Steve Pearce: “I would like to amend this bill in order to make our borders more secure. I am one of the Members who lives on a border…”

“I would like to amend this bill in order to make our borders more secure. I am one of the Members who lives on a border and on the southern border. In New Mexico we experience many of the problems of having a porous border. We find drugs, human trafficking, and other problems at the border because of our failure to secure the border, and many of our residents are affected daily. With an overwhelming amount of funding and preexisting TSA full-time employees, I think it is proper for us to divert funding from TSA to border security. The TSA, and I have heard my constituents call it 'thousands standing around,' seems to have plenty of people to do its work, and yet we do not have enough people to put on the border. We are simply requesting a move of less than 3 percent of the funds. Less than 3 percent of an agency, and every single American who travels on airlines understands the number of people they see standing around when they walk through the checkpoints. We are asking that less than 3 percent of that money be sent over to where we can use it along the borders. Our calculation is that we can hire over 4,000 new people to help us secure the southern border of the United States. CBO recognizes the value of this and scores this as a $43 million savings. We would like to draw that to the attention of the body. Every year, between 500,000 and 1 million illegal immigrants come into the United States. We need more people to help on the southern border.”