Speaker. this House majority needs to make up its collective mind. Do they want to provide emergency funding to enable our Federal agencies to respond to the humanitarian crisis on the border? Or do they wish to rewrite current law on immigration. political asylum. and due process? We cant do both in an hour of floor consideration. The House should have already taken up bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform the Senate passed more than 1 year ago. with the support of Democrats and Republicans. the labor and business communities. evangelicals. law enforcement. and many others. We would have been proud to work together with our Republicans on the other side of the aisle to give thoughtful consideration to this immigration process. The Senate did it. We had an opportunity to do it. and instead. we are rushing through tonight to put a bill on the floor that has changed many times as it has proceeded through the process. That bill. the comprehensive immigration bill. would have helped prevent the crisis on the border today. If we had passed this 1 year ago. we wouldnt be in the desperate situation we are in now. Now. we are at a point where it requires emergency supplemental funding that we should provide cleanly and quickly without the baggage of extraneous policy that caused so much political division. This package crossed the line from being a supplemental spending bill and became a controversial revision of immigration policy with limited funding thrown in as an afterthought. That is a shame. That is really sad because we know that the Departments of Homeland Security.
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immigration