Both major political parties have used America’s border as a political football designed to protect their big-monied interests in the business community and along the corporate coasts. 

The failure to secure our border is intentional, stemming from a deep-desire among various industries to attain cheap labor at the expense of U.S. national security, safe communities, low-wage labor markets, and a sensible immigration system that serves the interests of citizens.

Politicians in both parties repeatedly push amnesty in defiance of their constituents and citizens in a flagrant attempt to benefit powerful entrenched interests and secure potential long-term political power from a surge of new voters.

It is not only unlawful and antithetical to the oaths that elected officials have sworn, but it is also deeply destructive to the vitality of American communities. 

Violent international drug cartels, operating as little more than narcoterrorists, control large swaths of the U.S. southern border. These criminals operate highly sophisticated human trafficking rings, flood American communities with drugs and violence, and serve as the connective tissue that keeps violent criminal gangs like MS-13 in business in major American cities.

The destabilized state of our southern border is further inflamed by elected officials unlawfully flaunting federal immigration law under so-called “sanctuary” policies. The result is a fundamental breakdown in basic civil society that is unfair to both citizens and non-citizens alike. 

Recent gains made to build a wall, bolster ICE and CBP’s capabilities, enforce existing immigration law, and implement a skills-based immigration system that rewards fairness and merit must be secured going forward.

Citizens for Renewing America understands that a nation must be able to control its borders if it is to remain secure, sovereign, and free. And a secure border must then be followed by a reformed immigration system that preserves tight labor markets for low-wage workers and ensures that limited high-skilled visas fill the real gaps in our economy, not the needs of big tech companies on our coasts.