Open Borders Betray Blue Collar Workers

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, before the lockdown left took a wrecking ball to our economy, we were enjoying one of the greatest expansions of economic opportunity in our lifetimes. Unemployment was at its lowest rate in 50 years. The poverty rate was at its lowest rate in 60 years. Most importantly, wage growth was the strongest in 40 years, and the wage gap between rich and poor was narrowing for the first time in many years as blue-collar wages increased dramatically. The unemployment rate for women was the lowest in 70 years. For African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, veterans, disabled Americans, and those without a high school diploma, unemployment was the lowest ever recorded.

Now, the tax and regulatory relief we won in 2017 and 2018 explained much of that success. But something else was going on that caused the extraordinary improvement of wages for unskilled or low-skilled workers. It was because the Trump administration restored control of our borders and stemmed the flood of low-wage labor that had been suppressing wages for American workers for decades. Big business and big agriculture hated this policy because it required them to pay higher wages to Americans, but in the growing economy it produced, working Americans who had been left behind for decades finally began to prosper.

Now, did we learn nothing from this blue-collar boom?

The Democrats that these families trusted to look out for their interests in the recent election are betraying them at every turn. Nowhere is that clearer than the Democrats' zeal to open our borders to a new wave of illegal immigration.

The President's executive orders have already produced a new migrant crisis on the southern border. One abandoned the border wall in mid- construction. Another undermines the longstanding requirement that immigrants be able to support themselves and not burden American taxpayers.

Another ends the Remain in Mexico policy for those making asylum claims, the vast majority of those claims being dubious. Yet another effectively releases illegal immigrants accompanied by youths under 18 directly into the United States.

Another grants what amounts to sanctuary status for a wide variety of criminal offenses, including drunk driving and sex offenses. Another restores unrestricted travel from hotbeds of international terrorism.

The worst one orders ICE not to deport illegal immigrants for 100 days. That order now enjoined by a Federal judge begs the question: What is the difference between abolishing ICE and forbidding ICE to do its job?

Customs and Border Protection agents report in the last month the flow on the southern border has nearly doubled from 2,000 a day to 3,500 a day. The number of illegal immigrants encountered on the southern border during the first 4 months of the last fiscal year was nearly 165,000. That number has nearly doubled this year to more than 295,000.

Every American needs to clearly understand what this means to their lives, their families, their communities, and their futures.

How are American workers helped by flooding the labor market with another wave of illegal immigration?

How are our children, who have been robbed of an entire year of their educations, helped by filling their classrooms with non-English speaking classmates?

How are our streets made safer by allowing aliens who drive drunk to remain on our roads rather than be arrested and placed in removal proceedings?

How is our Nation made safer by reopening virtually unrestricted travel with nations that foster terrorism?

How are our communities made safer by making it harder to deport criminal illegal aliens and gang members?

How are our hospitals made more accessible by overwhelming emergency rooms by illegal immigrants demanding care?

Why would they pursue these policies that strike most acutely and painfully at America's working families? Especially now when those families are reeling from the effects of a year of repressive lockdowns?

Those blue-collar workers who made the greatest gains during the Trump economic expansion are the most harmed by reversing the immigration enforcement that produced it.

Let us not forget that millions of legal immigrants who obeyed our laws, respected our Nation's sovereignty, waited patiently, and have done everything our country has asked of them have also been made victims of the Democrats' pursuit of open borders.

Without enforcement of our immigration laws, our borders are meaningless. And if our borders are meaningless, then America ceases to be a nation and instead becomes a vast international territory between Canada and Mexico.

Mr. Speaker, I fear that is the ultimate objective of the left and that the only force that can stop them now is the American people at the ballot box.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source