July 25, 2024
For Immediate Release
Contact: Taylor Haulsee
As the party of open borders, Democrats believe they’ll gain new voters by allowing illegals to vote
San Diego, CA — This afternoon,Speaker Johnson traveled to San Diego, California to witness the impact of the Biden-Harris Administration’s catastrophic border policies. Joined by Representative Darrell Issa and United States Border Patrol agents, Speaker Johnson slammed the administration’s so-called Border Czar, Kamala Harris, and called on Senate leadership to take up the SAVE Act, a measure that secures federal elections by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
“The Democrats simply do not care. They believe, as the party of open borders, that they’ll gain new voters by allowing illegals to vote. Only Americans should decide American elections, pure and simple. All across the country, the American people are insisting upon that,” Speaker Johnson said.
Click here to watch the press conference
Below are Speaker Johnson’s remarks.
We’ve had a very interesting tour here at the San Diego sector. This has become, in many ways the epicenter of the Biden-Harris border catastrophe. And now, we’re very concerned in Congress that this illegal immigrant invasion is threatening even the integrity of our elections.
Just before the administration issued its June Executive Order, San Diego was already the number one spot for illegal crossings. And now, hearing that the June executive order, now that it’s been done, we’re hearing that things are even worse. We have an absolute catastrophe on the border, and it was engineered by the Biden-Harris Administration.
Back in January, I took the largest group of members of Congress down to the border at the Del Rio sector down to Eagle Pass in Texas. And at that time, that was the epicenter. And what we saw there was a human tragedy, humanitarian catastrophe, and we’re seeing and experiencing that here all along the border and now in San Diego. It’s gotten so bad here, in fact, with the volume that are coming across here, that the Biden-Harris Administration is now flying illegal aliens from California to Texas for processing, as if Texas didn’t already have enough problems of its own.
And now we’ve all seen on our television screens, there’s a yet another caravan of immigrants heading to the border to get in here. And of course, they want to come in before the election because they believe that there may be a good chance that President Trump wins that election. I certainly believe that. And this won’t be tolerated any longer. And so, it’s incentivized people to make the journey if they haven’t done it already.
We know what is going on here, and we’ve been saying this for quite some time. And in Congress, we’ve passed resolutions. We passed HR 2, which was our signature border security act. It was the most the most comprehensive border security act ever passed by Congress. But it sits still to this day, 16 months after its passage on the desk of Chuck Schumer in the Senate. They haven’t moved it because they seemingly don’t care.
Democrats apparently believe in an open border. That’s what their actions have shown. That’s what their inaction on our legislation has shown. And Republicans believe in border security. We believe that you must have a strong border to have sovereignty, to have your own nation, and we simply don’t have that.
Now, we are very concerned that this influx of illegal aliens threatens the integrity of our elections, as I mentioned. A few weeks ago, the House passed the SAVE Act, which is a commonsense piece of legislation that would do a very simple thing. You would have to require proof, the states would have to require proof of citizenship for someone can register to vote.
The problem is right now that under existing federal law, the states are prohibited from confirming or in requesting proof of citizenship. So when all the illegals come across the border and they’re turned over to the NGOs after they’re processed by Customs and Border Patrol, and they’re shipped out around the country by planes, trains, and automobiles funded by American taxpayers, by the way, when they go to their local community, the administration officials are encouraging them to go to their local welfare office, for example, and sign up for public benefits.
Well, here’s the problem. Because of the voter registration laws in the early 1990s, if someone goes to the local office to sign up for public benefits, they’re also handed a short form that says, do you want to register to vote? All you have to do to participate in the elections is check a little box and say, I’m a US citizen. Yes, register me to vote. There’s no proof required. And we think that’s outrageous.
So, the SAVE Act would fix that problem. And the vast majority of the American people agree that is something we should do. But you should know that 198 House Democrats voted against that legislation a couple of weeks ago, and the Biden-Harris Administration threatened to veto the legislation. Kamala Harris and 198 House Democrats want to allow illegal aliens to decide American elections. And right now, and every non-citizen can do that, and there’s no real impediment except the honor system, we don’t believe that is going to work.
Our elections are too narrow and too important to allow this to happen, especially since the administration is now on track to report 10 million encounters with illegals before October. That’s the official number we believe, I personally believe, members of Congress believe, the number is probably closer to somewhere in the 16-million-person range. Since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, 16 million illegals have come across the border.
Now, if just a fraction of those registered to vote and participated, they could throw the majority in the Congress, they could change the outcome of congressional races and perhaps even the presidential race depending on turnout.
We’re seeing it happen. The state of Virginia is having to remove thousands of illegal aliens from their roles. Ohio is doing that. Georgia is catching thousands of non-citizens who are trying to register, but the Democrats simply do not care. They believe, as the party of open borders, that they’ll gain new voters by allowing illegals to vote.
Only Americans should decide American elections, pure and simple. All across the country, the American people are insisting upon that. But Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress simply don’t care, and the Border Czar and San Francisco radical Kamala Harris bears the responsibility for this disaster.###