Fighting for Florida

On April 17, my colleagues and I introduced immigration legislation. It marked a first step toward achieving the strongest border security and enforcement measures in U.S. history, modernizing our legal immigration system to unleash strong economic growth and job creation, and dealing with our undocumented immigrant population in a tough, but fair way that is directly linked to achieving several security triggers.

While I believe this legislation will accomplish these things, I am also confident that an open and transparent process – one that engages every senator and the American people – will make it even better. I believe this kind of open debate is critical in helping the American people understand what’s in the bill, what it means for you and what it means for our future.

During my time in the Senate, many of you have written to me about your concerns with our immigration system. Today, I want to share this video with you in which I outline what this legislation sets out to do. And most importantly, I want to invite you to share your thoughts and submit your ideas below, on ways we can improve it.

Comments 356-360 of 5293

Troy Debs Baker

05/06/2013 12:15 AM

No send them back,we need to get things here right before
that
Ken DuLac

05/06/2013 12:09 AM

I agree with so many who once believed that laws were laws and that no one was above the law. Now we see that laws are only enforced when those in power want to.
No you write a 900 page law that often references other laws and leaves most decisions up to a Homeland Security Secretary that even you don’t believe is honest. Our hope is that the House will break this monstrosity into parts that make sense and can be understood.
So the simple points:
We allow those who can support themselves to stay legally. They get NO FEDERAL benefits including welfare, unemployment, income tax credits or Social Security. If states want to support them that is the state’s decision but no federal benefits and no addition federal support for states that make this decision, no federal requirements that states must support them. The immigrant must pay all state and federal income taxes. But no social security or medicare taxes until they are no longer provisional. In order to become “non provisional” they would need to go through current green card and naturalization processes AKA get to the back of the line and follow all the rules, but don’t force them to leave in order to go to the back of the line. If they never move past provisional status, they are not eligible for Social Security or Medicare. This sounds cruel to many but they will never have paid into the plans and there are many citizens who haven’t worked and aren’t part of Social Security or Medicare.
Instead of setting numbers of people who can come to the USA, setup a process where employers who need workers can get to a database of immigrants who have been prescreened for security and have no criminal records. If there is proof that workers will the skill set being sought are not available, allow the employers to screen them to verify that they have the skills they claim and if you find that the immigrant is falsifying their skills or employability, based on multiple prospective employers feedback, remove them from the database. The cost of finding productive immigrants gets paid for by employers. This way people who come here have a job already waiting. Those who are already here also apply to the database if they are unemployed or not using the skills that they have in their current employment. Why use 19th century methods when we have the ability to match people and jobs electronically and do remote interviews. If interpreters are needed the employers pay for them. This should self regulate the numbers of people coming here. Immigrants with resources who wish to come to start a business can be handled by government agencies as they are today.
We need to control the future of illegal immigration through diminishing the incentive to come here illegally. We must force all employers to use eVerity and set huge fines if they don’t, with jail time for repeat offenders. All employers must obey all employment laws for pay and benefits so that employers only have incentive to get workers who fill out their skill needs and not just cheap labor with no benefits. Of course in our new world that will likely only be a 29 hour work week (thank you new healthcare law).
So what happens to illegal immigrants who are here and not supporting themselves? They will have to become productive, become wards of the states (who are willing to support them) or go back home. Yes some liberal states will likely get further into the red and will raise taxes and chase business away and become insolvent. When that happens they will learn to toughen up and support their productive population unless the federal government just keeps bailing them out. If the federal government does step in we should treat the state like the EU does Greece and set tough goals that have to be met for support.
I’m sure that this is much too simple and needs to be turned into a 1000 page law with lots of cross references to many other laws. Making sure that all special interest groups get their pound of taxpayer flesh.
Ricky Carter

05/06/2013 12:04 AM

No 1- people who come here illegally does not deserve any benifits,2-They should not get any passage way to citizenship as they were unwilling to do it the proper way and should not get rewarded. This is unfair to those doing it legal. 3-We should only allow any immigrants that we actually need. Flooding the market with anything lowers the price and if you want an economy we must have Americans with jobs that pays a living wage.
4-US workers can not compete with people who are subsidized by taxpayer money with free medical and food stamps and welfare,US workers have house payments,insurance,taxes they can not work for the same wage as a subsidized workers,When corporations hire these workers they are indirectly subsidized.
5- When you take good experienced US worker off of construction sites you are throwing away all of the years of experience and with that you are actually cutting the quality of homes and structures as well as other products and for what reason. Greed that is all it is about. I have seen an worked on some jobs and I have seen it first hand.
6- One of our problems with our economy now is all of the immigrants here. It is causing loss of jobs people working for wages the same as they had 20 yrs ago. How do you expect an economy to grow without people working and having extra left at the end of the month to buy products. This is more about politics than about a good sensible system. We can have a system that works for all. We can figure out how many workers we will need in any given field and with planning we can allow that no to come in. We need to do background checks as we have enough criminals we do not need to import anymore.
Joseph W. Payton

05/06/2013 12:01 AM

Dear Senator, Have you forgotten what happened to Reagan? He went against his better judgement on amnesty because the Speaker promised him what he wanted and then reneged on all his promises. You will be marginalized by this. If you have any hopes of a future in National politics, you need to distance yourself from ANY kind of amnesty that does not FIRST secure our borders. I hope that you will NOT be a part of this without securing our borders and requiring anyone here illegally to go to the end of the line and go back to the country they came from and reapply to enter our country.
Harry Bean III

05/05/2013 11:55 PM

I have great respect for you Marco, BUT. I'm sure you have gotten a million comments saying the same exact thing I am going to tell you. NO AMNESTY! They must go to the back of the line, pay all back taxes and can NOT be on govt. welfare of any kind. That, to start with is against the Constitution, which you claim to uphold. This is Simple and should be a no brainer. The majority of US Citizens say and want the same thing I have stated. When will you people in DC start doing the RIGHT thing rather than the thing you think is politically correct. We are talking about the USA here, and it is important still to most of us. Do what is RIGHT!