America is an immigrant nation. As President, I will recognize and respect the vital role immigrants have played in building the American Community.
Candidate Bush promised that he would be a different kind of Republican, supportive of immigrants and their desires to achieve the American Dream. Candidate Bush promised to revamp the naturalization process so that immigrants who met the requirements could obtain their citizenship in six months or less. Unfortunately, President Bush has not kept these promises.
While he made these promises, his Attorney General John Ashcroft was deputizing local police authorities as junior INS agents to track down undocumented immigrants. He has ignored the dreams of millions of immigrants to become a legitimate part of our society, and not simply its unseen workforce.
As President, I will work to ensure that people who work hard, pay taxes, and otherwise obey the rules can become full participants in our society, including becoming citizens. I will work to regularize the migration of labor in a way that makes economic and humanitarian sense. Deaths in the desert do neither. I will propose reforms that ensure we can meet our economy's need for workers at all skill levels, without pitting foreign workers against U.S. workers and while respecting workers' rights -- including the right to organize.
I will work to ensure that immigrants who are detained by the Department of Homeland Security are afforded their basic civil rights. I will build on our country's long history of welcoming immigrants in ways that reflect our need for security but do not sacrifice the basic ideals upon which this nation was founded.
Immigrants create demand rather than take jobs away Four worries drive most of the opposition to immigration: JOBS: A new immigrant brings with him a need for products and services-which his job gives him the money to buy. So the immigrant has no net effect on the competition for jobs or the level of wages. Immigrants don’t take jobs away from Americans. They increase the demand for labor and they help meet that demand.
CULTURE: The answer to the culture problem isn’t to keep immigrants out, but to restore the America of free individuals, each responsible and self-governing. Immigrants will embrace our culture more quickly when government stops trying to dissolve it.
NOT ENOUGH ROOM: The US is still a country of wide open spaces. America could triple its population without our existing cities growing any faster than they do now.
Maintain open borders; end war on immigration End welfare, so that America attracts productive immigrants, rather than people who want to live off the taxpayers. Maintain open borders and a free market--so that America is a haven for people who want to produce in freedom. Government doesn’t work, and a government War on Immigration will be no more successful than the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs.
At worst what Dean says is no different than what Bush is saying --- and Dean apparently would limit this to people who work hard (no welfare types?), pay taxes (must show tax statements filed with the IRS?), otherwise obey the rules (stolen Social Security numbers wouldn't be used as any kind of evidence for more rewards?). I don't like Dean, I won't vote for Dean --- but how is his plan any worse than a plan that would go so far as to reward certain illegals that participated in felony document fraud. That would almost legalize those crime rings providing those stolen documents --- if it's no longer a crime to have used them, then it must be okay to provide them.