My Senator Replied that He was In Favor of the Amnesty Bill

Dear Mr. Piet Van:

This is in response to your recent correspondence regarding the subject of immigration. I appreciate receiving your views on this important matter.

Our immigration system is broken and needs reform. Undocumented immigrants flow through our porous borders. Employers hire them with near impunity. Our government lacks the ability to adequately detect unauthorized employment, while employers in sectors such as agriculture, Michigan’s second largest industry, fear that their crops will go unpicked for lack of legal, authorized workers. The bipartisan compromise bill before the Senate was an opportunity to reform this broken system.

The first step in immigration reform must be stronger border security. Although there were some provisions in the bill before the Senate that I did not support, this legislation had strong border security measures, even stronger than the ones we debated a few weeks ago. In fact, it contained the funding for the enhanced border security.

We need a more secure, more sensible, and fairer system of immigration. Because of filibusters in the Senate we were unable to fully consider and amend the bill. We do not know what the final language might have been, and we were unable to get a vote on a number of amendments because of the filibuster. We should have finished the consideration of those amendments to determine whether or not the final product was an improvement on the status quo. I’m disappointed the Senate was thwarted in that effort.

Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with me.

Sincerely,

Carl Levin

Bloggers Response:

Thank God there were enough Senators that listened to the people versus my Senator! I must agree that we must get border security first. I must disagree that there are not people that are willing to do the farm work with out the illegal immigrants. There are people willing to do the job, just not below minimum wage or possible the wage that the farmers want to pay.