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Floor Speech
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Mr. MOORE of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 980, I call up the bill (H.R. 6976) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide that aliens who have been convicted of or who have committed an offense for driving while intoxicated or impaired are inadmissible and deportable, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. MOORE of Alabama. 6976.
Mr. Speaker, every 45 minutes: that is how often someone in the United States dies in a crash involving an alcohol-impaired driver.
In 2021 alone, there were 13,384 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities. In the same year, drunk driving crashes led to 400,000 injuries. Those crashes don't discriminate. The victim could be me, it could be you, or it could be one of our family members.
This issue hits close to home for me. There was a newlywed couple from my hometown of Enterprise, Alabama, named Angel and Jeremy Seay. I knew them personally.
Angel and Jeremy were riding a motorcycle together when, out of nowhere, an illegal alien under the influence of alcohol collided into the newlyweds with his pickup. Their lives were cut dramatically short.
Sadly, tragedies like this are not uncommon across our country.
Consider this case from Missouri. Just 2 months ago, an illegal alien from Honduras was sentenced for driving drunk at 100 miles per hour and killing a man.
Now, Mr. Speaker, if you listen to my Democratic colleagues, you may think that drunk driving is no big deal. In fact, at a Judiciary Committee markup in 2021, my Democratic colleagues voted down three Republican amendments that would have made certain aliens ineligible for green cards if they had 1, 2, or even 10 DUI convictions.
Despite that, that should come as no surprise.
In 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden said that illegal aliens with DUI convictions should be allowed to stay in the United States. Biden asserted that ICE should not arrest aliens with drunk driving convictions because: You only arrest for the purpose of dealing with a felony that is committed, and I don't count drunk driving as a felony.
Candidate Biden even called for ICE officers to be fired if they arrested aliens without felony convictions.
To President Biden and my Democratic colleagues, today we say: Absolutely not. If you are a guest in this country and you drive drunk, you should be removed from our country, period.
Instead of hearing agreement on this from Democrats, today we will hear these farfetched hypotheticals and accusations that this bill is cruel and too broad.
Instead of engaging in hypotheticals, let's again revisit the facts: Drunk drivers are involved in 31 percent of all crash deaths in the country.
On average, drunk driving has killed nearly 11,000 people in the United States every year from 2012 to 2021. Yet, immigration laws do not explicitly make aliens inadmissible or removable if they drive drunk and recklessly break our laws.
H.R. 6976 changes that, and it creates safer streets and safer communities for all of us.
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Mr. MOORE of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, Democrats want to pretend that this bill is extreme, cruel, and harsh, as if imposing consequences on aliens for breaking our laws is somehow unheard of.
Yet, guess who also bar drunk drivers entry into ports?
Canada. That is correct.
In at least this one particular area, our liberal friends to the north get it right. Of course they do because it just makes sense. Mr. Speaker, if you are a guest in our country, and you drive drunk or impaired, you shouldn't be allowed to stay here as we wait for you to do it again or to kill or seriously injure someone.
Mr. Speaker, let's pass H.R. 6976 today and make these sensible changes.
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Mr. MOORE of Alabama.
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Mr. MOORE of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, in response to my colleagues on the left. First, my colleagues across the aisle say that it is a campaign issue, that we are trying to make this is a campaign issue.
It is not. They made it a campaign issue when Joe Biden came in day one and did away with the remain in Mexico policy, when they started this catch and release program, and now they are saying they need more money. It is the executive orders that have created the problem on the U.S. southern border.
I have been there a number of times--three times, to be exact--and Sheriff Dannels told us the best he had ever seen the border in 2018 was under Donald Trump. The worst he has ever seen the border was then, and that was before the recent 200,000 people came across last month.
To get up here and say that the administration needs more money or that they need some law--no. Biden has every tool in the toolbox to shut the U.S. southern border down, and he has continued to create crises for our communities. This government is so good often at setting the building on fire and then wanting to fund the fire department.
We don't need more money. We just need to apply the laws that are on the books and shut this flow down across this border before more and more people get killed and injured in these accidents we are talking about.
The Democrats would prefer to engage in these outlandish hypotheticals and make light of driving under the influence rather than protect American communities from dangerous drivers.
Again, here are some facts. According to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving: Most drunk driving offenders drive at least 80 times drunk before they are arrested.
Additionally, a 2014 article detailed how more than one-third of the individuals who are convicted of driving under the influence are repeat offenders.
The Protect our Communities from DUIs Act ensures that aliens who drive drunk can be removed from the United States after their first conviction--not after the tenth, not after they kill or seriously injure a child of yours or mine or a grandchild--instead of spending time on a 50-State survey of DUI laws to formulate some farfetched hypotheticals.
I encourage my colleagues to grapple with the consequences of drunk driving and support this commonsense bill.
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Mr. MOORE of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
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