Labor Sec’y Walsh: The Southern Border Is ‘Not Immigration’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh stated that elected officials in Congress, “talk about the southern border, and that’s immigration. That’s not immigration. Immigration is what we’ve always survived on as a country.” And that if there were more pathways to come to the U.S. legally on things like temporary visas, “then we wouldn’t have the challenges to the magnitude that we do at our borders in our country.”

Walsh stated that “there [are] two sides in immigration. We don’t want immigration — or we’d like to see legal immigration.”

He added, “I think the elected officials, sometimes, on Capitol Hill, what they do is they talk about the southern border, and that’s immigration. That’s not immigration. Immigration is what we’ve always survived on as a country. And really, it’s thinking about how do we use immigration in a positive manner? If we had legal immigration into the United States of America, legal pathways into the United States, if we had pathways where people could apply for visas and come into this country for three months, six months, nine months, maybe five years, then we wouldn’t have the challenges to the magnitude that we do at our borders in our country.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett