McCain on Illegal Immigration 2008

Illegal immigration has been a highly sensitive and a largely hot button issue facing decision-making politicians in the last decade. As very few decisive actions were taken by the most recent presidential terms the presidential candidates of this November 2008 election, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama realize that the issue is more important than ever and are fighting to establish a platform that will not only make U.S. Citizens happy but the enormous Hispanic community happy as well. The two candidates have been sure to voice and document their opinions on what should be done if and when they are elected, however, it is perfectly clear that Senator John McCain’s plan for the reform of illegal immigration is more intelligent, comprehensive, and achievable than Senator Barack Obama’s.

“We must prove we have the resources to secure our borders and, use them, while respecting the dignity and rights of citizens and legal residents of the United States.” (McCain 08) McCain’s first step in his five step plan to fix the illegal immigration problem is the secure our borders, this is the most important step in implementation of a plan to reduce terrorist attacks, job reduction, higher taxes due to non-payment of taxes by illegal immigrants, and violent crimes committed by unknowns in the Hispanic community, just to name a few. Other steps provided by his outline to secure our borders include, but not limited to, “ensuring adequate funding”, “Deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”, and to “continue US-VISIT comprehensive visitor security program”. (McCain 08) A current Rasmussen Report polls find “American voters believing, by a 63 percent to 28 percent margin, that it’s more important to control the border than resolve the status of people here illegally.” (Yakima) The US-VISIT program, an important step to securing the borders by land and air, was “launched after Sept 11th…US-VISIT is intended to automate the processing of visitors…using fingerprints and digital photographs to help find criminals, potential terrorists, and people who overstay visas and join the nation’s illegal immigrant population.” (Washington Post)

The second step is to find the Employers who are hiring illegal immigrants for inexpensive, and sometimes cheap, labor for skilled and un-skilled positions and to prosecute them for their unlawful hiring practices. A new option to complete the step, which is included in McCain’s plan, is to use biometric data to authenticate and employee’s person. Biometric data uses biological information to ascertain the person’s real identity. For example, one of the verification tools may be DNA, blood types, fingerprints and hair samples which are all unique to a person’s identity. Another asset of this particular plan would be to “find employers that are hiring illegally by using targeted auditing by the Dept. of Labor” and to “provide responses about an employee during hiring process”. The most agreed on portion of this step by citizens and lawmakers alike is that the “only serious way to deter illegal immigrants is to crack down on the people that employ them.” (Yakima)

To “Meet America’s Labor Needs” (Needs), McCain has broken down skill-sets to ensure specific requirements and wishes are being met by implementing “temporary worker programs” for highly skilled, low-skilled non-agricultural worker, and low-skilled agricultural workers. McCain has already had some practice and success with a program parallel to the one he proposes in step three of his plan to reduce, and to alleviate all together, the non-stop incoming flow of illegal immigrants. The Wall Street Journal writes that “Sen. McCain played a pivotal role in the 2005 and 2006 immigration debate when he introduced a bipartisan measure with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass). The bill included and essential worker visa for immigrants seeking to come to the U.S. and a version for those already her illegally.”