Contact Congress

This letter was sent by OpenCongress user sdlblue on October 20, 2011 in support of H.R.2709 Reuniting Families Act. Privacy setting: PUBLIC
To:

Comment on this letter below

H.R.2709 Reuniting Families Act
I am writing as your constituent in the 13th Congressional district of Florida. I am writing as your constituent in the 13th Congressional district of Florida. I support H.R.2709 - Reuniting Families Act, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.

Sincerely,
Shawnna Denicola
This letter was a reply from the office of Sen. Marco Rubio [R, FL] on October 20, 2011.
Interim Response
Thank you for taking the time to contact me. I have received your
message and I welcome the opportunity to address your concerns. As you
await a response, please know that our office is working towards best
serving the state of Florida. I appreciate hearing your views, and I
understand how important these issues are to you. Please expect my
response in the near future. In an effort to serve you better, please
do not duplicate e-mails into the web-form, as it may serve to delay
the response to your concerns. If you need immediate assistance with a
federal agency, please call (866) 630-7106 toll-free in Florida. You
may also contact the Orlando regional office at (407) 254-2573 or the
Miami regional office at (305) 418-8553. Please do not mail
correspondence to the Washington DC Office as it will delay the
response to your request for assistance
This letter was a reply from the office of Sen. Marco Rubio [R, FL] on December 20, 2011.
Responding to your message


Dear Ms. Denicola,



Thank you for writing to me to express your concerns regarding the
immigration system in the United States. I understand this is an
important issue and I appreciate hearing your thoughts.



Our current immigration system is broken. The American people
recognize this and have every reason to be frustrated with the federal
government. Our border is not secure and the current administration is
not serious about enforcing our nation's existing immigration laws. In
addition, our current legal immigration system needs to be reformed and
modernized to encourage legal immigration while deterring illegal
immigration.



As part of the solution, I cosponsored S. 1196, the Accountability
Through Electronic Verification (E-Verify) Act. This bill would
implement a system whereby employers are required to verify the legal
work status of their employees. I use the E-Verify system to ensure
that the members of my staff are legally authorized to work in the
United States. If this nation is serious about discouraging illegal
immigration, we must remove the incentive of unauthorized employment in
the US. Implementing a permanent, workable system where employers can
verify the lawful work status of their employees is an important step
towards that goal.




As I stated before, modernizing our legal immigration system is a
critical part of the equation. I, along with Senator Chris Coons of
Delaware, proposed S. 1866, the American Growth, Recovery, Empowerment
and Entrepreneurship Act (AGREE Act). The AGREE Act incorporates H.R.
3012, a widely supported bill spearheaded by Congressman Lamar Smith
(R-TX) and Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) that recently passed the
U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 389-15. This bill would
eliminate the per-country caps for employment-based immigrant visas and
adjusts these per-country limitations on family-based visa petitions
from 7% per-country to 15%. Changing our arbitrary and antiquated
per-country cap structure is an important step in promoting legal
immigration to the United States because these changes would reduce the
immigration backlogs that hinder the operation of our legal immigration
system and encourage illegal immigration into the United States. This
proposal does not increase the number of immigrant visas available for
issuance; it merely allows the federal government to better address the
demand for immigrant visas so people enter the U.S. through the front
door. I believe in policies that not only honor our heritage as a
nation of immigrants, but also as a nation of laws. E-Verify and the
AGREE Act are policies that honor our heritage in these ways.



It is an honor and a privilege to serve as your United States Senator.
I appreciate you offering your opinion on this important issue. If I
can ever be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Comments

No Comments Start the Conversation!


Note to Congressional staff & elected officials reading this: this letter was sent through Contact-Congress features on OpenCongress.org, a free public resource website, but in the future we seek to compel the U.S. Congress to adopt fully open technology for constituent communications. For more information how your office can better handle public feedback through an open API and open standards, contact us -- even today, there are significantly more efficient and responsive ways for our elected officials to receive email feedback than the status quo of individual webforms. For greater public accountability in government, we must make the process of writing one's members of Congress more accessible and empowering. Looking ahead, we will release more data from Contact-Congress letters and Congressional response rates back into the public commons. This will result in a new open data source on bills & issues people care about, as well as encourage best practices in constituent communications and make it possible to grade members of Congress on their responsiveness & citizen satisfaction.

OpenCongress is a free and open-source project of the Participatory Politics Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to increase civic engagement. The non-profit Sunlight Foundation is the Founding and Primary Supporter of OpenCongress.