00:00Thank you, Mr. Brown. We appreciate that. Now we're going to move on to five minutes of questioning, and I'll begin by recognizing myself.
00:10For decades, the United States has had an existential problem with illegal immigration.
00:21This isn't something that's new. It wasn't something that was created under the Biden administration. We've had it for a long time.
00:27And Republicans in Congress and in the rest of the country outside of Washington, D.C., demanded border security, that Washington would actually do what we said we would do on the campaign trail and secure the border and stop the flow of illegal immigration.
00:46And what would happen in Washington is that Republicans would ask for border security. We would ask for a wall.
00:55We would ask for things that we can fund that would stem this tide of illegal immigration.
01:02And in response from the other side of the aisle, we would hear demands for amnesty, a pathway to citizenship for people who have no business being here to begin with, who came here illegally.
01:15And the result was that nothing was done to secure the border.
01:22One of the things that I'm most excited about, about the big, beautiful bill that we are working on and are going to get passed next week,
01:31is that finally we can fund border security and mass deportations that the American people demand without having to negotiate on amnesty.
01:43In other words, the American people get what they would like, Republicans get all of our priorities, we get a border wall, we get river barriers, we get 10,000 new ICE agents.
01:56And we don't have to deal with demands for mass amnesty.
02:01That is a huge win, not only for conservatives, but for all Americans.
02:06And I'm excited about getting that done.
02:09I believe that mass migration is the single biggest existential threat to our country today.
02:17And we're going to begin by fixing that.
02:20So thank you to the witnesses for being here.
02:23Mrs. Vaughn, I'd like to start with you.
02:25I really appreciate your time here.
02:26Some claim that in order to finally secure the border for good, we need to make a deal on amnesty or to expand our already extraordinarily generous legal immigration system or work visa programs.
02:41Does this viewpoint put the interest of the American people first?
02:45Absolutely not.
02:47The biggest problem, well, first of all, we've tried this in the past and it never worked.
02:51It was always amnesty now, enforcement if we get around to it.
02:57And so this doesn't work.
02:58But what we do know also from experience is that every time amnesty is raised, it destroys all incentive people have to voluntarily comply with immigration laws and go home on their own if they don't have a path to legal status.
03:15It creates incentives for people to stay here illegally and incentives for people to start trying to cross the border illegally as well.
03:24We should not be discussing, contemplating an amnesty of any kind until there is integrity and enforcement of the immigration laws that we have.
03:38That's just not something that should be on the table now.
03:41Have the American people ever been promised border security in exchange for amnesty in the past?
03:47Oh, repeatedly, most notably in 1986 when the amnesty happened immediately, was given to more people than we were told would be qualifying for it.
03:59And the enforcement promises were never applied, never materialized.
04:05And it's been promised in a number of other types of legislation in 2013, in 2007.
04:13It's always the same thing.
04:15Amnesty now, we'll promise to give you enforcement later.
04:20Whenever amnesty is brought up in the national conversation, have you found that it leads to increased illegal immigration?
04:26That is definitely what happened in 2012, before the so-called Gang of Eight bill, and during that discussion.
04:36And it has happened in the past as well.
04:39In fact, well, look at what happened before the Biden administration took office.
04:44They had promised amnesty during the campaign.
04:46And the illegal crossings and encounters at the border went up even before Biden took office in January.
04:54They were up substantially in December, the month before that.
04:58And then I'd like to ask you about our green card system.
05:03Approximately how many immigrants are approved for permanent residency each year?
05:07It's about one million per year.
05:09About one million.
05:09And how many of those are via chain migration?
05:12About 60 percent.
05:1460 percent.
05:15Awesome.
05:15Thank you, Mrs. Vaughn.
05:17Appreciate it.
05:18And now I'd like to recognize the ranking member, Ms. Jayapal, for five minutes.
