IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — Senator Jim Risch is back to work in Washington D.C. as Congress gets back in session faced with a slew of to-do’s from healthcare, to the most recent call from President Trump to address illegal immigration with the ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
As Congress prepares to address those issues, Senator Risch says the illegal immigration debate has already been settled time and time again by Congress.
“You have these people who say ‘Congress didn’t do its job,'” Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said. “Well yes, Congress did, we have a law, you cannot come into this country illegally, you cannot remain in this country illegally and that is the law in America.”
But, the law often presents issues for the children who came to America illegally with their parents and have established a life in the United States.
“You’ve got that humanitarian aspect of it, but you can’t let that override everything else,” Sen. Risch said. “The system needs works, there’s no question about it, but you can’t just take this one thing and say well, we’re going to fix this and do it for the people that are here illegally and say there, it’s fixed. No, it’s not.”
Risch acknowledges there are many illegal immigrants who came to America as children who have lived in the United States for decades, have never known any other country and are good citizens. He says the real solution to the issues raised by the DACA controversy is border security.
“You’ve got to start with border security,” Sen. Risch said. “Then we start talking about what to do about the ones that are here illegally, but you don’t start with that and then go to the other stuff because the other stuff will never get done.”
