Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted the Biden administration for opening its doors to illegal immigrants fleeing poverty, violence or the effects of climate change, saying the U.S. isn’t a safe country in those respects.
The Georgia Republican was criticizing a new pathway for entry opened up by Homeland Security, which allows migrants to use a smartphone app to schedule a time to show up and be processed into the U.S., despite having no visa to allow entry.
Ms. Greene said Homeland Security officials have said those migrants are coming to escape violence and poverty, or to flee the effects of climate change. But she said if those are the criteria, the U.S. may not be the best place.
“Did you know there are over half a million homeless people in the United States today?” she told Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Blas Nunez Neto.
She added: “Talk about climate change, this is the fourth largest country in the world. We have an extremely diverse climate. We have a wide range of natural disasters — 97 natural disasters occurred in 2021. I don’t think this is very safe for migrants. We had 97. How many are they having in their country?”
Her criticism went to the heart of the U.S. asylum system and the reasons people are allowed to claim protection in the U.S., though it turned the equation around.
Conservatives usually complain that conditions in other countries are so poor that billions of people would head for the U.S. if they could. Former President Donald Trump famously labeled some nations “s—hole” countries.
But Ms. Greene, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, suggested conditions in the U.S. are rough, too.
In addition to natural disasters and poverty, she cited rising crime rates, saying that the U.S. is “not a safe country, by the way.”
“I think that you need better reasons if you’re going to try to let a bunch of people in the U.S. using a handy-dandy app,” she said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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