Dear Friends,
This month I introduced a bill to keep the National Guard on our border with Mexico to make sure we have a smooth hand-off to the newly trained border patrol that will replace them. Operation Jump Start started in the Summer of 2006 and was a stop-gap measure designed to beef up border security as we staffed up the Border Patrol.
Congress authorized 10,000 new border patrol agents in 2006 recruited and trained over 3 years. They won’t all be trained and on the job until late this year, or early in the 2009. Until then, it doesn’t make sense to me to pull the National Guard and leave the same gap we were trying to fill with Operation Jump Start in 2006.
I also signed on to a bill this month (H.R. 4088) that would authorize an additional 8,000 border patrol agents, phased in between now and 2012. These 8,000 new border patrol agents is on top of the 10,000 new ones that are being in phased in right now so that the United States has operational control of the border.
I believe securing the border pays for itself. Health care costs alone just in the border states for illegal immigrants that show up at emergency rooms without insurance costs us over $1 billion a year.
We should make it harder for people to cross the border illegally, easier for people to get caught and easier for people to be sent back immediately to their country of origin.
Good to be home,
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