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Everywhere I travel throughout Eastern Washington, I hear from people demanding we do a better job of controlling our borders and reducing illegal immigration.

There is overwhelming bipartisan support outside of Washington that we need to finally secure our borders, enforce our laws, and stop the problem of illegal immigration.

Once we secure our borders - and the federal government has not done a good job - then Congress, I believe, needs to take up the issue and look at how we try and identify those people that are here, that are national security risks to the United States.

These are our borders, and we have to secure our borders.

Border security is a complex issue and will remain a top priority during the 2007 legislative year. As Congress works to fix this problem, I will continue to push for strong measures that beef up security at our borders.

We all want our border to be secure. However, certain individuals use this argument to stop us from ever enacting immigration reform.

The fact of the matter is, is that we need our borders secured. Certainly, we realize that there's going to have to be some kind of immigration reform, but I don't believe any of that's going to move forward until our border is secured.

But the people of Arizona, the people of America, have been promised that our borders would be secured for years and years and years, with it not happening. And I don't believe the people of America, certainly not the people of Arizona, are ready to discuss anything other at this point in time other than securing our borders.

We also need to strengthen the security of our borders and ports and strictly control immigration.

I would argue that you're only going to get the conservatives, particularly a Republican House, to pass immigration reform if we, as conservatives, are reassured that the border is controlled and that we get to vote on whether the border is controlled.