Our Mission

Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy ("TSIP") was formed to educate the public and our elected officials about the importance and need for sound comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders and keeps our economy strong. We strongly support enhanced border security and believe we can have a secure border without criminalizing the employers and working immigrants helping to fuel our economy.

Working immigrants are critical to our economy. They are not taking jobs from citizens. They are fueling an economy that is creating more jobs for citizens and immigrant workers.

• A recent study of 27 states and the District of Columbia, including all major destination states for immigrants, found increases in both foreign-born populations and the employment of native-born workers. Rakesh Kochhar, Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, August 10, 2006, p. ii.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 1993, construction firms employed 4,779,000 people. Today, there are 7,227,000 employees in the industry - a 52 percent increase. By comparison, overall employment growth was 20 percent during the same period.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that another 792,000 new construction jobs will be created between 2004 and 2014. 125,000 additional workers will be needed per year just to keep up with demand.

We can do so by working with employers currently making good faith efforts to follow applicable laws and pay appropriate taxes to end the underground "cash only" system that eludes identification, verification, and taxation.

We should create a legal work status for these employers and working immigrants without disrupting their current working status. Such status would be conditional on the completion of certain requirements and would address the continued employability of immigrants working within our borders and allow proper identification, verification, taxation, and assimilation.

We should develop a viable and efficient visa work program that allows for a timely and reasonable flow of immigrant workers to meet future employment needs.

Finally, we should establish a system of effective and fair enforcement against employers and immigrants that refuse to comply with the reformed system.

We can no longer afford to ignore border security or our broken immigration system. Nor can we ignore our need for the critical services these immigrant workers provide. They help build our homes, churches, offices, hospitals, schools, and highways. Mass deportments of working immigrants and jailing productive employers are not viable solutions.

Instead, we can establish a sensible immigration policy that secures the border, meets our economy's labor needs, identifies, verifies, and assimilates immigrants, and properly taxes immigrant workers and their employers. In other words, we can accomplish everything our current immigration laws fail to do. This is what Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy supports.