What Mexico Represents to All of Us

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Thank you very much, Representative O'Rourke. I really appreciate your work on this issue. You have been doing a great job of really kind of setting the facts straight about this issue.

There has been a lot of rhetoric out there about what immigration means. And the fact that you have worked so hard to bring recognition about the economic benefits that the border has, particularly to our State of Texas, and you have been very tremendous in your efforts, I really, really do appreciate that.

I wanted to just talk about the fact how important the relationship is--the economic impact that you talk about all the time--how important it is to Texas and the United States.

According to the United States Trade Representative, U.S. goods and services traded with Mexico totaled an estimated $500-plus billion in 2015. Mexico was the United States' second largest goods export market in 2015. In 2013, Texas, our home State of Texas exported over $109 billion in goods with Mexico, and that was a 63 percent increase since 2008.

It is really hard to argue with those numbers. It just shows how healthy the relationship is with Mexico and about how incredibly foolish it would be to try to create barriers between our two countries that would cause economic harm to both Mexico and the United States and our border State of Texas.

The United States' relationship with Mexico, again, when you look at the economic picture, agriculture is something that people oftentimes take for granted--how they get their milk, how they get their fruit, how they get their vegetables.

Agriculture is how we eat in this country. I have met with different organizations that represent agriculture. I just had some cattle raisers from the Fort Worth area here. They talked about the fact that we don't have a comprehensive immigration reform bill and how we need to improve our guest worker program and how it is really hurting their industry.

And these are conservative Republicans that are telling me this, Representative O'Rourke. These aren't liberal Democrats or advocacy groups. These are people that are concerned about economic growth and prosperity in the United States and in border States that are saying that, hey, we have a huge problem here in agriculture.

One of our conservative institutes in the State of Texas, Texas A&M University down in College Station, did a study back in 2012 that looked at dairy farms and found that the dairy farms are very heavily dependent upon migrant labor. Three-fifths of the milk in this country is dependent upon migrant labor.

I think that that speaks in and of itself.

Without these employees, the study predicts economic output would decline by $22 billion, and 133,000 workers would lose their jobs. And what are we going to do if that happens? Like, what are we really going to do? What are Republicans going to do if that happens, if they were able to create borders and barriers between our southwest border?

They are certainly not going to make it up with any sort of social services to help people because they are always hollering about how they don't want to expand government. So what are they going to do if we lose all of that money? They are going to do absolutely nothing, and it would be very detrimental.

Then there is also immigrant entrepreneurship. In addition to providing a reliable workforce, immigrants are also a boost to local economies when they open up businesses in their communities. More than 40 percent of the Fortune 500 companies here were founded by immigrants or by their children according to the Partnership for a New American Economy.

I want to highlight one of my friends that has a business in my district, Gloria Fuentes. She was actually my guest, Representative O'Rourke, at the State of the Union earlier this year. She was someone, back in the 1970s, that was fleeing her home country of El Salvador. She immigrated to the United States, and her visa expired. Later, she became a permanent resident in 1986. And because of her hard work, working extra jobs, going to nightclubs at night to sell tamales and tacos, now she has a restaurant chain of 15, all across the State of Texas. That was done by someone that came here as an immigrant.

Why wouldn't we want to make it easier for people like Gloria to migrate to this country? Why wouldn't we want to make it easier for us to be able to exchange and trade ideas with people from countries that are south of our border?

We are really moving too slowly on the immigration issue. And again, the rhetoric about the southwest border is really hurting our country, particularly when you look at the net migration and how many people have decided that--you know what?--they don't want to live in the United States anymore just because of all of the rhetoric, the hateful rhetoric that is out there, mainly coming from the Republican side. I think that it is time that it stop because I think that our country--I know that our country--is better than that.

I just want to thank you for getting this conversation started. I want to thank you for your expertise and depth on this issue. Particularly with you coming from El Paso, it is certainly great to have you talking about this so much and reminding people about the facts, because there are a lot of things out there that are floating around the Congress--again, coming from the Republican side--that are completely untrue and deliberately false and meant to spread fear across our country. But the fact that you are here and you are educating the country on this very important issue means a lot to our State and to the United States. So thank you very much, Representative O'Rourke, and thank you for letting me share this time with you.

Mr. O'ROURKE. I thank my friend from Texas, amidst all this heat and the rhetoric around Mexico, our relationship with that country, the cost or benefit of immigration, that he is able to shed some light using the facts, sharing the truth, so that we understand our shared interdependence, shared benefit, and the value of the relationship between the United States and Mexico.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time remains?

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