An informed, conversational and --- at times --- solemn U.S. Sen. James Lankford spoke at the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s Congressional Forum on Thursday at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Tulsa Downtown. 

Congressional Forums provide an opportunity for the northeast Oklahoma business community to hear directly from members of the state’s federal delegation. 

Lankford spoke on a variety of topics, including the nation’s $33 trillion debt, domestic oil production, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the idea of student loan forgiveness and illegal crossings at the United States-Mexico border.

The senator spent nearly all his time answering questions from the audience.

He said the overall tenor in Washington D.C. is too loud and that legislators need to shout less and listen more.

“If we spend 20 years yelling about problems but don’t resolve them, we have a bigger problem, not a smaller problem,” Lankford said. “So, we have to find ways to strongly disagree and then get a point of decision and actually solve it. 

“…I’ve never been persuaded by somebody screaming at me. I’ve never had anyone cuss me out ever and at the end of it, I walked away thinking `You’re so smart. I should be more like you.’” 

On the country’s southern border crisis, the senator said six million people from Mexico have illegally crossed the border into the United States in the past three years, matching the number of illegals in the 12 years previous. 

Lankford spent 10 minutes speaking on asylum, the protection granted by a nation to someone who has left his or her native country as a political refugee. He addedthat to slow movement at the border, the United States needs to make clear its definition of asylum. 

“The majority of people crossing our border are coming for economic opportunity,” he said. “We should have legal pathways for immigration that are legal processes. For asylum, we should clarify. Asylum doesn’t mean I go through eight countries and then pick the country I want. If I’m in trouble in the location I’m in, then I move to the next safe place. That may be a different city in my own country, or if I have no safe place in my own country, I move to the next safe country.” 

The audience grew quieter as the senator closed with remarks about the Middle East.

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” Lankford said. “This is a season in Israel that Israel hoped they would not see and have not seen since 1973.

“This is also an incredibly tenuous moment for us as a country, as an ally of Israel, and we should be a strong, supportive, consistent ally of Israel."