8th Dist. hopefuls share stances on immigration

All three candidates in the 8th Congressional District are claiming to be tough on illegal immigration - but that toughness takes very different forms with each one.

Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean of Barrington says she's already an active part of the solution to what she acknowledges was a decades-long failure by the federal government to secure the nation's borders.

Bean sees the recent, controversial immigration law in Arizona as a symptom of how much the federal government had let its responsibility for border control lapse.

She said she's voted consistently for the construction of border fences, the addition of more border guards and making illegal immigration a felony. Such legislation has already built more than 600 miles of fence and doubled the number of guards since 2001 to more than 19,000.

Bean doesn't consider her stance on illegal immigration or her focus on border control to be a necessarily Democratic or Republican one.

"I think my position reflects those I serve in the 8th District," she said.

Bean said she would strongly oppose any form of amnesty such as President Ronald Reagan offered illegal immigrants in 1986, which she said has led to the problem growing four times worse.

Bean also favors creating more penalties for the hiring of illegal immigrants, while also providing employers with resources to help identify such workers.

Bean said illegal immigration is an important issue because it involves both national security and economic concerns.

While Republican Joe Walsh of McHenry would agree on that point and that the problem is a bipartisan one, he holds Bean and others now in Congress just as accountable for the current crisis in Arizona as the legislators of decades ago.

Walsh said accusations of racism have no part in the discussion of what's become a real drain on the nation's financial resources, yet fear of being labeled racist by the media is what's caused past and present politicians to handle the issue too gently.

The preponderance of illegal immigration is an affront to the many people from all around the world who try to move to the United States legally each year, Walsh said.

He blames the federal government for creating a violent situation Arizona had to respond to itself, and finds it extremely disappointing that the federal government's next step was to sue Arizona.

"That's mind-boggling," Walsh said. "They're under a state of siege in Arizona. As we sit here comfortably in the 8th District of Illinois, that's sometimes hard to understand."

While Bean says she's opposed to amnesty, her Democratic Party has been in favor of a comprehensive approach to immigration reform of which amnesty has been a part, Walsh said.

Walsh added that Bean voted for a health care bill which he said makes it easier than before for illegal aliens to receive coverage.

Walsh said a tough stance should be maintained even after borders are secured, with current illegal aliens deported as soon as they come to the attention of law enforcement.

For Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer of Lindenhurst, the impact illegal immigration has on Americans' ability to find jobs and receive good pay for them is the number one problem.

He criticized Bean's approach to the problem as "putting Band-Aids on a cutoff arm."

Too much Democratic and Republican attention is being spent on addressing the issue of illegal immigrants already here at the expense of actually getting the borders secured, Scheurer said.

He believes all America has to do to solve the problem within a year is to follow the example of every other country in the world - to bring its troops home from abroad to secure the nation's borders and airspace.

Only after the borders are locked down should such secondary concerns as the existing population be addressed, he said. Intelligence methods used to track non-Americans overseas could be used to find them domestically, he added.

"The next step is to bring all the interested stakeholders to the table - not just business, which is the only stakeholder at the table today."

Scheurer says his interest in border control stems completely from concern about jobs, while he believes similar interest among many Republicans is based on cultural fears.

The 8th District includes parts of Cook, Lake and McHenry counties.