[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 42, Number 31 (Monday, August 7, 2006)]
[Pages 1430-1434]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks on Immigration Reform in McAllen, Texas
August 3, 2006
Thank you all very much. It's good to be home. Thank you for coming.
Please be seated. You know, when I left the Governor's office, I knew I
would leave it in capable hands with Rick Perry. And I'm proud of the
job he's done as Governor of the State of Texas, and I'm proud to have
been introduced by the Governor of my State.
I want to thank you all for the warm welcome. It's nice to get out
of Washington. [Laughter] It's even better to come down to Texas. And
I'm proud to be with my fellow Texans.
I learned a lot growing up here; I learned a lot as your Governor.
And as Rick said, I understand this border, and I want to talk to you
today about border policy. We have an obligation to secure our border,
and we have an obligation to treat people with decency and respect. And
we're going to do both in the United States of America.
I just traveled and met some of the fine men and women of the
National Guard and Border Patrol who are working long hours to do the--
to keep this border secure. And I first--I want to say thanks to all the
Border Patrol agents and the Guard men and women who are here. You've
got a tough job, and the role of the Federal Government is to give you
the tools necessary to do your job.
So we landed, and we saw choppers with all kinds of new equipment on
it--airplanes that can interdict people flying in drugs, fast boats to
stop the people trying to bring drugs or people up and down the coast of
Texas. One of the things that you'll hear me talk about is the need to
modernize the technology along this border. And that's what we're going
to do.
I also recognized we needed more people to help the Guard and to
help the Border Patrol do its job. And so last May, I said, we'll deploy
up to 6,000 National Guard members to assist the Border Patrol. And I
said we'd get it done by August 1st. Well, we got it done by August 1st.
And I want to thank those in the National Guard who have joined us.
It's good to look out in the crowd and see a lot of folks that I got
to know over the years. And most of the folks that I got to know over
the years realize that I married well. And so Laura sends her deep
affection to the people of south Texas and our friends here in the
audience. She's doing just fine, by the way. She's a great First Lady.
[[Page 1431]]
I'm proud to be here with Congressman Ralph Hall, right out of the
Dallas area. Thanks for coming, Congressman. He's a fine Texan who cares
deeply about the people along the border here. I'm traveling today with
the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Ralph
Basham. Ralph, thank you for joining us.
So, what happens when the President sets policy in Washington, like
on the Guard policy--I said, ``We need to get 6,000 members of the Guard
down to help the Border Patrol.'' And then that order goes down the
chain of command, and the first person whose desk it landed on in the
chain of command after Secretary Rumsfeld was Lieutenant General Steve
Blum of the Guard Bureau. General Blum said, ``Mr. President, we're
going to get the job done.'' I said, ``That's good, General Blum,
because come August 1st, I'm going to come down to the area and take a
look-see.'' And he did. Thank you, General Blum, for a job well done.
David Aguilar is the Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. I don't know
if you know this or not, but David's mother lives here in the area. And
he made sure the first person I met when I got off the airplane, as far
as he is concerned, was his mother. [Laughter] One reason he's advanced
so highly in the Border Patrol, like the head of the whole thing, is
because he has listened to his mother--[laughter]--just like I have
listened to mine. So thank you for being here, David. Thanks for
serving.
Major General Chuck Rodriguez, adjutant general of the Texas
National Guard, very instrumental in making sure we've got the troops
here to help the Border Patrol. General, thank you very much. General
Allen Dehnert who's the adjutant general for the Texas Air National
Guard; General Dehnert, thank you very much as well. General Mike
Kostelnik who's the Assistant Commissioner, Office of CBP Air and
Marine, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol; look, he's the guy in charge of
airplanes and boats. [Laughter]
We're here as well, with Lieutenant Colonel Jose Carrillo. He is the
Rio Grande Valley Texas National Guard Task Force commander. See, in
other words, when you got to bring people down from other States to help
the Border Patrol do their job, you have to have an organization. You
just can't send people down here. And one thing the Guard has done well
is, they've organized this effort. I'm also proud to be here with Chief
Lynne Underdown. She is the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector
chairman. Chief, thank you for being here. Thanks for serving.
I want to thank Mayor Salinas of Mission who's with us today. Mayor,
thank you for joining us. Proud you're here. Mayor Cortez of McAllen is
with us. Mayor, good to see you. Thank you very much. [Applause] Yes,
that's a good sign, Mayor; it's a good sign.
Finally, one of my dear friends, I've known him for a long time, and
that's Mayor John David Franz of Hidalgo. Mayor, it's good to see you.
John David told me just as I got off the airplane--I said, ``How is your
family?'' He said, ``My son has just enrolled in West Point.'' And you
tell him thank you, John David, on behalf of a grateful nation.
And for those of you who have got a loved one in the United States
military, you tell them the Commander in Chief is incredibly proud of
the job they're doing to help secure this Nation and bring peace to this
world. We've got a fantastic military, and it's a military that will
have the full support--[applause].
I'm going to talk today about comprehensive immigration reform. I
say ``comprehensive'' because unless you have all five pieces working
together, it's not going to work at all. This is an important debate
facing our Nation, and the debate is, can we secure this border and, at
the same time, honor our history of being a land of immigrants? And the
answer is, absolutely, we can do both. And we will do both.
First, we've got to secure the border. We will keep it open to
lawful trade and commerce, and we will work to secure the border to
prevent people and goods and weapons from being brought illegally here.
That's our job. It's the job of the Federal Government--it's the job of
the--working with the State government to get the job done. That's what
the American people expect.
All this strategy has got to start with more money, and so we've
increased funding for border security from $4.6 billion in 2001 to more
than 7.6 billion in 2006. In other words, you can't say the American
people are going to make a commitment to secure the
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border, unless you spend money to secure the border, and we're doing
just that. And I recently signed an emergency supplemental spending bill
that provides an additional $1.9 billion in immediate funding for border
security. And what does that mean? Well, it means we're going to give
the Border Patrol, the people on the frontlines of securing this border,
better technology, and we're going to expand the number of Border Patrol
agents that will be able to use that technology. That's the strategy.
We put new resources in people's hands. And as a result of the hard
work of Border Patrol since 2001, Federal agents have apprehended and
sent home more than 6 million people entering America illegally.
I mean, people are working hard. There's people doing their job, but
we could do more. There's more work to be done. And so we've called for
increases in manpower and technology. We're going to train 6,000
additional agents so that you've got more people to help you do the job.
And in the meantime, the reason we brought the Guard down here was
because we knew we had an immediate need to enforce the border. And so
until those 6,000 are trained, we're going to be using National Guard
units from over 30 States here. And the plan is working. It makes sense.
If we need more manpower and the need for manpower is immediate, it
makes sense to call upon our Guard troops to come and help the Border
Patrol do the job.
We're going to help build a virtual border by using infrared and
motion sensors. We'll deploy unmanned aerial vehicles. In other words,
we're going to leverage the manpower we have. It's amazing, the new
technologies that are arriving. People are--these Border Patrol agents
will tell you that they're seeing more and better equipment. You got
heat sensors on guard stations that will enable people to detect
movement. We got choppers that are able to send real-time video streams
back to Border Patrol command centers that will then enable a dispatcher
to help an agent catch somebody who's smuggling people or drugs in a
near real-time basis.
This border is changing, and it needs to change so the Border Patrol
can do its job. We call this, by the way, this operation when we moved
the Guard down here, Operation Jump Start. So when you hear about
Operation Jump Start, that means Guard.
And the Guard has helped a lot. You know, it's interesting that--and
by the way, the Guard is not just in Texas. It's in New Mexico, Arizona,
and California as well. In other words, Border Patrol agents all up and
down thissouthern border are getting help from our Guard men and women.
And the Guards are doing--look, they're not arresting people. We're not
going to militarize this border. The job of arresting people is up to
the Border Patrol. That's your job. That's what you're trained to do.
That's what your skill level is. Their job is to help the Border Patrol
by, you know, surveillance and construction, logistics. I mean, if
you've got a Guard person dispatching, it means there's more--one more
Border Patrol agent out on the frontline. And so we're going to use this
Guard until we get 6,000 more people trained.
For the people who wonder whether the Guard could be effective down
here, when we deployed Operation Jump Start--since we've deployed it,
our agents have seen 17,000 pounds of illegal drugs and apprehended
2,500 illegal immigrants. In other words, the Guard is leveraging--
giving the Border Patrol more opportunity.
Last month, Border Patrol agents in this sector confiscated more
than 4,200 pounds of marijuana that was hidden in a tractor-trailer. And
the support of the Guard was important in making this seizure happen. So
for those of you in the Guard, I want to thank you for coming down here
and helping these good folks in the Border Patrol, and your presence is
making a difference.
In order to make sure the Border Patrol is effective, we've got to
stop what's called catch-and-release. For the veterans down here, they
know what catch-and-release means. And it had to have been discouraging
for you--risk your life, or you're spending long hours, and all of a
sudden, you apprehend people who are sneaking here illegally. But we
didn't have enough detention space to hold people. And so the people
were given a court date. And they said, you check back in when your
court date comes up. But a lot of folks didn't want to check in when
their
[[Page 1433]]
court date came up, so they just didn't show up. And one of the things I
learned early on was how discouraging that can be for the people on the
frontline of securing this border.
You can imagine what it must feel like to work hard and chase
somebody down, treat them humanely, send them in for their court date,
and then they don't show up. It seemed like wasted effort, didn't it? So
this Government is committed to ending this unacceptable practice. Step
one is to add detention beds. If you didn't have enough detention space
in the first place, the way you solve the problem is, you add beds. And
here in the Rio Grande Valley, we're going to add 1,500 beds in short
order.
We're also accelerating the deportation process, particularly for
people who are not from Mexico that we catch coming across the border.
Last year, for example, we put together what was called Operation Texas
Hold 'Em. We cut through redtape so we could quickly return Brazilians
who we caught illegally crossing this border. And we sent a clear
message: When we catch you, there will be immediate deportation. And
guess what happened? As a result of that clear message, the number of
illegal immigrants from Brazil has dropped significantly across the
whole region.
That's the message we must continually send over and over again to
people who feel like they can come from Central America, for example,
and if caught, be let back into society, and if not caught, they're able
to escape the Border Patrol. We want to send a clear message: We will
enforce our border.
But in order to make sure these Border Patrol agents can do their
job, we must have a temporary-worker program. You got to understand
here, and I know you do, there are people doing jobs Americans aren't
doing. There are people who have come across this border to do work
Americans are not doing. And it makes sense to let them come on a
temporary basis in a legal way.
Wouldn't you rather have people who are doing work Americans are not
doing, not trying to sneak across the border? I know the Border Patrol
agents would rather not have people try to sneak across the border. It
makes sense to me, to say to somebody, if you're going to do a job
Americans aren't doing, you can come for a period of time--say, 3
years--and do that work and support your family back home, and then you
go home after your time is up. That's the way to treat people humanely.
I don't like a system that's not working and a system that forces
people who want to work, in the back of 18-wheelers. I don't like a
system that encourages smuggling. I don't like a system that encourages
people to walk across the desert to risk their life. I think we need to
have a system that is orderly and fair and transparent.
We've got to enforce our immigration laws at the worksite. But as a
result of illegal activities in trying to get people into this country,
there's a lot of document forgery. Our employers cannot be document
verifiers. They don't know whether they've got a real document to look
at or a fake document to look at. One of the temporary--parts of a
temporary-worker program would be to give people a tamper-proof
temporary-worker card, that they could say, I'm legal, see; I'm here to
do the job; I'm going to work for a period of time, and then I'm going
to go home after I work a period of time; I can be here legally. That
will make it easier for us to have worksite enforcement.
Listen, we will hold people to account. It's against the law in the
United States to employ somebody who is here illegally. And a nation of
laws is a nation that upholds its laws. But we've got to be wise about
the policy that we enforce. We've got to give people something that
document forgers can't tamper with so our employers know whether or not
they're hiring somebody who's here illegally or not.
Fourthly, we've got to make sure that we resolve the status of
illegal immigrants who are already in this country. It's an interesting
debate taking place in America. I'll give you my position: One, I do not
think we ought to grant amnesty to people who are here illegally. And
the reason I don't is, I think that will encourage a whole other bunch
of people to come. But I know you cannot deport 10 million people who
have been here working. It's unrealistic. It may sound good in certain
circles and political circles. It's not going to work.
[[Page 1434]]
The best plan is to say to somebody who has been here illegally, if
you've been paying your taxes, and you've got a good criminal record,
that you can pay a fine for being here illegally, and you can learn
English, like the rest of us have done, and you can get in a citizenship
line to apply for citizenship. You don't get to get in the front; you
get to get in the back of the line.
But this idea of deporting people is just not--it doesn't make any
sense to me, and it doesn't make any sense to a lot of people who
understand this issue. So here's a reasonable way to treat people with
respect and accomplish what we want to accomplish, which is to be a
country of law and a country of decency and respect.
And finally, in order to make a comprehensive immigration plan work,
we've got to help folks assimilate into our society. And what does that
mean? It means, help people learn English, to help people understand the
traditions and history of the United States of America.
One of the fabulous things about our country is that our soul has
constantly been renewed by people seeking the American Dream, people
coming here to work to realize their dream, people wanting to raise a
family in the United States of America. And we come from different
backgrounds, but we're all united by the great ideal of being an
American citizen. That's why we say, we're one Nation under God. And to
help people assimilate will help us keep that in place.
And so it's good to be down here on our border. It's an exciting
part of the United States of America. It's amazing how this country has
grown and how vital the valley is of the State of Texas. It's got to be
exciting for people to grow up in this part of the world and see the new
prosperity. Gosh, it wasn't all that long ago that--I know these mayors
can remember--the economy was tough down here. It was, kind of, farming,
and that was all. And now there's economic vitality. People are making a
living, and the schools are improving. It's a great place to raise a
family.
It's a great place to also come and honor those who wear the uniform
of the United States of America, whether it be local law enforcement or
the sheriff's departments or the Border Patrol or the United States
military. We're a blessed country. We're a great country because we've
got people who stand up and say, I want to serve. And it's the service
of the men and women in uniform that are doing the job down here that
the American people expect.
I can't tell you how proud I am to be the Commander in Chief of the
military and to be the President of the United States, full of such
decent and honorable people. I'm honored to be back in this part of the
world. I want to thank you for coming out and giving me a chance to talk
about a comprehensive immigration plan. I expect the United States
Congress to do its duty and pass comprehensive immigration reform.
God bless.
Note: The President spoke at 2:40 p.m. at Anzalduas Park. In his
remarks, he referred to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas; Mayor Norberto
``Beto'' Salinas of Mission, TX; Mayor Richard F. Cortez of McAllen, TX;
and John David Franz, Jr., son of Mayor John David Franz of Hidalgo, TX.