GOP Immigration Negotiator: We Have to Be Able to Turn Away Those Who Don’t Qualify for Asylum

On Tuesday’s edition of CBS’s “America Decides,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), one of the Senators involved in talks about the immigration provisions in the spending package stated that one crucial issue is handling asylum applicants and that we have to get to a position where “we get to an orderly process that we can actually screen people at the border” and “If they should qualify for asylum, they come into our country to be able to do that. And if [they] don’t, we do the same thing that we’ve done for decades, and that’s turn them around. And so, we’ve just got to find what authorities are necessary to be able to do that and to come to that agreement.”

Lankford stated, “[A] key area right now that DHS has asked for for a long time has been how do we actually have the authorities that we need to be able to actually manage our own border. Right now, they’re screening about 500 people a day coming across our border and releasing about 7,000 into the country, saying, we’ll get to you later. That line for the later is now into the four to eight years now to actually get to later, if we ever get to them at all. … So, we’ve got to be able to resolve this.  … Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, cities all over the country are saying, we’ve got thousands of people here with no jobs, no plans, no anything else. We can’t manage all of this. And so, whether it’s a red state or blue state, people are asking around the country, how do we get to an orderly process that we can actually screen people at the border? If they should qualify for asylum, they come into our country to be able to do that. And if [they] don’t, we do the same thing that we’ve done for decades, and that’s turn them around. And so, we’ve just got to find what authorities are necessary to be able to do that and to come to that agreement.”

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