Congressman visits Moscow, answers questions from public.
Sorry I missed it. I was teaching.
U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador agrees with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in that the United States needs to build a wall along its southern border to stop the flow of illegal immigration.
Labrador, who represents Idaho’s 1st District, made a stop in Moscow on Thursday as part of his “Conversations with the Congressman” tour and fielded questions from area residents for about one hour at the Hamilton Indoor Recreation Center on issues ranging from immigration to health care.
Labrador has been traveling throughout the state to visit with constituents since late July and will wrap up the meetings today in Lewiston, Nezperce and Grangeville.
“I actually believe we need walls because we cannot bring everybody to the United States,” Labrador said. “If you bring every person that was poor, that wants a better education and better job to the United States, we’re going to destroy the United States. We don’t have the ability to bring them all, but I do believe that wall must have a gate where we bring the people that we need to the United States.”
Labrador said more refugees come to the U.S. today than any other country. Labrador said he wants people to come through the gates on the borders and show that they’re coming to live the American dream.
“We have the best country in the world but we have the most generous country in the world,” he said.
To solve the immigration issue, Labrador said the U.S. needs to enforce laws and create a modernized immigration system. He said the current immigration system is from the 1950s. He said the U.S. needs to accept people into the country based on skills and improve its interior enforcement system that detects people who overstay their visas.
One woman in the audience asked about Labrador’s ideas of balancing inequities to health care access.
“I don’t think access to health care is a right and you do,” Labrador said to the woman. “I think our job as legislators is to make sure that the health care system is such that the costs are the lowest possible so people can have more access to health care on their own. But I don’t believe it’s the federal government’s or the state government’s duty and responsibility to provide health care to people.”
He said the government should take care of vulnerable people and do the best it can with its resources.
He said he has seen education, health care and lately college tuition costs increase because the federal government has a hand in those items.
Anytime a task is turned over to the federal government, the cost goes up because there are more inequities, less access and less accountability because of a lack of free market, he said.
“Every time you put federal government into health care, the cost goes up,” Labrador said.
Via the Moscow-Pullman Daily News