Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) outlined his proposal for border security, and said that securing the border would be a top priority when he takes over the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.
Johnson said, “you have to secure the border first…if you continue down this path of deferring action and actually increasing the incentives. That’s what President Obama did with deferred action on childhood admissions. The result of that memorandum was the flooding of the border with all these kids out of Central America. So, we’ve got to stop the flow, that’s the first achievable goal possible.”
He added, “what I think in particular is you combine a robust guest worker program. Because I think that’s what is lost in this discuss and what will be so damaging about President Obama taking unilateral action. If he defers action on deportations, for example, that’s going to be an incentive for illegal immigration. So, what we need to do is we need to eliminate or drastically reduce those incentives for illegal immigration. Of course, the number one incentive is people coming here looking for work for that kind of opportunity. So, let’s have a functioning guest worker program. And, Neil, I’d attach to that prevailing wages, minimum wages so that we’re not incentivizing employers to bring in labor that would depress American wages. It’s just kind of a common sense approach. Let’s eliminate all the incentives for illegal immigration. It’ll really reduce those illegal immigrants down to a trickle, and then it’s going to be a whole lot easier to secure our border.”
Johnson also railed against the planned executive action by the president, stating “it will help poison the well which is not a good thing. It’s not the way you start the discussion, but if anything it’s going to ramp up the need to secure the border because, again, what that will do is it will increase the incentives for people to come here illegally, which makes it even more important than we first secure the border. So, from my standpoint, regardless of what President Obama does we need to pass a border security bill as the first step in solving the, not only illegal immigration problem. But, Neil, it’s a public health and safety issue. It’s a national security issue. So, I think all the uncertainty created by this administration, all the lack of security facing America right now, just points to the fact that number one priority has to be to secure the border.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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