U.S. Congress candidate Bill Townsend (Nevada CD4) releases policy position on immigration

LONDONDERRY, Nev. - April 19, 2018 - PRLog -- Bill Townsend, a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Nevada's Congressional District 4, today released his policy position on immigration.

"Immigration is a subject that is close to home for my family. My wife is an immigrant, coming to the United States from Beijing, China in 1992. She came here legally, via a Green Card, because her mother had taken the legal route and obtained permanent residence status. After arriving in America, she applied for citizenship and, in 1999, after 7 years of waiting, became an American citizen," said Townsend. "She describes that moment as 'One of the proudest days of my life'".

"While awaiting citizenship, she earned a college degree in accounting, became a certified public accountant, enrolled and received certifications in information technology and auditing, and worked for a handful of companies, rising to the head of global finance for newegg.com, a $2.8 billion revenue company in Southern California. By all definitions, she is the kind of person we want to immigrate to America," said Townsend.

The facts of the immigration debate are universally acknowledged. Immigration has long supported the growth and dynamism of the American economy. Immigrants and refugees are entrepreneurs, job creators, laborers, taxpayers, and consumers. They add trillions of dollars to the US gross domestic product, and their importance will increase in the coming decades as America's largest generation—the baby boomers—retires en masse, spurring labor demand and placing an unprecedented burden on the social safety net. Additional benefits to the US economy and society more broadly could be obtained through legislative reforms designed to modernize the US immigration system and provide unauthorized immigrants already in the country today (but not future illegal immigrants) with a path to becoming taxpaying members of our society.

Increased immigration enforcement imposes costs on taxpayers and threatens legal immigrants, their families, and communities across the country. The effect on illegal immigrants is even starker. Stepping up detentions and deportations will cost taxpayers an estimated $80 billion dollars—money that could be better spent on education and school safety—and will break apart families and place vulnerable individuals, such as survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, as well as women and children fleeing violence in their homelands in peril.

For the sake of our country's future, Congress must develop a well-rounded strategy to deal with the issue of legal and illegal immigration.

Townsend's immigration plan outlines 13 steps he will push for if elected to serve the people of Nevada's CD4:

1. Enact a law that prohibits, form the day it is passed forward, people who have entered the United States illegally from applying for citizenship.
2. With the passage of this law, we will prohibit people who have entered the United States illegally from applying for a work permit.
3. Work-place enforcement through mandatory e-Verify must be codified.
4. Require certain regulated businesses — especially banks, check-cashing companies, and those offering electronic fund transfers — to require non-citizens to document their legal status when making certain transactions that routinely require a photo ID.
5. Enact legislation that states "any illegal alien who is deported and then returns to America illegally will receive an automatic five year jail term" to be increased to 20 years if they are deported and illegally reenter the United States.
6. Complete the Congressionally-mandated biometric entry/exit system to track non-immigrant visitors.
7. Require state and local law enforcement to report affirmatively all non-citizens in custody to ICE, make ICE detainers mandatory, and require ICE to pick up and remove deportable aliens.
8. Expand expedited removal to include all illegal aliens with criminal convictions, estimated to include about 2,000,000 individuals.
9. End catch-and-release of illegal aliens by requiring that they be detained until removal.
10. Deny immigrant and non-immigrant visas to nations that refuse to repatriate their citizens.
11. Reign in the practice of birthright citizenship for illegal aliens and foreign visitors.
12. Reform legal immigration laws to include skills and education requirements so America may attract the best and brightest from around the world.
13. End the often corrupt EB-5 visa program.

"I often hear people say, 'The majority of illegal aliens aren't criminals.' The fact of the matter is, technically, by the rule of law, they are. They broke the law when entering America illegally and continue to break the law by staying here. Should we reward this behavior? No. For if we do, we tell the world that it is acceptable to sneak into America and live here illegally. However…there is a way to deal with this issue while telling would be illegal aliens there is no way outside of official channels to move to America," commented Townsend.


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Bill Townsend is a candidate for US House of Representatives in Nevada's 4th Congressional District. The Townsend Campaign's website is available at www.TownsendForNevada.com and features *"12 Big Ideas for Nevada"* with policies for each one.

Townsend is a long-time entrepreneur and was part of the senior management team and/or cofounder of Lycos.com, sixdegrees.com (the intellectual property behind LinkedIn), Deja.com (now Google and ebay). He is President and CEO of RevolutionSports, Inc., a television production company, and President and CEO of TRICCAR Holdings, Inc., a pharmaceutical and nutraceutical research firm. He founded Amati Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, in 2000.

Townsend is the author of the Internet industry's 1st Children's Advertising Guidelines, written in 1996, that set rules and standards for marketing to minors, privacy, and the use of personal data. He is the author of "Yes You Can: How To Be A Success No Matter Who You Are or Where You're From", and co-author of "$152,000 For Your Thoughts" published in Harvard Business Review.

Paid for by The Townsend Campaign