President Trump needs to do a prime time Oval Office address about immigration, the current crisis on the border, and why the country needs bold action from Congress and the executive branch.

Between the migrant caravan and the president’s Tuesday debate with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., immigration has become the most critical issue to a plurality of Americans, according to a Gallup poll . With just three weeks before the new Congress begins, Trump needs to score whatever legislative victories he can before Democrats take over the House.

To help, Trump should go on prime time network TV to tell the country why he needs Congress to fund a border wall, reform asylum laws, and pass E-Verify.

The border wall is Trump’s most important issue not only because it secures the southern border, but also because it was his most significant campaign promise during the 2016 election. So far, Congress has just passed funding on replacement fencing and not the actual construction of a wall. Congress could have made Mexico pay for the wall had House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., attempted to tax remittances and withhold foreign aid, but that’s water under the bridge at this point.

Trump needs to speak soberly to the public and explain why it’s necessary for Congress to fund the wall. He should say how monthly border apprehensions are at the highest they’ve been in years. Migrants coming in from the South are unvetted. There have been cases of migrants attempting to come to the U.S. with infectious diseases and criminal pasts . He should also reference Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan who told the Senate on Tuesday that a border wall would be an “important tool” for stopping illegal immigration.

He should highlight the success of other border barriers in America as well as foreign countries like Hungary and Israel , where there were declines in illegal crossings after they built a border wall. Trump needs to make a simple argument that walls have worked in the past and will work again to stem the crisis on the border.

Congress also needs to close the asylum loopholes which allow migrants to claim “credible fear” and allow a limited holding time for people who come to the ports of entry with children. This asylum system may have been created with the best intentions, but it has caused a massive humanitarian crisis.

Human smugglers, coyotes, and cartels prey on desperately poor Central Americans promising them easy access to a better life in the U.S. for thousands of dollars . It has become a multibillion dollar industry that lawyers help facilitate when they coach asylum seekers on what to say to law enforcement at the border, most of whom do not have credible claims to asylum.

This has to stop, not only for the sake of our sovereignty but also because it enriches human smugglers and has caused the death or disappearance of nearly 4,000 migrants over the last four years.

Enacting E-Verify would round out the essential enforcement measures Trump needs from Congress. It forces employers to check the legal status of anyone applying for a job and is overwhelmingly popular, supported by 79 percent of the country according to an ABC/Washington Post poll . Enacting E-Verify nationwide would protect low-skilled American workers who see their wages undercut by illegal aliens. Trump could even highlight a recent story from The Chicago Sun-Times about a bakery who was forced to fire unlawful aliens and hire African Americans after ICE raided the factory. Wages rose from $10 to $14 an hour for the African Americans who had been economically displaced by foreign nationals.

Finally, Trump needs to make absolutely clear that he will not sign a spending bill that doesn’t fulfill these legislative priorities. Furthermore, he must say he will use the full power of the executive branch to implement his immigration agenda. The Supreme Court ruled in Hawaii v. Trump that the president has broad statutory authority to make natural security judgments when it came to immigration. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president authority to “deny entry to any alien or class of aliens” whenever he “finds” that those class of aliens “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Using that executive authority, Trump should start throwing out executive orders on everything regarding immigration from the citizenship question for anchor babies to withholding visas to broad classes of foreign nationals. He should announce that he’s authorizing the State Department to stop the visa approval process and order the military to build tent cities and barriers on the border.

Hardball actions will add pressure not only to Democrats but also business-first Republicans who want cheap labor.

Immigration is Trump’s winning issue. It is the reason why he’s president. If Americans didn’t want to protect the southern border and further immigration restrictions, then Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton would be in the Oval Office right now. Trump needs to use the power of his office and speak directly to the public about why it’s so important in a national address, not just in a tweet.

Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer based in New York.