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Washington, DC Today,Ranking Member Chuck Fleischmann (TN-03)delivered opening remarks at the FY 2022 Homeland Security Subcommittee markup. Rep. Fleischmann led subcommittee Republicans to demand increased funding and resources to secure the southern border during the markup.

The full text of Ranking Member Fleischmanns opening remarks as delivered are below:

I would like to commend Chairwoman Roybal-Allard, Chair DeLauro and Ranking Member Granger, and all the staff, for overcoming what seems like impossible deadlines, producing a bill in what has to be record time, a mere three and a half weeks after the President released the budget request. So, thank you for all the work that enabled us to be here today.

I appreciate efforts by the Chairwoman to accommodate the many requests from our colleagues and producing such a comprehensive bill in such a short amount of time. And my sincere thanks to all the staff, both on the Committee and in the personal offices, for their hard work this year on the hearings, the virtual meetings, and the diligence tracking the issues in this bill. We very much appreciate their work.

Though it was unfortunate that this years hearing process took place before we had a budget, we were able to hear from many of the Departments components about their current operations and priorities. For some of the bills funding, we are in complete agreement cybersecurity, T.S.A., Secret Service, and Science and Technology, just to name a few. The proposed investments are worthy of our support. However, in order to truly get across the finish line, we must come to a reasonable agreement on the immigration issues, and until that is done, I just cannot support this bill in its current form.

The proud and dedicated employees of the Department of Homeland Security, who work so diligently defending and protecting our nation, truly deserve more than a repeat of partisan bickering over basic border security and the ability to enforce existing law.

Like last year, the bill before us completely disregards the conference agreement enacted for the previous fiscal year by rescinding all prior year border wall funds. We are perpetually taking one step forward and two steps back. Further, having to negotiate the simple enforcement of our existing immigration laws at our border and within the cities and communities all across the nation, is most certainly the cause of the surge of illegal migration along our southern border.

Additionally, we cant continue to embolden the cartels and transnational criminal organizations by limiting immigration enforcement. These criminal networks will continue to take advantage of these misguided policies by perpetuating the myth that the border is open and will continue trafficking more and more drugs and people into the U.S., increasing the profits for the cartels.

But what really concerns me is the lack of resources in this bill to address the crisis at the border. Remember in 2019 when we were stunned and concerned about seeing 144,000 people cross the border in one month? Fast forward to today, July 2021, and we are seeing 180,000 people crossing over the border illegally in just one month. But still this Administration does not acknowledge the crisis. ICE has been told to ignore the law, detention facilities are vacant, and no one at the Department can tell us if the migrants released into the interior are actually checking in with their ICE office or actively participating in their court cases.

I ask you what happens when the Administration lifts the Title 42 public health declaration and the borders are open again? How is this bill preparing the agencies for that surge? Instead of funding even the lean request for ICE enforcement, removal, and operations, the bill before us instead creates a grant program to give funds to non-profits for migrant shelters.

Lets let our border agents and immigration officers do their jobs, and instead of restricting them, lets help them enforce the laws on the books by giving them the resources they need: investments in technology and equipment, and a clear message that we support their law enforcement mission. We cant just give them arbitrary reporting requirements, prohibitions on funds, and hurdles and roadblocks to enforcement.

But I am an optimist, and I am committed to working with the Chairwoman, as we have done so well in the past, to reach agreement with the Senate on a bill we can support. And as I mentioned earlier, there are many parts of the bill I am happy to support, including increased and robust funding for CISA to help defend and protect our critical federal cyber networks; increased funding for the military branch of the department, the U. S. Coast Guard, so they can better defend our maritime security and interests, especially in the expanding Arctic; and increased funding for FEMA, which worked heroically all throughout the last year in response to the COVID pandemic in our communities.

I know we have a number of amendments, and I look forward to continued debate on these important issues.

I want to close by personally thanking Chairwoman Roybal-Allard and the Committee staff for their dedication and work this bill requires. These arent easy issues to begin with, and the scrutiny and reporting make it all the harder. The Chairwoman has my utmost respect for the leadership she brings to the Subcommittee. Its a pleasure working with you.

Id also like to thank the staff clerks Dena Baron and Darek Newby, our amazing Coast Guard detailees Adam Koziatek and Justin Smith, staff Kris Mallard, Bob Joachim, Karyn Richman, Mike Herman, and Elizabeth Laptham, and in my personal office Daniel Tidwell and Isabel with Ms. Roybal-Allard. I look forward to moving this bill.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back my time.

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Ranking Member Fleischmann: Like Last, Year the Homeland Security Bill Does Not Secure the Southern Border - Clerk of the House

More Mexican migrants came to the United States than left the U.S. for Mexico between 2013 and 2018 a reversal of the trend in much of the prior decade, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of the most recently available data capturing migration flows from both countries.

An estimated 870,000 Mexican migrants came to the U.S. between 2013 and 2018, while an estimated 710,000 left the U.S. for Mexico during that period. That translates to net migration of about 160,000 people from Mexico to the U.S., according to government data from both countries.

In the period from 2009 to 2014, by contrast, about a million people left the U.S. for Mexico while 870,000 Mexicans made the reverse trip, for net migration of about 130,000 people from the U.S. to Mexico. A similar trend from 2005 to 2010 resulted in effectively zero net migration between the two countries. (Due to the way the Mexican government sources report data, this analysis uses several overlapping time periods: 2005-2010, for example, and 2009-2014. In addition, migration from Mexico in this analysis includes only those who were born there, while migration to Mexico includes those born in Mexico, the U.S., and elsewhere.)

Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts of how many Mexican immigrants enter and leave the U.S. each year. This analysis uses the best available government data from both countries to estimate the size of these flows. For this analysis, migration from the U.S. to Mexico includes persons born in Mexico, the U.S., and elsewhere, while migration from Mexico to the U.S. includes Mexican-born persons only.

To estimate how many people have left the U.S. for Mexico, this analysis uses data from the 2018 and 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (or ENADID) and the 2020, 2010 and 2000 Mexican decennial censuses. Respondents are asked where they had been living five years prior to the date when the survey or census was taken. The answers to this question provide an estimate of the number of people who moved from the U.S. to Mexico during the five years prior to the survey date. A separate question focuses on those who have recently left Mexico. It asks whether anyone from the household had left for another country during the previous five years; if so, additional questions are asked about whether and when that person or people came back and their reasons for returning to Mexico.

To estimate how many Mexicans left Mexico for the U.S., this analysis uses the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey (2005-2019) and the Current Population Survey (1990-2019), which ask immigrants living in the U.S. about their country of birth and the year of their arrival in the U.S. Both sources are adjusted for undercount.

Other sources of information include detailed tables released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys Office of Immigration Statistics, the U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The main change in net flow between the two countries in the most recent period comes from the decreased return flow from the U.S. to Mexico 1.0 million from 2009 to 2014 down to 710,000 from 2013 to 2018 rather than an increase in the number of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. The number of Mexican immigrants going from Mexico to the U.S. stood unchanged at 870,000 for both 2009 to 2014 and 2013 to 2018.

There are several potential reasons for the changing patterns of migration flows between the two nations. In the U.S., job losses during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 in industries in which immigrants tend to be heavily represented may have pushed a large number of Mexicans to migrate back to Mexico, which in the aftermath of the recession also made the U.S. less attractive to potential Mexican migrants. In addition, stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws both at the southwest border and within the interior of the U.S. may have contributed to the reduction in Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. in the years leading up to 2013.

Some changing patterns in Mexico could also be behind the reduction in the number of immigrants coming to the U.S. since the Great Recession. First, growth in the working-age population of Mexicans has slowed due to a decades-long decline in the average number of births among women in Mexico. Lower fertility rates also mean smaller family sizes, which reduces the need for migration as a means of family financial support. Coupled with this, the Mexican economy over the past two decades has been more stable than in the 1980s and 1990s, when the country was hit with a number of profound economic crises.

While net migration from Mexico to the U.S. turned positive from 2013 to 2018 for the first time in more than a decade, it remained far below the levels seen in earlier decades when migration from Mexico to the U.S. was at its peak. In the five-year period between 1995 and 2000, for example, nearly 3 million immigrants came to the U.S. from Mexico, while only around 670,000 made the reverse trip, for net migration of nearly 2.3 million people from Mexico to the U.S.

Mexico is the largest country of birth among the estimated 47 million immigrants living in the U.S., according to preliminary estimates based on the 2019 American Community Survey. About 24% of all U.S. immigrants were born in Mexico.

After peaking at 12.8 million in 2007, the number of Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. has declined in recent years. Preliminary estimates show that in 2019, the overall population of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. was 11.4 million, or about 1.4 million below the number at the onset of the Great Recession.

The decline in Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has been due mostly to a decrease of about 2 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants, from a peak of 6.9 million in 2007 to an estimated 4.9 million in 2017, according to Pew Research Centers latest estimate of the unauthorized population in the U.S.

Mexican immigrants have been at the center of one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. Between 1965 and 2015, more than 16 million Mexican immigrants migrated to the U.S. more than from any other country.

In 1970, fewer than 1 million Mexican immigrants lived in the U.S. By 2000, that number had grown to 9.4 million, and by 2007 it peaked at 12.8 million.

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. and Mexican governments shut down their land borders to all non-essential travel, and the U.S. has yet to reopen them after more than a year. Travel in most of the world was disrupted during the pandemic and migration flows seemed to dwindle. However, it is still unclear how the coronavirus pandemic has affected migration flows from Mexico to the U.S. and vice versa. The two main sources for this kind of information, the U.S. Census Bureaus surveys and the Mexican governments INEGI data, are not yet available for the period covering the pandemic, while other data sources only offer a partial view. These secondary sources, however, do hint at some of the changes that might be underway since the coronavirus outbreak started.

One of these data points is the number of immigrants who entered the U.S. in fiscal 2020 through permanent legal residency, also known as a green card. In fiscal 2020, about 30,500 Mexican immigrants entered the U.S. this way, down 45% from the prior year. The reduction during the fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2019, to Sept. 30, 2020, was particularly notable in the months after the coronavirus outbreak began: Between April and September 2020, the number of Mexican green card recipients dropped by 90% compared with the same period in the prior year.

Another available data point is the number of Mexican immigrants who entered the U.S. through a temporary work visa, such as the H-2A visa for farmworkers, or the TN or H-1B visas for high-skilled immigrants. In fiscal 2020, Mexican farmworkers obtained about 198,000 temporary permits to come work in the U.S., up 5% from the prior fiscal year an annual increase far lower than those seen in most years leading up to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of high-skilled Mexican workers who obtained a TN or H-1B visa dropped 36% in the same period, from about 24,000 to 15,000.

Another snapshot of Mexican immigration flows relates to unauthorized immigrants, including those who come to the U.S. temporarily on a visa and overstay their permit and those who cross the border without inspection and reside in the U.S. as unauthorized immigrants.

While data on visa overstays during the pandemic is not available, the number of people traveling into the U.S. during the pandemic went down and the number of non-immigrant visas issued in Mexico also declined. In fiscal 2020, the total number of non-immigrant visas processed in Mexico by the U.S. Department of State dropped 35% compared with the prior year, from about 1.5 million in 2019 to about 960,000 in 2020. Most of these temporary visas were processed for tourism, business or for crossing the border and do not include a work authorization.

By contrast, apprehensions of unauthorized Mexican immigrants a statistic that is often used as a proxy for measuring illegal immigration increased considerably after the pandemic started in 2020, even as apprehensions of non-Mexicans dropped sharply. In fiscal 2020, the number of encounters or apprehensions of Mexican adults at the U.S.-Mexican border reached levels not seen since 2013. There were 253,118 such encounters, up 52% from 166,458 the year before.

It is important to note that apprehensions at the border were handled differently in fiscal 2020 than in years immediately prior due to an executive order called Title 42, authorized by former President Donald Trump. Under the order, Border Patrol agents did not always conduct a formal apprehension and removal, but instead sent immigrants directly back to Mexico without those steps.

Some analysts say that the new procedures have increased the number of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere who try to enter the U.S. illegally multiple times. The number of immigrants with a prior encounter with a Border Patrol agent increased considerably in fiscal year 2020, according U.S. Customs and Enforcement data.

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Before COVID-19, more Mexicans came to the U.S. than left for Mexico for the first time in years - Pew Research Center

The border crisis is a humanitarian disaster. Both parties are responsible. Democrats seem incapable of anything but publicity stunts, as evidenced by Vice President Kamala Harriss recent visit to El Paso, Texas. Republicans indulge in ugly nativist rhetoric, hiding behind law and order considerations when pushed. The constant partisan posturing means nobody is addressing the appalling conditions at border shelters, let alone working to rectify our byzantine immigration laws.

Piecemeal reforms wont do. We need a complete immigration overhaul. Immigration is a boon to Americans in almost every way imaginable. We should want more of it much more.

Immigration skeptics commonly make three arguments for tightening our borders. The first is increased immigration lowers the wages of citizens, which especially hurts the poor. The second is immigrants are especially prone to crime. The third is immigrants bring bad ideas, culture, and institutions with them, which will weaken economic and political institutions in the United States. None are true.

Immigrants dont lower Americans wages. The error here is looking only at one side of the ledger. Its true more immigrants means a higher labor supply, which pushes down wages, all else being equal. But all else isnt equal: Immigrants are also demanders of goods and services, which boosts wages for the workers who produce those goods and services. Even low-skilled workers, who compete most directly with immigrants for jobs, arent harmed. They may even see small wage increases. Overall, immigrant labor and native labor are complements, not substitutes. The more immigrants we have, the greater the degree of specialization and exchange. As weve known for hundreds of years, this makes countries richer, not poorer.

Immigrants arent a major source of crime. Nationalists raised this objection in the late 19th century in response to Irish and Italian immigration. Former President Donald Trumps dehumanizing rhetoric about Hispanic immigrants is just the latest case of nationalist cant. Fortunately, we have the data to refute it. Texas keeps track of the immigration status of those arrested and convicted of crimes. The data unequivocally show that immigrants are less prone to crime, including violent crime, than natives. In fact, even illegal immigrants commit less crime than natives.

Immigrants dont weaken our institutions. This is, admittedly, a serious concern. Institutions are the political and economic rules of the game that govern social life. Private property, democracy, and the rule of law are important examples. Institutions are the main cause of national wealth or poverty. Fortunately, the evidence shows that immigrants have minimal effects on institutions. In Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions, researchers Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell conduct a thorough analysis of the effects of immigration on institutions. (Full disclosure: Powell is my boss.) Culture, productivity, and respect for law and order dont fall in the wake of immigration, and sometimes, they even increase. Defenders of freedom and equality have nothing to fear from immigrants.

Pro-immigration policies often face political hurdles. This is due to a failure of messaging. Because immigration can make America much wealthier, it just might save Americas floundering social insurance programs. Despite their popularity, Social Security and Medicare are financial messes. The political will necessary to make the books balance through tax increases just isnt there. Theres only one solution: Grow the tax base. More immigration means a stronger economy and, hence, more tax revenue.

Michael Clemens, a leading scholar of the economics of immigration, contends that immigration restrictions amount to leaving trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk. The same worker is immensely more productive in the U.S. than in a country with poor institutions and scant productive capital. Immigration thus enables us to keep our civic promises by ensuring the elderly or infirm never suffer destitution.

When it comes to immigration, theres no trade-off between economic self-interest and moral imperatives. Accepting more immigrants is right in both cases. America was founded by sojourners and refugees longing to be free. Its time we live up to the promise of our founding and welcome those seeking a better life to our city upon a hill.

Alexander William Salter is the Georgie G. Snyder associate professor of economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University, a research fellow at TTUs Free Market Institute, and a senior fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research.

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Economically and morally, more immigration is right - Washington Examiner

File: A heat relief station is set up at the Salvation Army Phoenix Citadel on 15 June 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona (Getty Images)

At least 43 migrants have died in Arizonas borderlands this summer as several US states reel under a scorching heatwave and soaring temperatures.

Humane Borders, a nonprofit that maps the recoveries of bodies in Arizona using data from the Pima county medical examiners office in Tucson, said 43 human remains of migrants were found across Arizonas border with Mexico in June, reported the Associated Press (AP).

Of the 43, at least 16 bodies were recovered a day after their death, while 13 were dead for less than a week, Mike Kreyche, a mapping coordinator for Humane Borders, told AP.

Mr Kreyche said that in the first six months, 127 bodies were recovered from the region, 31 more than the corpses recovered in 2020 for the said period. This years death toll also surpasses the earlier figure of 2017 when 123 bodies were recovered along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Exposure has been listed as the most common cause of death among the bodies recovered from Arizonas border with Mexico, approximately 400 miles long with a vast stretch of desert land.

Due to the vastness of the territory and the millions of acres of desolate desert that migrants traverse, the sad reality is that a substantial percentage of human remains will never be recovered, says the NGO on its website. They add that as of 31 December 2018, over 1,000 decedents remain unidentified.

Texas also reported an increase in the number of migrant deaths as state officials increase the number of rescue operations along its border with Mexico.

There were 36 migrant deaths in the first five months of this year, more than all the deaths reported in 2020, according to the AP report citing data from the Brooks County Sheriffs Department in southern Texas.

Flames are seen on side of the highway after a bushfire broke out, near St. George, Arizona on 12 July 2021, in this still image obtained from a social media video (Reuters)

The stretch was not always a graveyard. Fewer than five dead migrants were found in southern Arizona each year prior to 2000, according to a report by USA Today.

Numbers began to rise in 2001 as illegal immigration from Mexico to the US increased. With heightened border security in California and Texas, an increasing number of migrants are now forced to move through Arizonas treacherous terrain to seek sanctuary, said the APreport.

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The increase in the recorded deaths come as the western states endure dangerously high temperatures this summer.

An estimate of about 200 people mostly homeless, sick and old died this month in Oregon and Washington.

According to a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US recorded its hottest June in 127 years. The average June temperature across the country was 72.6F, about 4.2 degrees above normal, said the report.

To add to worries, soaring temperatures have fanned wildfires across large swathes of the US.

Firefighters battled at least 55 large fires across the country on Sunday, with 11 occurring in Arizona alone. The scale of the wildfires is so large that at least 768,000 acres of land in 12 western US states and more than 500,000 acres in Canada were burning as of Sunday.

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Heatwave: 43 bodies of migrants recovered at Arizonas borderlands amid soaring temperatures across US - Yahoo News

Shrugging off the notion that the Southern border crisis is a political attack, Gov. Bill Lee says the nation should develop a new strategy to stop a surge in illegal crossings and activity from Mexico.

After a two-day trip to review 300 Tennessee National Guard soldiers serving on a year-long mission for border patrol support, Lee said Sunday night the visit really opened my eyes to the enormous challenges the nation faces there. First Lady Maria Lee accompanied the governor on his trip.

The governor noted he wants to be part of a national conversation with border governors and the Biden Administration to reshape strategy, calling for an enormous effort to making border security top priority so the government knows who is immigrating to the United States and can control criminal activity.

Lee could not pinpoint a change from the Trump Administration policy to that of the Biden Administration that has caused an increase in the number of people trying to cross the border. But he did note Trumps consistent talk about the importance of building a wall, which Biden scuttled once he took office, in addition to the priority the former president placed on border patrol.

And one of the things you do see when you go there is the winding complexity, the difficulty from a topography standpoint of the border and how technology combined with an actual border wall or an actual facility that stops people from moving, when theres a combination there, its powerfully more effective, Lee said. So I think the strategies have been different. But the difference that weve seen is the number of people coming across the border.

Lee, who could not pinpoint a change from the Trump Administration policy to that of the Biden Administration, said he wants to be part of a national conversation to reshape border strategy.

The governor said the biggest difference between illegal activity in the last two years and traditional activity is that people from 56 countries, not just from Central and South America, are trying to enter at the border. In addition, he said illegal drug smuggling, human trafficking and sex trafficking are more prevalent.

Tennessee National Guard troops from three units, the 269th Military Police Company, 913th Engineer Company and 2-151 Aviation Battalion are providing support for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, but are not detaining people. They are on a Title X mission, meaning the work is being paid for by the federal government, but it is up to the governor to authorize their activation.

Border activity turned into a hot Tennessee political issue in June when a Chattanooga TV station videotaped a plane dropping off a load of unaccompanied immigrant children in the middle of the night. Republicans accused the Biden Administration of trying to cover up the dissemination of illegal immigrants across the country.

Tennessees Senate and House speakers formed a study committee of Republican lawmakers to determine the impact of unaccompanied minors on the state, even though there were fewer than 100 who stayed at La Casa de Sydney.

The children in Chattanooga were housed at the Baptiste Group facility, which was operating under a federal contract with a Tennessee license, until the children could be connected with friends or family. The state revoked the organizations license after a child there told inspectors during a surprise visit that he saw one of the teens being kissed by a facility staff member. The teen later ran away.

Lee previously notified the Biden Administration that Tennessee would not accept unaccompanied immigrants from the Southern border. The governor did not discuss the Chattanooga situation during his Sunday night call with Maj. Gen. Jeff Holmes.

The governor said he met with the troops and leaders and took helicopter tours at night and day of a 25-mile stretch of the border where the most movement of people occurs. He described the complex nature of the border as winding, remote and wooded and pointed out it is difficult to control who moves across the border there.

Lee called the situation a national security threat and public safety threat and said he was struck by the amount of human exploitation going on there. Lee said he believes a strategy for border security is lacking at the national level.

I want to be part of those national conversations that go on because now that Ive seen it, I recognize that this is not a political problem. This is truly a problem for our country, and to the degree that my observations can be helpful, and that we can be a part of forming a strategy, he said.

Lee defended his decision to make the trip, saying the 300 Tennessee National Guard troops are top priority for him and calling it an important part of his job to interact with them.

We've got real problems here in Tennessee and the governor doing photo ops in Texas isn't gonna solve a single one of them. Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville

Democrats have accused Lee of turning the border situation into a political attack on the Biden Administration, especially since Tennessee National Guard troops have been there for a year.

Weve got real problems here in Tennessee and the governor doing photo ops in Texas isnt gonna solve a single one of them, said Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat. The governor needs to focus on getting Tennesseans vaccinated, back to school and back to work and spend less time just trying to get on Fox News.

Yarbro said he has not been able to discern much difference between Bidens border policy and that of former President Trump. But he noted he has been more concerned about the work of the Tennessee Legislature, which doesnt include national immigration policy.

State Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a frequent critic of the Lee Administration, also pointed out the state has plenty of issues that require the governors immediate attention, including health care, education and unemployment.

This taxpayer-funded junket was a political stunt and pit stop on the way to Iowa for an out-of-touch governor who fancies himself a candidate for the GOP presidential ticket in 2024, Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat, said.

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After National Guard trip, governor says nation needs new Southern border strategy Tennessee Lookout - Tennessee Lookout