John Boehner 8TH DISCTRICT OF OHIO

The Associated Press reported today that the number of people trying to illegally enter the U.S. between Oct. 1, 2008 and May 15, 2009 along our border with Mexico has gone down by 27 percent.  For the same period along our northern border, illegal entries were down 13 percent according to Customs and Border Protection officials.  Since we know that many people want to be part of the blessings America has to offer, I think we can attribute these numbers to the hard work of our border patrol agents and to the preventative measures Republicans have worked to put in place on the border. 

We’ve doubled the number of border patrol agents over the last five years and better equipped them to do their job safely.  We’ve built several hundred miles of the border fence, although we still have a ways to go before it’s completed.  But bills like the Secure Fence Act of 2006, of which I was a co-sponsor, have been instrumental in making sure our immigration laws are enforced.