Hey Congress: Get immigration reform done

From Plymouth Rock to Ellis Island and Galveston, Texas, to the sandy shores of Florida and the rocky coasts of California, immigrants have helped make our country the greatest in the world.

That spirit, however, is in jeopardy today. We have a badly broken immigration system. But there is hope. We’re on the cusp of real progress. President Obama and a growing number of bipartisan lawmakers have laid the framework for the kind of comprehensive, commonsense reforms that Americans support. And now Congress needs to act.

To fix our broken immigration system in a responsible way, we must do at least three things. We need to further strengthen border security, we need to streamline the legal immigration process so law-abiding companies can get the workers they need in today’s global economy, and we need to create a path to citizenship to bring the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country out of the shadows and into the full light of the American Dream.

In Texas, we know first-hand that the Obama administration has put more boots on the ground along the border than at any time in our history. That’s led to unprecedented success in removing dangerous people with criminal records. But Democrats and Republicans can agree that the work to ensure America’s safety and security is ongoing, and should be part of the legislative agenda going forward.

So should reforms that are both pro-family and pro-business. It doesn’t make any sense that outdated visa allocations separate husbands and wives, mothers and children, and brothers and sisters for years and sometimes decades. Nor does it make sense that while some employers flout the rule of law, many honest companies are handcuffed by rigid employment ceilings and burdensome regulations. Now is Congress’s chance to fix these problems, streamline our legal immigration system and crack down on companies that hire undocumented workers.

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