Immigration Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. BUDD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Virginia for yielding. I really thank him for his leadership on this issue.

The last time I spoke on this floor on immigration, I talked about three principles: One, Americans have the right to determine who becomes citizens through laws; two, the people who do come here should be in the best interest of American citizens; and three, that we have the right to enforce those choices.

The people who do come here should be in the best interest of American citizens. That is key. What we are doing now isn't there yet. We allow, today, one individual to get a green card. Then he is able to sponsor his immediate family and relatives. And then the relatives can sponsor their relatives. Then the relatives of those relatives can sponsor their relatives and so on, until there is no one in the family left to sponsor or no one left who even wants to come to the United States.

Potentially, this could go on forever. This is called chain migration, and 65 percent of our green cards are awarded through this chain migration. That is about 700,000 people every year gaining permanent residence in our country through no other criteria than that they happen to be related to someone who lives here.

We have no idea whether these individuals are going to be economically successful. We have no idea whether they will contribute to our country. We don't even look at those characteristics for chain migration. The important question is who the immigrant is related to, not whether or not he might help America be a safer or a more prosperous country. Chain migration does not meet that key principle. American immigration should be in the best interest of Americans.

The Securing America's Future Act ends this chain migration. It stops it for everyone except the children and spouses of immigrants. But those relatives cannot bring in additional immigrants, so the chain is broken. The Securing America's Future Act, in turn, replaces those immigrants with skilled workers, workers who could help us build a better future.

I think about it this way: there are 150 million people around the world who would say that they would emigrate to the United States if they were just given the opportunity. What a great country. We could do what we do now and let those people enter on the basis of who they are related to. That is what we are doing. Or we could let in the best engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and businessmen. We can let in those who could speak English well, who know our system of government, who have gone to university. But that can only happen if we end chain migration.

The chain migration proposal in the Securing America's Future Act becomes even more crucial when we look at the DACA issue. If we allow DACA recipients to get some form of residency, past history tells us that they will potentially sponsor around 3\1/2\ immigrants each. That is a 2- to 3-million-person increase in the immigrant population. That is a huge incentive for future immigrants to come here illegally.

The notion that you will get to bring your whole family over here if you manage to enter illegally is part of what led to the 2013-2014 border crisis. When the previous administration was rumored to be granting amnesty, tens of thousands of Latin American families sent their minor children north.

It was a national emergency, and it overwhelmed the Border Patrol and the immigrant processing facilities there in the Southwest. We had to pass emergency appropriations just to process these individuals. Any DACA fix that does not also include additional border security and protections against those migrating this way, they could really see a similar crisis.

Madam Speaker, the Securing America's Future Act is an incredible piece of legislation. And while I have dwelt on its chain migration provisions--and there are many more worthy reforms--this bill cracks down on sanctuary cities, which my colleague mentioned earlier. It includes Kate's Law to toughen penalties against those who are deported, come back to the United States, and commit crimes. It includes mandatory E-Verify to crack down on businesses that break the law. It ends the diversity visa lottery, one of the most senseless Federal policies that I can think of.

I thank Chairman Goodlatte for his efforts on this; I thank Representative Labrador, one of our staunchest conservative leaders in the House, for his leadership in crafting this bill; and I thank Representative Garrett for organizing this opportunity to discuss the bill.

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