Immigration was a top talking point at the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Congressional Forum on Thursday, which featured conversations between four of North Texas’s congressional representatives.
The panel – made up of Democratic Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Marc Veasey and Republican Reps. Beth Van Duyne and Keith Self, all up for re-election in November – discussed housing, transportation infrastructure, population growth and inflation in Texas, and more. But the panel delved deeper into immigration and its impacts on the area when Veasey said the immigrant workforce has played a role in the local economy’s growth.
“They participate in the workforce at a much higher rate than Texas citizens,” Veasey said. “So why are we not doing everything to make sure that we fix our broken system, to make it more efficient?”
The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank reported earlier this year a swell of immigration will boost the national GDP by almost $9 trillion and federal tax revenues by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
But Self argued border security is one of the country’s biggest issues.
“Until we solve the illegal immigration issue, there's no appetite in Congress to work on legal immigration,” Self said.
Van Duyne added immigration leads to inaccurate numbers of population growth and negatively impacts communities through violence.
“You try worrying about the health care, housing, infrastructure when you don't know who lives in your community,” Van Duyne said. “We have got to protect our borders.”
She said it's not a matter of if we're going to have an interior terrorist attack, but when.
Crockett argued against Van Duyne’s statements, calling on Dallas police officers at the panel to confirm crime has gone down this year.
“If you just Google it, crime is actually down overall, especially in our big cities,” Crockett said. “But immigration has become just this political talking point.”
Immigration continues to be a major focus in the upcoming presidential election, with voters from each political party sharing drastically contrasting views.
In recent years, Americans have become more likely to agree undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. should not be allowed to legally stay in the country, according to the Pew Research Center.
Forty-one percent of voters said undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to stay in the country legally, a 19% increase since 2017.
Voters favoring a national effort by law enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. also increased from 26% to 37% since 2021.
Crockett said dealing with any form of immigration means dealing with all levels of it.
“There is not an appetite to solve immigration…because it is great to campaign on,” she said.
Penelope Rivera is KERA’s news intern. Got a tip? Email Penelope at privera@kera.org.
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