6th Congressional candidates clash on immigration

Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam of Wheaton knows that immigration reform needs to occur, but he says it should occur in well-thought out steps, starting with securing the southern border.

His challenger for the 6th Congressional District seat, however, Democrat Michael Mason of Naperville, said immigration reform needs to be comprehensive - and it can't wait.

Mason said if Congress continues to stall immigration reform, President Barack Obama should utilize his executive powers to move it forward.

He expressed disappointment in Obama for abandoning a pledge he took to act on immigration by the end of summer. In June, Obama said he would wait to take any executive action until after the November election.

"I don't think that was a good sign to send, quite honestly," Mason said. "If you commit to that I think you need to do it. I believe that him not doing it was just another sign of the inability of the executive and legislative to be able to work together."

Mason, a retired U.S. Postal Service executive, said immigration reform has come down to politics, but it's "not a political game to families that are living with this every day."

"If you could see some motion, I guess, some action, it would give people confidence that their government is working for them somehow," he said. "I know there's people that believe inaction is actually the decisions that they're making and those are the decisions and the ways they should act. But that doesn't move the country forward at all."

Roskam said he would not want comprehensive reform, especially since it's an issue that faced a lot of demagoguery "from both sides."

"On this, I say break it down," he said, adding that he has talked to constituents who are still content with maintaining the status quo. "You can increase their interest in reforming the immigration system if they have a level of confidence that the southern border is secure."

Such action, Roskam feels, would take a lot of "drama" out of the issue. Then, he said, Congress could move forward by focusing on the creation of a seasonal worker program and attracting "the best and the brightest people" for U.S. companies.

"Let's make it so that every Ph.D. in science and math who's coming out of the University of Illinois, let's staple a green card to their diploma," he said. "We don't want them going home. We want them staying here."

Once all of those things are mitigated, he said, then discussions can begin on what to do about the millions of people who are here illegally and how they can "get right with the law." He expressed concerns especially with addressing the high percentage of people who reside here illegally because they overstayed their visa.

"They just get lost because we have no capacity to follow up on them and that's a very significant weakness," he said.

The 6th Congressional District stretches from Naperville to Tower Lakes and includes parts of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties.