American Principles in Actions

5 Point
Conservative
Immigration
Plan
1.) Secure the Border
Extend double fencing to all areas
along the southern border, where
illegal crossings can potentially
occur, to attain eective and
realistic operational control of the
border.

2.) Enforce Immigration

Law at the Workplace
Mandate all businesses use the
federal employment eligibility
verication system, or E-Verify, to
ensure only citizens and
individuals with legal status are
employed.

3.) Fully Implement an

Entry/Exit Registry
Utilize a biometric tracking system
of foreign nationals to ensure they
depart the country by the time
their visa expires.

4.) Ensure Employers Can

Hire Foreign Workers If
Needed
However, only allow this in
situations where the employers
cannot nd American workers rst.

5.) Provide a Path to Legal

Status for Undocumented
Immigrants
After steps 1, 2 and 3 are executed
and not earlier than January 21,
2017: provide legal status to
undocumented immigrants
including individuals who entered
as minors or so-called dreamers
after they pay a ne and back
taxes.

A Conservative Piecemeal Approach Proposed to

the 114th United States Congress
How We Put Americans First While Welcoming
Immigrants
We must guarantee the security of our
national territory while, at the same time,
we welcome the foreign workers our
country needs to grow the economy and
create good paying jobs for working
Americans."
Alfonso Aguilar, Executive Director of the American
Principles in Action's Latino Partnership and former Chief
of the U.S. Oce of Citizenship under George W. Bush.

www.americanprinciplesinaction.org
/AmericanPrinciplesinAction

@apaction

/PrinciplesinAction

While border security has improved, our southern border remains

far from secure. In 2014, apprehensions along our border with
Mexico totaled 479,371, with 332,457 of those taking place in the
Texas section of the border. The reality is that the Rio Grande
Valley sector in Texas is practically lawless and not under the
control of the border patrol. Border fencing, specically
double-layer fencing , along with manpower and technological
assets, works to stop and/or deter illegal entry. Yet, since the
Secure Fence Act of 2006 less than 50 miles of double-layer fencing
has been built. Double-layer fencing should be built along the 700
miles where the law mandates fencing and extended to other areas
not contemplated by the law where illegal entry is possible. This
would drastically reduce the number of illegal entries, which would
translate into a substantial reduction in the number of
apprehensions along the border.
Furthermore, operational control of the border should not be
unrealistically dened as the capacity to detain 100% of those who
try to enter illegally. This is quite impossible to accomplish. A more
realistic target is 90%.

Most immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally do so for work. If

we ensure they cannot nd a job if they lack legal status, we will
remove the main incentive for entering the country illegally. The
document-based protocol that most U.S. businesses currently
follow to check the employment eligibility of a worker, however, is
very ineective. Applicants are merely required to attest that they
are eligible to work and submit copies of documents and
information like social security numbers, green cards and
state-issued drivers licenses. Employers only archive those
documents having no way to prove their authenticity. As a result,
fraudulent documents and information, such as fake social security
numbers and green cards, are regularly used to game the system.
E-Verify, on the contrary, provides much needed reliability and
accuracy. It is a government run internet-based system that veries
the authenticity of the documents submitted against records from
the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security
Administration to conrm the employment eligibility of the
applicant. Its free and quick, and usually provides results in a
matter of seconds.

40 percent of undocumented immigrants do not enter the country

illegally, but come legally and overstay their visa. It is very dicult
for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to go after these
individuals and detain and remove them, since there is no way of
knowing who has returned before his visa expired or overstayed.
While we currently take down the biometric data of foreign nationals at points of entry, we do not have an exit registry to record
when they leave the country. A biometric exit tracking system
would perform this function, identifying most visa overstays for ICE.

After steps 1, 2 and 3 are executed and not earlier than January 21, 2017: 1)
implement a market-oriented guest worker program that allows businesses that
cannot nd American workers to recruit and temporarily bring into the country
as many unskilled agriculture and non-agriculture foreign workers as they may
need; 2) substantially increase the quota of H1-B visas for foreign professionals
with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), as
well as the number of green cards available to STEM students; and 3) allow
foreign STEM students who are oered employment here to remain in the
country while they adjust their legal status.
Border security and domestic enforcement should be a priority, but once we
have dealt properly with these challenges we must address the underlying
reason for our immigration problems: the need our economy has for foreign
workers. A great number of U.S. businesses cannot nd American workers for
certain types of jobs, usually in the extreme poles of the labor market: high-tech
jobs that require advanced degrees, on one end, and labor-intensive manual jobs
on the other. Americans are simply not going for these jobs or in many cases
there are no Americans of working age to do them. Either way, lling these jobs
is vital for companies to grow and create good paying jobs for working
Americans.
Yet, despite this demand, we do not have enough work visas to bring in the
foreign professionals and workers we need, and the guest worker programs
currently in existence are so over-regulated and costly that employers simply do
not use them. This is the reason why unskilled migrant workers come to the U.S.
illegally. They do not have a legal route to enter legally, while they are pulled
here by the magnetic forces of the U.S. economy and labor market.

After steps 1, 2 and 3 are executed and not earlier than January 21, 2017: provide
legal status to undocumented immigrants including individuals who entered as
minors or so-called dreamers after they pay a ne and back taxes. They
would be allowed to remain and live in the U.S., but they will not have a special
path to citizenship that gives them priority over other immigrants who are
applying for citizenship through proper legal channels. Undocumented
immigrants with signicant criminal records, including serious felonies and
repeated misdemeanors, will not have access to legal status and will be removed
from the country.
We cannot deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, nor
should we want to. The immense majority of undocumented immigrants are
good, hard-working people that contribute to our economy and our
communities. Many have been living in the shadows for decades. They did,
however, break the law to come in or stay in the country. They should, therefore,
not be rewarded with a special path to citizenship. That would be unfair to the
hundreds of thousands who wait in line to come here legally, wishing to reside in
the U.S. permanently and become citizens.
After we have secured the border and toughened up interior enforcement, we
should then provide undocumented immigrants a path to legal status, short of
citizenship. They would, of course, have to pay a penalty and back taxes. This
does not mean that we would close the door to citizenship to them, but we would
require them, if they want to naturalize, to get in the back of the line and follow
the process under current law to rst acquire lawful permanent residency (a
green card) and then eventually become a citizen of the United States.