We need immigration reform, and now

It is time for both parties in Congress to come out of their 20-year sleep and do something about immigration. There are ten to 20 million illegals in this country and 300 million citizens that want to know what to expect.

Nobody can blame someone for wanting to live a better life but immigration control requires a national law, not a myriad laws by 50 different states.

Arizona is only one of a number of states in serious need of reform in order to stay solvent. They went ahead with their own law because they can wait no longer for Congress. There are good people in Congress but politics and party bickering seems to make congress as a whole a mediocre bunch of overpaid politicians.

Some of the problems that need to be solved include lack of jobs. People come here, can't find work and need welfare, medical, and other handouts. The huge cost for welfare, education, prisons, etc. cannot be sustained.

The immigrants include terrorist, drug traffickers and criminals. We cannot be accused of prejudice against any one group when we express concern about immigration. For every 25 foot high wall to limit access there will be a 26 foot ladder to scale it.

To control some of the problems we must control automatic welfare and handouts. This is maybe the greatest invitation to all illegals. Automatic citizenship for anyone born in this country is foolish and was done away with in Europe many years ago.

It is physically impossible to deport millions of people, but we must have control and illegals must get in line with those who legally apply for citizenship.

The Arizona law does not give police the right to search unless there are other laws broken (very few have read the full law, which I'm told is only 10 pages long).

William McNutt

Des Plaines