Censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Debating Appropriations, Defunding California High-Speed Rail, Funding LGBTQ+ Projects, Censuring Rep. Brian Mast, Opposing HUD’s Diversity Council, Securing the Border

November 06

In this edition of ChamberTalk:

• Has Rep. Rashida Tlaib said anything about Israel worthy of official censure?

• How should Congress prioritize spending on housing and transportation?

• Is the high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles a good investment?

• Did the House GOP defund housing projects with “LGBTQ+” in their names?

• What did Rep. Brian Mast say that has some calling for his official censure?

• Should HUD have affinity groups organized around race and sexual orientation?

• Could Congress help solve the border crisis by reforming America’s asylum rules?

Quotes of the Day: “Republicans are choosing homophobia over housing, profits over people, cruelty over compassion. Their actions to target, attack, and dehumanize our LGBTQ siblings are nothing more than a show of contempt.” – Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), November 06, 2023  

 “I am not sure we should have a HUD, but if we are going to have a HUD, it should focus on its goals of providing housing or making sure we have affordable housing for the country, not setting aside groups of people who come from wildly different backgrounds and telling them because you are a Pacific Islander, or you are Hispanic, or you are Black you should think in a certain way.” – Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), November 06, 2023 

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA-06), Censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib, H5408+

Key points:

• Rep. Tlaib should be censored for promoting false narratives about Israel

• Rep. Tlaib has called for the destruction of the State of Israel

• Rep. Tlaib has repeatedly displayed unbecoming conduct for a House member

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House. 

The form of the resolution is as follows: 

H. Res. 845 censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. 

Whereas, Israel has existed on its lands for millennia, and the United States played a critical role in returning Israel to those lands in 1948 immediately following the Holocaust and in recognition of its rights to exist as an indelible signal of our solidarity with the Jewish people; 

Whereas, Israel is a critical ally to the American people and to our strategic national security interests in the Middle East; 

Whereas, the people of Israel, including American citizens, were brutally attacked on October 7, 2023, by Hamas; 

Whereas, Representative Rashida Tlaib, within 24 hours of the October 7 barbaric attack on Jewish citizens in the State of Israel, representing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, defended the brutal rapes, murders, beheadings, and kidnappings, including of Americans, by Hamas as justified resistance to the apartheid state; 

Whereas, Representative Tlaib’s October 8 statement claimed that Hamas’ October 7 attack on the Jewish people was partly attributable to the United States security aid provided to Israel which ignores the fact that the Iron Dome, a codeveloped air defense system, saved lives that day by intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli civilian targets; 

Whereas, on October 18, 2023, Representative Tlaib continued to knowingly spread the false narrative that Israel intentionally bombed the Al Ahli Arab hospital on October 17 after United States intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and President Biden assessed with high confidence that Israel did not cause the explosion; 

Whereas, on November 3, 2023, Representative Tlaib published on social media a video containing the phrase ‘‘from the river to the sea’’ which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the State of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; 

Whereas, Representative Tlaib doubled down on this call to violence by falsely describing ‘‘from the river to the sea’’ as ‘‘an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence’’ despite it clearly entailing Israel’s destruction and the denial of its fundamental right to exist; and 

Whereas, Representative Tlaib has repeatedly displayed conduct entirely unbecoming of a Member of the House of Representatives by calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and dangerously promoting false narratives regarding a brutal, large-scale terrorist attack against civilian targets inside the sovereign territory of a major, nonNATO ally while hundreds of Israeli and American hostages remain in terrorist captivity: Now, therefore, be it resolved that Representative Rashida Tlaib be censured. 

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL-05), Opposing Appropriations, H5421

Key points:

• This bill undercuts American values at the expense of low-income families

• Struggling parents should not also have to worry about having safe roofs

• Controversial policy riders also threaten civil rights protections

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this bill, and I yield myself the such time as I may consume. 

As ranking member of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, I take pride in how the work of this subcommittee impacts the day-to-day lives of every person in our country. 

Whether it is working to improve morning commutes to work and to school, fighting against the emissions that come along with moving people and goods from one place to another, or ensuring every American has a safe and stable place to call home, this bill touches the lives of every American. 

Yet, this bill undercuts the fundamental values of the American people, and it does so at the expense of our lowest income families. Rather than continuing investments to upgrade our outdated infrastructure, this bill would weaken the safety of our transportation workers and communities. Instead of reducing congestion on our roads, delays at our airports, and bottlenecks at train stations, this bill would make our daily commutes and travel times longer. 

When we should be investing more resources in safe and stable affordable housing to help the millions of American families that are barely able to get by each month, this bill would eliminate the opportunity for 22,000 working families to secure an affordable mortgage or home to rent. 

All in all, this bill trades the basic needs of everyday Americans for the wants of the wealthiest. This message is made very clear when the bill cuts more than $7 billion for freight, rail, transit, and port infrastructure projects that span all 50 States and the District of Columbia, urban and rural. 

This includes a complete elimination of the Thriving Communities program, striking out any new funding for the popular and bipartisan RAISE and Mega grant programs, gutting funding for light rail, subways, and bus projects by 82 percent, and slashing Amtrak’s Northeast corridor funding by 92 percent; crippling the entire national network from Florida to New York, Texas to California, and in my own district, from Chicago to Arkansas, Montana, and all the way to the Pacific Northwest. 

This bill also eliminates more than $2 billion for housing development and community revitalization programs, based on merit and need, I might add, including pulling back half a billion dollars intended to make housing safer for low-income children and families. 

A safe and stable roof over your child’s head should not be a worry for working parents already struggling to make ends meet. Yet, if enacted into law, this bill would force millions of families, the elderly, and the disabled to make even more difficult decisions each day on whether to live in a home riddled with lead and mold, all while the bill eliminates $25 billion from the Internal Revenue Service for tax oversight for the wealthy, an agency that this bill does not even have jurisdiction over. 

Compounding these concerns are the several controversial policy riders that unnecessarily attack high-speed rail, roll back transportation safety, and call into question civil rights protections for most Americans. 

This bill does not represent what a majority of our constituents have called on us to do, and I fear we have yet to see what additional cuts may be taken within this bill to appease those Members calling for draconian levels of spending, on the backs of everyday Americans.

As such, Mr. Chair, I respectfully cannot support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-01), Defunding California High-Speed Rail, H5408

Key points:

• The proposed rail project is way over budget and behind schedule

• The projections for the benefits of this particular project were oversold

• Congress should spend money on projects that actually help people

Mr. Chairman, one of the components in this legislation has to do with the California high-speed rail line which was originally bonded for $9.9 billion in 2008. The high-speed rail would run from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and the projected total cost was deemed to be around $33 billion that the voters of California were sold when this was placed on the ballot. They would fund $9.9 billion of it. The rest would come from the private sector, seeing that it would be such a great investment and they would make a lot of money at that. The completion date would be 2020. 

As I look at the calendar, we are already 3 years behind the 2020 date. As well, they have been looking for more money because they have fallen way short. The silence has been deafening from the private investors who have not come in on that because they know it is a money loser. 

So what do we have? 

Instead, California keeps coming begging to the Federal Government for more and more funds. They were able to scoop up about $3 billion soon after the Obama stimulus act. 

Do you remember that one, Mr. Chair, back in 2009, look for the shovel-ready projects? 

So they were able to scoop that up. They took that money because the other States who initially took that money gave it back because they weren’t going to make high-speed rail work in their States for anywhere near the right price. 

Here we are, at least 3 years after the initial date, and projections now are somewhere around 2035. They are just now chipping away at the Central Valley portion that would run from about Merced to Bakersfield and end in an almond orchard out there somewhere. 

They are running out of funding, so they keep coming back to the Federal Government for more. They got $3 billion of ARRA funding back then, and they have since passed a carbon tax in California, where they auction off carbon credit rights in order to prop this up even more. They are coming to us once again. They are $28 billion short of just fulfilling the Central Valley portion, not the whole $33 billion that voters were sold many years ago. It is going to end up being about $128 billion at current projections. 

Mr. Chair, we have to stop throwing money down this rathole. Initially, they tried to tell us it would be a million jobs, back when I was in the State legislature. They finally admitted after 3 years that they meant a million job-years. I guess that means 5,000 workers working for 20 years or something like that, or 200 years. Some crazy number would mean a million job-years. 

By the time you would actually take this rail, which is going to be electrified from San Francisco to San Jose, you would have to switch trains. You may well have to switch trains around here somewhere, too. You could take Southwest from San Francisco to L.A., be on the beach, and already have a sunburn before you could actually get off the high-speed rail where you are going. Plus, this is without being subsidized by the taxpayers for the ultraexpensive tickets these are going to be because of the massive overrun in costs. 

Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague, Chairman COLE, for including this language in the bill that would block $3 billion of new spending on this from Federal taxpayers. 

Mr. Chair, instead, why don’t we invest infrastructure money to build the water storage that would grow these crops that all Americans would utilize and enjoy, which they already do since 90 percent are grown in California? 

Let’s invest in good things instead of this dumb high-speed rail project, which is a rathole, a boondoggle, that will not pay off. 

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA-07), Funding LGBTQ+ Projects, H5424

Key points:

• Republicans cut funding for an LGBTQ+ senior housing development

• The GOP only applies the word “freedom” selectively for favored groups

• Republicans choose homophobia over housing and profits over people

Mr. Chair, I oppose this legislation for the draconian cuts and dangerous provisions included in it, but also for the critical funding priorities that were excluded. 

With this appropriations bill, Republicans callously stripped community project funding for The Pryde, an affordable LGBTQ+ senior housing development in the Massachusetts Seventh. 

It would seem for my colleagues across the aisle that the word ‘‘freedom’’ is selectively applied. It does not apply to my bodily autonomy. It does not apply to intellectual freedom for women, African Americans, or our LGBTQ siblings when it comes to our books, and it does not apply to the freedom to love whom you love. 

This project satisfies the committee’s requirements and would meet a critical need in my district at a time when mortgages are skyrocketing and one-third of LGBTQ seniors are living in poverty, and many are forced to re-closet themselves in order to age in community in their twilight years. Unconscionable. 

Republicans are choosing homophobia over housing, profits over people, cruelty over compassion. Their actions to target, attack, and dehumanize our LGBTQ siblings are nothing more than a show of contempt. 

While The Pryde has a pathway for other Federal funding, this act of policy violence contributes to the physical violence that far too many LGBTQ folks experience. 

As the vice chair of the Task Force on Aging and Families, I want my LGBTQ constituents and siblings in the movement to know they deserve safe and affordable housing, they deserve to be seen and loved, and I will never stop fighting for them.

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA-51), Censuring Rep. Brian Mast, H5425+

Key points:

• Rep. Mast has made inflammatory statements about innocent Palestinians

• Refusing to distinguish between innocents and terrorists is unbecoming

• Rep. Mast compared Palestinian civilians to Nazi collaborators

Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intention to raise a question of the privileges of the House. 

The form of the resolution is as follows:

 H. Res. 846 censuring Representative Brian Mast. 

Whereas, Representative Brian Mast served honorably in the United States Army with distinct sacrifice, dedication, and bravery; 

Whereas, Representative Brian Mast has repeatedly made inflammatory statements regarding innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are in harm’s way through no fault of their own as a result of horrific terrorist attacks conducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023; 

Whereas, Representative Brian Mast ’s refusal to distinguish innocent Palestinians from Hamas terrorists is false, misleading, dehumanizing, dangerous, and unbecoming of a Member of Congress; 

Whereas, on October 19, 2023, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee markup, Representative Brian Mast emphatically asserted that any urgently needed humanitarian aid for innocent Palestinian civilians who are in harm’s way through no fault of their own ‘‘should be slowed down’’ and that there should be ‘‘every effort made to slow down any perceived assistance’’; 

Whereas, on October 19, 2023, during the same House Foreign Affairs Committee markup, Representative Brian Mast stated that terrorism is ‘‘absolutely supported by the Palestinian people, from elementary school all the way up into the elderly’’; 

Whereas, on November 1, 2023, during a speech on the House floor, Representative Brian Mast inexcusably compared innocent Palestinian civilians, including children, who are often used as human shields by Hamas terrorists, to Nazi collaborators that perpetrated the Holocaust against the Jewish people; 

Whereas, the horrific crime against humanity perpetrated by Nazis that resulted in the murder of more than 6 million Jews during the Holocaust should never be trivialized; 

Whereas, on November 1, 2023, during a speech on the House floor, Representative Brian Mast stated that ‘‘there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians’’; 

Whereas, on November 2, 2023, Representative Brian Mast again incorrectly conflated innocent Palestinian civilians with Hamas terrorists by tweeting a video of a Hamas leader and asserting that ‘‘a two-state solution means making a state out of these murderous terrorists who are openly calling for the atrocities of October 7 to be committed over and over again’’; 

Whereas, Representative Brian Mast’s repeated conflation of innocent Palestinian civilians with Hamas terrorists sends a message to the world that violence against all Palestinians is legitimate and risks the incitement of brutal attacks across the Middle East region, including settler violence in the West Bank and Hezbollah aggression in northern Israel; 

Whereas, instances of anti-Arab hate and Islamophobia have been on the rise, including the hate-fueled murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old Palestinian American who was stabbed to death in his home in Illinois on October 15, 2023, because of his identity; and 

Whereas, Representative Brian Mast’s comments regarding innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza are dehumanizing, inflammatory, unacceptable, and can be reasonably construed as inviting the targeted murder of innocent Palestinians, fanning the flames of violence in the Middle East, and violating the international rules of war: 

Now, therefore, be it resolved that Brian Mast be censured. 

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06), Opposing HUD’s Diversity Council, H5461+

Key points:

• The HUD Diversity Council and associated affinity groups are divisive

• Research is starting to show that DEI training programs are failures

• HUD should focus on affordable housing and not dividing people

Mr. Chair, this amendment would increase and decrease the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to express concern regarding the inherently divisive nature of the Diversity Council and the associated race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation-based Affinity or Employee Resource Groups. 

Right now, HUD has several different employee affinity groups for different racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientations. These groups include Blacks in Government, for African American HUD employees; HUD AANHPI for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander; and HUD FedQ for LGBT employees. 

The so-called Diversity Council is reflective of this administration’s drive to divide America. In other words, we should go to work every day, and Hispanic employees should be in one room and talk about what they have in common and Black people should be in another room and talk about what they have in common, and the gay people should be in another room and talk about what they have in common. On the face of it, it is a little bit ridiculous. It is divisive by its nature, as is so much of the affirmative action mania that has taken over this country. 

A growing volume of research demonstrates that professional development programs and other trainings in DEI are abject failures. 

There was a piece in The New York Times, by author Jesse Singal, that compared different DEI interventions and noted: ‘‘Racial affinity groups, a popular intervention in which participants are temporarily separated by race so they can talk about race, have perhaps proved even more problematic. They’ve sparked complaints, in places like Jacksonville, Florida, where a principal was temporarily reassigned after she attempted to separate White students from students of color. . . .’’ 

In any event, the purpose of the groups is to tell people: Because your great-grandfather or grandfather came from Cuba, we are going to put you with these other people and you are supposed to share something in common with these people. In other words, people are labeled as being different by their race or by their gender, which on the face of it is such a racist and sexist thing to do. 

I am not sure we should have a HUD, but if we are going to have a HUD, it should focus on its goals of providing housing or making sure we have affordable housing for the country, not setting aside groups of people who come from wildly different backgrounds and telling them because you are a Pacific Islander, or you are Hispanic, or you are Black you should think in a certain way. 

I talked to an employee who has to put up with one of these groups in private at a business. That is exactly what they are. They have some expert diversity person telling people that because you are Black, you should think such and such a way, or because your grandfather is from Cuba, you should think such and such a way, or because your grandmother is from Korea, you should think in such and such a way. It is just anti-American across the board.

Opposing Speech

Mr. Chair, I would comment that I think the gentleman has kind of a bizarre view of the world and I don’t think is accurately analyzing what America is today. 

E pluribus unum, out of many, one, is the way we view America. 

When they define members of these groups, if you are one-quarter American Indian or one-quarter Hispanic or one-quarter Black, you are considered part of a group. To think that these people all have something in common because of where their grandparents were born, maybe grandparents who have long since died, is a little bit offensive on its face. 

If you look at how different groups do in this country, by the way, frequently the most economically successful group today are Asian Americans from India, then from the Philippines. Cubans do better than the average American. 

Like I said, they are kind of bizarre. For the purpose of identifying people or setting aside these groups, you are going to have people classified by one grandparent, supposedly of color, even though nobody under the sun even knows what their ancestry is, is divisive on its face.

I believe the only reason people keep pushing this garbage is they want to divide America and they want to have people who are perfectly happy Americans walk around and being told that because your grandfather was Native American or because your grandfather was Korean, you know—— 

The Acting CHAIR. 

The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), Securing the Border, S5353+

Key points:

• Human smuggling networks are exploiting America’s asylum rules

• People claiming asylum should stay in the first safe country they enter

• We should not allow gang members and domestic abusers into America

Madam President, there has been a lot of conversation about this body—quite frankly, around the Nation—about border security. Rightfully so. It has been top of mind for a lot of cities, States, for a lot of families, school districts, businesses, especially along the border States as they have had a disproportionately large number of people who have come, many of them from all over the world, many of them non-Spanish speakers, not from Central America and South America but literally from everywhere. 

The Wall Street Journal had a piece just this weekend where it detailed how hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world are making their way to the southwest border which is causing a surge in apprehensions, but it is especially people from Asia and Africa. 

Human smuggling networks, it says, are widening their reach around the globe. 

Arrests at the Southwest border of migrants from China, India and other distant countries, including Mauritania and Senegal, tripled to 214,000 during the fiscal year that ended in September. 

That was up from 70,000 just the year before. That is tripling that number. 

What is happening is on our southern border, the cartels are finding it more profitable to be able to move people in from farther. So they are organizing flights for people to go through seven or eight countries to be able to then arrive in Mexico, and they are moving them through in what they affectionately call ‘‘donkey flights’’ to be able to reach farther for the cartels to be able to make more and to exploit our laws. 

America has always been open to people and immigration. We are a nation of legal immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. And what we are finding at this stage is those laws are being exploited and being exploited dramatically. Let me give you just an example. There has been no change in the asylum law since 2010, but, in 2010, we had 21,000 people request asylum on our southern border for the year—21,000 the entire year of 2010. That wasn’t an anomaly. That was about a normal amount of people requesting asylum on our southwest border. Now, we have that many requests of asylum on our southwest border every 3 days. So it has gone from 21,000 in a year to now every 3 days. 

Everyone knows this is an issue. Last week, Secretary Mayorkas was in front of the Homeland Security Committee, and I asked him about this in a public hearing. I asked him whether there were policy changes that were needed. 

His answer was very direct. He said: 

Yes, policy changes are needed. 

I asked him specifically on reforming the asylum system, knowing that it has been exploited. His exact answer was: 

The asylum system needs to be reformed from top to bottom. 

I asked him about the issue of withholding of removal, which now about 55 percent of the people who were released into the country were actually released under something called withholding of removal. I asked him about that. His response was: 

[Withholding of removal and] the companion element is the convention against torture our system needs to be able to work efficiently and expeditiously while not compromising due process. 

I asked him about repatriating individuals in difficult countries that are called recalcitrants. He said: 

Our ability to repatriate individuals to the countries of origin when they do not qualify for relief under our laws is of vital importance. 

Why am I bringing this up? Because it is not just me saying we need to reform the asylum process. The head of Homeland Security is saying we need to reform this process. And it is just not the head of Homeland Security saying we need to reform the asylum process. It is the administration. 

Two weeks ago, the administration requested additional dollars for the border to be able to put in the supplemental. They asked for funding for Israel, for Ukraine, for Taiwan, and for border security. But then, after they put that request out, Homeland Security released an op-ed in the Washington Post, which said this: 

To be clear, this supplemental funding is like a tourniquet—urgently needed and critical in the short-term, but not a long-term solution to a deep-seated problem. Our national immigration laws, having gone through major revisions by Congress in 1996, are severely out-of-date, and our system is completely broken. On this, everyone agrees. 

The administration itself, just this past March, put out a release dealing with what they call ‘‘circumvention of lawful pathways.’’ In it, they did a Q&A back and forth to ask people questions on how it would function. This is one of the answers from the administration talking about what is happening currently at our border. They said: 

[Such a high rate of migration] risks overwhelming the Department’s ability to effectively process, detain, and remove, as appropriate, the migrants encountered. This would put an enormous strain on already strained resources, risk overcrowding in already crowded [U.S. Border Patrol] stations and border [ports of entry] in ways that pose significant health and safety concerns, and create a situation in which large numbers of migrants—only a small portion of whom are likely to be granted asylum—are subject to extreme exploitation . . . by the networks that support their movements north. 

I would be glad to have written that myself. 

The administration sees the same thing that everyone else who looks at the border sees. If you take an honest assessment of what is happening, our system is being exploited by cartels, and people from around the world are answering ads that are on TikTok and messaging services saying: I can get you into the United States if you pay me enough money. 

That is why 45,000 people from India came last year requesting asylum in the United States—because it is easier to get in and to pay the cartels than it is to go through the legal process. We are incentivizing illegal activity, and this body knows it. 

We are a nation of laws. We should prioritize the law. We should be open to legal immigration, but we should be opposed to illegal immigration and what is happening to enrich deadly, dangerous criminal cartels in northern Mexico. 

Again, the administration in their public statement made this statement just a few months ago: 

The current asylum system—in which most migrants who are initially deemed eligible to pursue their claims ultimately are not granted asylum in the subsequent [immigration court] proceedings—has contributed to a growing backlog of cases awaiting review by asylum officers and immigration judges. 

What are they saying? The system is broken because it is packed with people who do not actually qualify for asylum coming in to flood the system and request asylum. 

We all see the challenge. Now the question is, Are we going to do something about it? 

Republicans in the Senate, this past weekend, released a very simple proposal to deal with what we all know are the problems—closing the loopholes in the law that have been exploited. And, yes, it deals with asylum, and, yes, it deals with withholding because those are the areas that are being exploited. We see it. The administration sees it. The question is, Do Democrat Senators see it? That is really the issue now. Everyone else seems to see it and admit to it. 

So what did we propose? We proposed some pretty straightforward things. One is what is called ‘‘safe third country’’ transit. These are individuals like the 45,000 people who came from India last year. They fly through four or five countries—including dangerous countries like France—to be able to land here and to be able to cross the border and say: I need to find asylum. 

Almost everyone sees that as an exploitation, and it is not just us. There is almost no other country that does what we do. This whole issue about picking and choosing where I want to request asylum is not how asylum really works. You see, asylum under international law—and most people in this body know it—‘‘asylum’’ and ‘‘refugee’’ have the same definition under international law. A refugee doesn’t pick nine different countries and then pick the one that they want. They flee to the next safe place. That is the same international rule for asylum. 

If you were to request asylum right now in Canada—cross the border into Canada and request asylum—do you know what is the first question they would ask you? The first question they would ask you is: Did you just cross from the United States? 

If you answered yes, they would then say: Did you request asylum there, and were you denied? 

If they say, ‘‘I didn’t request asylum,’’ Canada will turn you right back around. 

And that is not just Canada. That is most of the EU. If you went to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK—if you went to any of them, they would ask: What country did you transit through before you got here, and did you request and were you denied asylum before you came in? If you said, ‘‘I didn’t request asylum in the places I transited from,’’ they would turn you around because that is not an unreasonable thing. 

When you go through five other countries and then request asylum in the last one, you are actually trying to emigrate to that country, not requesting asylum under international law. You are trying to pick the place. 

And, by the way, I don’t blame them for picking America. It is the greatest country in the world. But that is economic opportunity, that is not asylum. 

So the question is, Can we incentivize those individuals to not try to run a loophole through our system but to actually go through the legal process and request to come here as a legal immigrant? 

We love to see people from all over the world, as we always have, come into the United States legally, just not exploiting a loophole in the asylum law. That is the wrong way to be able to do it. 

The bill that Republicans have proposed also deals with streamlining the process. Right now, it can take up to 10 years just to get a hearing with an immigration judge under a standard that most people know, and the administration has admitted, people won’t qualify for asylum at the end. 

Why is that? Because, when you come across the border, you encounter Border Patrol or CBP or an asylum officer. They do an initial screening, and the screening is far lower than the actual standard. So you may qualify under the screening standard, but everyone knows you are not going to actually qualify for the actual standard for asylum. 

So there are two simple things that can be done here. One is to make the screening standard equal to the actual standard—to say: We all know this is what you have got to achieve. So screen for that. Is it reasonable? Is it even a 51-percent chance that you are going to get to that standard? If it is, then you come in. If you are not, then you are screened out. 

The second is that we actually have three different screenings. Many people don’t know this. We screen for asylum, and then we separately screen for what is called withholding, and we separately screen for Convention against Torture. Those three different screenings are made at three different times—sometimes across a decade of time. Everyone knows, if you don’t qualify for the first one, you are likely not going to qualify for the other two, either. But you can request it, and you can run that loophole, and then you are in the United States. And the cartels literally teach people exactly what to say in their last step so that they can exploit that loophole. 

So let’s actually have a screening standard that is the same standard you have to get to, and let’s screen for all three of those things at the same time. That actually sounds like government efficiency. I know we are not good at that as a nation, but, if we screen all three of those things at the same time, it allows somebody to have due process. We don’t want someone not to have due process. If someone is a victim of torture, we want to make sure they have an opportunity to go through that process. But why wouldn’t we go through all three of those at the same time, rather than across 10 years, waiting for multiple different hearings? 

Republicans also proposed something pretty simple. Right now, the law says that if you committed a felony, then you are not eligible for asylum. But the problem with that is, there are some crimes that are not considered a felony at the earliest days, and we are still allowing them in. 

Let me give you a for instance. What if you had three DUIs? What if you are dealing meth? What if you are a member of a gang and you show it? What if you have a domestic violence conviction? 

If you have a domestic violence conviction, you can’t own a firearm in America, but you could get asylum in America. We literally invite people to be able to come in whom we already know have domestic violence convictions. 

So we are making it pretty simple. We are saying: Hey, listen, let’s keep the standard where it is for a felony, but let’s actually prevent the loopholes. 

Why would we invite someone into the country whom we know has had multiple DUI convictions? Why would we do that? It is not safe for our streets. 

Do any one of you want to sit down with a dad and say: Your daughter was killed in a DUI because we were loose on our asylum rules? I would assume not. 

We are not asking for something extreme. Again, it is typical for many places around the world that this is how it would be done. All we are trying to do is to be able to fix the loopholes and to be able to secure our Nation. 

This proposal we put forward keeps families together. I know there is going to be an immediate thing that this is about separating families at the border. Actually, no, it is very explicit that if families travel together, families stay together for their hearing, to be able to make sure that we are protecting that family. But we are also raising a simple question. We all know and we have all seen the stories, and for those of us who have gone to the border, we have seen it with our own eyes: children traveling with adults that—we are all parents, and we can see clear enough that is not really your child—where children are literally used as a free pass to be able to get into the country and to be able to expedite. 

We would like to be able to protect those children and make sure children are actually not used to be a free pass into the country. There is a way to be able to prevent that and to be able to protect those families that are actually real families at the same time. 

We do a couple other things. We also raise just a very simple statement about the Border Patrol. Many people here may or may not know, but the Border Patrol can’t actually get overtime if you are at a certain level. If you are other Federal law enforcement, you do get overtime. But if you are Border Patrol, you do not. 

So these guys may work 100 hours for 2 weeks, but for the additional hours they are working, they don’t actually get overtime pay. That is not right. 

So what happens is, Border Patrol has a hard time with retention, not just because the job is incredibly difficult but, once they get to a certain level, their families encourage them and say: Why don’t we do another Federal law enforcement somewhere else— still stay in Federal law enforcement, but we can actually earn overtime pay at that point rather than actually being punished for staying in the Border Patrol and trying to be able to serve? 

Why don’t we fix that? 

Why don’t we fix some of the training issues that have come up? 

Why don’t we actually try to respond to those things? 

Why don’t we provide the opportunity for the Biden administration to be able to lay out a strategy for how to secure the border? We are not writing it. Just give them the opportunity to be able to do it. 

And here is one thing that has been interesting that I have already heard pushback from. We have a section where we talk about the border wall. What is interesting is, what we have actually proposed is we actually fulfill the border wall portion that President Biden has already said he is going to do. We actually just want to put it in writing so the President can’t just say orally, ‘‘I want to do this.’’ We have to actually put it in writing to be able to do it. That is a reasonable thing to be able to do. 

Listen, we are not asking for crazy stuff. We are asking for what Americans are asking for: Just secure the border. We want to be a nation that welcomes immigrants, but we also want to be a nation that honors the law. We can do both. That is what we are setting in front of this body—to say: When we are talking about the supplemental, let’s actually talk about not just securing Israel and securing Ukraine and securing Taiwan; let’s also secure the United States of America. 

With that, I yield the floor.