Our Greatest Existential Threat Right Now is the Border Problem

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, indeed, I spoke a little earlier about how we seem to have hopped from self-made crisis to self-made crisis in this Chamber, in this Capitol, in this town, whether it is by legislative action, executive action, or bureaucratic action, but what the American people are suffering from most is government caused.

It really isn't a condition of weather or nature or even so much our adversaries around the world--and those are all factors and they all can be factors--but they pale compared to crises that are, indeed, caused by the actions of the government in Washington, D.C., in my home State, and so many of them right there in Sacramento.

We are talking energy. We are talking fiscal. We are talking a business climate that is hampered by unreasonable regulations. We are talking about things as simple as women and girls' sports. Why should that be complicated? Yet it is.

And the one that is probably the most difficult and the greatest existential threat right now to our country immediately is the border problem. This porous border has been made that way pretty much since day two of the Biden administration. It certainly wasn't perfect before that, but my hat's off to President Trump in his term for trying as much as he can to do something about it, by building the wall, continuing to build the wall, repair old sections of the wall. He met resistance just about every step of the way.

Indeed that infrastructure makes it so much easier and simpler for our border personnel to be able to track who is coming across the border and basically funnel them to the areas where border entry can be properly processed with a plan in place, with rules in place, with laws in place that would make that expedient and actually beneficial to our country, and also less harmful to those that would wish to come here, to immigrate here, to seek jobs, to seek citizenship, what have you.

In an orderly society, we need to have control of the border and invite people to come be part of what this country has to offer. That is what immigration used to be many decades ago. It slipped away from us.

We hear all day long, oh, the immigration system is broken. Well, it is broken because it is not being enforced. Now, we could add to the laws that we have in the books there and refine them, such as the interpretation of asylum which is wide open these days. Asylum used to be more reserved for people that were being subject to abuse by a regime in the country they lived in. They would be subject to much persecution, religious persecution, political persecution, what have you.

We understand that. We saw that in World War II and pre-World War II in Europe with what happened to the Jews there. The United States didn't act quickly enough in that situation, but at least we understand what asylum should look like. What we have now is basically people presenting themselves at the border, if they are not just sneaking right past, and saying a few magic words to the personnel and then they are taken into custody temporarily, given a number and maybe even a fictitious name, and allowed to move on through.

I have been to that border. I have witnessed what that looks like. Indeed, we have buses going back and forth patrolling the border not to keep the border closed or enforced, but picking people up so they can sooner get them to processing centers. We are paying for that. It is like a giant welcome wagon that has been turned into such by this Biden administration.

Now President Trump, as I said, tried really hard to get a handle on this, and improvements were made with several hundred miles of new, strong border fence and repaired old fence. Also, the border personnel felt like we appreciated them. We appreciated their jobs. We appreciated the effort they are making.

Nowadays, I think they are just completely overwhelmed, and I can't imagine the morale is very good when they are basically told that they are to be part of running the welcome wagon and just letting people in. We hear anecdotes about them welding the gates open where they are, actually in Texas. Are you kidding me?

The State of Texas through their own National Guard has been making efforts to control parts of their border there, putting up wire and other measures that will help control some distance on their border.

You have the Biden administration threatening them and bringing lawsuits against them, and who knows, maybe even a confrontation with Federal troops versus Texas National Guard at some point in order for the Federal Government to be tearing down the barrier in order to preserve our border and have some semblance of order instead of the chaos that has been introduced and exacerbated by the Biden administration.

How does this make a lick of sense to anybody, to tear down the barrier that, indeed, the Federal Government should have built up to begin with?

Now, let's talk about the barrier itself a little bit. We are not a country that is going to completely close it off. We welcome legal immigration. I shouldn't have to say that. It has always been who we are. Legal immigration, one that goes through process, one that our own people, our own government decides how many people we want to have enter under the different programs, under the different categories, how many should we have this year apply for citizenship.

That number is way up from what it was five, six decades ago where I believe the stats are somewhere around 800,000 or 900,000 new legal immigrants, new citizens per year as I think I have it, whereas the number might have been around 200,000 back 50 or 60 years ago. It is a dramatic increase of us welcoming legal citizens over that time.

Others that would apply for work permits, education visas, travel visas, different categories. All we ask is that you follow a set of rules. Go through a process. That is not unreasonable.

I always liken it to when you leave your home, most likely you probably lock your doors on your house. Maybe you even set an alarm. Maybe you have a fence around your house, your property. Is it because you hate your neighbors, because you hate somebody else that might come by? No, it is because it is your security, it is your responsibility.

There are people who are going to be led into temptation. Look how many packages get stolen off front porches because the deliverer just leaves it there. I guess that is the agreement. That is rampant these days. What if that door was unlocked? The same people who are bold enough to steal packages off your front porch wouldn't have any hesitation to go inside and clean you out at well.

Look what they are doing to retail stores while clerks and employees helplessly watch them cart off phones and watches and whatever other merchandise they can get while their corporate edict is don't dare talk to them, don't follow them with a camera, don't get their license plate. Heaven knows you wouldn't want to try to detain them in any way, as we see more and more of the corporate world become spineless in controlling the chaos.

We see this affecting mostly our very large cities, which politically tend to be the blue cities, Democrat-controlled mayors and city councils, supervisors, like that. They have chaos like hasn't ever been seen in this country when you talk about crisis. Part of this is soft on crime, part of it is soft on border, soft on what they call immigration. This isn't immigration, it is an invasion.

Immigration would imply that there is a legal process to it. Again, we still welcome legal immigration to this country. We always have. That is the part that gets caught up in the blatant misinformation placed out there, because Republicans want to have order. They want to have something that will preserve the sovereignty of this country and preserve all the infrastructure within it.

I mean, when you look at the cities here, take New York City, where they are filling up community centers and school rooms and gyms and national parks with--they use the term ``migrants.'' A migrant is a euphemism. This is an illegal immigrant invasion. They are getting angry because people are bussing them in from Texas, Florida, and wherever else. The border States are overloaded. California, which I represent a part of, is one of those border States along with Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Truly, though, it ends up pretty much all of our States in effect are border States because you have the Biden administration flying these folks around the country and placing them wherever they see fit.

It is interesting to see. They squawk about maybe the Governor of Texas and Florida and some others bussing them to their city where they proclaim they are a sanctuary city, we welcome you, we want you to come in, as the Governor of New York and the mayor of New York City have claimed in the past, and then are backtracking on now because the numbers have finally caught up to them even though they have been warned and warned and warned by those of us who can see what that is going to look like.

Why do we put in place people who allow a system like this to happen, to foster a system that is so, indeed, broken as it is? We have the laws. We have the rules, and we even passed in this House a good piece of legislation, H.R. 2, to refine those rules.

You hear people saying: Oh, you Republicans are full of hooey on that because you say, on the one hand, enforce the laws you have, but on the other, why do you want this new law to come in? Well, because they are not doing the job. Asylum needs to be refined, it looks like.

Now, if you had a different administration that was on the side of the American people and on the side of enforcing the law, you could probably interpret asylum as it was originally intended, for those who indeed are facing a crisis due to an oppressive government.

However, no, it has been interpreted to be just pretty much wide open. Our border is a sieve. When I visited the border, you see people coming through a coyote process or paying people big money, otherwise their lives might be harmed by the coyote system they have down there, the cartels.

I saw pretty nice people coming across. There were families and such like that. These aren't bad people at heart. They are breaking the law, but when you leave a great big green light there saying come on in, I guess I can't blame them, but the people you are talking about aren't necessarily persecuted by a government in such fashion but, more, they are seeking economic opportunity. Nine out of ten or more are seeking economic opportunity, seeking a job, seeking the promise.

You hear the Democrats, you hear people in the media saying: All they want is to come and seek a better life. Well, sure, but the life of this country, the lives of the citizens who are already here, those who came here legally, came here properly, and those who have been here, born here as citizens, they are paying the freight on all this because you are bringing folks in who haven't been brought up in the American way, haven't been educated in our ways, probably don't speak the language in many, many cases, may not even have a skill to bring so that they can self-sustain themselves and their family.

It will be maybe low-skilled labor that probably won't pay their own way. That is chaotic, and that is not how our immigration system used to work. One hundred years ago, however many decades ago, you had to offer something that is going to strengthen our country to be an immigrant here.

Now, again, we will hear, oh, that is so closed minded, it is so oppressive and so hateful because that is the only play they have. They keep going to the well on that, call it xenophobia or racism or whatever. No, the greatness of this country is in its process, in its Constitution, in its stability and people who respect that and uphold that, uphold the Constitution, uphold the laws.

The lawlessness we are seeing at the border, as untold numbers are coming across daily, I am glad to see this idea that was coming from the Senate on an immigration bill has pretty much lost any momentum because, at a minimum, according to the pieces I am reading on it, 5,000 people would be allowed across the border per day before they take any action on it.

Now, let's say you are a retailer, all right? You are seeing all the break-ins and the rip-offs and the looting going on. What if you had a rule in your city that said we have to let five thieves in per day to your retail center and they can fill up their bags as much as they want, but on the sixth one we will go ahead and start enforcing on it. We will call the police, detain, whatever.

What kind of crazy idea is that, as well as so many other holes that are in this package?

The first place we start: enforce the border, finish building the fence so that our border personnel are not so overwhelmed and put them back to their real jobs of not just processing people as fast as they can and turning them loose in our country, which maybe they will show up for an asylum hearing in 8 or 10 years and become so entrenched in the country illegally that you can't find them or you can't deport them if you wanted to. That is part of it. That is part of the chaos that is being fostered.

Where I represent in California, which indeed is a border State, I represent the north end of it, which is about 600 miles from the border itself, but we see the secondary effects of illegal immigration, it keeps growing. When I say ``grow,'' it is literal because what we have in part of my district and some of the southern California districts as well is a proliferation of illegal marijuana grows, many, many acres of them.

There are hundreds of greenhouses that our rural counties are just overwhelmed trying to deal with. There has been a passive response by the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Biden administration, and our own California administration led by Governor Newsom with soft-on-crime policies.

This changes the landscape of a rural community, having all these marijuana grows and the cartels and all the filth that comes with that--the environmental damage, the people who are abused. Sometimes even slave labor is involved with people captive out there because nobody knows who they are, where they are, let alone having a permit to build these facilities or take the water from somewhere else in order to have the marijuana grow.

Today's marijuana, which is a much more powerful product, brings with it the whole litany of gang activity as this product is moved up and down, in my area, say, Interstate 5, but all over the West, all over the country even.

Illegal immigration has a lot of side effects. The marijuana proliferation, as I mentioned, of course the fentanyl is coming across the border and infecting and destroying so many lives. It goes on and on and on because this administration and our own Governor in California, that administration, continue to foster this lawlessness, soft-on-crime, soft-on-border policy that is doing us so much damage and is probably the biggest problem we face along with our massive deficit and the crunch that is coming from that.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) to talk more about that. I greatly respect him and the work he has done on this area on the border. He has been very diligent on putting this out in front of the people and pointing out what a crisis this is to our country and its existence.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source