THOMASVILLE — The surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the situation of those seeking to enter the country is “the worst it’s ever been,” U.S. Rep. Austin Scott said Saturday morning.

Scott (R-Tifton) spoke to the Georgia Federation of Republican Women, who met this weekend in Thomasville, and outlined a number of issues, including the continuing number of people from Central America seeking to enter the U.S. 

Many of them, Scott said, pay their life savings to multinational criminal cartels to be taken to the U.S. border with Mexico before they make an illegal and often dangerous crossing.

“When we look at what’s happening with the border, what sticks in my mind is, it’s worse than it’s ever been,” Scott said. “If President Trump were the president right now, the amount of criticism that would be coming from the national news media would be astronomical. And yet there is very little criticism of what President Biden has done.”

Scott has traveled to several of the countries in Latin America and said President Biden’s stance on immigration has helped foster the problem at the border.

“He ran for over a year saying basically ‘we’re going to have an open border and if you come here, we’re going to take care of you,’” Scott said. “He shouldn’t be surprised they’re here right now.

“The situation is worse now than it has ever been,” Scott continued. “It got better under President Trump because President Trump said ‘don’t come here.’ President Trump was portrayed as mean and evil and all those things because he said, ‘don’t come here.’ President Biden did the exact opposite and now we’ve got a horrible mess that candidly, I don’t know what the solution is at this stage.”

Scott, now in his 10th year in Congress, sits on the House Agriculture and Armed Services committees. But the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, he said, isn’t using the longstanding process of introducing proposed legislation into committees for vetting.

“If you look at the way they’re doing things, they’re running legislation through without even bringing it through a committee,” he said. “If they are going to continue to bring legislation to the floor without even bringing it through a committee, and Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi continues to strong arm people and get them to vote for bad legislation and (Sen.) Chuck Schumer runs it through on the Senate side, then there’s very little we can do, because mathematically, we don’t have the numbers to stop it. 

“The key to good government is the key to solving this and that’s to use the committee process,” Scott added. “If they will bring the legislation through the committees, we will be able to expose what the problems and hopefully find a solution that isn’t political. But right now, it’s 100 percent political.”

Scott also called out the House Democratic leadership for trying not to seat Marianette Miller-Meeks, who won Iowa’s 2nd District race over Democrat Rita Hart by six votes. The state has certified the results but Congressional Democrats may look to overturn the election.

“It’s a total double standard that we see from the Democratic party,” Scott said.

Scott also said he voted against the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package and assailed Georgia’s two U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, for backing it.

“They voted to give New York City more per person than any metropolitan area in the state of Georgia,” he said. “I was against the bill to start with and would have been against it no matter what. Georgia’s representatives and senators need to be working on behalf of Georgia citizens.” 

Editor Pat Donahue can be reached at (229) 226-2400 ext. 1806