EAGLE PASS, Texas — On Wednesday, a group of almost five dozen republican members of the house of representatives, including speaker Mike Johnson, traveled to Eagle Pass, Texas to get a closer look at the border with Mexico.
For months, Republicans in Congress have leaned heavily on the topic of border security, and that messaging is continuing now in this presidential election year.
Congressman Mark Alford, who represents Missouri’s 4th Congressional District, was the only Kansas City-area representative to make the trip.
I spoke to him about exactly what the Republican stance on immigration is.
“We are not against immigration, legal immigration,” Alford told me in a Zoom interview this week. “Legal immigration is a fabric of America's past, and will be a rich part of its future, but illegal immigration will not be, and there is a distinction between those two. There are many people in the Kansas City area who have come through the right way, who have sacrificed the time and the dedication and the money to earn their citizenship. And now to see others come in and jump in line in front of these people who have done it the right way…it's not fair to anyone involved.”
In May of 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Secure the Border Act” without a single Democratic vote.
Alford told me that House Republicans intend to stick closely to the provisions of that act when and if the U.S. Senate passes border funding legislation of its own.
“We've got to make sure that those coming to our country for asylum reasons are doing it the right way,” Alford told me. “If they don't meet the asylum requirements, political persecution being the main one, they need to go back to their country of origin not be allowed into the United States of America. Instead, they're being welcomed in, told that their court date is going to be years out, and you're welcome to stay in America until we figure out if you're here because of proper reasons for asylum.”
House Republicans are also pushing for border funding to be addressed either ahead of, or in conjunction with, funding for ongoing conflicts between Israel and Hamas, and Russia and Ukraine.
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