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Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, there has been a big conversation in this body that actually matches the conversation that is happening around the country right now. If you ask any random person on the street what are the key issues that they are thinking about right now, almost every poll that I have seen for the past several months has said people are concerned about the economy and they are concerned about border security. Just about every poll you have seen everywhere, that has been the one and two. Sometimes border security has been the top issue, sometimes it has been the second issue, but it has been in those top two over and over and over again. It is not just border States, and it is not just Republicans; it is Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike.
They see what is happening on the border, and they just want to know: What is the plan? Because the news came out that last September was the highest number of border crossings ever in the history of the country for any September. Then October was the highest number of illegal crossings of any October. Then November was the highest number of crossings of any November in our Nation's history. Then December came, and it was not only the highest number of illegal crossings of any December in our history; it was the highest single month ever, for any month in our history. Typically, December is a lower month, but instead, it was the highest month in our history, with the highest single day in our history and an average of 10,000 people a day who illegally crossed the border--right at 300,000 people in a single month.
Just to put that in perspective, if I go--during the Obama administration, what we had in December and November exceeded any single year in the Obama administration--just those 2 months. During the early days of the Obama administration, we had 21,000 people a year who requested asylum--21,000 people a year who requested asylum on our southern border. We had that in 2 days in December. That is how things have shifted.
That is why this is not a partisan issue; this is a national issue. People understand the national security implications of this, that we literally have thousands of people crossing the border every day, and we have no idea where they are. They cross the border, and I can tell you quickly how. They cross somewhere in the desert in Arizona, either through a gap that has been cut in the fence or in areas where there is a gap in the fence and they just go around it.
They are given a couple different options. One is a parole authority. It is called 236 parole. You are just released in the country--take off. There is another one called a notice to appear. You will hear the common term ``NTA.'' There are just so many people crossing right now, we don't have time to be able to go through all the paperwork, so we are going to give you a piece of paper that says show up at an ICE office--and you can literally go anywhere you want to go in the country to do this--go anywhere you want to be able to go in the country, hand them this piece of paper and turn yourself in, and then get a hearing date set after that.
It may be shocking to everyone: Not many people are actually showing up at ICE offices and turning themselves in. They are just disappearing into the country by the hundreds of thousands, month after month.
In addition to that, if you come to our ports of entry and you are going to do an orderly entry, well, that has shifted, actually. Since earlier this year, this administration has started using a parole authority that is termed ``humanitarian parole,'' but they are using it in a way that no administration has ever used humanitarian parole in the history of the country. You see, earlier this year--actually, I should say ``last year'' now that it is January. Earlier last year, this administration announced to the world that if you will tell us ahead of time that you are coming, when you come to a port of entry, we will give you a work permit when you arrive--that day. So 1,500 people a day come to their appointment at the port of entry, from all over the world. They show up. They are given a parole document called 212(d), and they are given a work permit that day and released into the country.
We just ask the question: How does that slow down immigration across the country? Because parole is actually not a status. Parole is actually listed in our law as a nonstatus. It is that you are actually here, but humanitarian parole was designed for a situation like what we had in Ukraine or it was designed for a situation where an individual has a funeral that they have to get to, but in their country, it takes too long to get a visa, and they couldn't get to the funeral, so they get humanitarian parole to be able to come in and get to that funeral. It is not designed to say ``You all come.'' It is not designed to be ``Anyone from anywhere in the world just show up, and I am going to hand you a work permit when you get here and release you into the country at 1,500 people a day.''
Americans see this. This doesn't make sense to people. They just want to know what we are going to do to get order where there is chaos. They are not asking for a political solution; they are just asking for a solution.
This shouldn't be something that we don't address here. For 2\1/2\ months now, my colleague Senator Murphy, my colleague Senator Sinema, and a whole bunch of folks around the three of us--our other colleagues in this body and their staff--have worked together to try to get to a solution on how we can address this in a bipartisan way. This body requires bipartisan solutions. We have to have 60. So we have to work on hard issues.
I would tell you, the House of Representatives did a very good bill called H.R. 2 that addressed a lot of issues dealing with immigration, but unfortunately the House didn't have any Democrats on board. In fact, they didn't even have all the Republicans on board that particular bill.
They passed a very comprehensive set of solutions to be able to deal with border security. That is what they passed. This body has not passed anything to be able to respond. The House noticed a long time ago that this is something that needs to be addressed. This body has been allergic to working on how to be able to solve the border crisis.
So for the last 2\1/2\ months, we have met in a bipartisan way to hammer out how do we solve this because it can't be ignored. The worst- case scenario is for Americans to say, ``Who is going to do something?'' and for this body to say, ``Not it.'' We have to come to some solutions.
Some of the issues are obvious. The vast majority of people coming in across the border will say, ``I have fear in my country'' because the cartels have told them, ``If you say the magic words, you will be released into the country because that puts you on a track for asylum,'' when actually what it does is it puts you into a 10-year backlog of claims that are out there. And people know, if I cross the border and just make a statement, I can be in the United States for the next 10 years.
It is the greatest country in the world. There are billions of people who would like to be able to be here. That is a pretty easy entry--to be able to just come across, say the secret word, and you are in. We have to be able to resolve that.
We as a nation should be able to filter through the people who are coming and to identify who actually qualifies for asylum and who is just wanting to come to be a part of the greatest Nation in the world. If you want to just come for economic reasons, there is a way to be able to do that, to go through the legal process.
We allow about a million people a year to legally naturalize into our country. We are one of the most generous countries in the world in our legal naturalization process. We should continue to be able to do that, as we have for decades and decades.
But for people who want to game the system, we are lawmakers. Why would we ignore people who are abusing the law? If we ignore the abuse of the law, what are we doing making law if it is not going to actually be enforced?
So let's get back to identifying those who actually qualify for asylum. And those who are just gaming the system--turn them back around and say: Go through the legal processes. Don't run through the desert. Don't swim across the river. Don't come to a border agent and lie to them.
Let's figure out a legal way to be able to address legal immigration and turn around illegal migration. We should be able to solve this issue. It is obvious to everybody. We should be able to bring immediate consequences when someone has actually violated our law.
Currently, if someone crosses the border, it may be 10 years before it is addressed. If we can't deal with immediate consequences--as I have heard over and over again from parents and from every individual, a delayed consequence is a nonconsequence. So if the consequence is delayed 10 years, that is not really a consequence, and everyone knows it. So we have to be able to have immediate consequences, and we have to have solutions to this issue about just paroling 1,500 random people from anywhere in the world.
If the standard to get into America is literally just fill out a form and tell them that you are coming first, and you are released into the country with a work permit in a nonstatus of parole, literally, that is an executive authority that could be taken away at any moment-- literally. The next President comes in, they can waive every single parolee on the first day, and it would be entirely legal because parole is not a status; it is just a release into the country.
If we can't figure out how to be able to solve that when the mayors of Chicago and of New York and of Denver are saying: Why is this administration releasing people into the country between ports of entry and this other parole process or an NTA with no work permit and just releasing them by the hundreds of thousands, why is this happening--if we can't answer that question, then we need to be able to sit down at the table until we do.
The Senate is where hard things get worked out. This is a hard thing. This is something that has not been resolved in more than 30 years. I understand we have differences of opinion. So does America--except in this one issue. They want this solved. America wants a resolution on this. So I encourage us, as a body, to keep negotiating, keep working at it. We are not going to solve everything; we never do. But we need to solve as much as we can because this is one of the biggest issues in the country. And I will tell you, this is one of our greatest threats.
In the past year in the flood of people crossing our border, tens of thousands of people who came across our border, this administration declared as a national security risk. The term they use is ``special interest alien.'' Tens of thousands of people who crossed were given that designation, ``special interest alien,'' and then released into the country.
We have no idea where they are. These were identified at the border as a national security risk. But because we are not managing our border and we are overrun with capacity, the option they have is releasing them.
For the sake of our Nation's national security and our future, let's actually go back to following the law. Let's actually create a process where when we pass law, we expect it to actually be enforced and to be done. We can do a hard thing. That is our job.
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Mr. LANKFORD. Yes, I would.
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Mr. LANKFORD. I don't run into many people who call the Canadians extreme. Not a derogatory statement towards the Canadians, but they have a pretty consistent system on it. If you crossed from the United States into Canada and ask for asylum, they would first ask you: Did you cross through the United States of America before you came into Canada? And if your answer was yes, they would turn you around and immediately return you back to the United States and say you can't request asylum here in Canada if you haven't requested asylum in the places you have already traveled through. That is the law in Canada.
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Mr. LANKFORD. Senator Tillis, that is correct that during the past several administrations, we had millions of people who have actually crossed our border, have either never requested asylum--at the border, they declared they were going to ask for asylum but, literally, never did, never filled out the paperwork, never even tried because they knew they weren't eligible--or they travelled through multiple countries on the way, never requested asylum because they wanted to come to America, which I don't blame them. It is the greatest country in the world. But that is not what asylum is. ``Asylum'' means I have fear in my entire country. There is no safe place in my country, so I fled to the next safe place. That is what the international definition of ``asylum'' is.
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