We have always been a nation of immigrants, but with the worldwide threat of terrorism, our national security requires that we know who is in our country and why they are here.  Because of the size of our international borders, we must secure our borders effectively and efficiently.  By utilizing cutting-edge technology, we can provide continuous surveillance of our borders. 

If elected, I will form a coalition consisting of the members of Congress from California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.  These four states alone represent more than 20% of the American population and certainly bear a greater share of undocumented immigrants.  The group will identify the circumstances under which an undocumented immigrant will be issued a temporary permit to stay inside the United States, while he or she gets in line and applies for permanent legal status.  The temporary permit may involve paying a fine or providing community service.  Those who do not meet the required circumstances or fail to register after a certain time period will be subject to arrest and deportation.  As Americans, we are humane and compassionate, and yet we are a nation of laws.  We need laws that address the entire aspect of the immigration problem, and those laws will be enacted only with leadership, not politics.

As a small business owner and a former FBI Agent, I believe that our government is no longer effectively serving the needs of the people.  Congress is filled with career politicians who are influenced by corporate and union money, and they seem to be more concerned about getting re-elected than they are about solving problems.  I believe that I can make a difference.  With my leadership skills, my small business and government experience, and a strong desire to serve my community, I will work with all members of Congress to find solutions and solve the issues that have been lingering in Congress for many years.  It is my desire to represent the people of the 27th District and build a better long-term future for our families and America.

I will be an advocate to maintain a strong national defense, to protect our country from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.  This means we must maintain a superior military force, not only providing them with the training and equipment they need, but taking care of their families while they are gone.  And when these brave warriors come home after serving their country, we are obligated to take care of them and their injuries, both physical and mental, for the rest of their lives.  They answered the call to duty, and it is our duty as Americans to take care of our veterans. 

I will also insure that the first responders in our communities, our law enforcement officers, firefighters and medical personnel, are provided with the training and equipment they need to detect, prevent and if necessary, respond to acts of domestic terrorism.  As we know, freedom is not free, and we must never let our guard down.  To maintain a strong national defense, we need to make a long term commitment to our military personnel and their families, and to our first responders.  And this long term commitment will only come with leadership, not politics. 

Water is essential to life and most of the water consumed by Southern Californians is imported from the Colorado River or Northern California.  Although current federal policies are progressing towards better water management, we still need better rules defining water quality, allocation and conservation.  Water rights come with responsibility and it is the role of the federal government to insure that Americans have a clean, consistent water supply that will meet the needs of a growing population. 

If elected, I will support legislation that creates new systems or improves existing systems to increase water storage capacity, capture stormwater runoff, reclaim and recycle waste water and continue the cleanup of the contaminated groundwater basins.

We need to secure our borders, not primarily to stop immigration, but to stop the inflow of drugs, criminal activity and security risks. At one time, our country could accommodate substantial immigration from countries throughout the world.  At this point, however, we need to reevaluate how many immigrants we can accomodate into our country. We currenlty have a large legal and illegal immigrant population, and before we encourage further substantial legal immigration, we must make efforts to develop a more robust economy and provide jobs and opportunities for our inner city youth of all races, as well as the exisiting immigrant population.

I support a pathway for our existing population of illegal immigrants to obtain legal residency, but not necessarily citizenship. Historically, a large number of imigrants came to California from Mexico, some legally and many illegally. Many of these people came to work agricultural jobs or other jobs that have supported a growing California economy. The government should provide a guest worker program that allows people to work temporarily in the United States and requires them to pay taxes, but does not provide welfare benefits, voting rights or any guaranteed rights to residency or citizenship.

We would also have a separate path to residency, where one of the factors would be the person's record as a guest worker.

The problem of Washington's obstructionism relates to the ongoing battle between libertal and conservative philosophies and the failure to understand that our government was formed to seek compromises. Both parties now believe that they need to "win" on every issue and need to control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the Presidency. The Constitution established our government as a limited government with controls on each branch of governement becasue our founders realized that the worst thing that can happen would be an out of control majority.

If you combine this all or nothing thinking with the main focus of Congress in being reelected, nothing substantial gets done. With the tremendous advantage of encumbancy, nothing will get done in the future.

To avoid this partisanship, we need to set three or four national legislative priorities and work on them - the deficit, rising healthcare costs, campaign finance reform and immigration. None of these issues are traditional long time liberal or conservative issues, but they are all problems that could result in subtantial economic decline, recession or worse.  They all can be fixed with a bit of reasonable compromise. 

To a large extent, terrorism expands geometrically when the United States interferes in a foreign country in an effort to democratize it, which ultimately leads to a collapse of the government and civil war or anarchy. Our own experience with democracy took over a hundred years and a civil war. Many of these foreign countries, while possibly wanting democracy, may not be ready for it. We should support a country's slow transition to democracy, but the kind of democracy that works in their country. Increased terrorism results from these incursions.

Regarding ongoing terror organizations that target the United States, many times we allow them to grow and expand before we take any action against them. A small terror organization becomes larger, gains more funds and grows even larger and then attacks our homeland or our interests. We need to be more proactive in eliminating these groups before they gain any traction through targeting them and their funding. For ISIS and Al Queda, we need to work with countries in the region and be much more bold in our air targeting and financial targeting. Unfortunately, we have now entered a quagmire where every country has a different agenda and different goals. We are allies with Turkey and the Kurds, but they are at war with each other. We want to get rid of Assad but we have to work with Iraq and Iran in eliminating ISIS, and both of them support Assad. Saudia Arabia is our ally, but they have a contrary agenda in Syria based on a sectarian battle between shites and sunnis. 

Any solution to this morass must start with the elimination of ISIS and Al Queda, followed by Syria and Iraq both establishing semi autonomous regions for shia, sunni and kurdish people within a loosely federal framework.

California provides a large portion of federal taxes and is a substantial portion of the country's economy. The water allocation and use problems relate to the entire western United States. Federal legislation should be adopted to encourage the development of a substantial number of modern desalination plants (possibly solar powered) along the coast to provide a long term supply of water that would reduce a large portion of the State's reliance on water from Northern California and Lake Mead. The State and Federal governments should also work together to modernize the reservoir and storage systems throughout the State.

The federal government must also develop plans to route water from various water surplus states to the Colorado river valley to replenish Lake Mead and balance the water sourcing for the entire western United States.