Congress needs to immediately pass a clean DREAM Act. I believe we need to do everything we can to protect young people who arrived in this country when they were children.
 
I also support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents and believe we need a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that moves us forward humanely and responsibly. I believe that any comprehensive approach should prioritize keeping families together and making sure businesses have the workers that they need while preventing them from abusing the visa system to outsource jobs.
 
We need to fully resource our immigration courts and fix visa backlogs so that people can move through our legal immigration system without undue delay, especially focusing on the wait times for children of veterans from the Philippines who fought in World War II. We should set a goal of welcoming 95,000 refugees a year to our country and protect people who came here under Temporary Protected Status. I am also committed to bringing home our deported veterans. If you served this country, you should be able to live in this country.
 
I also believe we can institute responsible, effective border security – not by building a wall, but by instituting measures that will actually increase efficiency and speed up transit across the border (which will also have the side effect of being good for our environment through reduced emissions). When the San Ysidro Port of Entry was closed last November in response to the “migrant caravan,” it was catastrophic for our economy and for Tijuana’s economy. After just five hours, the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce estimated American businesses lost nearly $5.3 million.
 
I believe it’s possible to have a safe and secure border that is also humanely enforced. That means that we should never separate children from their families nor put people unnecessarily in detention, and we must end the illegal metering of asylum applications and Remain in Mexico policy. And we need to resource and put in place programs for children who have experienced trauma because of the Trump Administration’s inhumane policies.
 
We also need wholesale reform of our border and immigration enforcement agencies, re-focusing CBP on securing the border and focusing on drug and human trafficking, instead of interior enforcement. I believe we should also extend DOJ civil rights oversight to CBP. And we must end the for-profit immigrant detention industry once and for all.