Failed Border Policy
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am fascinated by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle being so fixated on Ukraine when our porous southern border, our U.S. borders, are causing so much harm to our American economy and losing American lives such as Laken Riley here most recently.
We have been fairly generous to Ukraine since their problems have started with Russia. Indeed, the amount of money they received is at least 20-fold more than what we are even talking about that would secure our own southern border.
Now we see President Biden will be chasing former President Trump down to the border--in reality, a desperate attempt to stabilize his plummeting poll numbers on the issue, but let's not be kidded by that.
Today's visit, much like Biden's first and only other visit to our southern border, will be basically a photo op.
He will be visiting Brownsville, Texas, an area of the southern border that, according to reports, has had virtually nonexistent activity in recent days, weeks, and months compared to all the other places along the border where you can see plenty of footage of tens of thousands of people coming across. Create a distraction here by going over there.
This is nothing more than a smokescreen and an attempt to distract American people from his disastrous policies and the chaos he has unleashed at our southern border.
For the past 3 years, President Biden has not only ignored the crisis at the southern border, he is directly responsible for it.
Since his first day in office, he has worked to implement his own far-left failed policies which have basically turned every town in the whole country into a border town and destroyed countless American families. We then talk about this issue here on the floor since the media doesn't seem to want to cover that very well.
There are over 60 instances of President Biden and his administration taking actions that undermine our Nation's border security.
The first thing he did when he came into office was to get rid of the procedures and the policies that President Trump had put into place.
Yet, recently in the press, he is yelling at Republicans, saying: You need to back some of our border policies we are working on. Really? Put back in place the policies that already worked.
These eight items, he could do all of these without having Congress fund or come to agreement on a bipartisan fashion on any of them: end catch and release, reinstate the remain in Mexico policy, enter into an asylum cooperation agreement, end parole abuses, detain inadmissible aliens--wow, wouldn't that be something--use expedited removal process, rein in taxpayer-funded benefits for all illegal aliens--wouldn't that be a relief for families who are struggling--issue a proclamation to suspend or restrict entry in the United States.
Those are actions he could take on his own without having to battle through both sides of the aisle in both the House and Senate.
We would be happy to do that as Republicans. Republicans have been standing for these types of policies all along.
It all changed under the Biden administration. That is why we have suffered these last 3 years with the mass amounts of people coming across our border illegally and invading our country.
We know border security is national security. That is why the bill we passed, H.R. 2, earlier on is the right policy.
Yet, it is sitting there languishing under Senator Schumer and the Senate Democrats who won't bring it up for a vote or discussion.
Instead, they gave us a watered-down immigration bill that would allow 1.8 million illegal immigrants a year into our country with immediate work permits, benefits, and the ability to stay even longer, thereby codifying illegal immigration.
We are going to automatically concede 1.8 million can come in illegally without process, and we are going to give you stuff. Calling that a border security package and then reaming Republicans for not being for that, it is not even a funny joke.
Let's look at the numbers. Since Biden took office, there have been 7.2 million illegal crossings of our southern border; 8.7 million entries nationwide.
The total number of illegal immigrants who have entered through our southern border is greater than the population of 36 of our individual States.
Let's not forget about the terrorists. Mr. Speaker, 340 individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watch list have been stopped trying to cross the southern border.
So far in 2024, there have been 58 individuals whose names appear on the list who have been stopped trying to enter the border. How many haven't been stopped?
The total is more than the encounters in all fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined. That is how bad it has gotten to this point.
It is not just terrorists crossing our border. It is also Chinese Communist Party nationals. Mr. Speaker, 20,000 Chinese nationals have illegally crossed the southern border since fiscal year 2024 began in October.
Just last week, 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley's life was taken. How many more examples like that have to happen because of Biden's wide-open policy and today's photo op? We must do better.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source