Speech #1090179362

Mr. President. I would like to move to another topic. and that is back to the issue of immigration and the fence bill with which we are dealing. A lot of people have talked about a variety of implications of this legislation. To my mind. one of the principal considerations is the issue of national security. The 9/11 Commission stated in the preface of its report that: It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. That is obvious. but it is an important statement to be made that one of the things we must do to help secure this country is to make sure we have a better immigration policy. whether it is a legal immigration policy and people coming here legally. properly screened for legal immigration. or people who are coming in. One of the things we are hearing is there are a lot more people coming across the southern border who are being picked up who are not Mexicans. who are not from Latin America. They are coming from other countries. other places around the world. This becomes an increasing concern with the porous southern border. I commend the House for putting forth this bill. This is a very important part of an initiative that I have been talking about since the Senate passed an immigration bill which I said was. in my opinion. a misstep. I offered a package of legislation called the border security first approach. which is: Lets focus on the border. Lets focus on first things first. If we have a problem with 11 million people and growing. people who are in this country illegally. the first thing we should do is stop the growth. We should take a problem that now looks to be an infinite problem. an evergrowing problem. and make it a finite problem with a specific number of people who are here. But the idea that we are going to solve the problem of illegal immigrants by dealing with this. as the Senate bill did. by legalizing people who are here illegally without solving the problem of more and more people comingin fact. being another beacon for more people to come because if they do come. and they get here illegally. we are going to legalize them at some pointit just. in my mind. is putting the cart before the horse. We need to put the horse out there. and the horse is stopping the problem from getting worse. That means border security. A key element of border security that I think is obvious--certainly obvious to the American public. it is an 8020 issue in my Stateis to construct more physical barriers. That is what this legislation does. It is Important not just from the standpoint of the 9/11 Commission and terrorists. but what we are seeing in our Stateagain. we are far from the borderis anever increasing problem of illegal immigrants in illegal activity in our Commonwealth. We had the U.S. attorney for the eastern district at a press conference where I announced a $2.5 million grant to deal with the 222 corridor from Lancaster leading up into the Lehigh Valley. We have an explosion of gang activity there. much of it driven by illegal immigrants and a whole new crop of gangs from south of the border that are causing problems in that 222 corridor. We were able to get a Justice Department grant to help. but I think it points out the problem. Hazleton. a sleepy little town. the wonderful little town of Hazleton has gotten on the map because of the problems illegal Immigrants--criminal problems. drug problems. gang problemshave brought into that community. It is a continuing problem. Just last week. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 100 criminals who were illegal aliens and other folks who were immigrants out of status living throughout Pennsylvania. all the way from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Among those arrested were sex offenders. people who have committed burglaries. larcenies. robberies. criminal trespass. weapons violations. narcotics violations. aggravated assaults. resisting arrest. fraud. et cetera. All of these people were wanted on these charges.