Securing America's Future Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Ms. McSALLY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his years of hard work on this issue to secure our border.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4760, the Securing America's Future Act. As one of only nine Members of Congress who represent communities along our southern border, and as the Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee chair, I have witnessed firsthand the security threats we face from an unsecure border and the dysfunctions of our immigration system.

Since I came to Congress, I have been working passionately to protect Arizonans from the public safety threats that accompany a porous border, and to start to fix a dysfunctional immigration system.

This bill which we have been tirelessly working on since September last year, along with Chairman McCaul, Chairman Goodlatte, and Congressman Labrador, represent an important step to keep our country safe by securing the border, including building the wall, closing many legal loopholes, ending chain migration, ending the visa lottery, cracking down on sanctuary cities and MS-13 gangs, and providing a legislative solution to the DACA population that is reasonable and fair and doesn't incentivize more illegal activity in the future.

This is the first legislation on these topics in the House that President Trump has supported, and we worked very closely with the administration in the process to propose this thoughtful solution to fix these very real and complex security and economic challenges.

Like many pieces of legislation though, this bill is not perfect. There are many improvements, such as the guaranteed funding mechanism for border security, including the wall, and other technical corrections that we worked on over the last 6 months that I sure would have liked to have seen in this version of the bill on the floor.

Nonetheless, I strongly support passage of this legislation as the first significant proposal to solve these very serious issues that continue to impact communities in Arizona and the rest of the country.

I remain ready to lead and help deliver legislation to the President's desk that he can sign into law. I would urge our colleagues, especially on the other side of the aisle, who say they care about border security and DACA recipients, to not play politics and vote ``yes'' on this bill.

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