Sam Farr: “Thank you, Madam Ranking Chair, for yielding. I rise, Madam Speaker, on this bill with great concern. I am bringing a…”

“Thank you, Madam Ranking Chair, for yielding. I rise, Madam Speaker, on this bill with great concern. I am bringing a lot of passion to this debate because I lived in the barrios like the ones the children are coming from when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Latin America, very violent barrios. Look, this is not a border crisis. It is not a border security issue. This is a humanitarian crisis, and it is caused by problems on both sides of the border. Our country has a lot at fault here because we have not addressed comprehensive immigration reform, which means we have 11 million people living in the United States undocumented. They are essentially incarcerated in this country. They are not allowed to go home because the minute they go home and try to get back to the United States, they get arrested, and they are not allowed to ever return, or they are barred for 10 years from returning. So what happens, Madam Speaker? They have been living here for years and years. They have children that they left because there were job opportunities here, and those children are now living in places that are really dangerous, and all of a sudden, yeah, things have changed. They have got to get out. These countries are ranked number one, four, and five of the highest murder rates in the world. They leave them because there are real, serious humanitarian crises. They are showing up on our border. They are not sneaking across the border.…”