Border Wall Is Not a '19th Century Solution,' Says Texas Congressional Candidate

A Texas congressional candidate expressed frustration of the federal government’s continued failure to secure the nation’s southwestern border with Mexico. He said efforts to build walls and adequate fencing are being stifled by representatives who get elected making promises they fail to deliver.

“I get really frustrated when I hear people say [the wall] is a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem when nothing could be further from the truth,” Texas CD-21 runoff candidate Chip Roy told Breitbart Texas in an interview. “Look at what we use to secure our military installations, the White House, or even Texas ranches. Fencing and walls. Border walls work.”

Roy is currently facing voters in a GOP primary runoff election to decide who will replace retiring Congressman Lamar Smith (R-San Antonio). He is facing businessman Matt McCall who failed in two previous attempts to take the congressional seat.

Roy pointed to the section of border in the San Diego Border Patrol Sector where fencing and walls have cut illegal border crossings by 90 percent. In contrast, the Laredo Sector in Texas has no physical barrier along its 170 miles of river border, according to Borde Patrol officials.

“I love it when people say ‘there is a wall in San Diego and people just go around it to Arizona,'” Roy said. “Exactly! That is why we must continue building the wall.”

Anti-wall activists frequently claim the U.S. should not build a wall in the Big Bend National Park.

“Okay, build a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the edge of Big Bend,” the candidate responded. “We can talk about what that looks like in the national park after that is done. I would like to have that problem — that we’ve built the wall from the Gulf to Big Bend and we’re now going to have a conversation about it.”

“But we don’t do that because neither the Dems nor the Republicans are serious about it,” Roy argues.

“So, how do you get it?” Roy asked. “You get it by making it clear to all groups–whether they’re Wall Street Journal, cheap labor, or open borders kind of crowd, whether they’re for strong border security–that all roads for any sort of immigration reform start with border security.”

Roy said that border security is not just about a wall. It is also about increasing interior enforcement against illegal immigrants and people who lose legal status by overstaying their visas.

“There were over a half million visa overstays last year,” Roy stated. “We can fix all of this if we just have the willpower to do it. We’ve had authorizations to build the wall for 20-plus years. We’ve just got to put the dollars in place to do it.”

“We can’t get the Congress to do that right now when the president won overwhelmingly on that issue,” he said. “We need a Congress that is serious about sending the president legislation that he can sign.”

“So that’s it,” Roy concluded. “We need to secure the border with walls, clamp down on visa overstays, end diversity visas and chain migration, restructure our immigration system to be American first — all within the confines of limiting the flow from countries that are our enemies and securing the border from day-one, and not hedging about it.”

“And,” he continued, “under no circumstances should we give a pathway to citizenship to anyone who is here illegally.”

Roy also said that Republicans in Congress should not “unilaterally disarm” by granting any kind of status to recipients of what he called “President Barack Obama’s illegal DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) programs” without getting what we need for border security.

Roy spoke out against the “false compassion” of open border policies.

“It is absolutely a disservice to the very immigrants that some people say open borders are good for in the name of false compassion,” he explained. “We allow these kids to ride on the top of train cars as unaccompanied minors, we allow children to be sexually abused, and mothers to die in the deserts while attempting to find a better life — which I do not fault them for doing — because we refuse to secure our borders.”

Roy concluded by saying that if Congress does not take action to secure the border we will miss the opportunity that the election of President Donald Trump represents.