Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mrs. RAMIREZ. Madam Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to H.R. 8771.

Today, in a few hours, I will be launching my new Global Migration Caucus. While I will stand with colleagues to affirm there are those of us in Congress who want to be an effective ally to global efforts to create a safer and more equitable world where people can build the life they want and deserve at home, today my Republican colleagues, however, seek to withdraw our participation in coordinating global efforts, eliminate critical support for migration management, and fuel the crisis of displacement they claim they so desperately want to address.

We must not let their reckless and dangerous efforts go unchallenged.

My amendment would strike the harmful and hateful language of the underlying bill that prohibits the support of safe and humane migration management efforts around the world.

As vice ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, I hear my colleagues talk about what is happening at the border, especially at the southern border. However, they ignore questions about why we are seeing a humanitarian crisis at our border. They don't want to talk about the root causes of migration.

Violence, democratic backsliding, economic exclusion, and climate change are some of the crises that are driving families from their homes in search of safety and stability, much like what happened to our ancestors in the early 1900s or the 1950s.

Everything I have witnessed throughout my official trips and conversations with families, governments, and civil society points to this truth: Our country's safety is fundamentally connected to the stability, security, and sustainability people experience or do not experience across the globe.

I have heard a mother talk with desperation about the sexual violence and trauma that her 12-year-old endured while crossing the Darien. I heard stories of threats of violence and cartel intimidation that drove a mother to send her sons on a harrowing journey through dangerous migration routes.

For so many people around the world, the choice is flee or die.

Again, it is no surprise to me that the party of reactionary, isolationist, fear-based, and xenophobic politics doesn't understand the ideal of cooperation and prevention. Both cooperation and prevention require forethought, working across differences, embracing possibilities, and a commitment to inclusion, none of which are reflected in H.R. 8771.

An example is that the bill specifically bans funding for the Safe Mobility Offices, which are a cost-effective part of the U.S. Government's strategy to reduce irregular migration within the Western Hemisphere.

To my Republican colleagues: Which one is it?

Do you want less irregular migration, or do you want to slash funding to address the conditions that drive displacement around the world and ban funding for programs to increase access to lawful humanitarian pathways to the United States and other countries?

Madam Chairman, this amendment is necessary. This amendment will address the issues. I hope that my colleagues in this Congress will, maybe in some cases for the first time, do the commonsense thing: address the issues they say they care so much about and, in fact, support migration management and support countries that need resources so they do not have to come to our southern border.
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Mrs. RAMIREZ. In closing, Madam Chair, I find it really ironic and hypocritical when one moment you say: Close the borders, don't let people in, and if they want to come, then let them come the legal way. Then we create programs, one, to invest in communities outside of the U.S. so that they don't have to come to the southern border, they don't have to do that dangerous journey, we create programs of safe mobility so they can stay in places like Colombia and other places like Ecuador or Espana in the future, and then you say: Not that either.

The reality is that this is not about President Biden. This is about you want to create crisis, chaos, and fear-mongering at all costs even if at one moment you say this and the other moment you say that, because you have no intention in addressing issues of immigration or border. You want to create chaos because it is the only way you win.

My amendment will allow us to address the root causes of migration to ensure that people can stay in their home countries, and then you won't see them at the southern border. To me that is a solution, and it is why I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

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