We should be the pro-legal immigration party. A party that has a positive platform and agenda on how we can create a legal immigration system that works for immigrants and works for America.

As Congress continues to debate ways to address illegal immigration we must remember the many hard-working legal immigrants that contribute so much to our nation's economy and culture.

I mean we must act with intelligence. We must work on this framework so that immigration becomes an asset to both nations. Believe me what - just the Mayor Bloomberg said here in New York that this city would be stopped totally stopped if it were not by the immigrants working here.

A recent Pew Hispanic survey found that more than 70 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico are interested in a guest-worker program and then returning home.

We immigrants can sometimes sound a little hysterical about this because we come from places that have tried this and we know where it leads. Anybody who's lived in countries with socialized health care knows that it becomes the dominant political issue.

Illegal immigrants are beginning to comprise a black market class of workers in our society jeopardizing the financial health of companies which play by the rules while themselves vulnerable to the exploitation by those willing to take advantage of their illegal status.

In addition California spends nearly $1 billion a year in Medi-Cal services for an average of 780 000 illegal immigrants a month over and above emergency health services.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents and immigrants like them were known as '£10 poms.' Back then the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource - the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation.

President Obama is doing the right thing by offering young immigrants most often in this country through no action of their own a chance to live and work openly free from the fear of deportation.