[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 142 (Friday, October 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H12297-H12298]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CONGRESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized for 5 
minutes.

[[Page H12298]]

  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I just thought that it would be apropos 
for us to take a look at what the accomplishments of this particular 
Congress and the changes in the world are bringing to the American 
people. Today I hope that those people who are reading these remarks in 
the Congressional Record and those people who are watching on C-SPAN 
recognize that over the past 2 years we have indeed seen a revolution 
in Washington, DC.
  The word ``revolution'' really means a turnaround. It means not 
necessarily that great strides have taken place going in one direction 
or the other but, instead, that the direction has changed. Over these 
last 2 years, we have changed the direction of Government in the United 
States of America. I am very proud to have been part of Newt Gingrich's 
team, the new team in the House of Representatives, and what we have 
done to try to bring control to the uncontrolled increase in taxation 
and spending that threatened the very well-being of the American 
people. We have also come to grips with other issues that in the past 
have been unattended when the other party controlled the House of 
Representatives.
  One of the issues that is of most concern to me, Mr. Speaker, and of 
most concern to Californians is the flood of immigration, especially 
illegal immigration, that is flowing into California that is destroying 
some of our basic institutions and our social infrastructure.
  Today in California, many Americans who have spent their entire life 
paying their taxes, living honestly, trying to raise their family, 
trying to be good citizens in their community, are finding that the 
social infrastructure that they have come to rely upon is being 
destroyed because people from other countries are coming to our State 
illegally and flooding into the schools, into our hospitals, they are 
crowding our jails and preventing the judicial system from functioning 
and the other social services systems from functioning as they were set 
up.
  For the first time Congress has come to grips with this problem. I am 
very proud that although the President of the United States, who 
claimed that he was going to try to do everything he could to help us 
with this flood of immigration, that the President of the United States 
instead did everything he could to drag his feet and to prevent us from 
passing a meaningful immigration bill, but despite this, we were able 
to pass an immigration bill that turned the country around.
  There is still very much to do, and next year we will accomplish more 
on the issue of immigration reform. But we can be proud that instead of 
aiming at policies that made the situation worse, we have now turned 
this Government toward solving the problem and confronting the 
challenge to the American people.
  One area of concern to me, and I believe that our people should be 
alerted to this, is that this year this administration decided to speed 
up the process of naturalization of people who are in this country 
legally. However, many of those people who have been sworn in and 
become citizens of the United States were people who entered the United 
States illegally and were granted amnesty back in 1986. What we have 
had in the last year is a speedup of the naturalization process so that 
1.3 million legal immigrants now have basically become citizens. That 
is three times the number that were normalized just 2 years ago.
  Of that 1.3 million, this administration was in such a rush to grant 
them citizenship that thousands upon thousands of individuals who 
should have been screened out because they were convicted felons have 
been granted U.S. citizenship and turned loose among us.
  This cannot be tolerated. I would hope that the American people note 
who is trying to solve the problem and who is not trying to solve the 
problem, who is trying to come to grips with the ever increasing load 
of taxation and spending that we have seen from Washington, who is 
trying could to come to grips with this threat of a massive flood of 
illegal immigration.
  Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have served in this Congress, a Congress 
that has at last come to grips with some of these problems and 
challenges to our country's well-being.

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