[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]







                     THE COST OF THE BORDER CRISIS
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                                HEARING

                               before the

                        COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

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             HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 8, 2024

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                           Serial No. 118-13

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           Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget







    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]




































                     THE COST OF THE BORDER CRISIS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                        COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

             HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 8, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-13

                               __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget









    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]










                       Available on the Internet:
                            www.govinfo.gov
                            
                            
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                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
                 
55-834                    WASHINGTON : 2025 
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                        COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

                  JODEY C. ARRINGTON, Texas, Chairman
RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina         BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania,
TOM McCLINTOCK, California             Ranking Member
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin            JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania          EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas            DANIEL T. KILDEE, Michigan
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia    SCOTT H. PETERS, California
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  BARBARA LEE, California
BOB GOOD, Virginia                   LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
JACK BERGMAN, Michigan               JIMMY PANETTA, California
A. DREW FERGUSON IV, Georgia         JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
CHIP ROY, Texas                      SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
BLAKE D. MOORE, Utah                 ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota,
DAVID G. VALADAO, California           Vice Ranking Member
RON ESTES, Kansas                    DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan            BECCA BALINT, Vermont
MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota        ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, 
RUDY YAKYM III, Indiana                  Virginia
JOSH BRECHEEN, Oklahoma              ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina

                           Professional Staff

                      Gary Andres, Staff Director
                  Greg Waring, Minority Staff Director
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                            C O N T E N T S

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                                                                   Page
Hearing held in Washington, D.C., May 8, 2024....................     1
    Hon. Jodey C. Arrington, Chairman, Committee on the Budget...     1
        Prepared Statement of....................................     4
    Hon. Brendan F. Boyle, Ranking Member, Committee on the 
      Budget.....................................................     6
        Prepared Statement of....................................     8
    Ms. Julie Kirchner, Executive Director, Federation for 
      American Immigration Reform................................    11
        Prepared Statement of....................................    13
    Mr. Ammon Blair, Senior Fellow, Texas Public Policy 
      Foundation's ``Secure and Sovereign Texas'' Initiative.....   107
        Prepared Statement of....................................   109
    Mr. Ammon Blair, Senior Fellow, Texas Public Policy 
      Foundation's ``Secure and Sovereign Texas'' Initiative, 
      submissions for the record.................................   130
    Mr. Brent Smith, Kinney County Attorney, Texas...............   460
        Prepared Statement of....................................   462
    Mr. Brent Smith, Kinney County Attorney, Texas, submission 
      for the record.............................................   464
    Mr. David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies, Cato 
      Institute..................................................   465
        Prepared Statement of....................................   467
    Hon. Glenn Grothman, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   485
    Hon. Glenn Grothman, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   533
    Hon. Bob Good, Member, Committee on the Budget, submission 
      for the record.............................................   541
    Hon. Jack Bergman, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   548
    Hon. Rudy Yakym III, Member, Committee on the Budget, 
      submission for the record..................................   565
    Hon. Ilhan Omar, Vice Ranking Member, Committee on the 
      Budget, submission for the record..........................   570
    Hon. Chip Roy, Member, Committee on the Budget, submission 
      for the record.............................................   579
    Hon. Jodey C. Arrington, Chairman, Committee on the Budget, 
      submissions for the record.................................   645
    Questions submitted for the record...........................   743
    Answers submitted for the record.............................   745

 
                     THE COST OF THE BORDER CRISIS

                              ----------                              


                         WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2024

                          House of Representatives,
                                   Committee on the Budget,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in Room 
210, Cannon Building, Hon. Jodey Arrington [Chairman of the 
Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Arrington, McClintock, Grothman, 
Smucker, Carter, Cline, Good, Bergman, Roy, Moore, Valadao, 
Estes, McClain, Fischbach, Yakym, Brecheen, Edwards, Boyle, 
Schakowsky, Kildee, Peters, Doggett, Panetta, Omar, Balint, and 
Espaillat.
    Chairman Arrington. This hearing will come to order. 
Welcome to the Committee on the Budget's hearing on the cost of 
the current border crisis. I would like to welcome our panel of 
expert witnesses, Ms. Julie Kirchner, the Executive Director of 
the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Mr. Ammon 
Blair, Senior Fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation's 
``Secure and Sovereign Texas'' Initiative. Mr. Brent Smith from 
Kinney County. He's the Kinney County Attorney there in West 
Texas. It shares 17 miles of border with Mexico located between 
Del Rio and Eagle Pass for those of you who are familiar with 
the great State of Texas, and then of course, we have Mr. David 
Bier, the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato 
Institute. Lady, gentlemen, welcome to the hearing.
    I am going to make an opening statement. I yield as much 
time as I may need. I will try to just talk through this a 
little bit. The American people, I think, at this point are as 
familiar on this issue as any with respect to the wide-open 
borders in the United States and the epic humanitarian disaster 
that has ensued as a result, and the greatest national security 
threat to the American people is posed by these open borders.
    So, the social cost, I think, has been well in front of the 
American people consistently, but I don't think we have talked 
enough about the financial burden to taxpayers and the fiscal 
impact. FAIR has done a great job. I have seen studies that 
suggest this cost is upward of $400 billion. Their cost 
estimate is at $150 billion. The lion's share of that cost is 
borne by state and local governments, and friends, state and 
local governments cannot borrow or print money like the Federal 
Government, and so, they are having to balance their budgets by 
either absorbing this cost through raising taxes or they are 
having to cut services to their citizens. The $150 billion, 
when you look at the 22 million people that are estimated to be 
in this country illegally comes out to about $9,000, tax 
dollars per illegal immigrant.
    So, I want you to listen. I want everybody to listen to 
this stat, $9,000 roughly per illegal immigrant that taxpayers 
are fronting. That is more than we spend per Medicaid 
beneficiary. That is more than we spend on the most vulnerable 
American citizen for their health care. That is more than we 
spend for our heroes, our veterans in the way of military 
retirement benefits. So, I think for everyone, this should be 
unacceptable. I believe it is quite avoidable, but this is the 
real and significant, and at the state and local levels, 
especially, unsustainable cost of the current border crisis.
    Texas, in my home state alone, we have spent over $13 
billion which is about $4,500 per illegal immigrant in Texas. 
Just to give you an example or a sample list of services we are 
providing for people who are here illegally, it is about $3 
billion extra dollars for Head Start. At the state level, it is 
$70 billion across the United States for public education, and 
states have a very difficult time prioritizing and investing in 
public education because of the cost of health care, and now 
the cost of illegal immigration. You look at criminal justice, 
it is about $12 billion extra in criminal justice costs across 
the United States, tens of billions of dollars in uncompensated 
care at hospitals.
    We talk all the time as a Committee about how health care 
costs are driving our deficits and national debt. Medicare 
alone is a trillion dollars, and that will double over the next 
ten years, and we have got tremendous cost, and that is not to 
even consider the crowding out of our citizens who are in need 
for these spaces and hospitals, seats for our students in their 
schools. So, it is real and we have quantified it, and I am 
grateful for the work of FAIR.
    I think I would say at a time when we have record deficits, 
the highest level of indebtedness in our Nation's history, 
surpassing a time of war when we are in relative peace and 
prosperity, at a time when our fellow Americans are spending 
now about $1,300 more a month because of the inflation tax, 
where we are looking at an economy teetering on recession, we 
have seen inflation uptick the last month. We saw the first 
quarter GDP not even get half of its expectation. I am 
concerned about it, but then you are going to add $150 billion 
in unnecessary cost because of illegal immigration.
    Now, let me say something, and I am done about CBO. CBO 
talks about the benefits of immigration, and let me be clear. 
We need legal immigration. Legal immigration is a hallmark of 
the American experiment, the new blood, hungry for opportunity 
and freedom and the American dream. There is nothing more 
American than that. There is nothing more un-American than 
lawlessness and chaos and the lack of respect for rule of law. 
That is all I am trying to contrast here, but here's what CBO 
does, and it ticks me off, actually. They take into 
consideration some of the benefits of illegal immigration in 
terms of jobs filled and revenue as a result, and some taxes 
paid, by the way. That $150 billion is the net after we back 
out about $30 billion in taxes. What I would like to submit to 
my colleagues is that CBO, in order to do their job, to provide 
the full picture and accurate information for us as lawmakers, 
to make the decisions and value judgments, is to have the full 
net cost, and that is, that $150 billion is in no CBO analysis 
whatsoever, but the benefits are. Seems a little odd to me, 
seems biased to me, and I am going to make sure as long as I am 
Chairman, that that full picture is represented so my Democrat 
colleagues and my Republican colleagues and us as a Committee 
can just deal with the facts and make decisions, and act 
accordingly.
    With that, I appreciate you, again, witnesses, taking time 
to provide your counsel and insight at this very important 
hearing, and I am going to turn it over to my friend and 
Ranking Member, Mr. Boyle.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Arrington follows:]

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    Mr. Boyle. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman, and like you, I 
thank the witnesses for taking time to be here today out of 
your busy schedules. I want to do a few things in my opening 
remarks. First is to make clear how proud I am that we are, as 
President Kennedy once wrote in his book, a nation of 
immigrants. More than 90 percent of the American people, myself 
included, are descendants of immigrants. In my case, it is my 
father who came here from Ireland when he was 19 years old, 
looking for economic opportunity, as well as my mother's 
parents who sailed here on the SS George Washington right after 
the second World War. Their story is like millions and millions 
of American families who worked hard, played by the rules, and 
in doing so were able to provide more opportunities for their 
children than they had themselves. My family has been able to 
live the American dream.
    And you know, if you go back to the very beginning of the 
nation, almost 250 years ago in my district at Independence 
Hall in Philadelphia, if at that time you had said, you know, 
we are going to build a new country, but we are not going to 
build it of the elite or the affluent of Europe or any great 
power, no, this new country on this continent is going to be 
comprised by those who are on the bottom rungs of the ladder in 
societies where they come from, and we are also going to add on 
to that slavery and build the nation with slaves and then 
descendants of slaves, and oh, by the way, that nation is going 
to go on to become the wealthiest, most powerful and greatest 
nation in the history of the planet. Would you really have 
believed if one of our founders said that to you in the late 
18th century? But that is who we are as Americans.
    And I know there is a lot of rhetoric going around right 
now about immigrants and I am not accusing the Chair of 
participating in this, but there are some who irresponsibly 
delve into the bashing of immigrants. Unfortunately, that has 
also been around as long as the American Republic. Well, it was 
wrong then and it is wrong now.
    So, to be clear, I am proud that we are a nation of 
immigrants. As the Congressional Budget Office has verified, 
immigration will add $7 trillion to our economy and lead to an 
additional $1 trillion in tax revenue over the next decade. 
Those countries and economies that are shrinking, particularly 
in Western Europe, wish they had the benefit of America's 
immigrants. It is sometimes said that America has an 
immigration problem. The countries that have an immigration 
problem are those countries to which no one wants to go. 
America does not have an immigration problem.
    We do, however, let me be clear, currently have a real 
challenge on our southern border. No, this did not begin in 
this administration or the last several years. It actually 
began about 20 years ago during the George W. Bush 
Administration. 2004/2005 is when we first began to see a real 
surge at the southern border. Our peak year before COVID was 
2019, a fact that some like to forget. Of course, once we hit 
March 2020, we had a dramatic drop of crossings at our southern 
border. Once the pandemic ended and America's economic, robust 
economy returned we have seen that surge reoccur.
    So, we admit, there is bipartisan agreement, I think 
widespread agreement across America, we have a particular 
problem at our southern border of illegal crossings. Now, some 
months ago, actually last September, President Biden and Senate 
Democrats worked with Senate Republicans, and over months and 
months of negotiations that were very difficult, in good faith, 
a bipartisan agreement was reached. It would have been the 
toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in two 
generations. It would have provided $20 billion for border 
security, hired 1500 new CBP officers, and funded more than 100 
additional immigration judges. That way, those claiming asylum 
could have had their cases heard right there, and the 
overwhelming majority of asylum cases tend to be rejected, and 
in those cases, those folks would have been returned to their 
country of origin.
    It also would have provided the machinery that we need for 
better detection of fentanyl at ports of entry, a specific 
concern of mine. It would have given the President new 
authority to go after fentanyl traffickers, some of the worst 
of the worst, and it would have expanded legal pathways for 
migrants to work and support their families, those who are 
following the rules.
    But what happened? Unfortunately, more than a few 
Republicans were more concerned with doing Donald Trump's 
bidding than they were concerned about fixing the problem. 
Donald Trump didn't want the border fixed because he wanted the 
issue. Now, don't take my word for it. Let us see what the 
leader of the Senate Republicans said, and I will quote him. 
That is Mitch McConnell. He said, ``Trump didn't seem to want 
us to do anything at all.'' Another Republican Senator said 
Trump, ``Doesn't want us to solve the border problem because he 
wants to blame Biden for it.''
    So, to quickly recap, step one, Republicans demanded a 
border deal. Step two, they negotiated a border deal. Step 
three, when Trump ordered them to, they killed that border 
deal, and finally, step four, here we are holding a hearing 
about how bad the border is. It is time to stop playing 
politics with this very important issue. Let us actually, 
finally get back to a bipartisan solution to fix this American 
challenge, and with that, I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Ranking Member Boyle follows:]

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    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania, and in the interest of time, if any other Member 
has an opening statement, I ask you to submit it for the 
record. We will hold the record open to the end of the day to 
accommodate those Members who may not yet have prepared written 
statements.
    Once again, I would like to thank the witnesses for their 
time. The Committee has received your written statements. They 
will be made part of the formal record. You will each have five 
minutes to deliver your oral remarks. Ms. Kirchner, I yield 
five minutes to you.

STATEMENT OF JULIE KIRCHNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FEDERATION FOR 
                  AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM

    Ms. Kirchner. Thank you. Chairman Arrington, Members of the 
Committee, thank you for inviting me to speak today on the 
impact the border crisis is having on our nation. My name is 
Julie Kirschner, and I am the Executive Director of FAIR, the 
Federation for American Immigration Reform. With 45 years of 
experience and expertise, FAIR is a national nonprofit that 
seeks to educate Americans on the impact of mass immigration 
and to advocate for policies that serve our national interests.
    For over three years now, Americans have been watching an 
unprecedented crisis unfold at our borders. So many illegal 
aliens are arriving that our immigration system is beginning to 
collapse under its own weight. The chaos is imposing record 
costs on Americans. Last year, FAIR published a report entitled 
the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States 
Taxpayers. The study strives to illustrate the myriad of ways 
Americans pay for illegal immigration.
    Our estimate, which we believe is a conservative one, is 
that Americans now pay $150.7 billion annually due to illegal 
immigration. This figure represents a net cost. In terms of 
gross expenditures, we estimate that Americans pay $182 
billion. Then, approximately $31 billion is received in taxes 
from illegal aliens, only 17 percent of the costs they create.
    The high cost of illegal immigration is due to several 
factors. First, because illegal aliens usually have low 
incomes, those who do pay taxes pay little, if anything. 
Second, illegal aliens incur significant costs to the taxpayer 
on a daily basis because public services such as policing, K-12 
education, and emergency services are provided universally. 
Further, due to loose eligibility criteria, intentional and 
otherwise, many illegal aliens receive benefits from Federal 
and state programs despite the fact that they have no legal 
status.
    The majority of costs are incurred at the state and local 
level. The predominant cost for states is K-12 education. We 
estimate it costs Americans roughly $70 billion each year to 
educate children who either have no legal status or who are the 
U.S. born children of illegal aliens. The second highest cost 
to states is medical expenditures, which we estimate to be 
approximately $22 billion annually.
    The impact of the border crisis is being felt acutely in 
both border states and destination states. We can look to New 
York City as a good example where over 180,000 migrants have 
settled and 30,000 migrant children have enrolled in New York 
City public schools. Mayor Eric Adams now anticipates the 
border crisis will cost $10.6 billion through the summer of 
2025. The situation is being replicated in cities across the 
country, and these local costs for food and shelter and other 
costs that are not well documented are not incorporated into 
our report. This means that taxpayers are paying much more than 
we estimate.
    But Americans need not be paying billions of dollars as a 
result of illegal immigration. This is a manmade crisis. From 
the moment the Biden Administration took office, it tore down 
all programs and policies designed to deter illegal immigration 
and began to release illegal aliens en masse. The Biden 
Administration has also proactively taken steps to help illegal 
aliens obtain benefits. This has been accomplished through a 
variety of means, but in particular, through illegal parole 
programs and the retroactive granting of temporary protected 
status.
    Let us examine the administration's parole program for 
Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Many people 
don't realize that this program has an immediate and 
significant cost to taxpayers. Upon being paroled into the 
United States, these aliens, who have no legal status, 
immediately become eligible for work permits, Social Security 
numbers, Obamacare, and will be able to attain valuable tax 
credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the additional 
Child Tax Credit.
    On top of that, parolees are eligible for Federal benefits 
on the same terms as legal permanent residents. That means 
after a five-year waiting period, they may receive benefits 
under all the major Federal benefits programs: Medicaid, Social 
Security, Supplemental Security Income, Food Stamps, Temporary 
Assistance for Needy Families, and Federal Student Aid, and 
that is assuming they otherwise qualify. For Cubans and 
Haitians, however, the five-year waiting period is waived, 
waived by statute. So, that means that Cubans and Haitian 
nationals brought to the U.S. through the President's parole 
program are immediately eligible to receive all Federal 
benefits. This happens before they even file a tax return and 
despite the fact that they have no legal status.
    Members of the Committee, over the past three years, 
between nine to ten million illegal aliens have been 
encountered at our borders. On top of that, approximately 1.8 
million illegal aliens are counted as gotaways, and there is no 
end in sight.
    If we do not reverse course now, if we do not change our 
current policies, the numbers will only grow and the costs will 
only increase.
    Thank you, sir.
    [The information follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    
    Chairman Arrington. Thank you, Ms. Kirchner. Now, we will 
yield five minutes to Mr. Blair for his opening statement.

 STATEMENT OF AMMON BLAIR, SENIOR FELLOW, TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY 
     FOUNDATION'S ``SECURE AND SOVEREIGN TEXAS'' INITIATIVE

    Mr. Blair. All right. Dear Chairman Arrington, Ranking 
Member Boyle, and distinguished Members of the Committee, good 
morning and thank you for inviting me to testify before you.
    As a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, I 
bring 22 years of military experience and a deep understanding 
of border security, for my time in the Army and U.S. Border 
Patrol. My roles have ranged from Infantry Officer in Operation 
Lone Star, to Collateral Intelligence Agent, and also Marine 
Border Patrol agent.
    Today, we stand at a pivotal moment in the history of 
Texas, facing unprecedented challenges that threaten the very 
fabric of our state and nation. Texas shares 1,254 miles of 
border with a failing state, besieged by an authoritarian 
regime that not only sponsors terrorism, but also allows 
cartels to wield a spectrum of warfare, undermining the rule of 
law and jeopardizing the safety of our communities.
    The Mexican cartels are foreign terrorist organizations and 
have extended their nefarious operations beyond the border, 
infiltrating every major city and many towns across Texas. The 
threats we face are not isolated. They are intricately linked 
to global adversaries, including state actors like China, 
Russia, and Iran, and non-state entities such as Hezbollah, 
Hamas, MS-13, and Tren de Aragua. For example, the Chinese 
Communist Party has weaponized the Mexican cartels and used 
them as proxies in their drug warfare on American society. The 
CCP is supplying the cartels with precursor chemicals and 
synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. The Mexican cartels have 
built a silk road from Mexico across the border and into every 
state, county, and community in the United States, enabling the 
CCP's insidious strategy of drug warfare.
    The Federal Government's deliberate inaction to counter the 
national security threats has not only exacerbated the border 
crisis, but the Federal Government is actively weaponizing mass 
migration and disinformation to erode the very foundations of 
our sovereignty and stability. This manufactured humanitarian 
catastrophe has overwhelmed the Federal agencies, leaving them 
unable to fulfill their primary mandate of protecting the 
American people.
    As a result, Texas has been left to fend for itself against 
an unrelenting invasion of complex and evolving threats that 
threaten the fabric of our society. The Federal Government has 
broken the compact between the United States and the states. 
The Executive Branch has a constitutional duty to enforce 
Federal laws protecting states, but it has failed to do so. The 
Preamble of the Constitution outlines the chief responsibility 
of the Federal Government to ensure domestic tranquility and 
provide for the common defense. Article IV, Section 4 provides 
``the United States shall guarantee to every State in this 
Union a Republican Form of Government and shall protect each of 
them against an Invasion.''
    Despite these clear mandates, the Biden Administration has 
not only failed to secure our borders, but has actively 
undermined the efforts of states, like Texas, to protect their 
citizens. The administration's unlawful and unconstitutional 
commitment to the U.N.'s global compact for safe, orderly, and 
regular migration prioritizes humane migration over the rule of 
law.
    Recently, a total of more than $7.4 billion in U.S. tax 
dollars has been allocated to the State Department for 
Migration and Refugee Assistance in Fiscal Year 2024. This 
staggering sum highlights the administration's misplaced 
priorities, focusing on facilitating mass migration rather than 
securing our borders and protecting our citizens, all funded by 
Congress.
    The Department of Homeland Security has neglected its 
primary mission, as outlined in the Homeland Security Act of 
2002. By prioritizing the facilitation of weaponized migration 
and importation of millions of foreign nationals into the U.S., 
DHS has failed to secure the border. DHS's own definition of 
security is as follows. The collective use of programs, plans, 
procedures designed to protect the nation's citizenry and 
infrastructures from malevolent attack and ensuring the 
continuation of normal operations.
    For these reasons, Governor Abbott has declared an invasion 
under Article I, Section 10, Clause 3, to invoke Texas 
constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. The 
consequences of DHS's failure are evident in the staggering 
data on opioid and drug epidemics impact on Texas.
    Just this week, Austin Travis County Emergency Medical 
Services responded to a total of 75 overdose cases from Monday 
to Wednesday evening this week, resulting in nine overdose 
deaths. Typically, the county only sees two to three overdose 
deaths a day.
    Our economic impact, $50.1 billion each year towards the 
opioid crisis. Hospitals are facing $202-per-capita of costs 
associated with this and those with the loss of life, $706-per-
capita of cost. The fact that this same Federal Government acts 
more forcefully now against Texas than it ever has against the 
Mexican cartels and the border security crisis tells you that 
everything you need to know about what we face today, we don't 
just have a crisis at the border, we also have a crisis of 
constitutional governance.
    In closing, I implore this body to commit to the utmost 
priority of protecting our citizens. The future of our great 
nation depends on our focus against this common enemy. May 
history remember this day as the essential moment when our 
nation united to end the Mexican cartels, all national security 
threats emanating from the border, protecting American 
citizens, and secure a brighter future for generations to come.
    Thank you, and I look forward to addressing your questions.
    [The information follows:]


    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    
    Chairman Arrington. Thank you, Mr. Blair. Now we will yield 
five minutes to the pride of Kinney County, Texas, my friend, 
Mr. Brent Smith.

    STATEMENT OF BRENT SMITH, KINNEY COUNTY ATTORNEY, TEXAS

    Mr. Smith. Thank you, Members, for holding this hearing. 
President Reagan once said, ``A nation that cannot control its 
borders is not a nation.'' As I sit before you today, I can 
attest to the fact that we no longer have control of our 
borders. We have surrendered it to criminal cartels, and in 
doing so, have jeopardized our own national security. To give 
this topic the importance it deserves, one might argue that 
this hearing should take place in the banks of the Rio Grande. 
While doing so would jeopardize the personal safety of each one 
here, it would at least provide this Committee with a firsthand 
experience of what Texans are living like every day.
    Kinney County shares 17 miles of border with Mexico and is 
located between Del Rio and Eagle Pass. While the jurisdiction 
of my office may be limited geographically to Kinney County, 
you can be certain that the facts of my testimony expand well 
beyond its borders and apply to every county along our southern 
border with Mexico.
    For Texas, living on the border, words cannot adequately 
describe the conditions on the ground. Our homes are being 
broken into in the middle of the night. The main street of our 
small towns are now places of high-speed car chases with cartel 
smugglers. Walking outside on your own property after dark is 
no longer safe. To put it plainly, Texans no longer enjoy the 
safety and security of a sovereign border.
    Kinney County has a population of only 3,200 residents, 
most of whom are farmers and ranchers.
    In the year 2020, the county reported 134 criminal charges 
for prosecution. This drastically changed in 2021 after 
President Biden issued multiple executive orders revoking 
numerous border security policies that DHS was operating under 
to successfully secure our border. Shortly thereafter, criminal 
cartels seized control of our border and imposed their own 
policies that would allow their criminal enterprises to thrive.
    In 2021, the number of criminal charges increased from 134 
during the previous year to 2,708 in one year. In 2022, this 
number exploded once again to 6,800 criminal charges in the 
county. In 2023, there was 5,826 criminal charges, all 
beginning at 134.
    Kinney County normally operates within a $6 million annual 
budget. However, the open border policies enacted by the Biden 
Administration has required the county to significantly expand 
the capacities of our local criminal justice system, costing 
Texas taxpayers an additional $10.5 million. Perhaps, however, 
the most significant cost that we have sustained during this 
border crisis is the loss of the safety and security we once 
enjoyed as Americans. In order to protect the safety of 
students attending the public school from the threat posed by 
high-speed car chases with cartel smugglers, the school 
administration was forced to erect military-style vehicle 
barricades around its own campus. On at least one occasion, the 
smuggled occupants of a vehicle breached these barriers on foot 
and attempted to enter the school while the campus was on 
lockdown. In another incident, a county resident was forced off 
the highway during her commute to work when a human smuggler 
shot her vehicle multiple times in an effort to avoid capture 
by law enforcement. This resident was forced to quit her job 
due to the danger she subjected herself to by simply commuting 
to work.
    The unmistakable sound of a helicopter in flight in Kinney 
County now causes families to bring their children inside the 
home and shelter in place until law enforcement gives an all 
clear. What dollar amount do you assign to the loss of safety 
and security? I am not certain, but I do know the cost is very 
high.
    In an effort to provide adequate warning to residents of an 
ongoing law enforcement pursuit, a county wide text alert 
system has been in place, which undoubtedly has saved many 
lives. Even with such proactive measures in place, two tax-
paying residents have died because emergency medical services 
were not available when they were needed the most. On both 
occasions, all available paramedics were deployed to human 
smuggling events miles away and were unable to respond to the 
county resident. This is a clear example of how an open border 
policy has deadly consequences for Americans across this 
nation.
    The violence and lawlessness occurring on our border is not 
sustainable for any sovereign nation, let alone a Texas county 
comprised of 3,200 citizens. Make no mistake, the willful 
neglect of this administration's refusal to enforce the laws of 
our nation have compromised the safety and security of not only 
Texans, but every American. Texans should not have to bear the 
financial burden of securing the border while this 
administration actively undermines our efforts to protect our 
own citizens. However, we have a sacred duty to preserve those 
liberties we inherited from others who paid the ultimate price. 
Texans have never backed down from a fight, and we will not 
begin to do so now.
    Thank you.
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    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and 
now yield five minutes to Mr. Bier. I am sorry I mispronounced 
your name earlier. Bier flows, rolls off the tongue, as a 
Texan, a lot easier than Bier. So, it is Bier, right?
    Mr. Bier. That is right. Thank you.
    Chairman Arrington. Okay, Mr. Bier, you have five minutes. 
Thank you.

STATEMENT OF DAVID BIER, DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION STUDIES, CATO 
                           INSTITUTE

    Mr. Bier. Chairman Arrington, Ranking Member Boyle, and 
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify.
    For nearly half a century, the Cato Institute has produced 
original research showing that free markets and individual 
liberty make the United States a wealthier, safer, and freer 
country. In a free society, markets incentivize people to 
contribute to the welfare of others. Thanks to freedom, America 
isn't a fixed pie. It is a growing one. It is exactly for these 
reasons that so many people from around the world come here, 
and for these same reasons, we should let them come legally.
    America has never needed immigrant workers like it needs 
them now. Population growth is down 90 percent from its 
historic highs. America's nine million open jobs are costing 
the U.S. economy more than a half a trillion dollars in 
economic output per year, and we need immigrants to fill them. 
The U.S. prime age employment rate is already at near record 
highs, and more Americans are retiring than entering the job 
market. As a result, 100 percent of labor force growth is now 
coming from immigrants.
    The Congressional Budget Office just found that the recent 
increase in immigration, almost entirely, unfortunately, from 
illegal immigration, will increase the size of the economy by 
$7 trillion, increase tax revenues by $1 trillion, and cut 
deficits by about a trillion over a decade. The National 
Academy of Sciences seminal 2017 report on the fiscal effects 
of immigration on Federal, State, and local finances found that 
immigrants reduce deficits both in the short and long term.
    Last year, Cato published a 250-page update of that report 
and found that immigrants pay $1 trillion in taxes, $300 
billion more than they receive in benefits. Even low-skilled 
immigrants who arrive early enough in their careers are 
fiscally positive in the long term. Studies that claim to find 
otherwise simply ignore most of the direct and indirect 
revenues that immigrants create.
    Of course, every immigrant is not always and everywhere 
fiscally positive, but the big picture is clear. Immigrants are 
makers, not takers.
    Congress should be exploring how to permit immigration in a 
lawful and orderly way to maximize these potential benefits. 
Unfortunately, America is benefiting from immigration in spite 
of Congress's dysfunctional legal immigration system, which was 
last updated in 1990. Backlogs and delays are now so extreme 
that literally in any other area of law, there would be daily 
hearings and investigations about them.
    Just three percent of the applicants for legal permanent 
residence this year will be approved. Most of the people who 
are currently applying for legal permanent residence will die 
before they or their family members have the opportunity to 
immigrate legally.
    Our legal immigration system is mostly ignored here, but 
its message that the way to come is to come illegally, is heard 
around the world. As long as we continue to proclaim this 
message, we will continue to incur some costs related to 
illegal entries. The only way to change the message is to 
change the law. That may be hard, but if we start with the 
accurate premise that these immigrants can be contributors, we 
can skip the contentious arguments over how to keep out 
everyone who is trying to come here and focus on the solvable 
issue of how they can come legally and contribute.
    Free Border Patrol to keep out real threats. Let people not 
be forced to hand over their life savings to cartels. Let them 
line up transportation, housing, and jobs in advance of their 
arrival. Let them come legally, and if you don't want them to 
have any welfare benefits, I am fine with that.
    Fixing immigration only requires faith in America, in our 
markets, in our constitution, in our freedom, and if you ever 
lack that faith, talk to those who are Americans by choice. 
Immigrants will tell you that they believe in America. We 
should listen.
    Thank you.
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    Chairman Arrington. Mr. Bier, thank you for your comments. 
We are going to move to the Q and A portion and I am going to 
yield five minutes to start us off, and I just want to respond 
to some of your comments because I believe in free people, free 
markets, and free and sovereign states.
    Freedom without security is complete anarchy. Freedom 
without rule of law is chaos, and so, there are things we can 
do, and I agree with you, there are places that are broken that 
should be fixed within the immigration framework in our laws, 
and there is no doubt there are ways to do that, even on a 
bipartisan basis.
    But when the President of the United States on his first 
day repeals and rescinds remain in Mexico and interior 
enforcement and holding sanctuary cities accountable for 
enabling illegal immigration, when that happens on day one, and 
then 93 other executive actions within the first hundred days 
to unravel the programs that were effective in reducing illegal 
immigration and effectively securing our border, that looks 
like a willful and intentional act to create chaos.
    So, yes, there are ways to fix the current system, but I 
can't accept the fact that the President of the United States, 
through this Section 212(f), which is the broadest of 
authorities I know of, it says, if you, Mr. President, think 
this is in the interest of the United States to turn anyone 
around for any reason, you can do that.
    Mr. Bier. Can I ask, where do we go from here?
    Chairman Arrington. Well, where we go----
    Mr. Bier. If not reform the system, where do we go from 
here?
    Chairman Arrington. Where we start is to do that which we 
can with the authority and tools we have, and we saw very 
clearly, very clearly in the last administration, where there 
is a will, there is a way. Doesn't mean it is perfect, doesn't 
mean there aren't things to fix, but you can't have, in the 
last month of the Trump Administration, 1,000 a day, and then 
this last December, 10,000 a day of people coming across 
illegally.
    To your point, if people think they can come illegally, 
they will come. Just this week, President Biden and the 
administration rolled out a rule to give $9 billion worth of 
health care to people here illegally.
    You get what you reward. You are an expert on free markets. 
Incentives drive behavior. We are putting incentives out there 
intentionally that are creating this, and there is a cost to 
society, especially--and more so than the financial cost,--all 
of the folks on the terrorist watch list, all of the drugs, all 
of the crime and criminals, we are not vetting this, it is 
pouring into our communities, and it is devastating. We need 
freedom, but we need rule of law alongside of it, or we lose 
the peace and tranquility we promise in the Constitution.
    Mr. Bier. Well, we can have both, right? We can have both. 
We don't have to choose between security and a legal 
immigration system that works.
    Chairman Arrington. This----
    Mr. Bier. We don't have to choose.
    Chairman Arrington. You are right.
    Mr. Bier. They are compatible. In fact, they complement 
each other.
    Chairman Arrington. They do.
    Mr. Bier. We have a legal immigration system that works and 
there is going to be fewer people crossing. So, Border Patrol 
is freed up----
    Chairman Arrington. Do you think the President----
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. To interdict the people.
    Chairman Arrington. Do you think the President is doing 
everything he can to create order and law at the border? And do 
you think he is doing everything within his power to make sure 
we have seamlessness at the border with respect to immigration? 
Do you think----
    Mr. Bier. I----
    Chairman Arrington [continuing]. He is doing everything he 
can?
    Mr. Bier. I mean, all I can say is he has deported a lot of 
people, far more people, even as a percentage of the people who 
arrived, he deported more----
    Chairman Arrington. That is absurd.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. In his first two years than the 
other administration did in its last two years.
    Chairman Arrington. Let me move on. Let me move on.
    Mr. Bier. So, it has deported a lot of people.
    Chairman Arrington. Yeah.
    Mr. Bier. I don't think that is the answer. We got to get 
back to----
    Chairman Arrington. I think it is----
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. The legal immigration system----
    Chairman Arrington. For me, it is----
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Is the problem.
    Chairman Arrington [continuing]. Intellectually dishonest, 
to me, to sidestep a very simple question. Is this President 
doing everything he can with the tools that he has, recognizing 
there are things that we need to do?
    Mr. Bier. There are other values at stake.
    Chairman Arrington. I think the answer----
    Mr. Bier. There are other values at stake. He could 
separate----
    Chairman Arrington. I think the answer is no.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Children like the last 
administration did.
    Chairman Arrington. No.
    Mr. Bier. Yes, he could do that. He shouldn't do that.
    Chairman Arrington. Mr. Smith----
    Mr. Bier. There are lines that you should respect.
    Chairman Arrington. Mr. Smith, a deluge of crime coming 
across the border--well, you know what, Mr. Blair, you were a 
Border Patrol officer. Is this just a natural ebb and flow like 
my Ranking Member suggested? Just a surge? A seasonal surge? Or 
is it--let me----
    Mr. Boyle. Just to clarify, this point I made.
    Chairman Arrington. Okay.
    Mr. Boyle. I didn't say seasonal surge. I mean, this is 
obviously beyond a season. I mean, we have a unique problem of 
three countries that have tremendous problems, the triangle 
countries in Central America that are causing a large part of 
this, but what I did say is this started a couple decades ago. 
This has not just started the last couple of years.
    Chairman Arrington. Okay, let me take off then on that, and 
I don't want to mischaracterize you. Is this something that has 
been going on for--when I say this, and this is my last 
question, what we are experiencing now with the record flow of 
migrants, the record flow of drugs, record migrant deaths, 
record people on terrorist watchlists, is that something that 
has been going on, as the Ranking Member suggests, for a decade 
or so? Or is this a recent phenomenon as a result of this 
administration's either policies, lack of leadership, et 
cetera, willful or not? Where is the--is this a longer tale? Or 
is this something as a consequence of the current 
administration's policy?
    Mr. Blair. Sure. To give you an example, let's look at the 
Venezuelan issue. So, Venezuelans, in 2017, we had roughly 
2,600 encounters, and then fast forward to 2023, we had 334,000 
encounters. Now, you look at that. About eight million people 
have fled Venezuela because of Hugo Chavez before, and then 
also Maduro. Right? And so, at first, they were starting to go 
to South American countries, but it wasn't until the current 
administration's policies and procedures that allowed this to 
actually happen, and that invited all the foreign nationals 
from South America, regardless of what country of origin, to 
our southern border.
    So, you can see the numbers or the data right there to show 
that this is not a natural occurrence. This is all by design, 
and it has all been done through policies, through this 
administration.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman, and now yield 
five minutes to my Ranking Member, Mr. Boyle.
    Mr. Boyle. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to 
turn to the witness from the Cato Institute. I would point out 
Mr. Bier, now FAIR, F-A-I-R, the acronym, published a report on 
the alleged burden of migration to the U.S. Mr. Bier, you have 
over a decade of impressive experience in immigration studies. 
Your work has been cited widely, including by the U.S. Supreme 
Court. You have displayed your knowledge already here this 
morning. So, with your background and knowledge and experience, 
I would like you to take this opportunity to comment on the 
FAIR report, their use of data in the report, and how the 
methodology of the report may fail to capture the broader 
context of immigration's economic benefit to the country.
    Mr. Bier. Yeah. So, the FAIR report significantly 
understates the tax benefits, expenditures, contributions of 
immigrants. I mean, you look at the state tax revenues that 
they calculate, it is 37 percent below what is in the census. 
Current population survey data understates their federal income 
tax by about 88 percent; understates their Medicare and Social 
Security taxes by 62 percent. The discrepancies are so 
enormous, you are left with the impression that they are just 
inventing them, just like they invent the number of illegal 
immigrants in their study. They say they are 15.5 million. They 
just invented that number and then, so they can't use any of 
the available census data.
    FAIR counts the expenditures on education for U.S. born 
children, for example, minor children, excludes all of the tax 
payments from the adult children of immigrants in the United 
States. Doing that alone cuts the total number of tax payments 
in half, which they have already reduced by about two thirds.
    And they, FAIR, they completely ignore tax incidents or 
taxes that are indirectly the result of immigrants. So, they 
have zero tax incidents for corporate taxes that are paid by 
corporations who hire these workers. They have zero capital 
income taxes that they attribute to immigrants working in the 
United States. Research has shown that those changes just by 
themselves can turn a low-skilled immigrant from dramatically 
negative to fiscally positive if they arrive early enough in 
their career.
    Mr. Boyle. Well, thank you, and building off of that, I 
would point out something directly relevant to this Committee, 
the Budget Committee. We had an important set of economic data 
or report released on Monday from the Trustees of Social 
Security and Medicare trust funds, and we got tremendously good 
news. Because of this economy performing much better than was 
projected a year ago or a couple of years ago, the lifetime of 
the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare have been 
pushed out. That is good news that we all should cheer.
    I was wondering, given this is a hearing on immigration, 
what impact does immigration and immigrants have on Social 
Security and Medicare Trust Funds?
    Mr. Bier. Well, the Social Security Trust Fund report 
directly says it. It is a result of increased labor force, and 
the increased labor force results in more tax revenue to Social 
Security. The report says that basically increasing from 
829,000 to 1.7 million immigrants per year reduces the annual 
burden of Social Security by 1.5 percent of taxable payroll, 
over, by 2097, which is about $137 billion in today's term. So, 
very significant impact on Social Security revenues in the long 
term.
    Mr. Boyle. Then finally, I wasn't planning on asking this, 
but since we had a good back and forth and you had a good back 
and forth with the Chairman, and I am going off memory here, so 
please correct me if I am wrong, but my memory of this becoming 
a really, I mean, of course, immigration has always been a hot-
button issue at different peaks in American history. The race 
riots, the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing riots of the 1840s 
happened in my district. They were so deadly, they actually, 
that is what led to the creation of the Philadelphia Police 
Department because of just how widespread and deadly they were. 
So, this has been an ongoing story throughout American history.
    But I really remember in my lifetime the question on the 
southern border rising to a certain prominence right around 
2005. That was when George W. Bush----
    Mr. Bier. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Boyle [continuing]. Was working with John McCain and 
Senator Kennedy. You had a surge in crossings then. You have 
had different drops, but increases, and then obviously, we have 
an enormous challenge now. So, if you could just walk me 
through----
    Mr. Bier. Sure.
    Mr. Boyle [continuing]. Kind of the last 20 years.
    Mr. Bier. Yeah.
    Mr. Boyle. Is my recollection of this correct?
    Mr. Bier. Yeah.
    Mr. Boyle. I mean, this has been a multi-decade issue----
    Mr. Bier. Yeah.
    Mr. Boyle [continuing]. That unfortunately does continue to 
get worse.
    Mr. Bier. Look, the big difference between then and now is 
who is arriving. So, Mexicans----
    Mr. Boyle. Yeah.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Were arriving. You had about two 
million crossings in the border in the year 2000, but half of 
the people made it through. They made it across the border. 
This is according to estimates by the Department of Homeland 
Security. So, the big difference now is more people turn 
themselves in. They are from countries that are very difficult 
to deport to, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, et cetera. Even the 
Northern Triangle countries are far more difficult to deport to 
than Mexico. So, you had far more evasions----
    Mr. Boyle. Yeah.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. In the early 2000s. Now you have 
more people seeking asylum, but the magnitude is nothing new to 
Border Patrol. We actually had more overwhelmed Border Patrol 
agents in the 2000s when you had the number of arrests 
exceeding three per day per Border Patrol agent, which is, I 
mean----
    Mr. Boyle. Right.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Totally unheard of today with 20,000 
agents.
    Mr. Boyle. Thank you.
    Chairman Arrington. Thank you----
    Mr. Boyle. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the Ranking Member. I now yield 
to Mr. McClintock from California for five minutes.
    Mr. McClintock. Thank you, and Mr. Chairman, I need to 
begin by noting the Democrats habit of discussing legal and 
illegal immigrants as if they were the same. That is a supreme 
insult to the millions of legal immigrants who enter our 
country every year by obeying our laws. Legal immigrants come 
here pledged to pull their weight, not to be a burden on 
others, to obey our laws, and to love and defend our country.
    Illegal immigrants come here under very different 
circumstances. Their first act is to commit a Federal crime by 
illegally entering our country. Their second act is to demand 
free food, shelter, medical care, clothing, education, 
transportation, and legal services. I have watched them at the 
border taunting our Border Patrol as they illegally cross into 
our country. To equate their lawless behavior with law abiding, 
hardworking, and patriotic legal immigrants is outrageous, and 
my colleagues who do so should be ashamed of themselves.
    The Senate bill we heard the Ranking Member tout would make 
it impossible for a future President to use his existing 
authority to secure the border, as Trump did, until illegal 
crossings exceed 4,000 a day, and as Border Patrol agents tell 
us, the problem is not lack of laws. It is a deliberate 
decision by the Democrats not to enforce those laws. Now, the 
Democrats tell us, well, this is great for the economy, since 
the more people in the economy, the larger it is. Well, duh, 
but as the CBO Director testified to this Committee earlier 
this year, the economic impact on working Americans is 
catastrophic because it suppresses wages for unskilled and low-
skilled American workers, and it breeds an underground economy 
that further suppresses the competitiveness of American 
workers. So, working Americans see their wages stagnate as a 
result, and many are forced out of the labor market entirely.
    Ms. Kirchner, how do we help working Americans by flooding 
the labor market with cheap, illegal labor?
    Ms. Kirchner. We don't help them at all, and actually, if 
we wanted to be kind to the previous generations of immigrants, 
we would not flood the market with cheap labor. There is ample 
evidence that it depresses wages.
    Mr. McClintock. And the CBO Director actually confirmed 
that right here before this Committee. You estimated the net 
cost to U.S. taxpayers to be $150 billion to support these 
illegals after deducting what little tax they pay. That 
includes $70 billion in costs to our schools, does it not?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. McClintock. And $22 billion for medical care?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. McClintock. What do you think the Democrats would say 
if Republicans proposed cutting $70 billion out of our schools 
and $22 billion out of our hospitals? And yet, isn't that 
exactly what they are doing?
    Ms. Kirchner. Well, I wouldn't propose to put words in 
anyone's mouth, but I do think that illegal immigration has 
consequences, and we need to accept that as a nation, and we 
need to make good policy decisions, and that means 
understanding the real impact of what is going on and the costs 
that are associated, not just the economic benefits, as you 
said, of growing the greater economic pie, GDP, measuring 
alone.
    Mr. McClintock. By the way----
    Ms. Kirchner. And everything is made up of choices. And if 
you look----
    Mr. McClintock. And your estimate of cost is just direct 
cost to the government. It is not the cost of crimes committed 
by illegals.
    Ms. Kirchner. Exactly.
    Mr. McClintock. It is not the cost of wage reductions for 
working Americans.
    Ms. Kirchner. Exactly.
    Mr. McClintock. It is strictly direct cost.
    Ms. Kirchner. It is a snapshot of payments----
    Mr. McClintock. Well----
    Ms. Kirchner [continuing]. And revenues.
    Mr. McClintock [continuing]. The Democrats tell us that 
illegal immigrants are more law abiding than Americans. Mr. 
Smith, are the illegals entering your county more law abiding 
than your legal residents?
    Mr. Smith. Well, I can tell you from the numbers that I 
quoted earlier, of those thousands of cases, we have about 50 
county residents being prosecuted. The remaining is the result 
of an open border, and I would just add that, you know, there 
is a difference----
    Mr. McClintock. I have got to go on. Ms. Kirchner, did you 
not look at the scape request made by states for the cost of 
incarcerating illegals and conclude that illegals are 231 
percent more likely to be jailed for crimes in California, 440 
percent more likely in New Jersey, and 60 percent more likely 
in Texas?
    Ms. Kirchner. I have not looked at the recent data, but I 
know, and certainly in California, it is very high.
    Mr. McClintock. In fact, in some cases, in some states like 
California, they make it illegal to report immigration status 
of suspects. So, using Cato's methodology, illegal aliens never 
commit a crime in California?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, that is a problem, sir, and we do know 
the truth. We know, and even, you know, what is interesting is 
even the Biden Administration recently has been coming out and 
saying, please, sanctuary cities, please honor our detainers. 
We don't want to deport many people, but the people we want to 
deport are very bad.
    Mr. McClintock. I'm just going to finish by saying that 
opposition to illegal immigration is not opposition to legal 
immigration. In fact, the people I find who are the angriest 
about illegal immigration are the legal immigrants who have 
played by the rules, waited patiently in line, and are now 
watching millions of illegal migrants cut in line in front of 
them.
    Ms. Kirchner. Absolutely.
    Mr. McClintock. If we are going to encourage and reward 
illegal immigration, which is the clear and consistent policy 
of the Democrats today, then there is no point in legal 
immigration. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. The gentleman's time has expired, and 
we now yield five minutes to the gentlelady from Illinois, Ms. 
Schakowsky.
    Mr. Schakowsky. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate in 
this Committee that there is actually some back and forth, even 
at the start, and I want to say as a first generation American 
myself, that I am very anxious to see and to talk most directly 
about the positive aspect of immigration to this country. We 
have heard about all the projections of the, was it $7 trillion 
to our economy from immigrants and another trillion, you know, 
that we are going to benefit or billions that we are going to--
oh, $1 trillion over a decade in money going into our own 
budget.
    But here is the thing that I am really struggling with. In 
Chicago, we had a roundtable from employers and then immigrants 
who want to work. Employers are desperate for workers right 
now. We want to increase those numbers, and yet when you talk 
to the immigrants and the migrants, and I have to many, I say, 
what is it that you want from the United States? The number one 
answer is a job, I want to work. The fact that we could boost 
our economy if we had a better immigration process, a system, 
we could do this as a Congress of the United States to make a 
much more sensible one.
    And I have to say to you, Mr. Blair, you are talking about 
what goes on in Texas. I have to tell you, there are busloads 
of people being put into cars and into trucks to come to my 
city. These are people who are desperate. They have come across 
this border and made it because they want a better life, and 
you know what happens to them? They don't even know where they 
are being sent to, and they are dropped off in places they have 
never heard of. We lost a child on one of those trips. Often no 
water given to them on the way from Texas to Chicago.
    Who are we as a country right now, when these are people 
who are coming here with every intention to do, to make this 
country better, to have a safer place. These are human beings 
and are not really treated that way by the governor that you 
are touting right now for all the great work and the trauma.
    And, you know, when we talk about the chaos, I think there 
are people, including Donald Trump, who want the chaos to 
continue, and what he has said, and I quote, that what 
immigrants do is ``poison the blood of our country.'' How 
awful. I am sorry.
    I do want to talk to you, Mr. Bier, and if whatever time is 
remaining, and we seem to be flexible in time around here, to 
respond to the positive of what immigrants can do, and if we 
don't have them, and I want to ask you, what if we had a mass 
deportation, or if we were to stop immigration in the United 
States, which some recommend, especially so called illegal 
undocumented people, what would happen to our economy?
    Mr. Bier. Well, it would be a massive contraction in our 
economy. We would lose, over the next decade, about one percent 
of our GDP would go away from just mass deportation of the 
longtime illegal immigrant residents. Not even talking about 
the ones who have come recently who are applying for asylum. 
So, massive contraction in the economy, huge blow to employers, 
a huge exodus of foreign direct investment into our economy, 
because people aren't going to invest in an economy that has a 
shrinking workforce. If you don't have workers here, you are 
not going to be able to build factories here. You are not going 
to be able to have farms here, and so, you are going to see 
investment go offshore. You are going to see jobs go offshore.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Let me just ask, did employment help 
prevent the economy going down in the United States?
    Mr. Bier. Yes, absolutely. Without the immigrants that we 
have had, we would have had a decline in our labor force since 
December of 2020 or, sorry, December of 2019. So, yeah, 
immigrants are the reason why gross domestic product and the 
number of jobs has been increasing so significantly, and the 
CBO report goes into great detail on that.
    Chairman Arrington. The gentlelady's time has expired, and 
we will now give five minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin, 
Mr. Glenn Grothman.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you much. First of all, I would like to 
make a unanimous consent request to submit the Centers for 
Medicare and Medicaid Services' final rule for CMS released 
today that will lead to 100,000 new enrollees under the 
Affordable Care Act at a cost of $7 billion.
    Chairman Arrington. Without objection, so ordered.
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    Mr. Grothman. Thank you very much. Now, Mr. Bier, at the 
end there, you heard the testimony earlier today, the number of 
freebies that are being given away, particularly in the parole 
program from Haiti and Mexico, people immediately eligible, I 
take it, for low-income housing, food stamps, medical care. 
Does this concern you when we are giving away these amounts of 
Earned Income Tax Credit, which I consider a horrible program 
with all sorts of reverse incentives?
    Mr. Bier. It is totally unnecessary. We could not spend 
that money, rebate it to taxpayers. There is no reason why we 
need to do this. If we don't want to spend the money, don't 
spend the money, and I know you have a bill that would do just 
that, but it is a choice. It is a choice and so far, all of the 
immigration bills that have come out of the House of 
Representatives, none of them have dealt with this issue. So, 
it is an issue, but it is not one that changes the immigration 
from----
    Mr. Grothman. You are right. This is----
    Mr. Bier. Good to bad.
    Mr. Grothman. This is the best bill. You should talk to 
Speaker Johnson on it when you go out the building. In a 
hearing I was at a little while ago, someone testified that the 
number of people in prisons in Venezuela has dropped 20 percent 
over, I don't know, the last year or so, and apparently the 
President of Venezuela himself has kind of bragged a little bit 
that he is sending the criminal element here. Is that a 
possible concern when you have anybody who wants coming across 
the border instead of picking your immigrants?
    Mr. Bier. Well, it is certainly a concern. That is why we 
have Border Patrol to interdict those people and, of course, 
screen them, and, you know, if they are a criminal threat, they 
should be removed. I don't trust anything the Maduro government 
says. So, whatever information you are getting from them, I 
would question that.
    Mr. Grothman. Well----
    Mr. Bier. But you should, you should really take 
information from a credible source, not from----
    Mr. Grothman. Yeah.
    Mr. Bier. A socialist government.
    Mr. Grothman. I will point out, you understand that when 
these people come across the southern border, we can try to 
check and see if they have a criminal record in the U.S. and 
Canada. There is no way to find out whether they have a 
criminal record even from Mexico, much less from Venezuela or--
--
    Mr. Bier. Well, almost none of the people come directly 
from Venezuela. They spend time in these other countries where 
we do have information sharing agreements. They are----
    Mr. Grothman. Right.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Getting their fingerprints checked 
in Panama and all along the way. So, it is a concern. We should 
obviously have strict security and make sure that we are 
vetting people, but the idea that this turns it from, oh, we 
have to keep out every Venezuelan from the United States is not 
true.
    Mr. Grothman. No, no, I----
    Mr. Bier. Venezuelans have a much lower incarceration rate 
in the United States than U.S. born persons do, according to 
the American Community Survey. So, the idea that we need to 
just ban an entire nationality because there are some 
uncertainties here is just not a reasonable conclusion.
    Mr. Grothman. I am going to ask Ms. Kirchner to give us 
some information on stuff that people who come here, either 
parole or we will refer to as illegally, are immediately 
eligible for and what you think that does to the cross-section 
of people who are currently coming here?
    Ms. Kirchner. Well, sir, those who come here illegally, it 
depends how they are released, and this is one of the ways the 
Biden Administration has significantly exacerbated the problem. 
So, if you are released through parole, parole is given a 
status under our benefits programs much like that of a legal 
permanent resident, and we know that there are millions of 
parolees. We don't know the exact amount. I am waiting for the 
latest report to come out, but we know that there are millions 
of parolees, and because they are considered lawfully present, 
even though they have no legal status, they are immediately 
eligible for work permits, they are eligible for Social 
Security numbers, they are eligible for Obamacare, and that 
also, the Social Security number opens up the box to tax 
benefits, Earned Income Tax Credit, and the additional Child 
Tax Credit, but where we are really going to see the cost, 
these parolees, because they are treated like legal permanent 
residents, some of them immediately get benefits. The Cubans 
and Haitians, as I said, are immediately eligible for 
everything, but the chickens will come home to roost in about 
five years when all of these other parolees who are not Cubans 
and Haitians are going to be eligible for everything, and so, 
we need to be aware that without adding one illegal alien 
crossing the border, the costs are going to go up.
    Mr. Grothman. Okay. Thank you. I just want to get in a last 
word on something. I have been down to the border several 
times, and whenever I am down there, the Border Patrol points 
out that unless you have a criminal record from the U.S. or 
Canada, there is no way for them to determine whether or not 
you have a record. That is what they are telling me. And----
    Mr. Bier. I mean, you should look at some of the CBP press 
releases that they put out when they catch people from Columbia 
or other countries, so.
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    Chairman Arrington. The gentleman's time has expired. I 
don't need help, but I know there is a lot of folks that like 
to give me help. Jimmy, why don't you help me out?
    Mr. Panetta. I will.
    Chairman Arrington. Take five minutes.
    Mr. Panetta. I will try, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Arrington. Take five minutes, and I may give you a 
little extra, too, if it is an interesting and intellectually 
honest conversation.
    Mr. Panetta. I can't promise you that, but thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity, and Ranking Member, 
and gentlemen, and ma'am, thank you very much for being here. 
Look, I think we can all agree upon a couple of things that 
obviously, when it comes to immigration, it is a very emotional 
issue. I think it is emotional because we are all connected to 
it in one way or the other, especially in this country. Yes, as 
I agree with the Ranking Member, we are a nation of immigrants, 
but I will go one step further. We are a nation of risk takers, 
people who are willing to take the risk to come here to provide 
a better life, either for themselves or for their children, and 
ultimately, I firmly believe, as the grandson of immigrants, 
that is the American dream. That is why people still want to 
come here. Not to rape, not to pillage, but they want to 
provide a better life for them and their families, and I think 
we are so damn lucky to have that, to have, to be a country 
like that where people still want to come here, and I think 
that is part of the emotions behind this.
    But look, I think we can all agree in this room and outside 
of this room, there is a crisis at the border. We get it. Got 
it. Check. We understand that. From a humanitarian, a familial, 
a criminal, and a financial crisis that we are facing at this 
point.
    But rather than just continue to talk about the issues, we 
want to make sure we talk about solutions. Unfortunately, 
especially here in the United States Congress, especially in 
this political world, when we talk about solutions, it is 
difficult. It is difficult because what I have seen in my 
limited time that I have been here in Congress, immigration 
reform, border security, is the most politically toxic, policy 
complicated issue I have worked on. Unfortunately. 
Unfortunately.
    In the seven and a half years that I have been here, we 
have tried, though. We have tried and we have actually had some 
successes.
    I think we have agreed, Jodey. Sorry, Mr. Chairman. In the 
time that we have been here, I think we have voted on $120 
million in border security that went to infrastructure, 
technology, and personnel. We also got some places when it came 
to immigration reform, not necessarily comprehensive 
immigration reform, we realized that was difficult, but we kind 
of backed off and we looked at it piecemeal.
    We did the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. One of my 
proudest things that I personally worked on, yet just as 
fulfilling it was frustrating, because it was the most 
bipartisan immigration bill passed out of the House of 
Representatives in the last two decades. Unfortunately, it got 
stalled in the Senate. I am going to get back to you, Mr. Bier, 
on that in a second.
    We had the Dream and the Promise Act as well, and then, of 
course, we had potentially what happened in the last few 
months, that Senate deal, that, and I got to give a lot of 
credit to one of my conservative colleagues in the Senate, 
James Lankford, and one of my most liberal colleagues in the 
Senate, Murphy from Connecticut, a very conservative deal that 
would have provided funding, would have provided 
infrastructure, would have provided personnel, would have 
raised the standards of asylum, an issue that we are dealing 
with at the border that is causing the most consternation there 
and difficulties there, but unfortunately, it was rejected by 
the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, and therefore 
no other Republican would go with it.
    So, it is obviously difficult, but I think when you have 
people who have the political will to come up with solutions, 
we can actually do this, not just rag on each other when it 
comes to the issues. We got it, we get it, but we got to make 
sure that we talk about solutions.
    I believe one of the solutions with the Farm Workforce 
Modernization Act, I say that because of the district that I 
represent on the Central Coast of California, I have seen, not 
just familially, I have seen in my neighborhood, in my 
community, immigrants who have come here who want to 
contribute, and we know what it is like out there picking 
strawberries. We know what it is like in slaughterhouses. We 
know what it is like now in construction yards. You do not see 
too many native-born Americans doing that type of work.
    And so, Mr. Bier, I want to address my question to you as 
to what type of effect, when you look at our agriculture, who 
is doing those jobs these days?
    Mr. Bier. Look, it is, right now, most of the increase in 
our agricultural workforce is coming through the H-2A 
guestworker visa program. So, these are temporary seasonal 
workers. Unfortunately, those jobs, that visa category is not 
available for any job that is year-round. So, if you have a 
farm and you are planning year-round and that job, that worker 
that you need is year-round, that visa is unavailable. That is 
one of the things the Farm Workforce Modernization Act would 
have relaxed that rule and allowed people to work in year-round 
agriculture. So, that is where a lot of the illegal immigration 
and illegal employment ultimately is going because there is no 
legal way for people to hire through that program.
    So, if you get rid of the workers, I mean, you are talking 
about half of the agricultural labor force is just immigrants--
--
    Mr. Panetta. That----
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Forgetting about their children----
    Mr. Panetta. You know as well as I do, that is a generous 
number.
    Mr. Bier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, all these estimates are 
ballparks.
    Mr. Panetta. Exactly, exactly.
    Mr. Bier. So.
    Mr. Panetta. And I would go so far as say is that you have 
a number of people working in agriculture and I think the 
estimates that I have seen 70 percent working in ag on those 
farms, unfortunately, do not have proper status. Yet they are 
continuing to contribute to our agricultural economy, correct?
    Mr. Bier. Yeah, absolutely. If you don't have the manpower 
to do specialty crops in this country, you are going to import 
all those high-profit crops from abroad, and that is the nature 
of a free market economy. That is the nature of global 
competition. Our farmers want to compete internationally and be 
exporting food around the world and compete in those high-
margin crops.
    Mr. Panetta. I want to thank you. I want to thank the 
witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to working 
on not just highlighting the issues. Let's make sure we have 
the political will to come up with solutions.
    Chairman Arrington. Well, I appreciate----
    Mr. Panetta. Thank you.
    Chairman Arrington [continuing]. The gentleman from 
California's sincere efforts and his leadership to fix some of 
the broken parts of the illegal, of the immigration rather, 
system in our country around agriculture. He is in fact a 
leader on that and I appreciate it. Now I yield five minutes or 
so to my friend from the Keystone State, Mr. Lloyd Smucker.
    Mr. Smucker. Mr. Bier, do you think we should get 
operational control of the border? We should have operational 
control?
    Mr. Bier. Absolutely.
    Mr. Smucker. Do you think we should stop the flow of 
illegal immigration?
    Mr. Bier. Yes.
    Mr. Smucker. Do you think we should welcome productive 
individuals who want to be productive members of our society to 
come here?
    Mr. Bier. Yes.
    Mr. Smucker. And they should be properly vetted.
    Mr. Bier. Yes.
    Mr. Smucker. So you think we should increase our legal 
immigration?
    Mr. Bier. Yes.
    Mr. Smucker. Ms. Kirchner, do you think we should get 
operational control of the border?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Smucker. We should stop the flow of illegal immigrants?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes.
    Mr. Smucker. Do you think that we should properly vet legal 
immigrants and we should continue to do so?
    Ms. Kirchner. Absolutely.
    Mr. Smucker. Do you think that we need individuals who want 
to come here, who want to be productive members of society?
    Ms. Kirchner. Absolutely. We should have skilled 
immigration. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Smucker. So, we really aren't far apart, and I don't 
think Democrats and Republicans are all that far apart here 
either.
    I do think, Ms. Kirchner, one of the pieces that you 
missed, and not to argue with you, but that you missed 
slightly, is we do need workers, and workers who come here and 
perform jobs that are needed, contribute to our economy. They 
will buy food, they will buy clothing. They will, in general, 
benefit the United States by growing our economy, a stronger 
growth in the economy that benefits by those workers paying 
into the Social Security system, paying into Medicare, 
generating additional revenue and additional taxes.
    It is unfortunate today that that is happening with illegal 
immigrants. It should not be happening because at the same 
time, we then are allowing the flow of drugs, we are allowing 
the flow of criminals into the country, and that is, you know, 
I am from Lancaster County, 2,000 miles from the border. We 
have hundreds of fentanyl deaths in our region. It is a real 
problem that we have. Every single city, every single area of 
the country really has been affected by the Biden 
Administration's policy on the border.
    So, I agree with almost everything that you are saying.
    Ms. Kirchner. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Smucker. Mr. Bier, I agree with almost everything that 
you are saying as well. We have got to fix it, and the Biden 
Administration has absolutely failed the American people with 
what they are allowing to happen on the border, but I think it 
is really, really important that we not continue to conflate 
the two issues.
    We need legal immigrants, we need individuals to take jobs, 
and I think it is actually the opposite of what you said, Ms. 
Kirchner. I don't think they are taking American jobs. I think 
what happens if we don't have an adequate workforce, companies 
that can choose to do so will go to other countries, will go to 
other areas to build their new factory. So, I think immigrant 
workers are actually a net gain for American workers as well, 
and I just, one small thing where you and I disagree.
    Mr. Bier, I think you are passionate in what you are 
saying. I think you could be more convincing if you are more 
open to an understanding of other viewpoints and not as 
confrontational. You know, I think it is really important that 
we have these real conversations. We address the real concerns 
that the American people have about the border and recognizing 
that, recognizing the absolute abject failure of the Biden 
Administration's border policy is absolutely important, 
particularly for those of us, the witnesses here from Texas. 
You are seeing it probably more than other communities, but we 
are seeing it in my community as well.
    And so, I agree completely with Representative Panetta. We 
have to fix this. We can do it. This panel isn't far apart. 
Members of Congress aren't far apart on this issue.
    I have a bill that would actually create an entirely new 
visa program for those year-round workers, for farm workers, 
but then also construction, health care. There are a lot of 
people, there are a lot of places where we need millions of 
workers.
    This also then gets muddied. We also need to increase the 
workforce participation rate of Americans. That is another way 
we resolve our worker issue, but we can't do it without 
immigrants, and in fact, I don't think we can solve our debt 
problem unless we are really growing this economy, and I think 
immigration, legal immigration, where we are properly vetting 
immigrants as we always have done, is a really important part 
of that.
    So, sorry I didn't get to any more questions, but thank 
you, Mr. Chair, and I will yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I appreciate your line of thinking and 
comments and associate myself with them, and now we are going 
to continue on the Republican side with Mr. Bob Good from 
Virginia for five minutes.
    Mr. Good. Thank you Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate all of 
our witnesses who are here today. I have a question. I would 
like to try to get four succinct answers as I go down the row, 
starting with Ms. Kirchner. What percentage, in your opinion, 
estimation, your research, what percentage or what number of 
the world's non-U.S. population would come to America if they 
could? In other words, we got roughly 350 million Americans, 
some seven billion-plus people who don't live in the United 
States. So, if they could, what percentage of the world's 
population or what number, would you just kind of a guesstimate 
based on, that would come here if they could?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir. Fortunately, I didn't know it would 
be a pop quiz. But I know Gallup has done----
    Mr. Good. You didn't know there was going to be math in 
this.
    Ms. Kirchner. No, no, no. I do know Gallup has done some 
surveys and I know it is, I think it is probably a third.
    Mr. Good. So, you are saying somewhere in the two billion 
range. I am just assigning a number to a third, maybe two to 
three billion, something like that.
    Ms. Kirchner. That would be my guess. You couldn't hold me 
to it.
    Mr. Good. Okay. Mr. Blair, if you had to guesstimate a 
number, if they could, the world's population that would come 
to the United States if they could?
    Mr. Blair. Well, the U.S. is the greatest country in the 
world, so I would probably put it maybe 50 percent or more.
    Mr. Good. Okay, you are saying three, four billion. Mr. 
Smith?
    Mr. Smith. I make it a close 70 percent.
    Mr. Good. Close to 70 percent. So you are saying in the 
five billion type range, and then down at the end, Mr. Bier?
    Mr. Bier. Oh, it would certainly be over 100 billion, but 
we can focus on the people who have already----
    Mr. Good. Over 100 billion?
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. Gotten the process.
    Mr. Good. We don't have 100--you meant----
    Mr. Bier. Sorry, sorry, 100 million. Wow.
    Mr. Good. You are saying only 100 million?
    Mr. Bier. We could--yeah.
    Mr. Good. You are saying only 100 million.
    Mr. Bier. Well, that is about what Gallup estimates.
    Mr. Good. Only 100 million.
    Mr. Bier. Yeah.
    Mr. Good. What is the population of Africa? What is the 
population of South America? What is the population of Asia? 
And you are thinking only 100 million of them. There is, what, 
five billion between those just roughly making it up. So you 
are saying in the range of two percent would come here? Two 
percent would come here if they could?
    Mr. Bier. I mean, wages equalize over time, so look at 
what--we have open borders with Puerto Rico----
    Mr. Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I think you know----
    Mr. Bier. We have----
    Mr. Good [continuing]. Where I am going. Thank you. I 
reclaim my time. Thank you.
    Mr. Bier. Okay.
    Mr. Good. All right. So, how many should we let come to 
America? I think that is a fundamental question. How many 
should we let come to America? Meaning legal, illegal, someone 
to mix the two together, which is offensive. I wish Mr. 
McClintock was still here. How many should we let come?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir, we----
    Mr. Good. What would be a good number?
    Ms. Kirchner. We believe that current immigration rates are 
about as much as we can sustain as a nation. We would, however, 
advocate that those immigrants be skilled. We think, for the 
national interest, it would benefit both our economy----
    Mr. Good. Respectfully, I am going to pause you, because I 
have only got two minutes.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Good. And I am going somewhere. I apologize, Ms. 
Kirchner, for that.
    Ms. Kirchner. No, that's fine.
    Mr. Good. I think the--okay. What percentage would come if 
they could? How many should we let come? And what number would 
make us no longer America? And is it worth preserving what 
makes us distinctly, uniquely America? Is that worth 
preserving?
    The fundamental question relative to the illegal alien 
invasion, or for those who support the illegal alien invasion, 
first of all, as others have said, there is no such thing as 
illegal immigration. Immigration is a legal, lawful process. 
For that matter, legal immigrants are Americans, aren't they? 
Legal immigrants are Americans, of course. They wanted to be 
Americans. They earned their citizenship. They pledged their 
allegiance. They learned our language. At least everyone that I 
have interacted with at the naturalization ceremonies they have 
the privilege of going to has learned our language. They have 
had the means and the ability to contribute to our economy and 
our society and make us stronger, make us better.
    In fact, this Friday, two days from now, I look forward to 
welcoming another group among the million or so that we legally 
allow into this country every year, legally. I am going to 
welcome them at Patrick Henry's Red Hill home in my district. I 
have the most historic district in the country, I would submit.
    So the fundamental question for those who support the 
illegal alien invasion is, does everyone around the world have 
the right to come to America? Or does America have the right to 
decide who gets to come to America? How about those two 
questions? Does everyone around the world have the right to 
come to America? Or does America get to decide who has the 
right to be in America? Ms. Kirchner.
    Ms. Kirchner. Americans should be able to decide the future 
of their country. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Good. Mr. Blair?
    Mr. Blair. Americans should decide.
    Mr. Good. Mr. Smith?
    Mr. Smith. Same.
    Mr. Good. Mr. Bier?
    Mr. Bier. America should decide, but there should be a 
presumption in favor of liberty.
    Mr. Good. And that is the question that does indeed make us 
very far apart from what Lloyd said. Because what many on the 
other side believe, and I would submit Mr. Bier believes this 
if he was being honest with us, that they believe that--because 
of the statements that he said in his opening remarks, they 
believe they have the right to be here, and then the Ranking 
Member talked about the triangle countries coming here. You 
know, we cannot--and he said, the problem is we got to go fix 
those triangle countries so they don't want to come here 
anymore from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The only way 
we can do that is to let lawlessness reign, destroy our 
economy, defund and undermine our police, you know, destroy our 
institutions, so that we become as bad as some of these 
countries around the world, and then the journey and the cost 
of the journey, the difficulty is no longer worth it. I submit 
that is Democrat policies carried through.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I submit--I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman for----
    Mr. Good. I am sorry. For the record, sir, if I may----
    Chairman Arrington. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Good. I ask unanimous consent to submit an article of 
support from the Center Square regarding the 60 counties in 
Texas that have declared an emergency and the 50 counties that 
have declared an invasion in light of the crisis at our 
southwest border.
    Chairman Arrington. Without objection, so ordered.
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    Mr. Good. Thank you, sir. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I now yield five minutes to General 
Jack Bergman from Michigan.
    Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I ask unanimous 
consent to enter into the record an April 2024 article from 
Gallup titled, ``Immigration named top U.S. problem for third 
straight month.''
    Chairman Arrington. Without objection, so ordered.
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    Mr. Bergman. As Gallup findings confirm, Americans continue 
to be deeply troubled by President Biden's refusal to secure 
the southern border or enforce immigration law. This should not 
come as a surprise to anyone in this room. We got issues, 
especially you, Mr. Blair. You got a lot of years in an Army 
uniform. I got a few years in a Marine uniform. So I am going 
to kind of talk to you, especially with your last, you know, 
10-plus years here with the Border Patrol. We can talk soldier 
to Marine, but I also serve on Armed Services, so I am a little 
bit familiar and in a former life wearing the hat of Commander 
of Marine Forces North, which we dealt with the border, if you 
will. Some of my information may be a little dated, but not 
much. Okay.
    Mr. Blair, in your written testimony submitted to the 
Committee, you note that the level of illegal mass immigration, 
U.S., is currently--the level is currently seen as a 
deliberate--this is a quote, ``a deliberate and calculated 
strategy of weaponizing migration to undermine the sovereignty 
and security of the United States and its states.'' Could you 
elaborate just a little bit? Don't take a whole lot, but just 
give me a couple of--you know, elaborate on that a little bit.
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir. If you look at the great work done by 
Kelly Greenhill and also Joseph Humire from The Heritage 
Foundation, they have done a lot of case studies in regards to 
this. Weaponized mass migration has happened over 80 times 
since the 1951 Refugee Convention. It is when a state or 
nonstate actor uses human beings as a weapon to eradicate 
someone's sovereignty.
    So in my report, I stated Lukashenko was doing that against 
the countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, where he forced 
foreign nationals to other people's borders in order to 
decrease the security of the environment so that they could 
decrease the sovereignty of that nation. By following that same 
playbook, the current administration is inviting massive 
amounts of foreign nationals to our southern border in order to 
decrease or eradicate our sovereignty, force Border Patrol 
agents, like what I was doing, and other law enforcement 
agencies and also local law enforcement to address that fact 
that mass migration, which decreases the security of the 
environment and allows the Mexican cartels to completely 
operationally control both sides, and so that is really what 
weaponized mass migration is. It is a tool to completely 
eradicate sovereignty.
    Mr. Bergman. So I am going to put my words on this. They 
are organized on many different levels. So having said that, 
since we know we have, as the United States of America, we have 
foreign adversaries, Russia, China, Iran. Do you think they are 
looking at the cost of illegal immigration that it imposes on 
our taxpayers and that this is part of the calculations of the 
Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians? I mean, again, if it is 
organized, somebody is doing the math on how much money we are 
pouring into this. Do you think that is a calculation that they 
use?
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir, 100 percent. The Chinese use the 
unrestricted warfare, so it is every asymmetric means to 
eradicate our sovereignty and security and financial warfare is 
one of those means.
    Mr. Bergman. Okay, and kind of how plausible is it that 
foreign nationals are illegally coming to the U.S. at the 
direction of adversarial governments to engage in espionage or 
to potentially be in sleeper cells?
    Mr. Blair. Oh, it happens every single day. Look what has 
happened the first few days in May. We had more Chinese illegal 
aliens coming through southern California than we did all of 
Fiscal Year 2021, and so when you look at that issue and you 
see that our vetting process--as Border Patrol agents, we 
typically don't vet, and you look at these single military age 
males and you look at the difference between those that are 
actually running from, whether that is communism or running 
from situations where their life is in danger compared to the 
ones that we are actually apprehending, you can see in direct 
confidence that they are here for nefarious means.
    Mr. Bergman. Okay, and I see my time is about to run out, 
but would you think that potentially the cartels are operating 
as brokers and playing all sides against the middle to create 
the environment that because of their use of drones, because of 
their use of different submersibles, because of all the things 
they use, that there are probably things that we don't see that 
are tied together for the benefit of those against us?
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir. The Mexican cartels have completely 
controlled the operational border--I mean, sorry, the southern 
border, and have created a Silk Road for the CCP to enter every 
single one of our communities.
    Mr. Bergman. Well, in Marine terms, I am guessing probably 
the Army says the same thing, we got snipers in the wire.
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Bergman. On the inside and the weapons are pointed at 
us, and we need to not continue to turn a blind eye to that 
fact.
    And I will just say I will yield back. I guess I am a 
little bit over, but I would suggest that as a personal trait 
for anyone, arrogance creates a blind spot in all of us. So we, 
in our dealings with ourselves and others, should look to 
eliminate those blind spots.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Michigan, 
and yield now five minutes to the gentlelady from Michigan, 
Lisa McClain.
    Ms. McClain. I see a trend going here, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you. I think it is interesting that you have all the 
Republicans asking questions right now. So I appreciate this 
hearing, Mr. Chairman. Clearly, we care, and I know you do.
    I know we have talked about the numbers, but I think it 
bears repeating. The Federal Government spent over $66 billion 
on illegal immigrants in 2023, according to the Federation for 
American Immigration. Does anyone here want to guess how much 
we have spent on homeless veterans in 2023? Guess? Well, let's 
just start higher, lower, the same? Anybody want to guess?
    Mr. Smith. Fractional.
    Ms. McClain. Fractional. Thank you. $3 billion. $66 billion 
on illegals, $3 billion on people who have laid down their 
lives for this country. Can anyone explain up there why that 
makes sense?
    Mr. Bier. Well, one is including all sorts of benefits and 
one is just looking at a very, very narrow slice.
    Ms. McClain. No, no, I am using the same numbers.
    Mr. Bier. So if you look at----
    Ms. McClain. Sir, you are----
    Mr. Bier. If you did a direct comparison----
    Ms. McClain. I am using apples to apples.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. It would be a very different 
calculation.
    Ms. McClain. I am using applies to apples. So since you 
know, why don't you share with me?
    Mr. Bier. We don't track U.S. vet----
    Ms. McClain. You don't know. You don't know.
    Mr. Bier. We don't track U.S. veterans in the Census, so 
that would be very helpful if we did, then I would be able to 
give you a very good----
    Ms. McClain. But do you know the answer? Because I do. I 
do. So I appreciate your opinion of which you have no facts on, 
but let me continue and let me educate you some more.
    The Federal Government, breaking that $66 billion down, 
let's look at what we fund. So you might want to get a pencil 
and paper and take some notes because I will help you do your 
job: $5.8 billion in SNAP, $10 billion in Medicare, $8.2 
billion in uncompensated hospital expenditures, $3 billion for 
primary and secondary education for illegal immigrants, and how 
many illegal immigrants are given taxpayer-funded housing 
compared to the number of homeless veterans that are sleeping 
on the street?
    You don't know because you don't want to know. You don't 
want to see the numbers. Well, I do, and I can share with you 
the American people do because I will share with you, the 
people in my district, in Michigan of the 9th District, we care 
about our homeless veterans. We care about our veterans, and 
yes, we care about them a little bit more than we care about 
people who have broken the law to get here illegally.
    So, I actually have some suggestions and maybe some answers 
on how to fix it. Instead of $66 billion, here are a couple 
things we could spend. The White House has requested $13 
million for the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans. I 
am going to say it again, $13 million with an ``M.'' Right? 
Maybe we could find that out of that $66 billion, right, 
different between million and billion, big difference, we could 
funnel some more of that $66 billion to our homeless veterans. 
Anyone opposed to that? Why aren't we doing it? Why aren't we 
doing it? Anybody got an idea? Anybody got an idea why we are 
not, God bless you, why we are not doing it? I will tell you 
why we are not doing it. Because the Biden Administration does 
not want to do it. Am I correct? Am I incorrect on that? I 
didn't think so.
    This year's budget request from the White House asks for 
$17.2 billion in mental health spending for veterans. That $10 
billion we lose to Medicare spending would surely benefit the 
struggle with the mental health issues. So why don't we do 
this? America is a very charitable country. Why don't we take 
care of our own first? Anyone see a problem with that? Why 
don't we? I will tell you why we don't. Because the Biden 
Administration doesn't want to do that.
    It is maddening to me. The White House budget requested for 
caregiver support programs, not $2.9 billion. Maybe instead of 
$3 billion for educating illegal immigrants, we can give more 
funding to caregiver support programs. Right? We are all 
talking about--both sides of the aisle, which ironically 
doesn't even want to participate in this hearing, sadly, but 
not unexpected, we all talk about caregiving as a problem. 
Right? I hear that on both sides of the aisle. What would 
happen if we took that $3 billion and gave it to caregivers 
that live in the United States? Anyone have a problem with 
that? Why don't we do it? Anybody? The Biden Administration 
doesn't want to do it.
    And you play games with your facts and you play this shell 
game. Well, I am going to share with you the American people 
are not fooled and they are frustrated and fed up with it. 
Let's just be honest about where this money is going so we 
possibly can redirect it to the correct place. Let's start with 
our veterans. Thank you, and with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield 
back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlelady from Michigan, 
and now yield five minutes to my friend from Utah, Mr. Blake 
Moore.
    Mr. Moore. Thank you, Chairman. This is--I have had the 
last two and a half, three years, numerous town halls. This is 
the topic that has been in every single one. I am from Utah. I 
don't--you know, we are not on the southern border. We are 
recognized recently again as the top state in the nation from 
U.S. News. We have all the right economic indicators, all this 
great stuff going on, and the massive concern of what is going 
on at the border and what could potentially be the problem with 
what has happened over the last three years in ten years from 
now. Well, what implications that this has on the next decade. 
So immediate, acute issues and what ultimately plays out is 
terrifying to my constituents.
    To me, as I see some of the simple things that you saw from 
the previous administration, I heard Mike Pence, Vice President 
Pence, talk about the negotiations with Mexico to come up with 
the Remain in Mexico plan. I wish we could create a legislative 
fix to it. I would be all for it. Make it permanent, make it 
into law, figure out the catch and release issues, parole 
authority all across the board.
    President Biden came to office and he just said, you know 
what? I don't like President Trump. What Mike Pence--what 
President Trump and Mike Pence did, I am going to just take it 
away. There were positive things happening and we are just 
going to--we are going to reverse it all. That is what he did. 
Everybody knows it. Every single constituent of mine 
understands that there was frustration there, and I wish we 
could fix it legislatively, too. I think there is a solid group 
of Republicans and Democrats that recognize we have to have 
strong border security and we have to fix our immigration 
antiquated process. We get it, but for 30 years, we haven't 
been able to fix it. President Biden can at least do something 
right now, and he has been unwilling to do it.
    Mr. Blair, Ammon, a couple questions. So, I have got 
numbers here. Cartels have seen, according to Homeland Security 
Investigations, cartels have seen their human trafficking and 
smuggling profits soar from $500 million in 2019 to well over 
$13 billion in 2022. Now, it is going to be hard for us to 
accurately track the amount of money that the cartels are 
making. I don't think they properly report on their W-2s what 
they are profiting from this, but would you say that is 
directionally correct from your understanding?
    Mr. Blair. That is directionally correct.
    Mr. Moore. We are not talking a small difference from 
just--that is one factor that is different from 2019. I will 
give it two. There are two factors that are different from 2019 
to 2022. One of them was there was a pandemic that caused some 
disruption and the other one was that President Biden came in 
and his administration reversed every single border provision 
that was going on, and he has allowed for three and a half 
years of this to continue on. This is enabling cartels, enemies 
of our country, bringing in fentanyl and creating--running the 
show down on the southern border.
    There is an intersection here with the Department of 
Homeland Security and the intelligence community. Do you think 
there are effective ways for DHS agents to work with the 
intelligence community on tracking cartel whereabouts in border 
towns, intercepting plans and disrupting operations? Can you 
just speak to that and maybe the current state between DHS and 
the intelligence community and what we need to be doing better?
    Mr. Blair. Yeah. First and foremost, they need to be 
designated as foreign terrorist organizations in order to get 
the intelligence apparatus to completely understand what 
Mexican cartels are actually doing. Also, you also need to 
change the Uniform Crime Report or the National Incident-Based 
Reporting System. As it stands right now, a lot of cartel-
related activity is actually not put into that system, so we 
are actually running blind right now.
    So, whether that is going to be Border Patrol on the 
ground, HSI, Department of--anyone in the Department of 
Justice, all of us are operating in silos. There is not a lot 
of shared information. There is some, and I do give credit to 
those that are sharing, whether that is at the individual 
tactical level and maybe sometimes at the operational level, 
but in terms of trying to understand the entire threat as it 
stands now with our current system, that is almost impossible.
    Mr. Moore. I shudder whenever I hear the concept of not 
sharing intelligence and properly communicating with each 
other. We saw from the 9-11 Commission that we can do better in 
the IC. So I encourage you, and I want to be a voice back here 
to make sure I can do whatever we can to get out ahead of that 
issue and realize that we are on the same team and working 
together.
    Existing funding, let's talk at least existing funding and 
where we need to put most of that in order to divert migrants 
to only the ports of entry, help end the reign of the cartels, 
and secure the sovereignty. Anything on the additional existing 
funding that we can be doing a better job of that right now?
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir. Critical infrastructure between the 
ports of entry. So adhering to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, 
that would deny almost all illegal entries, which would stop 
one of the commodities, and I hate to reference foreign 
nationals or human beings as commodities, but to the Mexican 
cartels, that is what they are.
    Mr. Moore. That is what they are to them.
    Mr. Blair. And so in order to deny that, we would need some 
sort of apparatus between the ports of entry in order to 
actually understand the domain awareness of it and also be able 
to stop it, because as it stands now, as a Border Patrol agent, 
you are going down there, a lot of times it is like it is back 
in 1924. I am having to cut sign on roads to understand what is 
actually who, where, when, why, or how is actually coming 
across because we don't even have the technology to understand 
that.
    Mr. Moore. I was only able to ask questions to you, Mr. 
Blair, but thank you to all of our witnesses for their tireless 
work on this. We have got to come up with solutions and fix 
this issue. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Utah. I now 
yield five minutes to the gentlelady from Vermont, Ms. Balint.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all the 
witnesses for being here today. When we have people come and 
share their time with us, it helps us to do our jobs better. So 
I appreciate it.
    Mr. Bier, I said to you earlier, I was very pleased to meet 
you this morning because I have been following your writing for 
some time and there are so many things that you have written 
that absolutely resonate and make sense for me given our 
situation in Vermont with our workforce crisis, and so you said 
America has never needed immigration like it does now. I would 
agree based on what I see across industries in Vermont. You 
have also said that without immigration, the U.S. population 
will decline by the 2030s. We have labor force decline. The 
jobs that are going unfilled are not going to be filled without 
immigrants. The numbers don't work out. It doesn't pencil out. 
Right? So as the U.S. prime age employment rate is at near 
record high and we still have thousands and thousands of jobs 
that are going left unfilled, even in my small state of 
Vermont.
    And the other piece that we talk about a lot in here is 
Social Security and making sure we shore up Social Security. 
So, immigrants we know will work and they will pay into the 
system and that can boost Social Security revenues, which we 
desperately need, and so thank you so much for being here 
today.
    The data seems to indicate that the nation's public debt is 
set to increase to $54 trillion by 2034, and I am wondering, 
how can immigration help to offset this debt that we see 
coming?
    Mr. Bier. Well, look, we need obviously reform to our 
spending program. So, you know, I don't want to say that 
immigration is going to somehow solve all of our problems.
    Ms. Balint. Absolutely, multi-problems.
    Mr. Bier. At the margin, immigration helps, and, you know, 
we have the Congressional Budget Office saying that we are 
going to reduce spending or reduce the deficit by a trillion 
dollars over the next decade just from that, and if you look at 
long term, the Social Security trustees report finds massive 
gains from immigration. When you talk about Social Security, 
you can measure that in workers. They tell us how many workers 
we need in order to fund retirees.
    Ms. Balint. Right.
    Mr. Bier. And by the mid-2030s, they are going to be about 
35 million workers short of what they need to keep Social 
Security revenues equal to expenses. There is a huge need in 
the United States, and it is measured in tens of millions, not 
thousands.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you. You know, in my home state, as I 
mentioned, we have a terrible workforce crisis right now, and 
it is particularly hard on one of our core industries, the 
dairy industry. You know, two-thirds of New England's milk 
production is supported by migrant workers, immigrants who come 
to work, and it is not just the ag industry in Vermont, 
specifically the milk industry. It is ag industry across the 
country, right, we know this. Can you tell us what affects 
strict immigration policies? I am talking about legal 
immigration, like the number of people coming in, the number of 
people able to work. How does that impact all of us, not just 
in terms of workforce, but in our pocketbooks, in terms of the 
prices that we are paying? Like, how does it fit into the 
general contours of the economy?
    Mr. Bier. Right. So we are in a global economy. We can 
import milk from abroad. We have to compete with farmers around 
the world who can manufacture this stuff cheaper because they 
have lower costs of labor in those countries. Of course, we are 
more productive in this country, and our farms are more 
efficient in that respect, but they still need the workers, 
they still need the labor, and if you look at what we are doing 
with the H-2A visa program, we exclude all year-round 
agriculture from that program. So there is zero visas under 
that program for year-round dairies, where you have a need. The 
cows have to be milked----
    Ms. Balint. Yes.
    Mr. Bier [continuing]. All year round.
    Ms. Balint. Yes.
    Mr. Bier. And there is no recognition of that need in 
Federal law right now.
    Ms. Balint. And I believe we get so caught up in divisive 
rhetoric that we just don't look at things, the commonsense 
initiatives that we could take around immigration and allowing 
also migrant workers to work legally. There are things that--
there are levers available to us that we are not using.
    The other thing I am very concerned about in my home state, 
and I know it is not just Vermont, it is most of New England, 
we have an aging population. We literally do not have the 
workers to fill the current jobs, let alone growth that 
industry wants to have in Vermont, and I just don't see how we 
are going to get there without----
    Mr. Bier. Yeah, without immigration, we are going to have a 
prime age workforce decline of six million over the next 
decade. That is enormous. So, you know, you are talking about, 
essentially, that is two percent of the population. So that is 
a significant decline in a very short period and at a point 
where we desperately need more people to counteract the effects 
of aging. You mentioned about a quarter of our population is 
going to be over the age of 65 by 2050. We have to have 
immigration to deal with that problem, that issue.
    Ms. Balint. I really appreciate it, and, you know, just to 
acknowledge you have worked for a more conservative think tank. 
I am a progressive from Vermont, but on these issues there is a 
commonsense coming together that we have to focus on that and 
not the divisive rhetoric. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Bier. Of course. Thank you.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlelady from Vermont, 
and now yield five minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. 
Yakym.
    Mr. Yakym. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 
hearing, as well as to our witnesses for being here today.
    This chart behind me paints a picture of the Biden 
Administration's failure to secure the southern border, which 
by far outpaces any of his predecessors. This is a chart that 
shows every single President, first term, the first 38 months 
of the last six presidential terms and cumulative illegal 
border crossings.
    President Biden created this crisis on day one when he 
signed his first 64 executive actions that have undermined 
border security and encouraged illegal immigration. Despite the 
unprecedented surge in illegal immigration, the Biden 
Administration chose to deny that there was any problem at all. 
As a matter of fact, just 11 months in, they called it, 
``cyclical or seasonal.'' They continued to insist that the 
border is secure, about the 28-month mark. Even at the end of 
last year, President Biden and his administration officials 
continued to downplay the border crisis in month 37 as just 
``ebbs and flows,'' but two weeks after calling it ebbs and 
flows, and nearly three years into this crisis of his own 
doing, President Biden finally admitted in month 37 that the 
border is ``not secure.''
    We have known for years what President Biden and his 
administration refused to acknowledge until recently, that our 
southern border isn't secured. No laws have changed, just the 
will to enforce them.
    And while they have been in denial, we have seen fentanyl 
decimate our communities. We have seen people on the terrorist 
watch list stream across the southern border. We have seen 
state and local government budgets strain under the weight of 
providing food and shelter. We have seen crime with illegal 
immigrants assaulting police and even committing rape or 
murder. Last month, 50 men and women from Indiana's National 
Guard deployed to Texas to support its efforts to do what the 
Federal Government refuses to do and enforce our border laws, 
because the sad fact is that every state and every community 
has become a border state and a border community under 
President Biden's failed border policies.
    My question first to you, Mr. Blair. You spoke about your 
experiences trying to secure our border through the variety of 
roles that you have served in. Can you share how the Biden 
Administration's policies worsened under this border crisis?
    Mr. Blair. Sure. As a Border Patrol agent and an officer on 
the Operation Lone Star, by inviting so many people to the 
southern border that he has, it forces or coerces every single 
agency along the border to deal with that, to deal with that 
mass migration, and so because of that, the rest of the border 
is left wide open for other nefarious activities, such as 
Mexican cartels, such as Tren de Aragua coming up from 
Venezuela. All the other criminal activities are now happening 
between the ports of entry. Because of that, the record amount 
of fentanyl coming through, you name it.
    Mr. Yakym. Great, and as a follow-up, what national 
security threats are posed by the current situation at the 
southern border?
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir. So every single adversary that the 
United States has, has a nexus to our southern border. That is 
China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, to include also nonstate 
actors, Hezbollah, Hamas. You also have ISIS, MS-13, Tren de 
Aragua. Every single one now sees that the Mexican cartels now 
are in control, and now they have the ability to now move into 
every single community in the United States.
    Mr. Yakym. Thank you, and Mr. Smith, you have led the 
charge at the local level to protect your community and 
prosecute illegal immigrants. What hurdles have you faced in 
those efforts?
    Mr. Smith. The logistics of prosecuting this many people 
are just overwhelming for a county my size. You know, Operation 
Lone Star really is the only thing standing in between the 
citizens of Kinney County and the open border policies of 
Biden.
    Listening to some of the questions here today, though, it 
seems like a lot of the emphasis is put on the immigrant 
welfare, but being a Budget Committee, y'all deal with taxpayer 
dollars. To me, there is a huge message being missed here. Just 
I am astounded at what I am hearing today.
    Mr. Yakym. How has your community changed as a result of 
President Biden's open border policies?
    Mr. Smith. We no longer have a sovereign border. Our 
residents have to live in fear of hearing helicopters during 
the day, getting their kids in at night. You know, a lot of 
outside activities are very limited now. We have transformed 
our entire lives to live with a security threat.
    Mr. Yakym. Great. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would submit 
to you that the numbers don't lie. The numbers on this chart do 
not lie. President Biden created this crisis with the stroke of 
a pen. He can fix it with a stroke of a pen, and I call on him 
to do just that.
    Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back.
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    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Indiana. I 
now yield five minutes to my friend from Oklahoma, Mr. Josh 
Brecheen.
    Mr. Brecheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding 
the hearing regarding the cost of illegal immigration. 
Alexander Hamilton once said, writing under the pen name of 
Lucius Crassus, he said, ``To admit foreigners indiscriminately 
to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our 
country would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian 
horse,'' think Trojan horse, ``into the citadel of our liberty 
and sovereignty.'' He later said something similar, talking 
about these entities, ``Foreigners will generally be apt to 
bring with them attachments,'' dot, dot, dot, and goes on to 
say, ``It is unlikely they will bring with them that temperate 
love of liberty.''
    Ms. Kirchner, you have talked about we are granting the 
right of citizenship right now through the Administration, the 
benefit of citizenship from those coming from Haiti and from 
Cuba. The moment they are paroled by this administration, I 
will submit as a member of the Homeland Security Committee as 
we have prosecuted this case out of that Committee, illegally 
in defiance of what Federal statute--the moment they come in 
under what Secretary Mayorkas and what this administration has 
brought forth, they come in illegally. We are granting them 
citizenship-like status. Hamilton--I just read how Hamilton 
warned us about that.
    Can you speak to, again, what we are giving them in terms 
of Social Security numbers and the benefits? If you can speak 
to that.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir. The parolees that are let in, they 
are----
    Mr. Brecheen. 30,000 a month.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes.
    Mr. Brecheen. That is what our average is, 360,000 a year.
    Ms. Kirchner. And there are more at the border. Those are 
the ones flown in and there are more that are being----
    Mr. Brecheen. Those are the flown in.
    Ms. Kirchner [continuing]. Filled in at the border. They 
are treated, for the purpose of Federal benefits programs, they 
are treated like legal permanent residents. So for most people, 
that is green card holders, and that means that on day one they 
get work permits. Well, they have to apply, but they get work 
permits. They are eligible for Social Security numbers, they 
are eligible for Obamacare, and with the Social----
    Mr. Brecheen. I filed a bill on that, by the way.
    Ms. Kirchner. I am sorry?
    Mr. Brecheen. I joined a colleague in the Senate to file a 
bill to stop that madness on----
    Ms. Kirchner. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Brecheen. Them being eligible for Obamacare. Keep 
going.
    Ms. Kirchner. And they are eligible for tax credits. I 
mean, we will give them back money when they file a tax----
    Mr. Brecheen. Refundable tax credit.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, exactly.
    Mr. Brecheen. With no tax liability.
    Ms. Kirchner. Exactly. So when they do pay taxes, they will 
get--it will be a net gain for the migrant. So in five years--
although in five years, all of those parolees will be eligible 
for everything under the sun: Medicare, Medicaid, Social 
Security, TANF, food stamps, Social Security income, Federal 
student aid. You know, if your kid is going to college, they 
will be eligible for Federal Government money to go to college.
    Mr. Brecheen. And that is just the parolees.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes.
    Mr. Brecheen. For time's sake, I want to kind of reclaim my 
time here and say that is just for the parolees of 30,000 a 
month, this administration is granting that type of status to, 
but then you also have ones that these children, these 
individuals, these illegal immigrants have children, then that 
child then, absent the parole release into the country, that 
also grants that family access that may not be paroled into 
these other benefits of food stamps and Medicaid. So I want to 
continue. Let me ask you something.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Brecheen. You were put in contrast with Cato a minute 
ago in terms of your numbers.
    Ms. Kirchner. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Brecheen. Cato claims that the revenue brought in by 
illegal immigration is a trillion dollars. You all are stating 
that the revenue brought in on an annual basis is $31 billion. 
That is quite the contrast. One trillion, Cato says, is the 
total to all benefits, the state, local, Federal, a trillion 
dollars in revenue. Yet you all contend it is $31 billion. Cato 
says the benefits from illegal immigrants is $700 billion. You 
all say it is $180 billion. It is quite the--also, if you 
listen to Cato, they are to be pro liberty.
    And one of the comments--I am not recognizing you yet, 
okay, one of the--you keep interrupting Members of Congress and 
it has been quite said to you, I have seen you in Homeland 
Security and you have been asked to be a guest, and so I would 
ask that you honor that. $31 billion compared to $1 trillion 
benefits, $700 billion versus $180 billion. I mean that is 
unbelievable.
    So, I am going to break it down because I got 45 seconds. 
For anyone who would doubt your numbers or your grant deference 
to Cato, break it down to the smallest sample size that we can 
look and we see numbers and the impact. Look at what is 
happening in New York. They are suggesting a ten--Eric Adams, 
the Mayor of New York, said brace yourself. This is all wide, 
all government services. He told them brace yourself, from ten 
to 15 percent cuts. It is a Democrat mayor. So, if there is 
such a positive benefit, then why isn't New York seeing that? 
Why are they having to tell all government service, brace 
yourself for ten to 20 percent cuts?
    Ms. Kirchner, I want to give you the last word on that.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir. I think the difference is whether 
you are looking at a broader economic impact, GDP, or whether 
you are looking at the cost to the Federal Government, the cost 
to American taxpayers, which is what we are looking at. We are 
looking at the cost to American taxpayers, and this is being 
felt most acutely at the state and local level, and the 
National Academy of Sciences agreed on that as well, that this 
is something that the Federal Government, we are spending 
billions of dollars on it, and it is only going to increase as 
the numbers come in.
    Mr. Brecheen. I yield, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma. I 
now yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota, Ms. Omar, for five 
minutes.
    Ms. Omar. Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Bier, I want to give you 
a minute to respond.
    Mr. Bier. I was just going to say that our numbers were not 
all illegal immigration, it was just total immigration, so all 
immigrants. So that is why it is not directly comparable. That 
is all I was going to say.
    Ms. Omar. Thank you so much. Let's keep clarifying some 
points to better understand the true impacts of our immigration 
policies. Mr. Bier, how has the restriction of legal pathways 
significantly increased reliance on asylum?
    Mr. Bier. Well, look, I mentioned three percent of the 
people who are going through the green card process get a green 
card each year. So that right there tells you we are about 97 
percent closed. People don't look at this as an option. People 
are going to die in these backlogs before they get green cards, 
and so, yeah, they look at it and they say, there is no way. 
This is not an option for me, and so they come to the border 
and they tell us that that is why they are coming. There is no 
visa category available to the people who are showing up at our 
southwest border.
    Ms. Omar. Thank you for that clarity. Can you confirm that 
immigration policies that facilitate legal entry have reduced 
illegal entries? Yes or no?
    Mr. Bier. Absolutely. The parole sponsorship programs that 
the Administration rolled out have dramatically reduced the 
number of encounters of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, even 
Venezuelans are down compared to what they were before these 
programs were announced.
    Ms. Omar. And our Republican friends always say people can 
come here legally. Could you walk us through this Cato chart--
--
    Mr. Bier. Yeah.
    Ms. Omar. Outlining the mess that our legal immigration 
system is?
    Mr. Bier. Yeah. This is why 97 percent of the people who go 
through the process get excluded because there are all these 
different restrictions in place, and you go through each one. 
There are multiple different categories here, obviously. 
Refugee program, you know, you got one out of 100 million 
displaced people worldwide getting in. You have the diversity 
lottery. Again, it is a 0.2 percent chance of getting in 
through that. Family sponsorship, nine million person backlog 
there. Again, you are going to die before you see a green card 
through that process. So you go through each one of these 
things and you can see how restrictive it is. Ultimately, you 
end up in the employer-sponsored categories, and even those, 
the ones that are supposed to be for skilled and all about our 
economy and everything, even those are incredibly backlogged, 
over two million people waiting for the opportunity to 
immigrate legally through those.
    Ms. Omar. And finally, in terms of real costs that we 
should be talking about, isn't it true that immigrants 
generally contribute more in taxes than they consume in public 
benefits?
    Mr. Bier. That is right. Our report looks at all taxes and 
all benefits of all categories. We look at the entire budget 
for state, Federal, and local governments, and we find $1 
trillion in tax payments versus just $700 billion in benefits; 
$300 billion net gain from immigration.
    Ms. Omar. And Mr. Bier, is it fair to say that our debate 
around immigration often overlooks the actual facts and data 
needed to craft sensible policies?
    Mr. Bier. Yeah, I think if we started with the premise that 
these people could be contributors, then we would ultimately 
craft a much more rational immigration policy than we have 
right now.
    Ms. Omar. Yeah, maybe it is about something else entirely. 
I won't speculate on what that something else could be, but I 
hope that some of my colleagues will reflect on why the idea of 
immigration or the changing face of our country seems to 
unsettle them.
    We know that there are undeniable benefits to immigration. 
The real costs are rooted in poor policy decisions. Our 
restrictive and failed immigration policies are costing us not 
just economically and fiscally, but also harming global 
standing and dividing our communities. With something as 
complex as immigration, this discussion merits thoughtful 
consideration and not whatever this hearing is about.
    And I will just say as an immigrant, on a personal note, 
you know, when we arrived in the U.S. in 1995, it took my dad 
about two weeks to find employment. He worked at the airport 
and then became a cab driver. We moved to Minnesota. He worked 
for the Post Office until he retired in 2010. I was expected to 
find a job to help support the family, so were all of my six 
siblings. All of us have been gainfully employed since we were 
16 in this country. The idea that immigrants do not come to 
this country desperately searching to reach that American dream 
is ridiculous, and it is something that I find abhorrent that 
is constantly discussed as we come to this country to just be 
on public benefits when we desperately want to be as equal as 
every other person and be gainfully employed and live the 
American dream.
    Thank you, and I yield back.
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    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlelady, and now yield 
five minutes to the gentleman from California, Mr. Valadao.
    Mr. Valadao. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you all for 
testifying today to discuss the devastating cost the situation 
at our southern border is having on communities across the 
country. The issue at our southern border is complex, but one 
aspect that demands urgent attention is the influx of illicit 
drugs, particularly fentanyl. I have heard countless times from 
communities and law enforcement in my district about the 
devastating rise of this drug and the cost it has on individual 
safety, law enforcement, and public health.
    I want to start by going over a few statistics. In 2020, 
more than 5,000 Californians lost their lives due to opioid 
overdose, and 80 percent of those deaths were directly 
attributed to fentanyl. In 2021, fentanyl-related overdose 
deaths surged by 54 percent. Last year, California seized a 
record amount of fentanyl, 62,000 pounds, enough to kill the 
global population twice over. These alarming increases in 
seizures and over 1,000 percent increase since 2021 underscores 
the severity of the crisis.
    As we discussed, the cost that the open southern border has 
had on our local law enforcement, who are on the front lines of 
this crisis, we need to remember that these statistics 
represent lives lost, families shattered, and communities in 
distress. Our nation's officers deserve our unwavering support 
as they grapple with this crisis, allocating precious time and 
resources to combat fentanyl while striving to keep our 
neighborhoods safe. Responding to overdose calls, investigating 
drug trafficking, ensuring the public is safe from drug-related 
crimes and violence demand significant resources and stretch 
our local agencies very thin. These are resources that could 
otherwise be allocated to community policing, crime prevention, 
enhancing emergency services. It is our duty to combat this 
crisis with every tool at our disposal.
    So, I want to thank you all again for taking the time to 
discuss this significant issue, but I want to direct my 
question directly to Mr. Smith and Mr. Blair. Can both of you 
touch on the cost that illegal drug flow from the southern 
border continues to place on our local law enforcement and 
communities?
    Mr. Blair. Unfortunately, because we are dealing with mass 
amounts of illegal immigration at the southern border, most of 
our assets, to include resources, are now geared towards that. 
So a lot of the apprehensions, unfortunately, when it comes to 
narcotics and everything else is happening with the Texas DPS 
or local law enforcement, maybe that is on Operation Stone 
Garden or whatnot. So, unfortunately, the local law enforcement 
is now having to deal with Mexican cartels or foreign terrorist 
organizations while the Federal Government is facilitating the 
invasion.
    Mr. Smith. You know, the resources in Kinney County and 
other counties along the border are beyond stretched thin. They 
have been broken. Our EMS is broken. We have a volunteer fire 
department. It is broken. Counties are broken, communities are 
broken, people's lives are being devastated. We all deal with 
taxpayer funding dollars which are trying--some people here 
want to legislate not for their benefit. The taxpayers are the 
ones that fund this building, that pay for these tax dollars. 
Legislation should be implemented toward them.
    I think this border crisis really simplifies down to a 
simple issue: when you don't enforce the law, people don't tend 
to follow it, and if we enforced our laws, our border would be 
secure, Americans would be safer, and many of the deaths that 
we have seen wouldn't have occurred. That is all I have to say 
on the subject.
    Mr. Valadao. No, I appreciate that. That is--and the 
mention of the cartels, that is something I think a lot of 
people forget to mention. I have got a community that was in my 
district before redistricting, and Mendota, California, it was 
an issue with this little tiny community, could barely afford 
to even have an entire police department and they were dealing 
with MS-13 and having to bring in state, local, and Federal 
resources to try to combat some of these issues they were 
dealing with, and it is all related to what is going on the 
border and it continues to add pressure on a lot of folks, but 
the fentanyl side of it is just one that really needs to be 
addressed obviously, and I know there is a lot of concern 
there.
    But then, also, I think some comments were made earlier by 
Mr. Bier that on the process of immigration, I mean, I come 
from a family of immigrants. My mom and dad immigrated here and 
so obviously immigration is something that is very close to 
heart for me, but we have to have a process that works and we 
have to have a process that allows those who want to come here 
legally go through that process and play, I think, for the most 
part, a really good role in what our country is and has become 
is because people from all over the world see what we are and 
they want to be a part of that, but we have to have a process 
that works and I think that would help relieve some of the 
pressure on the border, but the drug situation is just one that 
you can't overlook anymore, and the cost it is having in our 
local communities is just something that has to be addressed as 
quickly as possible.
    So thank you, Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentlemen and now yield to 
my friend from California, Mr. Scott Peters, for five minutes.
    Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Back home in San Diego 
generally we know that the border is an opportunity, not a 
threat. In our region, San Diego-Tijuana binational region 
alone, more than 150,000 people cross the border every day to 
shop, to go to school, to work, or visit the doctor. It is the 
busiest port of entry in the Western hemisphere, but we also 
acknowledge that we can't enjoy the benefits of cross-border 
commerce unless we manage our border responsibly and we need to 
make improvements, and right now, we have community-based 
organizations that are trying to pick up the slack so that we 
can deal with the newcomers that are coming to the U.S. to do 
all the terrific things that Mr. Bier has pointed out. These 
organizations, along with the County of San Diego, are doing 
their best to provide basic services to some of the most 
vulnerable people, but they are dipping into their own pockets 
to fill the gaps, and Democrats know that we need more 
resources at the southern border.
    But the problem is that there are folks in this building 
who'd rather campaign on the chaos than do anything to stop it. 
Recall that Speaker Johnson said there would be no foreign aid 
unless there was border security and there was a deal. It took 
four months to come up with it in the Senate. A very 
conservative senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Lankford, a very 
liberal senator from Connecticut, Senator Murphy, and the deal 
maker in the Senate, Senator Sinema, worked for four months to 
come up with a deal, and they reached a deal that would have 
included more than $20 billion for border security.
    What was in there? Fifteen hundred more Border Patrol and 
Customs officers, 1,200 more ICE personnel, 16,000 more 
detention beds, 100 new immigration judges, 4,300 more asylum 
officers and a change in the asylum definition that would have 
made asylum tougher to achieve, and 100 fentanyl-specific 
inspection machines for the southern border that are otherwise 
sitting in the warehouse waiting for us to authorize them. 
People complain about fentanyl, we are ready to deal with that, 
and an automatic border shut off if there is over 8,000 
immigrants in a day, or 5,000 average over seven days, no 
discretion, the border would be shut. Right? That was all part 
of the deal.
    According to Senator Murphy, he had about 20--he thought he 
could get 25 Republican votes in the Senate. There was some 
nervousness about supporting Ukraine among some of the 
Republican Senators, but that bill would have passed 
overwhelmingly and would have ensured the availability of 
additional immigrant visas to help the kind of legal 
immigration that we all acknowledge we need.
    What happened was Mr. Trump decided he'd rather, literally, 
he'd rather campaign on the issue than solve the issue. He told 
those Republican Senators, don't vote for this, on a Sunday 
night and on the morning--the next morning, on the Monday, the 
number of Republicans supporting it went from 20 to 25 down to 
three. There was no vote in the Senate.
    President Biden would have signed that bill, the toughest 
border bill in history. A lot of Democrats would have had a 
hard time voting for that, frankly, but, because there was 
nothing about Dreamers, nothing about all the things that 
Democrats have been trying to deal with, path to citizenship, 
didn't deal with immigration, just with border security. Just 
with border security.
    And that bill, by the way, is still available for Mr. 
Johnson to bring to the House floor and force a vote on it if 
he is serious about doing something about it, but instead we 
have these academic hearings, not just in this Committee, 
about, you know, complaining about what is happening as though 
we don't have the agency as Members of Congress to fix it.
    So let's pull that bill off the shelf. Let's all force a 
vote on it. Let's see if Republicans will support it, because, 
you know, President Biden can't be responsible--this is not on 
President Biden if it is President Trump who killed it. This is 
Trump who did this. Okay? And we have every ability in this 
building to solve this problem.
    We were elected to office. President Trump isn't even in 
office now, but he appears to be able to push around the 
Republicans, at least in the Senate. If my Republican 
colleagues want to do something about border security, fine, 
let's do it. Let's put that bill on the House floor. Speaker 
Johnson owns the House floor. He owns the time for it. He could 
do it next week, and if you are serious about it, let's vote on 
it, but if you are not serious about it and just want to 
campaign on it, let's fess up to that. You want to just have 
this chaos, not you, some people want to have this chaos to 
campaign on. They'd rather campaign on the issue than solve the 
issue. That is not why I came to Congress. That is not why 
people sent us. Let's vote on it.
    I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from California, 
and yield five minutes now to the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 
Ben Cline.
    Mr. Cline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our 
witnesses for being here. It is important that we take 
opportunities like today to zero in on the cost of the Biden 
border crisis because without the leadership of the Chairman, 
if we weren't in the majority, if House Republicans weren't in 
the majority, hearings like this would never happen. We know 
that the other side would not be focused on securing our border 
and for all the talk about some Senate bill that didn't pass 
the Senate. So I don't know what shelf the Speaker is going to 
pull the bill off of because it is not a shelf that is in the 
House of Representatives. It is a bill that can't pass the 
Senate.
    So, meanwhile, our Senate counterparts, as they talk, they 
have held at least 16 hearings related to climate change, but 
only one hearing on immigration to try and gloss over the 
disastrous effects of the policies pushed by the White House, 
this White House that refuses to follow current law. So we can 
talk a lot about changing policies, but until we have a 
President that actually follows the law with regard to parole, 
with regard to detention, we have laws that are currently in 
effect, but this President refuses to follow them. This 
Homeland Security Secretary was impeached because he ignored 
the law.
    The American people are seeing straight through the 
obfuscation and the blustering on the other side. They know 
who's responsible for this crisis, and they are the--and they 
are frustrated because they are the ones left having to pay for 
the consequences, and the consequences are real.
    The last time I was in Yuma, Arizona, and, as we know, 
about 85 percent of the fresh wintertime produce is grown in 
Yuma, we met with farmers, farmers who were testifying about 
illegal immigrants who come across the border, who tromp across 
their crops, who camp in their fields, and they are not 
allowed, because of U.S. food safety laws, thankfully, that 
they are not allowed to harvest or sell that, they have to 
destroy it at the cost to the farmer.
    So then we went to visit with a hospital in Yuma. We 
visited a NICU. The neonatal facility was talking about how 
they have a certain number of beds, but that those beds are 
often full of illegals, forcing residents of Yuma to have to go 
to Phoenix to get care hours away, and that is because, 
tragically, the incentives for people to make this journey are 
so strong because they can cross the border unimpeded, that 
these women are sexually assaulted, raped on the way up here. 
They get pregnant. They don't receive any kind of prenatal 
care, and so inevitably, they are giving birth early. They are 
premature, they go into labor prematurely. They have to have a 
NICU available in Yuma when they get here, and so they take up 
the space.
    So then we talk about the schools, the cost to the school 
divisions for, not just because you have an additional student 
in the classroom, but because that student is ESL. So you have 
those added costs.
    Then you have the transportation system, the bus system. 
Then you have the housing impact, the rental impact. What is 
the impact on rents when you have a limited number of housing 
units available? Low-cost housing, but that impact.
    So just when you are talking about Yuma, and it is right on 
the border, so we looked at the fencing, the holes in the 
fencing. When we went actually on our bus ride to the border, 
all of a sudden, cars started weaving in and out of our convoy 
because we had capital police in front and behind us. They were 
slowing us down to a crawl, to a five mile an hour crawl on a 
highway. We said, what is going on? It was the cartels 
operating freely on our side of the border, trying to determine 
what this was, and is it something that should be allowed, 
should stop? By the time we got to the fence, no more than ten 
minutes later, 15 minutes later, that part of the border was 
clear, but we could see across the river the school buses 
idling. They were waiting with migrants waiting to cross, and 
the cartels are in complete control.
    So I can't even begin to talk about the cascading impact on 
costs to this country, but every country is becoming--I mean, 
every state is becoming a border state. Every community is 
becoming a border community. Mine has an interstate running 
through it, and if you talk to the state police about what they 
pull over every day on that interstate, operating illegally: 
human trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking. It is an 
epidemic, and until we get a handle on it, these crises are 
going to continue.
    So I appreciate you holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman. I 
appreciate our witnesses being here today, and I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Virginia, 
and with our final witness from the great state of Texas, Mr. 
Chip Roy.
    Mr. Roy. I thank my friend, the Chairman. I thank you for 
holding this hearing and I appreciate the witnesses being here 
and giving your time here.
    Mr. Blair, you served in the United States military. You 
served in the Border Patrol. You spent over 20 years of your 
life doing that. Now you are at the Texas Public Policy 
Foundation. Can you explain for the record whether or not you 
believe H.R. 2 would effectively secure the border versus the 
Senate bill, which in my opinion, to see if you agree with it, 
would actually codify catch and release and codify alternatives 
to detention such that it would codify the current broken 
system? Can you quickly answer that?
    Mr. Blair. Yes, sir. H.R. 2, along with your other bill 
designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, 
both those bills would secure the border. The other would not. 
It would actually allow the Mexican cartels to continue to 
smuggle and continue to have a slave trade in the United 
States.
    Mr. Roy. I appreciate that. Mr. Smith from Kinney County, 
could you explain--I know you already went through your 
testimony. I just want to make sure the record is very clear. 
Kinney County, you have gone from, prior to the Biden 
Administration, I have heard all of this testimony here today 
saying--or questions from my colleagues saying, oh, nothing is 
different. There is--you know, everything is all just perfectly 
fine under Biden. We have heard testimony that says, oh, they 
are doing more, you know, removals. Just speak to the actual on 
the ground. Kinney County, Texas, not some ivory tower sitting 
in Washington, D.C., where you put out papers and sit in think 
tanks and talk about how, you know, wonderful things would be 
in theory, in Kinney County, Texas, did you go from 140 crimes, 
roughly, prior to the Biden Administration to now something 
like 6,700 crimes last year?
    Mr. Smith. Absolutely. That is going to be criminal 
trespass, evading arrests on foot, human trafficking, human 
smuggling, criminal mischief.
    And to speak on the Senate bill, I have talked to--I deal 
with Republicans and Democrats on the border. The only 
Democrats I have spoke--heard from that support that are here 
in Washington, D.C. The Democrats on the border don't support 
the Senate bill, but the ones here do.
    Mr. Roy. I am just wondering, I mean, you probably no doubt 
have either met with the family or know the family, the people 
who died because the emergency services were not available to 
them because they were being used to go deal with people who 
are here illegally because of our broken system that the 
Democrats refuse to actually deal with at our border, is that 
family interested in reading, you know, studies from think 
tanks in D.C. about, you know, what we need to do with our 
immigration system and free markets?
    Mr. Smith. No. They want their relative back that has died. 
That is what they want.
    Mr. Roy. Ms. Kirchner, are you familiar with the quote from 
Milton Friedman that you cannot simultaneously have free 
immigration and a welfare state?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Right. Do you believe we have a welfare state?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe that that welfare state attracts 
people from all over the world?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe that that welfare state is 
expensive?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe that under our current law in the 
United States Supreme Court, under Plyler v. Doe, that the 
people of Texas have to pay through their taxes to fund people 
getting an education whether they are here illegally or not?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Question: Do you believe that, and can you testify 
on the record here that I am correct, that there are roughly 51 
and a half million people here in the United States who are 
foreign born?
    Ms. Kirchner. That is about right. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Is that about 15 percent to 16 percent of the 
American population?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Is that the highest percentage that we have ever 
had as a percentage of our population since we have been 
counting it going back well into the, you know, early part of 
the 19th century?
    Ms. Kirchner. I think we have just hit historic highs.
    Mr. Roy. Correct. We have now surpassed current highs and 
that is not really accounting for the most recent numbers 
piling in over the last year?
    Ms. Kirchner. Exactly.
    Mr. Roy. That 51 and a half million, has that been 
bolstered by roughly about a million people, a little less than 
a million? I want to be factually accurate, 900-and-something-
thousand on average per year legally coming into the United 
States, legal permanent residents over the last roughly 25 
years.
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. Right. In other words, do we, as some of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to say, have a 
closed door or an impossible way for people to come to the 
United States? Do we not, in fact--have we not allowed almost 
20-something, 25 million people legally to come into the United 
States over the last two and a half decades?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir. We have a legal system. We have a 
legal way to come to the United States. It is called a green 
card.
    Mr. Roy. And right now, under our current system, are the 
laws being ignored by the current administration?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Roy. And this notion that people flowing across the 
border, I heard one of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle talk about the benefits of parole, that somehow that was 
fixing the system. Is that not, in fact, a backdoor way to dump 
more people into the United States rather than having them 
visibly come across the border, enraging the American people 
rightfully, and rather fly them into the United States to the 
tune of 400,000 people last year, including the State of Texas 
and the State of Florida, and fly them into the country under 
parole when the law requires a case-by-case analysis? Is that 
correct?
    Ms. Kirchner. Yes, sir. Parole has become a shadow 
immigration system. It is essentially supplanting the family 
and employment-based systems. They have created a completely 
separate system for hundreds of thousands of people who have no 
legal basis to enter this country.
    Mr. Roy. Well, I appreciate you all testifying here, and I 
would just say that if people want to submit reports, maybe 
they should send those reports to the families and the victims, 
the people who have been dying, like the six families who died 
from fentanyl poisoning in my school district or Laken Riley's 
family in Georgia, who I am sure would be delighted to read 
about all of the studies about what we could do with our 
immigration system when we have, in fact, been putting forward 
legislation to fix that immigration system, but our colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle are not interested in that while 
numbers continue to flood across the border.
    Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to submit 34 
affidavits from Kinney County landowners regarding the impact 
of the border crisis on their properties, safety, and 
livelihood.
    Chairman Arrington. Without objection, so ordered.
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    Mr. Roy. I thank the Chairman.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and 
now yield five minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Buddy 
Carter.
    Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of you 
for being here, and thank you for your expertise and your 
interest in what I consider to be one of the most pressing 
problems that we have in our country today and that is the 
border situation at the southwest border and the porous border.
    Look, I have been in Congress for ten years. I have been to 
the border eight times in that ten years that I have been a 
Member of Congress. The last time was about two months ago. It 
is in as bad of shape now as I have ever seen it in the eight 
times that I have been there.
    I am a pharmacist by profession, so I am obviously 
concerned about the number of immigrants who are coming across 
that border, but I am also concerned, and even probably more 
concerned, about the illegal drugs coming across that border, 
particularly fentanyl, fentanyl that is poisoning our 
communities.
    You know, every day we lose over 200 people as a result of 
fentanyl poisoning. I want to share a story with you real 
quick. As I said, I am a pharmacist, a health care 
professional, and I embarrassed myself at a town hall meeting 
one day, and I was embarrassed to have made the mistake I made. 
I referred to it as fentanyl addiction, and a mother stood up 
and she said, no, sir, you are wrong. It is not addiction. She 
said, my son took one pill and he is dead. It is fentanyl 
poisoning, and that is exactly what it is.
    We have made some progress in some of the tools in our tool 
chest. I led a letter to the FDA asking them to reclassify 
naloxone to where you could get it without a prescription. Now, 
I am often critical of the FDA, for good reason I think, but I 
have to applaud them in this case, because they did just that. 
I keep naloxone with me. I keep it in my backpack everywhere I 
go. Thank God I have never had to use it, but I know that it is 
there if I ever have to use it.
    We all know the statistics. Since President Biden took 
office, over 60,000 pounds of fentanyl have been intercepted at 
our borders. That is what has been intercepted. We have no idea 
what has gone through those borders without us knowing it. In 
fact, I will tell you, I mentioned the last time I was at the 
border, the Border Patrol agents told me two things that I 
didn't know before. First of all, the number of non-Mexicans 
crossing that border now exceeds the number of Mexicans 
crossing that border. Secondly, and this is what disturbed me 
the most, the street price of fentanyl has plummeted. It has 
gone from $10 a tablet down to 25 and 35 cents a tablet, which 
is simple economics. That is supply and demand. The demand is 
still there, but the supply of fentanyl on the streets right 
now is so high that the price has plummeted.
    This is a national emergency. This is something we have got 
to address and save Americans, 200 every day, and everyone 
here, everyone in this room knows someone who's been impacted 
by this. Either you have a family member or you know of someone 
who's been impacted by this. That is what has really got me 
concerned.
    Ms. Kirchner, I want to ask you, given your experience with 
DHS and with the Border Patrol, how has current border policies 
contributed to the rise in fentanyl trafficking and drug 
trafficking as a whole?
    Ms. Kirchner. Well, sir, the Biden Administration has 
focused very heavily on releasing illegal migrants and that has 
driven this mass wave of immigration through Central America, 
through Mexico, but what is coming with it? I mean, all of 
these people are paying cartels and they are all paying cartels 
and their cartels are becoming richer and richer, and we know 
that the cartels use human beings to divert resources so that 
they can bring in their shipments in other areas of the border. 
So, it is interesting you asked that question because when I 
first started working on immigration over 20 years ago, I had 
border agents tell me, no, the two are separate. Smuggling 
aliens is different than drug trafficking and they were very 
different, and now it is all combined. It is one big, 
lucrative, illegal, toxic operation and we are paying the price 
as Americans.
    Mr. Carter. Thank you for that. Let me move on. Mr. Blair, 
I want to ask you, we know that on the Federal side we spend 
roughly a billion dollars a year incarcerating illegal 
immigrants. Do you know how much money the State of Texas and 
its localities spend on the same issue? Any idea?
    Mr. Blair. Sir, I do not. I can find out for you, but I do 
not know that number.
    Mr. Carter. I appreciate that. Let me ask you, Mr. Smith, 
has the increase in drug smuggling impacted the public safety 
of your community?
    Mr. Smith. It has. You know, the amount of law enforcement 
it takes to respond to incidents.
    Mr. Carter. And I suspect emergency personnel carry 
naloxone with them and they have to use it quite often. It is 
not inexpensive.
    Mr. Smith. Absolutely. Absolutely.
    Mr. Carter. Mr. Chairman, I can't thank all of you enough 
for being here, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 
hearing because this is a national emergency. You know, if we 
had a plane crash today and it killed 200 people, we'd stop 
every airplane that was flying in this country until we figured 
out what went wrong. Yet we lose 200 people every day to 
fentanyl poisoning and what happens? Nothing whatsoever.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Arrington. I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I 
thank the patience and contributions of our witnesses. In 
conclusion, I would like to make a couple of brief comments and 
I will try not to give another speech.
    When I think about this administration and what is 
emblematic of this administration with respect to immigration 
enforcement and border security, I think about Ms. Kamala 
Harris, our Vice President. She was designated as the border's 
czar. She was in charge for the Administration, and I remember 
her as a presidential candidate along with the other Democrat 
presidential candidates, when asked the question about the 
current border situation, she, along with every Democrat 
candidate raised their hand when asked should we decriminalize 
border crossings? She also raised her hand along with the 
others when asked if we should provide, ``free services.'' They 
are not free, but should we provide health care? And she raised 
her hand. It is like the maxim your granddad taught you growing 
up: when people tell you who they are, believe them, and I 
believe they are, for whatever reason and rationale, for an 
open border. I think the greatest cost of that is much deeper 
and more profound than just the financial cost, the dollars and 
cents, no question about it, and I won't go through the litany 
of things associated with those costs because I am trying my 
best to stay focused on the Budget Committee's jurisdiction 
with respect to the financial impact.
    I put a premium on freedom. I know Cato puts a premium on 
freedom. I think the fact that the United States has put a 
premium on freedom is the reason that you see unlocked and 
unleashed human potential like no other country in the history 
of humanity, but what I would say to my guests, Mr. Bier 
especially, if you are not enforcing the laws, and this 
President has not done that willfully, intentionally, 
systematically, if he has not done all that he can do, and, in 
fact, I think he has undone things with respect to it, but if 
he is not doing everything he can do to provide for a common 
defense and secure our sovereign border, there is no freedom.
    Rule of law is essential and security is essential to the 
freedom and quality of lives of the American people, and yes, 
there were problems with our border and with immigration 
enforcement before this President, and yes, both sides of the 
aisle will have to come together to fix some of these 
deficiencies in our current immigration system, but the crisis 
today, the lawlessness and chaos at our border is different 
than anything we have experienced and it could have been 
avoided. It is self-inflicted, and it is actually one of the 
reasons why it is very difficult to have a bipartisan, 
productive conversation to reach some good outcomes that would, 
in fact, make the system work better. So I think that that is a 
big observation of mine because I, too, am a champion for 
freedom.
    But what is happening in Kinney County? If you asked how 
freedom is working out for the citizens of--my fellow Texans in 
Kinney County and 253 of the other counties in Texas, they 
would say there is no American freedom the way we knew it 
before. They don't go to their ranches anymore, and they don't 
leave their kids and their wives at the ranch anymore. They are 
fearful of their lives. That isn't the American way. That isn't 
liberty as we have held it out to the rest of the world.
    But yes, legal immigration, good. Labor shortage, 
hardworking, God-fearing, freedom-loving people from all over 
the world coming for a slice of the American dream, you better 
believe it. That is the American story. It really is. All I 
would say is I welcome those folks and I would be in their 
shoes, fighting tooth and nail to get to this country, this 
experiment in liberty and democracy, but I only welcome them if 
they respect our laws, the safety of our citizens, and the 
sovereignty of our country, and that is our constitutional, 
sacred duty.
    And in this hearing, we are just trying to identify the 
financial cost, and it is real, and for a Federal Government 
that prints money and borrows money without any thought, it is 
hard to suggest that there is a consequence to anything we do. 
Funding foreign countries' security, funding expansions of 
health care. I mean, as long as there is no immediate 
consequence or you are not taking tax dollars out of their 
pocket or cutting someone's favorite program, it is just such 
an irrational system up here.
    The best way, I think, to look at a rational system and 
observe what it is doing is to look at those places around the 
country, which is every place but the Federal Government, where 
they have to actually balance their books. They have to make 
the ledger balance. So they either raise taxes or cut 
expenditures to absorb the cost. Man, that is why people are 
yelling from the rooftops, help us, we are overwhelmed and we 
are overrun, because they don't say that in this town as long 
as China and other bondholders will say, here is some more 
money for this insatiable appetite to spend.
    I appreciate you, Mr. Bier, and I appreciate your testimony 
and I appreciate your back and forth, and I always appreciate 
my colleagues on both sides having a good, robust, productive 
conversation.
    Mr. Smith, thanks for making the trip up here from Kinney 
County. Tell my friends out there hello.
    Mr. Blair, thanks for your service to our country.
    Ms. Kirchner, thank you for all the work that you all did 
as the basis for our discussion in terms of the financial cost 
of our open border and this border crisis.
    With that, God bless you all and God bless our great 
country. We are adjourned.
    Oh, let me just say this. Sorry. I am going to also submit, 
if I can, since I have adjourned, but I want to submit a letter 
of support from Sheena Rodriguez, president of Alliance for a 
Safe Texas, and then another study from the Federation for 
American Immigration Reform that has formed the basis again of 
today's hearing, and I obviously don't object and I so order.
    [The information follows:]

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    Chairman Arrington. And now we are adjourned. Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 12:39 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
 
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