By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch
Post
HUTCHINSON — Part of the issue in keeping illness out of the United States is being sure people aren't sick when they come in to the country. Kansas U.S. Senate candidate Kris Kobach praised actions President Trump has taken to slow the spread of coronavirus.
"His administration did something that some people on the left criticized him for and that is shut down travel from China through our ports of entry, our airports and seaports in January," Kobach said. "That was a great move. I wrote a piece for Breitbart in January, where I sometimes write a column. I pointed out that, although that is absolutely what we must do, anytime you have a global pandemic, we have to be able to control our ports, we control who comes in to this country. There was an 85% increase last year in illegal crossings of Chinese nationals across our southern border."
It's now estimated that some 12,000 Chinese nationals may be coming in illegally.
"This is Congress's fault," Kobach said. "If Congress had given President Trump the money to build the sections of wall that are finally getting built this year, if that had happened back in 2017, we'd have 500 more miles of wall up on the border and it would be much harder for people to come into the United States from any country."
Kobach notes that illegal immigration isn't fair to legal immigrants.
"The ones who do it legally, they are the ones suffering right now, because they are in direct wage competition with people who come in illegally and will accept a lower wage," Kobach said. "One of the great things President Trump has done has increased wages across the board for people, but if we continue to have open borders, which hopefully we will not, that will just continue to depress wages further."
Kobach has been an adviser to President Trump on an intermittent basis on immigration issues since his 2016 campaign.