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There should be a path to earned legal status for those that are here. Not - not amnesty - earned legal status, which means you pay a fine and do many things over an extended period of time.

For those who have come here illegally, they might have a transition time to allow them to set their affairs in order. And then go back home and get in line with everybody else. And if they get in line and they apply to become a citizen and get a green card, they will be treated like everybody else.

The reality is for 50 years in this country, federal law has required people that are illegal - or that are immigrants - or that are legal immigrants to this country to carry documentation to that effect. And that has been the law for 50 years.

It was a really big deal to become an American citizen the right way. You have to work really hard, and it is such an honor to be able to say that.

You know, when President Reagan, who was one of my idols, granted amnesty to about three million illegal immigrants it was based on the fact that the borders would be secured. That didn't happen. It didn't happen during the Bush administration.

Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don't like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.

Yes, they broke the law, but we can't deport them. Let's get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it - they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.

I would give illegal immigrants already here a three-month grace period to apply for a temporary worker's visa. If they failed to apply within that time frame, they would be considered fugitives, and they would be found and deported.

The recent, single-year influx of unaccompanied minors from foreign countries into the United States is a direct result of President Obama's policies of encouraging amnesty and failing to enforce existing immigration laws.

If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.