Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who will be the new chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee when the next Congress begins in January, says he expects to hold hearings “very early” next year as part of his information gathering efforts on border security, he said in an interview Thursday.
Johnson said he doesn’t have draft legislation that he’s waiting to introduce, but rather “I would describe it more as I have a priority versus I have a bill” when it comes to border security, he told Defense Daily by phone.
Between now and when Johnson begins holding hearings on border security, he said he’ll be reviewing the border security elements of comprehensive immigration bill that the Senate passed last year as well as related legislation that has been reported out of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. The Senate bill, which Johnson voted against, authorized nearly $40 billion and included a detailed technology plan to bolster security on the southern border.
Johnson said that the way the money was thrown into the Senate bill last year “was somewhat offensive” and was done to increase the votes for it, adding that it probably wasn’t well thought out. On the other hand, he said, there was “a lot of careful consideration” behind the bill by senators he respects such as Republicans John McCain (Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.), “and so I don’t want to denigrate anything that’s in that bill until I have enough time to really examine what technology they were taking a look at [and] what the assumptions were.”
Something Johnson is touting that he believes needs to be part of any future border security bill is a guest worker program that appropriately aligns supply with demand. The “root cause” of illegal immigration is “by and large people coming here seeking opportunity, looking for work.” If there is a “functioning” guest worker program, that will reduce incentives to people illegally coming into the United States to find work, he said.
Johnson said the Senate’s immigration bill last year did not allow for enough guest workers to meet demand, and he called the quotas “laughably small.” Any legislation should allow the states to set their own quotas and prevailing wage rates by industry sector with the federal government providing the “flexibility and overall legal framework” for the states to do what is in their respective interests, he said. He added that there need to be minimums to the prevailing wage rates to prevent employers from “incentivizing” guest workers to come into the country and depress American wages.
“That would dramatically and drastically reduce the number of people coming to this country illegally, which is going to make it a whole lot easier to secure the border,” Johnson said of an adequate guest worker program. “We’re going to have to worry about a whole lot less people coming in here that we’re going to have to really track and detect.”
Johnson said this summer’s wave of unaccompanied child immigrants arriving at the southern border was due to President Barack Obama’s decision two years ago to temporarily halt deportations of children.
However, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said last month that the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. peaked in 2006 at about 12.2 million and then fell to about 11.3 million with no growth since then. He also said that despite the spike over the summer with minors arriving at the southern border in the Rio Grande Valley, the numbers of unaccompanied children crossing there are now at their lowest level in almost two years.
Sen. Johnson also said media reports on Obama’s possible plans for an executive order that would defer actions on more immigrants will only create incentives for illegal immigration.
“The percentage of deportations have been extremely low, so regardless of how the deferred actions may be written, the signal is our borders are open and ‘come on, you’ve got a shot at being a citizen’ I guess.”
He also said that welfare benefits to non-U.S. citizens need to be stopped, which would further reduce incentives to illegal immigration.
Johnson also said that border security is an “imperative,” not just to solve the nation’s problem with illegal immigration but also to stop potential threats such as terrorism and diseases like Ebola and others from entering the country.
“That’s why I just think that public pressure is going to help us win the day of actually, finally after decades on a bipartisan fashion failing to secure the border, I think now might be the time,” he said.