Rubio, Colleagues Slam Biden Administration for Southern Border Crisis

Borders matter. There's a reason why every map you're going to look at, whether it's a state or [country], has borders. These aren't just some arbitrary lines. The borders tell you what the law is on one side of it versus what's on the other. And they're relevant. They're relevant, for example, in determining who can come into a place.

Our immigration laws are the most generous in the world. No country in the world is more generous on immigration than the United States. It's not even close. And we've created a process for people to come here legally. And if you follow that process, we're going to welcome you with open arms. You're going to enrich our country.

A number of us, I would imagine everyone in this room, at some point had someone who came to the United States through whatever the process was at that time. And it certainly has defined us as a great country. You follow that process, we're going to welcome you. If you don't follow that process, you're not going to be able to stay. That should be what we do.

That makes all the sense in the world, especially for this country. Because as bad as we may think things are in America--and they are, inflation and gas prices--it's still way better than everywhere else. And so the bottom line is, if tomorrow we announced that anyone who wanted to come to America could, 250 million people would come, maybe more.

So this crisis at the border, it's not hard to understand. You don't need some Ivy League study to figure this out. If you tell people, "Hey, you shouldn't come, but if you do, you're going to get to stay,' people are going to come. And they're coming at a rate that is unparalleled.

Just from Cuba alone, we already have more people in the last nine months than the entire Mariel boatlift. That's just from one country. Just from one country. And there's no compassion involved in this. There's nothing compassionate about luring people into a trip where rapists, and murderers, and the worst human beings on the planet get their clutches into them and abuse on them, on their children, on women traveling alone. It's a horrifying experience. There's nothing compassionate.

And if you can smuggle human beings, you can certainly bring bags of stuff like pills across the border. [Over] the Fourth of July weekend in one county in Florida, I believe we had 19 overdoses--a mass casualty event. Nineteen overdoses, because some tainted drugs wound up in the hands of some kids having a party. It overwhelmed the small county. They probably all came across that border. You know why it's not coming through the airport? Because they screen for it there. You know why it's coming across the border? Because we don't.

We don't, because we have an administration that doesn't care about enforcing the law. Because frankly--and I'll be honest with you about this--their base, their activists, their supporters support open borders. They'll never say it because they know it doesn't poll well, but they think the border should be open and anyone who wants to come across should.

There's no country in the world that would tolerate that. Mexico wouldn't tolerate it. Guatemala wouldn't tolerate it. Canada wouldn't tolerate it. And we shouldn't either.

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