Issue Position: Immigration

Issue Position

The United States is a nation of immigrants, and our country thrives off the diverse backgrounds of its citizens. While the entry of undocumented immigrants presents a challenge to our nation's Border Patrol, it is critical that blocking illegal immigration not come at the cost of hampering the healthy, legal immigrants who make continue to grow our economy, create jobs (immigrants are twice as likely to start new businesses), and make our country strong.

Laws like Arizona's S.B. 1070 are exactly the kind of laws we should not be pursuing at a federal level. Rather than marginalizing our immigrant population, we should be empowering them to contribute to our economy and civic life. At home, this means funding bilingual education programs where demand far exceeds supply. It also means increasing the availability of immigrant visas for skilled labor, and streamlining the visa process for graduates of US colleges and universities, especially within engineering and technical fields.

Comprehensive immigration reform has brought together some incredible bipartisan coalitions that are interested in reforming our broken immigration system. We need leaders in Congress who can harness the power of these bipartisan coalitions to move this issue forward.

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