An Arizona congressman has introduced a measure that would help fund the construction of President Donald Trump’s promised border wall by trimming foreign aid to the home countries of those who illegally enter the United States.
“We have failed to secure the funds for the border wall. In the meantime, our Border Patrol agents suffer demoralizing losses of resources and personnel,” Biggs said in a statement. “We must fund, start, and complete the border wall without further delay.”
In addition, a new fee for international money transfers would be added, and foreign travelers filling out I-94 application forms would see an increase in fees, to $25 from $6. Biggs said these higher fees also would help fund salaries for Border Patrol employees.
The $1.6 billion is far short of the estimated $25 billion needed to complete the wall and came with strings attached, prohibiting Trump from building the kind of structure he wants. The importance of the wall was made clear when Trump briefly threatened to veto the spending bill because of the low funding.
The newly introduced act also restores overtime pay for Border Patrol employees at the same rate as all other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) law-enforcement agencies. In addition, it instructs the DHS to take action in installing physical barriers and technology to prevent illegal crossings, as deemed necessary.
“It’s foreign aid, it’s not stealing money. It’s money that we have been providing and many of these people are not crossing at ports of entry. They are not coming though legally trying to get into our country—they are breaking into our country,” he said.
In a July 3o post on Twitter, Trump voiced his frustration on the slow-moving border wall construction.
A barrier already exists in some places along the U.S.–Mexico border. Most illegal crossings occur in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, where the winding Rio Grande River acts as a natural border between the United States and Mexico.
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