Speech #1140020034

It is our insatiable appetite here in the United States for illegal drugs. funded with our dollar bills and enforced with U.S. guns. that creates and maintains a lot of the instability and chaos that drives people from their homes to America. Yet almost every budget that is considered in this Congress cuts mental health and drug counseling. addiction treatment and prevention. and does little to address our role in fueling instability. With specific regard to immigration and asylum. in this Congress. we are debating laws to make it harder for children to apply for asylum and laws to make it easier to deport children or to put families into lengthy and expensive detention. To add insult to injury. the Judiciary Committee just approved a measure to allow those who want to homeschool their children but who are prevented from doing so by their own government to be considered as a special class of oppressed victims to be considered eligible to apply for political asylum in the U.S. For the people from Germany and Sweden who want to homeschool their children. that is the kind of oppression that Congress responds topeople from Central America whose governments are unwilling or unable to protect children from murder and sexual assault. not so much. The reality is that we need to do more to engage and strengthen our neighbors. we need to do much more to make sure that the actions. trade. and consumption of our people are helping. not hurting. and we need to do much more to make sure that we have secure borders by also remembering to put doors on those borders so that people can come with visas in a controlled way and not risking their lives with smugglers. First and foremost. we must remember the message that Pope Francis reminded us of when he said of those who drowned in the ocean: "They are men and women like us. our brothers seeking a better life. starving. persecuted. wounded. exploited. victims of war. They were looking for a better life." Let us not forget that migrants are human beings.