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Chuy García: Republicans 'Pretend To Be Concerned' About Immigration System, 'Don't Want To Fix' It
Forbes Breaking News
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7/1/2025
In a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Chuy García (D-IL) spoke about the U.S. immigration system.
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00:00
We're here in the back. Thank you for coming. We see you, and I yield back. Mr. Frey?
00:09
Mr. Garcia. Mr. Garcia, I wasn't trying to skip you. I have to leave,
00:13
so I'm getting Mr. Frey to come and sit in the chair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:18
Before I make a few remarks, I want to just observe that the bulk of this hearing has been
00:26
about illegal or unauthorized immigration, and we're supposed to be talking about legal
00:33
immigration and visas and the visa system. In addition to that, people went as far as to
00:41
talk about an existential threat. People talked inaccurately about the last amnesty that was
00:50
granted, which is incorrect. It was 39 years ago that Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and
00:58
Control Act, known as IRCA, signed into law by President Reagan for those who may be mistaken
01:06
or were too young or not born yet to be able to talk about it as if it were a fact. But once again,
01:13
we're here so that Republicans can pretend to be concerned about an immigration system that they
01:20
have consistently undermined. For more than 30 years, 39 to be exact, Republicans, with a few
01:28
exceptions, temporary ones, have rejected immigration reform and embraced largely a racist narrative that
01:37
portrays immigrants as criminals and terrorists, all for short-term political gain. And I say that as a
01:44
proud American who also is an immigrant to this country, we have a lawless authoritarian regime that is
01:54
terrorizing communities, kidnapping people off the streets, deporting U.S. citizens, including children
02:01
with cancer, locking up nearly 60,000 people and depriving them of even food and basic necessities,
02:10
and openly violating the law and preventing members of Congress from doing oversight visits.
02:19
I experienced that last week with three other members in Illinois. And as my colleagues have pointed
02:27
out, the administration is cracking down on legal immigration through overbroad and discriminatory
02:34
actions targeting international students and imposing travel bans on 19 countries. It is a cynical and cruel
02:43
campaign that does nothing to improve the lives of working families. And the people of this country see
02:49
through it. That's why the president's polling on immigration is underwater. Even though Republicans don't
02:57
want to fix our immigration system, it's more important than ever to promote a thoughtful and nuanced
03:04
approach to these issues. And we can look to history to inform our path forward. Mr. Naurastat,
03:13
thank you for being here today. I want to ask you about the Bracetto program in the 1950s and 60s.
03:20
That was a program, as you know. Do you think that it was more effective than the overly punitive system
03:29
that we have in place today? And what lessons about the visa process can we learn from that program
03:35
today? It was far more effective than the process we have today. It was not perfect by any means. There
03:41
were definitely problems, I think, in any of these programs. The problems, though, back then were largely
03:45
caused by too many rules and restrictions and, frankly, by the Mexican government side, which sort of
03:51
inserted a lot of corruption to steal wages from some of these workers. But what we saw was at the beginning
03:57
of the expansion of the Bracetto program in 1952, there were around 2 million or so unauthorized
04:03
immigrants in the U.S., almost all of them from Mexico. And within a few years of this program,
04:09
the border flows, the illegal crossings fell by over 95 percent, and the illegal immigrant population
04:15
fell by 90 percent because they got these visas. This was ended, this program, in 1964. And that is when
04:22
the modern illegal immigration program or illegal immigration problem began was because Americans
04:30
still demanded immigrant laborers, but Congress had made it illegal. Thank you for that. And I ask you
04:39
that because it's personal to me. My father came to this country under that program, eventually became a
04:46
lawful permanent resident and petitioned for us. That's how we arrived in 1965, another historic year
04:53
in immigration law. So if Republicans want to restore integrity, and I think you corrected the record,
05:02
sir, and security to the visa process or enhance it, perhaps, then they should stop criminalizing
05:08
immigrants at large and destroying those lawful pathways. If America wants to stay the vital
05:16
country that it has been and remain a beacon for the rest of the world, then we need to restore those
05:23
pathways which have been shut down. Thank you, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have a
05:29
unanimous consent request. I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record this congressional research
05:36
report titled U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Operations and Issues for Congress, and it shows
05:44
that out of 10 million forms processed by USCIS in 2023, only 1.6 percent were referred to the Office of
05:51
Fraud Detection and National Security for any...
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