Immigration is an extremely important issue that affects all of us, whether we see it in our daily lives or not. In Michigan, immigration issues are not always as visible to us as they are to the southern border states. Immigration issues do have a profound impact on healthcare costs, incarceration costs, wage suppression, the unemployment rate and many more aspects of our daily life.

There is no magic formula like simply building a fence or mobilizing the military that will quickly solve our immigration problems. Complex issues require comprehensive and well thought out solutions – this will require a multi-faceted approach that includes better security at our border, but also a better mechanism to address 12 million illegal aliens who are currently in our country. If part of this solution is a meaningful temporary worker program, it must also include a quantifiable employment verification and enforcement system to ensure that we don’t continue having history repeat itself.

Just as amnesty is not the answer, neither is pretending that we can solve an issue involving more than 12 million people, simply by making a half-hearted attempt at enforcing current law. The reality of the situation that we are now in will have to be solved by finding common ground, respecting the rule of law and then being committed to enforcing that law.