American Dream and Promise Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, as we dither and posture and virtue signal here today, our southern border is collapsing.

The border patrol warns that before this year is out, they will have apprehended over 1 million illegal aliens making a mockery of our sovereignty and our asylum laws. Unless Congress acts, these illegals will have to be released into our country; that is the population of the cities of Atlanta and Sacramento combined.

Now, instead of taking simple measures necessary to secure our borders and reserve our asylum laws for the truly persecuted, the House meets today to grant blanket amnesty to roughly 2.5 million illegal aliens, encouraging millions more that they, too, can violate our borders with impunity.

Now, the Democrats have long-advocated free services for illegals: free healthcare, legal counsel, education, food, housing--all paid by American taxpayers.

Now, they deny they support illegal immigration; yet, they heap rewards on those who illegally immigrate.

Many have gone so far as to advocate abolishing the agencies that defend our borders.

Democrats long ago ceased to call illegal immigration for what it is--illegal. They have supported allowing illegal aliens to vote in our elections and opposed visa tracking of foreign nationals entering our country.

They have even enacted sanctuary laws that require dangerous criminal illegal aliens to be released back into our communities rather than to be deported, as Federal law requires.

Now, the real tragedy today is that there are hundreds of thousands of children who were brought here illegally and, in effect, stranded here without a country.

They have no legal status here, yet little familiarity with their birth country. And there is broad bipartisan support to remedy this situation today, but we cannot do that until we first fully secure our border and fully enforce our immigration laws. Otherwise, we simply encourage more children be brought here illegally, producing yet another generation who will come to us in a few years with the same demands that we hear today.

We could address both issues right now, right here and now. If full funding of the border wall and reform of our asylum laws were to be combined with legalizing the status of children who were brought here and raised here, through no fault of their own, this bill could become law in a matter of days.

Within days, we could bring these young people out of legal limbo and restore the integrity of our borders--within days.

But by forcing the completely one-sided partisan approach, the Democrats end up with precisely nothing.

This is not legislating. This is farce.

And history is screaming this warning at us that nations that either cannot or will not secure their borders simply aren't around very long.

Madam Speaker, let that not be the epitaph of the American republic.

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