In January of this year, Senators John McCain, Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez, Richard Durbin and Marco Rubio announced a bipartisan immigration overhaul agreement. With immigration at its current magnitude, not only is there a strong following but an equally large opposition as well. Many feel it is not fulfilling the interest or demands of our country. Given the controversial nature of the topic, in addition to wealth of information provided by recent construction in Congress, I crafted a letter to Senator Mark Udall (CO) requesting his leadership in regards to immigration reform.

My letter simply stated that immigration remains a volatile issue between the federal government, states, and localities. Washington is often blamed for the lack of enforcement of immigration laws, failing to secure the border or not penalizing employers who hire illegal aliens. A number of cities across the U.S. currently have enacted ordinances prohibiting people in their communities from employing illegals, while others declared themselves as “safe havens” for the undocumented. With the announcement of an overhaul agreement, I felt this a most opportunistic time for Senator Udall to lead on the issue of immigration reform.

Senator Udall was gracious enough to return my correspondence with his thoughts stating, “I am confident that there is a sensible, bipartisan solution to our country's immigration issues, particularly if we lower the temperature on heated rhetoric that fuels ethnic and cultural division. Reasonable people can disagree about how best to address immigration reform; however, only by engaging in open and honest discussion will we be able to work toward solving any or our shared problems, including immigration reform.” Supporting legislation that strengthens border security and illegal immigration, he believes will fix our broken system.

Although limited, my previous experience with government (i.e. driver’s license office, license plate purchase for auto, voting) has proven to be somewhat unresponsive and bureaucratic. I was delighted to receive a response, however at the same, a little disappointed at the rhetoric. Upon comparing, I believe the verbiage reads similarly to his position on immigration as posted on the website referenced within the letter. This leads me to believe that the letter was probably penned by an aid, which does seem a little insincere, but truly I had no expectation of Senator Udall handwriting a response! Our type of government [Federalism] provides division of political authority between our central government and state government, which advocates for representative government. Connecting with an elected official can be initiated on the lowest levels of government beginning with local districts, municipalities and counties, progressing to the state level, eventually on to the federal government. This is democracy at work. In Chapter Eleven, we examined the interworking of Congress and the basic rules of policymaking. Senate and House members possess broad knowledge of much and specialization of little, and for this reason each chamber of Congress has certain committees and subcommittees set up to perform specific functions. Bills are submitted, sifted through and narrowed down within these committees; revised, rewritten and resubmitted for consideration, wherein Congress votes to enact as law. The bipartisan effort constructing immigration overhaul was my motivation to contact Senator Udall and as fate would have it, on April 17th, Senators McCain, Schumer, Menendez, Durbin, Graham, Flake, Bennet and Rubio (known as the Gang of Eight) introduced S.744, a bill entitled: “Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act.” The bill contain sweeping immigration changes to bolster border security, legalize