By Johannes Sorto Contributor
There are few issues in American politics today that the left distorts as effectively as immigration. Though liberals love to argue that Republicans hate all illegal immigrants and are the anti-immigrant party, this argument is a far cry from reality.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center conducted a survey among Republicans on immigration and found that 70 percent of Republicans believe that the economy would benefit if undocumented workers became legal citizens. Another 69 percent of Republicans believe that illegal immigrants are hard workers and 86 percent of Republicans would support legislation that allowed immigrants to live here legally.
Lastly, 76 percent of Republicans believe that deporting illegal immigrants is unrealistic.
Only a small minority of Republicans are against immigration reform. Yet this group receives the most media attention and used to represent all Republicans, thanks to the Democratic Party’s rhetoric.
The problem with immigration is there are a large amount of immigrants who are able to enter this country through various means, such as by crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visa. The left claims that the only way to solve this is to allow every illegal immigrant automatic citizenship. This does not fix the problem in any way. Granting citizenship does not fix the problem, instead it encourages it and we would have even more people entering illegally.
We already saw this occur when President Obama signed into law the Dream Act. After it was signed, children from Mexico and Central America crossed the border illegally because their parents believed that any child that enters the U.S. will automatically become a citizen. This created a major humanitarian crisis that lasted an entire summer, a direct result of liberal policies.
The solution to immigration has three parts. The first is better border security. Though no amount of border security can stop all immigrants from crossing illegally, it can lower the number, and more importantly, it can stop drug trafficking which is plaguing communities, including ones on Long Island.
The second part is to change the immigration system so that it provides a legal avenue for poor people from Latin America to immigrate here. Many people from Latin America enter the U.S. without papers because there is no option for them, but if there are opportunities through a better immigration system, we would see a drop in illegal immigration overall.
The third part is that the U.S. needs to pay more attention to Latin America. Millions of Hispanics are coming here because of gang violence or poverty. If the United States made a greater effort helping Latin American countries fight against gang violence, along with increasing economic development, we would see less illegal immigrants entering the United States.
The Republican Party has never been an anti-immigrant party. The Republican Party is a party of reforming the government to run more effectively for our nation. It is a party that is focused on stopping waste, fraud and abuse and looks to promote freedom to all in hopes that everyone will be able to live life to the fullest.
Johannes Sorto is the president of the Hofstra Republicans
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