Why This Republican Congressional Candidate Is for Amnesty

Californian 30th district Congressional candidate Mark Reed recently visited Epoch Media Group and shared his opinions on illegal immigrants and education reform.

As the descendant of immigrants from Guadalaraja, Mexico, Reed wants U.S. Congress to support President Trump’s immigration policies and proposals.

Secure the Border and Grant Amnesty to Those Qualified

He states that people hold many misconceptions about illegal immigrants, and Congress is also not addressing the main issues.

“60% of the illegal immigrants here are visa overstays. It’s not Mexicans, Guadalajarans, not Nigaraguans. It’s not people from Central America. It’s just visa overstays. They (Congress) can’t even correct that. Congress ... will not do what they are supposed to do,” he said.

As a businessman, he’s spent quite some time studying statistics, and he says he found some interesting facts about illegal immigrants.

For example, $90 billion a year is spent on illegal immigrants for welfare and social services, while $3 million a day is spent to incarcerate illegal immigrants. During the year 2005, four to ten million illegal immigrants crossed the U.S. southern border and millions of pounds of drugs also came in from the south.

“Illegal immigrants don’t contribute into the economy as much as they try to make you believe. If you look at the welfare program, subsidized housing, you look at the incarceration rate. Nationwide in every county or state prison facility, one-third of the inmates are illegal,” he said.

Reed wants to secure the border wall and expel illegal immigrants who are criminals. He believes it’s not reasonable that the U.S. spend trillion of dollars securing other countries’ borders around the world, yet maintain a relatively open border at home.

He also suggests setting up more U.S. embassies in Latin America and receive asylum applications there, so that sex traffickers can’t abuse the system by bringing young girls to the U.S., applying for asylum with them, and forcing them to make money at the same time.

On the other hand, he supports President Trump’s idea of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants who do not break any laws other than coming and staying in the U.S. illegally, given that they did not use any welfare.

As a matter of fact, he mentioned that Ronald Reagan attempted to do the same thing back in the 80s. He gave amnesty to illegal immigrants in the country, and the condition was the border wall needed to be built. However, Congress didn’t allocate enough money at that time.

Almost Half of People on Welfare are in California

Reed indicates that California has both the most millionaires in the U.S., but at the same time, one-fifth of its people live under the poverty level.

“We have 10% of the population of America in the state of California. We have 48% of the welfare recipients.”

Yet he says some progressive Democrats want universal health care, which could triple the California budget, and that means taxpayers will need to pay triple the tax.

“They take it from you. They give it to this person, so that the people that are being taken from finally said, ‘I’ve had enough.’ They go to another state. They leave the state. You are watching 1,700 business in California leave every year.”

Control Education Funding and Get Youth on Track

Reed believes that people tend to feel good when they work and take care of themselves, and the government should allocate appropriate education funding and equip people with the skills they need.

“We need to make changes on the federal level of how we fund what education,“ he said. ”I think the Fed and funding are destroying our colleges because we are teaching a bunch of things that America doesn’t need. And we are going into over a trillion dollars in college debt. And these kids are not going to pay it back because they can never earn a living off what they just learned.”

For instance, when San Francisco refurbished the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinese wielders were hired, because there weren’t enough American wielders.

Reed suggested that we give ninth graders aptitude and IQ test, help them realize their talents, and put them in three different tracks: academia, trade or military.

In addition, he thinks teachers, not administrators, should have more input in education reform. He says we need to change our curriculum to identify students and group them by their abilities so that quick learners won’t be slowed down, feel bored, and demonstrate disruptive behaviors like he used to do in school. He said after realizing his IQ was 158 when he was already an adult, he finally understood why he misbehaved all the way until high school.

Not only students, he thinks prisoners and other people around the world need to learn basic skills to maintain a living, and they will feel better when they can support themselves.

“Send them out to work. Have them clean out the freeways. We have four, five million trees that are dead throughout of California that’s why it’s burning down to the ground. Take all the prisoners out there. Teach them how to chop trees now. Take the woods, sell it. Do something productive with what we were doing,” he said.

Reed is also against heavy taxes and for an open and free market. He also wants to cut both the California government and Department of Education in half to save costs.

If he is elected in November, he said he would like to join the Foreign Affairs Committee, House Finance Committee, and Military Committee in Congress.