Securing Our Border

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, we have, right now, a situation where the President is visiting the border.

In my line of work, as a young lieutenant, I flew along the border and knew that there was a problem in the early 1990s. As a matter of fact, in the mid-1990s, as a forward air controller, we had to stop operations at nighttime as vans bouncing around in the middle of our operations made us cease fire so we could chase illegal immigrants out of our firing ranges. Then, as an emergency medicine doctor, I treated patients who came here illegally.

Most people don't realize the consequence of our actions, of our poor border security, and what it has done. We understand the numbers. We understand the millions that are coming across the border, 4 million since we have had a new President, but not the downwind consequences when you provide laws that encourage bad behavior and punish good behavior.

One of the things that most people don't realize is that when you go to the emergency room and are waiting in line behind a lot of people who came here illegally, you are not only waiting in line behind them but you are also paying for their bills. Many people are coming across the border to receive treatment for their chronic illnesses that cost millions of dollars per year, and those are several patients per hospital. We are talking about billions, even tens of billions of dollars, spent on people who come here illegally. It comes from taxpayer money, both out of your pocket and through your taxation, which adds to our debt, which, of course, is going to be paid for by our children.

To make it worse, we punish those people who come here the right way. In my district, we have a huge immigrant population, people who come here from all over the world, whether it be India, Europe, South America, and they have to wait in line with a glutted immigration policy that makes it very difficult for them to follow the law. Meanwhile, we reward those people who break the law.

I think we need to change our laws. I think we need to make it more streamlined for people who follow the law, who are good citizens, who paid their taxes, who have jobs, who create jobs, and make it more difficult for people who break laws.

I think, right now, when you talk about the overwhelming number of people coming across the border, and when you have the President go down there and have the borders cleaned up so he can view something that doesn't really exist, which is a problem where we don't protect our sovereign border, which is one of the President's main responsibilities; where you have people's property violated; where you have people's rights violated; where you have crimes.

Of course, as an emergency medicine physician, this last year I lost four patients who came in from fentanyl overdoses that I was not able to revive. Now, almost every single night, I do revive somebody, so it is something I literally witness almost every single shift, usually several times per shift.

The opioid crisis is real, and it is something that is killing over 100,000 Americans per year. Every year, we are setting a new record, and we have done nothing of consequence to really stem that tide.

I think it is with the greatest earnest appeal to my fellow Republicans and Democrats that we watch after our own house. It is okay to be compassionate. It is okay to reach out and help people, but we have to do it the right way.

Most importantly, we have to make laws that encourage good behavior, that people coming here are rewarded for following the laws. They are rewarded with citizenship when they do the right thing, and we are punishing people who come here with ill intent.

Finally, I would like to point out that we are experiencing diseases here in America we haven't seen in decades. Where is it coming from? It is because we don't have good screening procedures.

It used to be, to come to America, you couldn't even come here if you had glaucoma. Now you can come here with every kind of disease process there is, and we will never even know that you are even here.

If you look at the terrorists coming across the border--we know that we have at least nine terrorists we have caught in the last month, but we don't know how many got away. It is because we have poor border security.

So, it is not just for one thing; it is for many things that we need to secure our border, make sure that we are a sovereign Nation, and follow the law.

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