Issue Position: Immigration

Issue Position

What's Wrong

Our immigration system is broken. The number of undocumented workers continues to grow by about 500,000 per year, the system that oversees the immigration process is weighed down by bureaucracy and lack of funding, and businesses using illegal hiring practices are not being held accountable.
Alexi's Plan To Make It Right

Alexi's parents left Greece because they believed in the promise of America, but now that promise is slipping away from immigrant families. The United States needs common sense and comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders, protects the rights of all workers and modernizes our legal immigration programs.
Secure our borders

* Alexi supports efforts to protect the integrity of our borders by adding personnel, infrastructure and technology at our ports and borders.
* Most undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. in search of employment opportunities. The federal government must increase its enforcement of existing immigration laws and hold accountable the companies that provide jobs for undocumented immigrants.

Immigration reform

* Alexi believes that we should place the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants on a responsible path to citizenship. He supports a plan that requires undocumented workers to pay a fine for entering the country illegally, learn English, pay taxes and wait in line to become citizens.
* Children who have grown up in the United States and are upstanding citizens should not be punished for their parent's illegal immigration. Alexi supports the bipartisan DREAM Act to provide certain undocumented immigrant students the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they have graduated from U.S. high schools, are of good moral character, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years.
* The Federal government's response to the problems facing our broken immigration system must not be REAL ID -- an unfunded mandate that infringes on the privacy rights of our citizens by forcing all workers to have a government issued ID that must be verified before they can begin work. Alexi would only support legislation that respects the rights of all workers.
* The "Secure America with Immigration and Enforcement" (SAVE Act) and other enforcement-only legislation do not solve the difficult problems facing our immigration system. Forcing undocumented workers underground takes us away from true immigration reform, distracting us from the core issues facing the immigration system.

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