At a House Rules Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) spoke about protecting the border.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you.
00:01Chair, thanks to the gentleman.
00:02The gentleman yields back.
00:03The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized for questions, please.
00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:05I want to thank each of you for taking the time to come and address this.
00:06You know, it's interesting.
00:07All my friends on the other side of the aisle are talking about cultural wars being fought.
00:08I want to commend you for cutting things that should have been cut out of the time of day
00:09out of your budget.
00:10And I guess this cultural war is for the little 12-year-old girl that got murdered under a
00:11bridge.
00:12I guess it's cultural wars to be against what happened to Lakeland Riley by illegals.
00:41I guess it's cultural wars to object to the invasion at our border for the killings that
00:46are taking place every day.
00:49The 12-year-old girl happened, I think it was yesterday, by two Venezuelans that were
00:53in this country.
00:55One I think was in May and one was in March.
01:00This is an atrocity what this administration is doing to this country.
01:04And so I appreciate, Mr. Amadei, the $600 million for the wall, building, resuming the
01:12wall, which is the only way to really handle this, the 200 agents that you're hiring.
01:18Can you go into how you're going to, what the thought process is on putting some things
01:25in place for the Biden administration to make them follow?
01:29And I realize, yeah, he's going, if it sees the light of day, he's going to be against
01:33it.
01:34He's against everything that's pro-American.
01:36So would you go over that, Mr. Amadei?
01:38Yes, sir.
01:39Mr. Chairman, through you to the gentleman from South Carolina, I think we're all up
01:45here a product of our experiences, and our experiences in terms of border issues over
01:52the last three years should have instructed people on both sides.
01:56And so when we had ICE, when we had the Border Patrol, when we had those agencies, CISA,
02:05all those folks in front of us, and people on both sides got to question them, we were
02:12looking for stuff that wasn't working and looking for stuff that there was some history
02:19that said did work.
02:21And so from that testimony, you can attribute it to whatever you want, but I'll just tell
02:28you that testimony informed the committee's work product on what we're doing now is not
02:34working.
02:35And that's as nice as I can say it.
02:36And that was the opinion of, that was the opinion of the, obviously the majority of
02:42the committee.
02:43And so we tried to put the funding in those areas that we believed were proven, time-proven
02:51methods of controlling flow in some sort of a manner that complied with regulations and
02:57rules for entering the country.
03:02And so that's where you see the, we put our money where our mouth was in terms of solutions
03:10for the border that are different than what's going on right now.
03:15I'm going to address HB2Bs, increasing that.
03:19I get, I'm from South Carolina, we're a manufacturing, textile manufacturing state, we're heavy in
03:26the hospitality industry.
03:27Do you realize this number of HB2Bs hadn't been increased for 34 years?
03:34And we've got empty tables that are not being used, taxes aren't being collected on food
03:39sold because they can't get waiters, they can't get the processing there.
03:44Give me a flavor of what went into that, increasing that.
03:48Well, it wasn't the first time that it's been in front of the committee.
03:51As you probably know, Dr. Harris from Maryland, who has a bit of an industry floating around
03:57there associated with the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Coast and that sort of thing
04:01with the seafood industry, offered it.
04:04Ms. Penigree from Maine, strong voice for the hospitality industry and in what's going
04:10on up in the northeast corner of the country.
04:16You've got Mr. Westerman, forest workers.
04:18I mean, there's a cross-section that is, God forbid, bipartisan that supports this.
04:25The biggest challenge that it has is when you talk about immigration is, well, is that
04:29really in Homeland's jurisdiction?
04:32And so, the judiciary members have a concern about that.
04:36There's an outfit out there, Numbers USA, that has a concern about it.
04:41They didn't make any effort to contact me, not that that's magic, but it's like, well,
04:48these are jobs that other people could have and it's like, listen, if I've missed some
04:52data on that, I'd be happy to look at it and acknowledge that.
04:56I can just tell you that it went before the committee.
05:03The committee was fine in their markup.
05:05It went before the full committee and the full committee supported it.
05:10I would be scared because I would venture to say that there's a fair element of bipartisan
05:19support for that.
05:20We'll see what this committee does, but if it gets to the floor, unless there's somebody
05:28who's got some impassioned, factual basis for saying, this is why this is bad policy,
05:36I think people that need temporary workers in accordance with the rule set up, they deserve
05:43a shot.
05:44All it really does is say, this is the number and it makes you do that number, whatever
05:50the existing number is.
05:51It's not discretionary.
05:52You know that for sure.
05:54It's not like, hey, we're going to double the number of visas or anything else like
05:58that, but it is going to say, and by the way, the last few years, that number has been issued.
06:04It just says, you will instead of you may, is the general effect for the number of visas.
06:10I've heard from the numbers group and they can't back up anything that, any objection
06:16to it.
06:17This isn't, what Biden is doing is illegally letting anyone and everybody with a criminal
06:23record in this country, what the HB2B visas do, they have strict guidelines.
06:29These people are coming to work.
06:31For that peach farmer who's got to get to Peaches, Ives field, for that, farmers at
06:37every process need workers.
06:40Again, it hadn't been increased since 1990.
06:43Anyway, thank you all for your work.
06:45Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions.