Immigration needs ‘reform’

Sam Graves

When building a house, you have to do things in a certain order.

You could not, for instance, put up your roof before the walls.

In the same way, no plan to fix our nation’s immigration system will work until we fully secure our borders.

President Obama has pushed for “immigration reform,” but to him “reform” means nothing more than handing out amnesty to those living in the United States illegally.

As the President showed with his unconstitutional amnesty order last year, he also has no interest in following the legislative process to reach those “reforms.”

Immigration reform will be meaningless if illegal immigrants can continue to flood this country. That is why I have long advocated that the best solution is to build an actual fence along our porous southern border.

Throughout my time in Congress, I have voted for additional miles of fencing along our international borders, introduced legislation that called for a real fence across the entire southern border, and pushed to give additional resources to these charged with protecting it.

A fence is not the only answer to our immigration problems, but having the ability to enforce our laws is a good place to start. Otherwise, we will continue this same conversation.

We need to regain control of our borders and enforce the laws on the books. Until we control our own border, any other plan will not work.