WASHINGTON D.C. — Congressman French Hill (AR-02) recently joined Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business Network to discuss his visit to the southwest border at McAllen, Texas, to investigate the ongoing immigration crisis, as well as the latest news on U.S. trade talks with China. Key excerpts below:
Touring the Southwest Border in McAllen, Texas "This was my fifth trip to the border in the last three and a half years. This [trip] was the most compelling as it relates to [the border] emergency. We visited with Catholic charities, we visited with border patrol and there is no doubt that they are overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of people coming across the border . . . [N]ow we are confronted with Central American families coming across the border in record numbers and we just don't have the staff to process them or places to hold them. So they're now being released directly into the United States."
Providing Resources to Border Security and Commerce ". . . [W]e need to divert resources to the border to help [CBP] do their job [and protect] the billions in cross-border commerce. We need FEMA at the border to help with this humanitarian crisis. We need contractors to help us with the humanitarian crisis and let our custom officers and border patrol go back to their core mission. But I believe it would be a mistake to stop the trade flow going across the southern border. I think that would be an economic mistake for the country. We need to treat this just like Jeh Johnson, [President] Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, and current Secretary of Homeland Security Nielsen say, we need to react to it as if it were a Category 5 hurricane."
Enforcing Trade Concessions from China
"I think we have obviously a major trade issue [with China] but we are joined in that trade concern by the EU, Japan, and the other G7 countries, to work together and open Chinese markets, to rein in excesses when it comes to state-owned enterprises, to block their ability to steal intellectual property and compel Americans to share technology. That's at the heart of what the president is trying to do with this agreement . . . [T]his negotiation is 20 years overdue and so important since China joined the [World Trade Organization]. We need that enforcement. Simply buying more American goods and services is not good enough. We need structure reforms"
