“There’s no way to fix this unless you have both parts of the equation.”

WASHINGTON, DC – In remarks yesterday morning before a breakfast meeting of The Ripon Society, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) discussed the effort he is leading on Capitol Hill to secure the border while promoting economic growth and job creation.

“There were a half million encounters at the border in the last year of the Trump Administration,” Tillis stated.  “There were three million encounters over the last 12 months.  We have a crisis at the border, and we know that it’s manageable because we haven’t passed a law to change our border policy. We just have an Administration that took down constitutionally sound policy that managed the situation.

“Incidentally, we had it manageable with a porous border. We need more work there, but we were managing it. The Border Control Council says that if they have a half million encounters a year, and they have border security deployed to the border — not babysitting, driving buses, or pushing paper — that is a manageable inflow. But now we have three million.  We’ll probably have another three million. The border is a disaster.”

The Tar Heel State lawmaker was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014.  Since coming to Congress, he has built a reputation as a commonsense conservative who is not afraid to work across the aisle to solve some of the most pressing challenges facing our country.  One of those challenges is border security and immigration reform.  He visited the border earlier this year with a bipartisan group of eight Senators, who also held roundtable discussions in Texas and Arizona to further examine where common ground on this issue can be found.

According to Tillis, a solution must include not only stronger security along America’s southern border, but reform of our nation’s outdated immigration laws.

“There’s no way to fix this unless you have both parts of the equation,” he stated.  “So I’m doing now what I call missionary work. I’m going to get on my donkey, I’m going to ride it over to the House, and I’m going to see what the art of the possible is.  I have got to see whether or not Members have the courage to step up and recognize they are smart people. They really understand that none of this can get done unless we bridge the gap.”

To view the remarks of Senator Tillis at yesterday’s breakfast discussion, please click the link below:

The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.