Speech #1140087175

For every minute of delay. $166 million lost to the United States economy. Now. let me talk about the security argument. I just heard from my colleague from Iowa that Mexico and Mexican immigrants. whether they are undocumented. whether they are pursuing a better life in this country. whether they areas almost all of them arenet contributors to our economy. to our communities. to the safety of our cities. that somehow they represent this terrible threat. the primary threat for our country. and the sky and everything with it is falling should we not be able to deport these 11 million undocumented immigrants from communities like Washington. D.C.. from El Paso. Texas. from Fort Worth. from throughout the United States. I would like to share something with my colleagues and with you. Mr. Speaker. about the effect that immigrants have on the safety of our communities. As I mentioned. I represent El Paso. Texas. which. with Ciudad Juarez. forms onehalf of the largest binational community anywhere in the world. Twentyfour percent of the people that I represent were born in another country. most of them. the country of Mexico. And I will tell you. it is not in spite of that fact that we have so many migrants in our community but. in large part. because of it that El Paso is this countrys safest city of over 500.000. So of all large cities in this country. from Los Angeles on the West Coast to New York on the East Coast. El Paso is this countrys safest city. And it has been not just in the past year. but for years before this last one. and for the last 10 or 15 years. it has been rated one of the top five safest cities in the United States. And that is because the relationship that we have with Mexico. The migrants who come from that country are coming to this one to build a better life for themselves. certainly. but more importantly and connected to our relative safety. they are building a better life for their kids. They are keeping them focused on their studies. on contributing to their communities. on staying out of trouble and getting ahead and doing better. That is what I want you to know when we talk about security connected to immigration and when we talk about security relative to Mexico. I also want my colleagues. who themselves are taxpayers. and the taxpayers they represent to know that today we spend $18 billion a year to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. In the last 10 years. we have doubled the size of the Border Patrol force. from 10.000 agents to 20.000 agents. and we are reaching. if not already past. a point of diminishing returns where we can do no more good by spending more dollars and by adding more agents to already swollen ranks of the Border Patrol. Let me give you some facts that bear that out. In the year 2000. we had 1.6 million apprehensions at our border with Mexico. This last year. in 2015. we had 330.000 apprehensions. Another way to look at this is that. in 2005. the average Border Patrol agents on the southern border. our border with Mexico. made 106 apprehensions a year. Ten years later. 2015. last year. the average agent made 17 apprehensions the entire year. and in El Paso. again. one of the most critical sectors for our connection with Mexico. the average agent made 6 apprehensions all yearnot in a week. not in a month. but 6 apprehensions for the entire year. So El Paso is the safest city.