Speech #CREC-2018-01-08-pt1-PgS53_t5

They also supported the so-called Gang of 8 bill 5 years ago, which also would have built hundreds of miles of physical barrier on our southern border. What has changed since then? All that being said, building a wall will help stop illegal immigration, but it will not fix all the problems to the law itself. That is why I have said, as the President has said, we also have to deal with that second consequence--ending chain migration. One trial balloon I have heard floated in recent days is that a negotiated piece of legislation could eliminate the immigration preference for the adult, unmarried kids of legal permanent residents, green card holders. That is perfectly fine. We should do that, for sure. But to act as if that alone would end chain migration is preposterous. It will delay a very small part of chain migration--only delay, only delay a very small part--about 26,000 of the more than 300,000 people who come here a year through family preferences. It doesn't even touch the preference for the adult, unmarried children of citizens or parents or siblings of citizens and green card holders alike. In other words, once these young people in the DACA population become citizens, then they will be able to get legal status for their relatives, which means, far from stopping chain migration, it will actually accelerate the naturalization process and the chain we are trying to stop in the first place. The time has come to end this foolish, unwise, and, indeed, dangerous policy, as we saw just a few weeks ago in the most recent attempted terror attack in New York, which had at its initiating point someone who had come into this country because of chain migration. Not a single advanced, industrialized nation has such a lax immigration policy as we do when it comes to immigrant families--not Canada, not the United Kingdom, not France, not Germany, not New Zealand, not Japan. If we are actually going to fix this problem--if we are going to do right by the American worker, if we are going to promote the American dream and American ideals, then it is time for these mindless family preferences and chain migration to come to an end. I yield the floor, and I yield to my colleague from Oklahoma.