In a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) delivered an opening statement about legal immigration into the United States.
00:00There are recess at any time. I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing on the visa process.
00:06We'll begin with opening statements and we'll begin with mine.
00:10In many ways, the 2024 election was a referendum on the Democrats' open border policies.
00:17For four years, they opened America's borders and deliberately trafficked at least six million
00:22illegal aliens directly into our communities. While the Border Patrol was overwhelmed arranging
00:27lodging, transportation, food, health care, and legal services for this massive population,
00:33another two million gotaways entered our country as well. The result was devastating to our nation
00:39and it produced one of the greatest political realignments in our nation's history.
00:44Americans suffered as their classrooms filled with non-English speaking students, their hospitals
00:48were overwhelmed by illegals demanding care, their food pantries stripped bare, and homeless
00:54shelters filled to capacity. The cost of these services is estimated at $160 billion a year
01:00or about $1,250 from the taxes of an average American household annually.
01:07More ominously, among this population were the most violent criminals, criminal gangs, and cartels
01:12on the planet, often shielded by Democrat sanctuary laws and leftist DAs and judges.
01:18The sad, senseless, and entirely preventable tragedies produced by these policies continue to unfold
01:25before us on a daily basis. For four years, the Democrats in this Congress and this committee
01:30told us this was for our own good, and besides, there wasn't anything we could do about it anyway
01:36short of their demand for widespread amnesty. But the American people knew better. They knew,
01:42as President Trump put it, that we didn't need new laws. We needed a new president.
01:47And we got one. And within 30 days, illegal border crossings were cut 96% and traffic across the
01:54deadly Darien Gap dropped 99%, saving thousands of lives. Since taking office, roughly 150,000
02:03illegal migrants, many with criminal convictions or charges, have been detained by the Trump
02:08administration as required by law, and the largest illegal mass migration in history is now being
02:14redressed by the largest repatriation. Reportedly, roughly a million illegal migrants have already
02:20decided to voluntarily return to their own countries as a result. We have a long way to go to restore the
02:26integrity of our immigration laws. Violent mobs in our cities have repeatedly attacked law enforcement
02:32officers carrying out these laws, and Democratic officials have said that the violence will stop once
02:38enforcement stops. In other words, if we enforce the law, as the American people demanded, Democrats will
02:44burn our cities to the ground. Well, we're not going to allow such intimidation to prevail.
02:49In the coming months, we will report out of the Judiciary Committee a new version of HR2, which will assure that
02:56this deliberate and rampant illegality can never again threaten our nation, our communities, or our people.
03:02The purpose of today's hearing is to determine to what extent our legal immigration system has been
03:08exploited, abused, and defrauded, and to recommend measures to assure that legal immigration to the
03:14United States is legitimate, honest, fully vetted, and above board, serving the interests of both the
03:21United States and those honest and law-abiding immigrants who seek to come here legally.
03:27America has the most generous legal immigration system in the world. During fiscal year
03:322023, the U.S. government issued more than 10.4 million non-immigrant visas, while nearly 1.2 million
03:40ailings became lawful permanent residents through the immigrant visa system. We will devote a future
03:46hearing to the deliberate subversion of the visa process by the Biden administration when the
03:51inspector general publishes one of his forthcoming reports. Suffice it to say for now that during those
03:57four years, the administration sacrificed integrity and security in the screening process in issuing
04:02visas, exploiting the discretion and the legal requirement for in-person interviews with a
04:08counsel or officer. Integrity in the visa process is a matter of national security for our country.
04:15Take, for instance, the case of Mohamed Suleiman, who perpetrated a depraved anti-Semitic terrorist
04:20attack in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month. Suleiman had previously been denied a visa on at least one
04:26occasion but was issued a visitor visa in 2022. One month after his arrival in the United States,
04:32Suleiman filed an asylum application. Such action clearly showed that he never intended to leave the
04:38U.S. once here as required by his tourist visa. Subsequent statements by his family members have
04:44validated that assertion. Cases like this demonstrate why it is imperative that State Department and Department
04:51of Homeland Security employees who adjudicate visas have as much information as possible about the
04:57applicants. Some of that information is supplied by the alien during the application process, while other
05:03information is available through the U.S. government interagency screening and vetting process. But as we have
05:08heard in previous testimony about illegal alien border crossers, if an alien has no criminal or other
05:14security-related record, it's like they're, quote, being vetted against a blank sheet of paper, as one witness
05:21told this subcommittee last year. The same is true of aliens seeking visas. And there can be no substitute for
05:29looking virtually every applicant in the eye and questioning their motives, intent, and plans. Once again,
05:37President Trump has taken decisive action to improve screening and vetting of visa applicants.
05:41On Inauguration Day, he directed relevant agencies to identify deficiencies in the visa process and the
05:47resources available to allow for maximum vetting of visa applicants. Pursuant to that executive order,
05:54the administration has identified 19 countries that were uncooperative or deficient in providing
06:00background information on applicants, and the President accordingly restricted issuance of visas to
06:05their nationals. Non-immigrant visa categories that are rife with fraud and abuse include the student
06:11visa program, where fake schools are set up for the sole purpose of facilitating fraudulent claims of student status.
06:17The U visa is offered to those who are victims or witnesses to crimes and offer a path to U.S. citizenship.
06:25It should be no surprise that criminal rings have been uncovered that stage phony crimes and take advantage of this process.
06:32Fraud and lax vetting and the visa process do not exist solely in the non-immigrant visa context.
06:39The immigrant visa process is also routinely abused and exploited. Take, for example, the diversity visa program known as the visa lottery.
06:48Not only do bad actors impersonate U.S. government officials to try to get diversity applicants to pay them money,
06:55but fake documents and sham marriages have become commonplace.
06:59The Special Immigrant Juvenile Program is also susceptible to fraud and misuse, allowing 20-year-old foreign nationals to falsely
07:07claim abuse by a parent and be allowed to remain in the U.S. nearly indefinitely.
07:12And the VAWA, self-petition process, conducted in secret without the knowledge of the U.S. citizen spouse, has also been subject to fraud as well.
07:21As this administration closes this dangerous chapter of outright illegal immigration under Biden,
07:27we must also protect our legal channels from fraud and abuse.
07:32That's the purpose of today's hearing, and we look to our witnesses for their guidance.
