I understand that the vast majority of these people are honest, decent, hardworking people who came here to improve their own lives and their children’s lives. America holds so much promise, and what honest person wouldn’t want to come here to try to make a better life for himself and his children? But illegal immigration is a problem that must be confronted by the United States government who, in turn, must confront other countries. I feel as sorry for these individuals as anyone else does. Conditions in some of their countries are deplorable.
Nonetheless, illegal immigration has to stop. A country that can’t protect its borders isn’t a country. We are the only country in the world whose immigration system places the needs of other nations ahead of our own.
There is a word to describe people who do that: fools.
I have great respect for the people of Mexico. The people have tremendous spirit. I’ve been involved in deals with Mexican businessmen. But those businessmen aren’t the people the Mexican government is sending us. Too many people have forgotten the Mariel boatlift. In 1980, Fidel Castro told the Cuban people that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba was free to do so. President Carter opened our borders to anyone who came here. Except Castro was too smart for him. He emptied Cuba’s prisons and insane asylums and sent his biggest problems here. He got rid of the worst people in that country, and we were left to deal with them. More than 125,000 Cubans came here, and despite there being many, many great ones, some were criminals or had mental problems. More than thirty years later we’re still dealing with that.
Does anybody really believe that the Mexican government—for that matter, all the governments in South and Central America—didn’t get that message? The Mexican government has published pamphlets explaining how to illegally emigrate to the United States. Which makes my point—this is not about a few individuals seeking a better life; this is about foreign governments behaving badly and our own career politicians and “leaders” not doing their jobs.
And who can blame these foreign governments? It’s a great way for those governments to get rid of their worst people without paying any price for their bad behavior. Instead of putting these bad people in their prisons, they send them to us. And the bad guys are bringing the drug business and other criminal activity with them. Some of them are rapists, as a matter of fact, and as we have now seen in San Francisco, some of them are killers. The man who shot and killed a beautiful young woman had been pushed out of Mexico five times. He should have been in jail there, but instead they sent him here.
The price we’re paying for illegal immigration is enormous.
It has to stop.
The first thing we need to do is secure our southern border—and we need to do it now. We have to stop that flood, and the best way to do that is to build a wall. People say you can’t do it—how do you build a wall across the whole border?
Believe me, it can be done.
Nobody can build a wall like me. I will build a great wall on our southern border. It doesn’t have to cover the entire border. Some areas are already secured with physical barriers. In other areas the terrain is too difficult for people to cross. It’s probably about 1,000 miles we will need to secure with the new wall.
There are people who say it can’t be done, that it’s not possible to build a wall 1,000 miles long. Except beginning more than 2,000 years ago the Chinese built a wall that eventually stretched almost 13,000 miles that could never be breached. It was a combination of massive walls, impassible trenches and ditches, and rugged natural terrain, as well as an estimated 25,000 watchtowers. Believe me, our wall-building technology has improved a lot in 2,000 years. What we don’t have that the Chinese had is the commitment to do it. They understood the danger of leaving their border unprotected and they did something about it. We talk about it and do nothing.
Walls work. The Israelis spent $2 million per kilometer to build a wall—which has been hugely successful in stopping terrorists from getting into the country. Ironically, some of the same people who claim we shouldn’t build this wall cite the success of Israel’s wall. While obviously we don’t face the same level of terrorist threat as our closest Middle East ally, there is no question about the value of a wall in the fight against terrorism.
Many people don’t know that even Mexico has built its own wall on its southern border—to keep out illegal immigrants.
It wouldn’t even be that difficult. We already have a modeclass="underline" Yuma, Arizona, for example, built three walls separated by a 75-yard no-man’s-land that allows border agents to patrol within that area with their vehicles. They installed cameras, radio communications, radar, and a great lighting system. After it was built, the 120-mile-long stretch known as the Yuma sector saw an incredible 72 percent decrease in the number of people apprehended trying to get into this country illegally—and mine will be much better.
Construction of the wall needs to start as soon as possible. And Mexico has to pay for it.
Let me repeat that, one way or another: Mexico will pay for it.
How? We could increase the various border fees we charge. We could increase the fees on temporary visas. We could even impound remittance payments derived from illegal wages. Foreign governments could tell their embassies to start helping, otherwise they risk troubled relations with America.
If necessary we could pay for the wall through a tariff or cut foreign aid to Mexico or simply make it clear to the Mexican government that it is to the benefit of their very profitable—for them—relationship with the United States to pay for it.
But one way or another, they are going to pay for it.
I don’t mind putting a big, beautiful door in that wall so people can come in and out… LEGALLY.
The wall will be a good start, but by itself it won’t be enough. Without the wall, however, everything else is more of the same old big talk we hear from the politicians.
We’ve been trying to get this problem under control for more than 75 years. We’ve tried a lot of different solutions, and the result is that now illegal immigration is worse than ever. One of the solutions that did show promise was President Eisenhower’s attempt to deal with illegal immigration on our southern border, which had become known as the truly terribly named “Operation Wetback.” But even with that awful name the program was successful. It was a joint effort between the INS and the Mexican government. Special immigration teams were created to quickly process and deport illegal immigrants. One of the reasons it worked is that people who were caught were given to Mexican government agents, who moved them into central Mexico, where they could find jobs. In the first year, more than one million people were sent back.
What we need is the comprehensive program I have outlined that will enable us to get our immigration system under control. It starts with enforcing the existing laws. A country either has laws or it doesn’t. But having laws that we don’t enforce makes no sense to me. And in addition to keeping bad people from coming in, we’ve got to get the criminals out. When you break our laws you get thrown out. It’s simple. Why should we absorb the expense of keeping criminals in prisons? Let their countries of origin deal with the problems they sent us. If they refuse to take them back, we can stop issuing visas to those countries, preventing their citizens from legally visiting the United States.
I also would triple the number of immigration officers we currently employ until the wall is built. We are asking these people to do a job that would be difficult even if they had all the support they need, and they don’t. Think of it this way: Currently there are about 5,000 officers attempting to enforce the existing immigration laws against the more than 11 million illegal aliens. Compare that to the 10,000 members of the Los Angeles Police Department or the 35,000 officers in the New York Police Department. Since 9/11 we have tripled the size of the border patrol but haven’t substantially increased the number of ICE officers—the officers who enforce immigration laws.