Speech #990275235

This is definitely not the answer. However. I share the sentiments of those who see the obvious solution to stopping illegal immigration: we need to put more people on the border to physically stop people from crossing into the United States. Its that simple. We already have the border patrol established for this purpose. but they are sadly undermanned. We currently have one border patrol agent for every four miles of our Southern border. We now expect one border patrol agent to stop a steady flow of aliens along the length of a distance of 70 football fields. Thats a difficult task for ten men. let alone one. Some argue that this will cost money. In fact. this amendment will save money in the long run. We pay millions and millions of dollars every year to house. feed. educate and hospitalize undocumented aliens and their families. I am told 80 percent of all children born in Los Angeles County public hospitals are born to illegal alien mothers80 percent! As a member of the Congressional Border Caucus. I am concerned that the border zone is becoming a chaotic nomans land. a forboding area for the ordinary people who live there. but a fertile breeding ground for drug smugglers and criminals. Sure there are other ways to combat the crisis. and this bill includes many of them. Yet most of these solutions would not be necessary today if we had long ago treated the root cause and not the symptoms of the problem. I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment to increase the border patrol by 50 percent. Its very simple: it we want to solve this problem. we need to patrol our borders. and to patrol our borders we need an adequate border patrol.