On Wednesday, Dan Newhouse, Chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, joined other lawmakers on the steps of the U.S. capital, calling for “real, commonsense immigration reform”. Newhouse threw his support behind Florida Representative María Elvira Salazar’s Dignity Proposal. Newhouse said the proposal is based on the principles of border security, asylum reform, protection for Dreamers, and practical solutions for guest workers and undocumented immigrants.

Here is the transcript of Newhouse’s comments Wednesday:

"Thank you, Maria, for giving me the opportunity to speak today. It has been great to see you dive in headfirst and making sure Republicans get our message across on responsible immigration reform.

Our immigration laws are broken. We need meaningful improvements, and we need to secure our border.

Reforming our broken system has been one of my top priorities in Congress – from ensuring we have a workable guestworker program for our agriculture industry to providing certainty and legal status for Dreamers who were brought here as children at no fault of their own.

At the same time, one only has to look at our southern border right now – at the thousands of illegal crossings happening each day – to know that illegal immigration has reached a crisis point. There have been more than 200,000 illegal border crossings in the first two and a half months of this year alone!

We have to strengthen our border and ensure the men and women who protect our nation have the resources they need to effectively do their jobs.

The best way to stop illegal immigration is to streamline our legal immigration processes, eliminate opportunities to work without legal status, and simply enforce our laws.

Ms. Salazar’s proposal is a great place to start.

The United States is a country built by immigrants, and we welcome them into our communities. In my home district of Central Washington, immigrants are small business owners, scientists, teachers, veterans, neighbors, friends, and – in many cases – family.

They contribute to our culture and to our history – but we must make sure they come here legally and remain here legally.

We all understand that we have several problems to solve, and we all have different ideas about how to get there.

This proposal recognizes the contributions of immigrants, strengthens our national security, bolsters our local economies and small businesses, and proves that Republicans are ready to play ball with a responsible and serious proposal like this one. 

Again, thank you, Maria, for being willing to work on these issues – we have a lot of work ahead, but I look forward to our continued collaboration."

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