our employers the proper tools to verify the legal status of their employees.
A modernized immigration system also requires a way for those who want to contribute to our economy to come here legally. Any reforms to immigration policies should include expanding access to employers to bring in seasonal and temporary labor when they are unable to find Americans to fill the jobs. Wisconsin, for example, relies on seasonal labor for agriculture and other industries, but due to a lack of seasonal H-2B visas, some Wisconsin businesses face annual labor shortfalls. Additionally, a functioning guest worker program will help to maintain control of immigration flow. Providing a way to legally link employers with immigrant workers and building a streamlined, safe, and efficient visa process will provide businesses with needed workers and relieve pressure on the borders.
We also want the best and brightest foreign students that were educated in American universities to remain in the United States. Many of the world's best students, particularly those with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, receive their education in America. We could boost economic growth, create jobs, increase our competitiveness, and spur innovation by making it possible for U.S. employers to more easily hire foreign graduates of American universities in STEM fields. This way, these graduates apply their American education in the United States, rather than take their American education to our foreign competitors. Over the past ten years, growth in STEM jobs was three times the rate as non-STEM jobs, and these occupations are projected to grow more than twice as fast through 2018. American employers have expressed concern regarding the availability of high-skilled STEM workers and have urged reform of the visa system to help them fill these empty positions. Nevertheless, in order to ensure the career prospects of graduating American STEM students are not diminished, any legislation should require employers seeking to sponsor foreign STEM graduates to first complete labor certification. Labor certification protects U.S. workers and the U.S. labor market by ensuring that foreign workers seeking immigrant visa classifications are not displacing equally qualified U.S. workers. The job security of Americans must always take precedence over the job security of foreign graduates.
Immigration legislation must include a fair and reasonable way to address the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. We need to invite people out of the shadows and give them a way to get right with the law, without letting them cut in line in front of others who have come to our country illegally. This includes finding a way forward for the " DREAMers " – unauthorized immigrants that came to the United States as children through no fault of their own, grew up in our country, and are now seeking to pursue an advanced degree in America or enlist in our military. It is not reasonable to expect the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants. Instead, we need an immigration plan that is realistic and works to the benefit of all Americans.
We should reform our immigration system because it will help America – because immigrants will contribute to our economy. They will help create jobs and spur our economy. In 2011, immigrants created over a quarter of all new businesses. Immigrant-owned businesses generate over $775 billion in tax revenue every year. In addition, an estimate by the American Action Forum predicts immigration reform will boost per capita income by $1,700 over ten years and reduce the federal deficit by $2.7 trillion. We should modernize our immigration policy because it is right for our country. A robust and innovative workforce will lead to economic growth, and in turn, will help to maintain and strengthen the prosperity of this nation.
I will continue to advocate for reforms to our broken system that has been failing Americans and those seeking to legally immigrate to our country. Effective immigration reforms must include strong border security provisions, a workable visa-tracking process, a secure employee verification system, an enforceable guest worker program, and fair provisions to address the unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S. In the past, I have supported initiatives that would have accomplished these goals, and I will continue to do so as my colleagues and I consider legislation in the 113 th Congress.
In the meantime, if you wish to share additional information with me concerning this issue, please feel free to contact me by calling, emailing, writing, or faxing me. Please be advised that mail sent to my Washington office is subject to an additional two-week delay due to increased mail security.
Again, thank you for contacting me. If I can be of further assistance to you regarding this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always happy to respond and be of service to you.
Sincerely,
Paul Ryan
MY RESPONSE
6-15-13
Dear Congressman Ryan,
Thank you for your letter describing the reasons why you think it’s necessary to grant amnesty to millions of immigration law breakers and flood our labor markets with a vast increase of legal immigration.
It is amazing to read in your first paragraph your use of virtually every stale cliche, falsehood, sophistry and Orwellian language currently being used to sell and deceive the American public on the Senates proposed amnesty and immigration surge bill.
I feel it’s important to address some of the multitude of stale cliché’s, falsehoods and deceptive language that you employed in your letter to me.
1. “Immigration system is broken”:
Our immigration system is only broken because you and many of your fellow politicians like President Obama, Chuck Schumer, John McCain and Marco Rubio, refuse to enforce our immigration laws. Not only do you refuse to enforce our immigration laws, you obstruct and disallow any legislative attempt to enforce those laws. Mr. Ryan our immigration laws are the collective will of our people and you Mr. Ryan refuse to enforce them all to benefit your cheap labor patrons.
2. “De facto amnesty”:
Mr. Ryan, we don’t have de facto amnesty, what we have are laws that are ignored, undercut and mocked by law makers such as yourself, who’ve sworn an oath to uphold those very laws.
3. “Undocumented immigrant”
Your choice of description for an illegal immigrant is a leftist term used in place of the correct legal term; which is unlawful alien or illegal alien. The term undocumented immigrant is Orwellian language that is meant to dumb down and cheapen our laws. In our system of law Congressman Ryan, one is either here legally or illegally, it’s either one or the other.
I would like you to know that millions of Americans find it extremely troubling to hear a “lawmaker”, who has sworn to uphold our laws use words that basically say that those laws don’t exist or really shouldn’t matter.
4. “In the shadows”:
Congressman Ryan, I don’t know what country you’ve been living in, but illegal immigrants in our country are most definitely not hiding in shadows. Where were you on May 1, 2006 when, 500,000 illegal aliens and their supporters marched down the streets of Los Angeles, waiving Mexican flags, and 300,000 similarly marched through the loop in Chicago?
Please go to any construction site in any major city and you will see for yourself that illegal immigrants are most definitely not hiding in any shadows. While you are at it Congressman Ryan, please also examine the number of illegal aliens who are in our prisons and hospital emergency rooms. If you don’t want to take my word that the illegal aliens are in no way living in the shadows, please go ask the Jamil Shaw family or the bologna family,
I suggest you might also contact your colleague in congress Steve King or Lou Barletta, who might be able to point a few things out to you if you truly think illegal immigrants are hiding in shadows.
5. “11 million immigrants living undocumented”:
One of the most dangerous falsehoods that you are spreading is the unverified number that we have 11 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. The undisputed facts are that nobody really knows how many illegal aliens are really in our country. You say it’s 11 million, but it could be easily be 20 million. It could be 11 million in California alone, and no one really knows.
For a lawmaker it’s your responsibility to scrutinize those numbers, because of how those numbers could impact the whole nation. Yet respectfully it seems that you do not show the least bit of interest in verifying that number, before they’re legalized. Have you ever once thought of the impact on our country if the supposed 11 million turned out to be 20 or 30 million?
Have you ever stopped to think of the impact of chain migration on our country when the millions of amnestied immigrants bring in their extended relations, which could conceivably be another 33 to 60 million, if on average each immigrant petitioned 3 family members?
Mr. Ryan the numbers that I just listed for you are very plausible and would cause a radical and devastating change for the United States, and the fact that you don’t address this issue shows that you’re are not capable of understanding the issues or you just don’t care.
I can only speculate that your real motives for immigration reform is higher labor supply = lower labor price.
Speaking of labor, where have you been this last five years, while Americans have gone through a near depression with crippling high levels of unemployment, and all you can talk about is guest workers and vastly increasing H1-B visas, as if we had rising wages and labor shortages. One can only wonder what planet you’ve been living on?
In Closing Congressman Ryan, I would like to pose this fundamental question to you,
Why do we have immigration laws?
My answer to you is that we have immigration laws to protect Americans from hordes of people uncontrollably coming to our country and causing chaos, lowering our standard of living, depressing our wages and disrupting our society.
Because you and politicians like you Congressman Ryan refuse to enforce our current laws, we now have crippling debt caused by overburdened schools, hospitals, and prisons. We have falling wages for the poorest of Americans because legal and illegal immigration has been allowed impart specifically to flood labor markets and depress wages. We also have a crippled and declining Republican party because the Democrat party uses immigration specifically to import new people that rely heavily on government, in other words we are importing Democrats.
Mr. Ryan if the Democrat party of Obama, Reid and Schumer and The Republican party of Ryan, Rubio and McCain will not enforce our current immigration laws what makes you think we will believe that you will enforce the new laws?
Mr. Ryan, stop this amnesty charade and enforce our laws!
Truly disappointed in your betrayal,
Greg
unchallenged.
Dear Greg:
Thank you for contacting me regarding your thoughts on immigration reform. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me on this important issue.
You raised some interesting and insightful points regarding this issue. The vast majority of Americans agree that our current immigration system is broken. What we have right now is de facto amnesty – meaning there are currently 11 million immigrants living undocumented and without legal status in the United States. Because these immigrants are here undocumented and as a result, outside the scope of the law, we often do not know who they are or in what activities they are engaged. In addition, there are immigrants who attempt to come to this country by legal means and find themselves wrapped up in endless paperwork and bureaucracy, and in turn, ultimately live in the United States unauthorized. Additionally , our current immigration laws are not enforced. The result of these failures is a system that encourages people to break the law, and punishes those who follow it. It is clear that our current immigration system is not working, and America deserves better.
There are deeply held views on all sides of this issue, and rightly so. We are a nation of immigrants and people continue to flock to our country in pursuit of the American Dream. The Census Bureau assumes net immigration – meaning legal and illegal – will total 68 million immigrants by 2050. The non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies points out that these future immigrants plus their descendants will add an estimated 96 million residents to the U.S. population, accounting for three-fourths of our population growth from 2010 to 2050. Immigration to the United States shows no signs of slowing. Rather than continue down the same broken path, we instead need to implement a real, long-term solution to fix these problems. We need a system that modernizes our immigration laws, adheres to the rule of law, and ensures those who want to play by the rules can get ahead. We need a system that is accountable, efficient, and effective.
With that in mind, I believe there are four principles of reform: First, we need to secure the border. That should be our first priority. We cannot have a safe and secure country without a safe and secure border. Second, we need to enforce our laws so we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Right now, we encourage people to break the law, and we punish people who follow it. We need to reverse this practice. Third, we need to let immigrants who want to contribute to the economy come here legally. We need a guest-worker program, and we need to attract the best and brightest to our shores. Fourth, we need to offer people a path to earned legalization and a chance to earn citizenship. We should welcome anyone who is willing to take that pledge and who shares that commitment to our country, but we must also ensure fairness to those who have followed the law.
Through stronger border security laws and enforcement of our laws, we will be able to stem the flow of illegal immigration and restore the rule of law. We must ensure that our law enforcement officials have access to the resources, including technology and manpower, needed to enforce the laws already on the books and protect our borders to help stop the smuggling of drugs, arms, and humans. Securing the border is the first step to develop a realistic solution to fix our country's broken immigration system. Without improved and ongoing border security, all other steps to achieve immigration reform will be rendered less effective.
We must also implement a modernized system to track the entry and exit of tourists, foreign students, diplomats, temporary workers, and others who come to the United States with a legal, temporary visa. Currently, visa overstays are estimated to account for 40 percent of the current 11 million undocumented population here now. In an age of national security threats and transnational terrorism , we need to know who is in our country and ensure they are adhering to the law and obeying the limitations of their visa. This requires a modernized process to track the entry and exit of visa holders.
We also need security in the workplace. This is why we need an employee verification system that allows employers to easily and accurately verify an employee's legal status in a timely manner. The faulty and cumbersome verification process we currently have continues to provide incentives for the use of fraudulent documents and puts many at risk of identity theft. Any verification system should be safe, secure, and immediate. In order to keep illegal immigrants from finding work in the United States, we need to give our employers the proper tools to verify the legal status of their employees.
A modernized immigration system also requires a way for those who want to contribute to our economy to come here legally. Any reforms to immigration policies should include expanding access to employers to bring in seasonal and temporary labor when they are unable to find Americans to fill the jobs. Wisconsin, for example, relies on seasonal labor for agriculture and other industries, but due to a lack of seasonal H-2B visas, some Wisconsin businesses face annual labor shortfalls. Additionally, a functioning guest worker program will help to maintain control of immigration flow. Providing a way to legally link employers with immigrant workers and building a streamlined, safe, and efficient visa process will provide businesses with needed workers and relieve pressure on the borders.
We also want the best and brightest foreign students that were educated in American universities to remain in the United States. Many of the world's best students, particularly those with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, receive their education in America. We could boost economic growth, create jobs, increase our competitiveness, and spur innovation by making it possible for U.S. employers to more easily hire foreign graduates of American universities in STEM fields. This way, these graduates apply their American education in the United States, rather than take their American education to our foreign competitors. Over the past ten years, growth in STEM jobs was three times the rate as non-STEM jobs, and these occupations are projected to grow more than twice as fast through 2018. American employers have expressed concern regarding the availability of high-skilled STEM workers and have urged reform of the visa system to help them fill these empty positions. Nevertheless, in order to ensure the career prospects of graduating American STEM students are not diminished, any legislation should require employers seeking to sponsor foreign STEM graduates to first complete labor certification. Labor certification protects U.S. workers and the U.S. labor market by ensuring that foreign workers seeking immigrant visa classifications are not displacing equally qualified U.S. workers. The job security of Americans must always take precedence over the job security of foreign graduates.
Immigration legislation must include a fair and reasonable way to address the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. We need to invite people out of the shadows and give them a way to get right with the law, without letting them cut in line in front of others who have come to our country illegally. This includes finding a way forward for the " DREAMers " – unauthorized immigrants that came to the United States as children through no fault of their own, grew up in our country, and are now seeking to pursue an advanced degree in America or enlist in our military. It is not reasonable to expect the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants. Instead, we need an immigration plan that is realistic and works to the benefit of all Americans.
We should reform our immigration system because it will help America – because immigrants will contribute to our economy. They will help create jobs and spur our economy. In 2011, immigrants created over a quarter of all new businesses. Immigrant-owned businesses generate over $775 billion in tax revenue every year. In addition, an estimate by the American Action Forum predicts immigration reform will boost per capita income by $1,700 over ten years and reduce the federal deficit by $2.7 trillion. We should modernize our immigration policy because it is right for our country. A robust and innovative workforce will lead to economic growth, and in turn, will help to maintain and strengthen the prosperity of this nation.
I will continue to advocate for reforms to our broken system that has been failing Americans and those seeking to legally immigrate to our country. Effective immigration reforms must include strong border security provisions, a workable visa-tracking process, a secure employee verification system, an enforceable guest worker program, and fair provisions to address the unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S. In the past, I have supported initiatives that would have accomplished these goals, and I will continue to do so as my colleagues and I consider legislation in the 113 th Congress.
In the meantime, if you wish to share additional information with me concerning this issue, please feel free to contact me by calling, emailing, writing, or faxing me. Please be advised that mail sent to my Washington office is subject to an additional two-week delay due to increased mail security.
Again, thank you for contacting me. If I can be of further assistance to you regarding this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always happy to respond and be of service to you.
Sincerely,
Paul Ryan
MY RESPONSE
6-15-13
Dear Congressman Ryan,
Thank you for your letter describing the reasons why you think it’s necessary to grant amnesty to millions of immigration law breakers and flood our labor markets with a vast increase of legal immigration.
It is amazing to read in your first paragraph your use of virtually every stale cliche, falsehood, sophistry and Orwellian language currently being used to sell and deceive the American public on the Senates proposed amnesty and immigration surge bill.
I feel it’s important to address some of the multitude of stale cliché’s, falsehoods and deceptive language that you employed in your letter to me.
1. “Immigration system is broken”:
Our immigration system is only broken because you and many of your fellow politicians like President Obama, Chuck Schumer, John McCain and Marco Rubio, refuse to enforce our immigration laws. Not only do you refuse to enforce our immigration laws, you obstruct and disallow any legislative attempt to enforce those laws. Mr. Ryan our immigration laws are the collective will of our people and you Mr. Ryan refuse to enforce them all to benefit your cheap labor patrons.
2. “De facto amnesty”:
Mr. Ryan, we don’t have de facto amnesty, what we have are laws that are ignored, undercut and mocked by law makers such as yourself, who’ve sworn an oath to uphold those very laws.
3. “Undocumented immigrant”
Your choice of description for an illegal immigrant is a leftist term used in place of the correct legal term; which is unlawful alien or illegal alien. The term undocumented immigrant is Orwellian language that is meant to dumb down and cheapen our laws. In our system of law Congressman Ryan, one is either here legally or illegally, it’s either one or the other.
I would like you to know that millions of Americans find it extremely troubling to hear a “lawmaker”, who has sworn to uphold our laws use words that basically say that those laws don’t exist or really shouldn’t matter.
4. “In the shadows”:
Congressman Ryan, I don’t know what country you’ve been living in, but illegal immigrants in our country are most definitely not hiding in shadows. Where were you on May 1, 2006 when, 500,000 illegal aliens and their supporters marched down the streets of Los Angeles, waiving Mexican flags, and 300,000 similarly marched through the loop in Chicago?
Please go to any construction site in any major city and you will see for yourself that illegal immigrants are most definitely not hiding in any shadows. While you are at it Congressman Ryan, please also examine the number of illegal aliens who are in our prisons and hospital emergency rooms. If you don’t want to take my word that the illegal aliens are in no way living in the shadows, please go ask the Jamil Shaw family or the bologna family,
I suggest you might also contact your colleague in congress Steve King or Lou Barletta, who might be able to point a few things out to you if you truly think illegal immigrants are hiding in shadows.
5. “11 million immigrants living undocumented”:
One of the most dangerous falsehoods that you are spreading is the unverified number that we have 11 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. The undisputed facts are that nobody really knows how many illegal aliens are really in our country. You say it’s 11 million, but it could be easily be 20 million. It could be 11 million in California alone, and no one really knows.
For a lawmaker it’s your responsibility to scrutinize those numbers, because of how those numbers could impact the whole nation. Yet respectfully it seems that you do not show the least bit of interest in verifying that number, before they’re legalized. Have you ever once thought of the impact on our country if the supposed 11 million turned out to be 20 or 30 million?
Have you ever stopped to think of the impact of chain migration on our country when the millions of amnestied immigrants bring in their extended relations, which could conceivably be another 33 to 60 million, if on average each immigrant petitioned 3 family members?
Mr. Ryan the numbers that I just listed for you are very plausible and would cause a radical and devastating change for the United States, and the fact that you don’t address this issue shows that you’re are not capable of understanding the issues or you just don’t care.
I can only speculate that your real motives for immigration reform is higher labor supply = lower labor price.
Speaking of labor, where have you been this last five years, while Americans have gone through a near depression with crippling high levels of unemployment, and all you can talk about is guest workers and vastly increasing H1-B visas, as if we had rising wages and labor shortages. One can only wonder what planet you’ve been living on?
In Closing Congressman Ryan, I would like to pose this fundamental question to you,
Why do we have immigration laws?
My answer to you is that we have immigration laws to protect Americans from hordes of people uncontrollably coming to our country and causing chaos, lowering our standard of living, depressing our wages and disrupting our society.
Because you and politicians like you Congressman Ryan refuse to enforce our current laws, we now have crippling debt caused by overburdened schools, hospitals, and prisons. We have falling wages for the poorest of Americans because legal and illegal immigration has been allowed impart specifically to flood labor markets and depress wages. We also have a crippled and declining Republican party because the Democrat party uses immigration specifically to import new people that rely heavily on government, in other words we are importing Democrats.
Mr. Ryan if the Democrat party of Obama, Reid and Schumer and The Republican party of Ryan, Rubio and McCain will not enforce our current immigration laws what makes you think we will believe that you will enforce the new laws?
Mr. Ryan, stop this amnesty charade and enforce our laws!
Truly disappointed in your betrayal,
Greg