My Comments Regarding My Senator's Response

Below is a response to the recent comments I received from you:

Dear Soap Box Ravings:

Thank you for contacting me regarding immigration reform. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

As you may know, on June 28, 2007, the Senate voted to set aside debate once again on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S.1639).

(Soap Box Ravings says both Florida Senators, Martinez (Republican) and Nelson (Democrat) voted identically with Yeas for this vote.)

I firmly believe addressing this issue in a comprehensive manner is critical to our nation’s security and continued prosperity.

(Soap Box Ravings Feels that this is a BS position to ramrod a bill through the system and to garner votes while Senator Martinez tries to retain his position while pandering votes.)

While securing our borders is top priority,

(Soap Box Ravings feels that "top priority means first priority and needs to be taken care of before any other step, NOT in conjunction with any other step.)

we must also address the economic and law enforcement realities of having millions of illegal immigrants already living and working in the United States. Any solution to this problem must be practical to be effective.

(Soap Box Ravings feels that once you identify and remove the known criminals, sex offenders, and possible foriegn agents from the mix; the rest can then be processed to become accepted by this culture if that is what they want or they can be carded to be farm workers if that is what they desire.)

Efforts to secure our borders should be coupled with necessary changes to our current ambiguous and ineffective immigration policies to maximize security for our country.

(Soap Box Ravings believes that if our borders are secured, we will no longer have our "current ambiguous and ineffective immigration policies.")

Additionally, gaining operational control of the border will not cease the problem if we do not gain control of our employment system.

(Soap Box Ravings did not know that a goal of our government was to gain control of our nations employment system.)

Please know that, I will continue to work

(Soap Box Ravings sees not so much work as a stampede to give US Citizenship to a large number of people who have and continue to break our laws with the assistance of our duly elected representatives who have sworn to uphold our laws.)

with President Bush and my colleagues in Congress to develop a plan that will halt the flow of illegal immigrants crossing our border while implementing needed changes to our immigration laws.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Do not hesitate to contact me with any additional questions or comments. For more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator