[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 144 (Thursday, October 23, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H9478-H9479]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              STOP 245(I)

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I wish to commend my colleague, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray], for the remarks he just made 
and for the energy that he has put into this effort to bring our 
borders under control and to prevent hundreds of millions, even 
billions of dollars from being spent on people who have come to this 
country illegally.
  I think it is incumbent on those of us who have been very active in 
this effort to prevent illegal immigration into the United States, to 
express our appreciation for the fact that legal immigration has done 
great things for the United States of America.
  I know I am speaking for my colleague, the gentleman from California, 
[Mr. Brian Bilbray], and I know I am speaking for myself and most of 
us, I think all of us who have been active on this issue in the House 
of Representatives. Legal immigration has served our country well. We 
are all immigrants, except perhaps for the American Indians who met us 
at our shores.
  The people who have come here legally, however, are screened so that 
they are not carrying diseases, they are screened so that they can take 
care of themselves, so that they are not criminals, so that they are 
not people who would be involved in acts of terrorism. We have, in 
fact, the most generous legal immigration system in the world where we 
screen out people who will not be taking care of themselves or are not 
healthy or pose a threat to our society, and let other people come to 
our society who will be producing wealth and become productive members 
of our society.
  We can be proud that the United States of America has a legal 
immigration system that permits more legal immigration into our society 
than all the other societies in the world combined. That is a wonderful 
thing, and we have benefitted from that. But what we have not 
benefitted from is a flood of illegal immigration in the last 10 years 
that is overwhelming many of the social systems that we put in place 
for our people.
  In California we find our education system breaking down. Our young 
people's test scores are going down, down,

[[Page H9479]]

down, even as we pump more money into the system. They go in and they 
say the class size is too large. And then we find out a third of the 
members of the class are illegal alien children.
  In California the health care system is breaking down, and those 
children in our school system are confronted with diseases that we 
thought we had knocked out years ago but perhaps are being brought in 
by illegal people from South America someplace.

                              {time}  1815

  These are things we have got to care about, not because we do not 
like the people who are illegally coming into our country but because 
we care about our own citizens. The question the American people should 
be asking of their elected representatives, the question, the main 
question should be who do you care about, who are you representing. Are 
you representing some cockamamie liberal idea that they are going to 
share the wealth with everybody?
  I was in a negotiation with someone yesterday who was literally 
talking about an amnesty program, another amnesty program for the 5 
million illegal aliens who are in our system. And also during the 
discussion we talked about the people who are here illegally perhaps 
bringing their grandparents over, being able to bring their 
grandparents over. I just could not understand how anyone could suggest 
that we bring people over from overseas who are senior citizens, who 
have never paid a cent into our system, who would then partake in the 
social benefit packages that our own seniors have paid for all of their 
lives. They have worked all of their lives to build a little security 
for themselves, and then we are going to betray them by permitting 
people to come in great masses from overseas and partake out of the 
bowl until the bowl is dry, especially when for so long our own 
citizens have been contributing to that thing, thinking they would be 
helped by that when they became seniors.
  Who are we representing? Who are we watching out for? If our people 
are not watching out for the well-being of the people of the United 
States, they should not be in the House of Representatives. We see this 
time and time again where there is a concept of a global concept here, 
that it is going to guide our decisions, what is best for the world or 
best for those seniors overseas.
  I have a heart. I care for these good people who would like to 
emigrate here illegally. I have a heart for people who are trying to 
improve their economy overseas. But we cannot have policies that are 
aimed at helping others at the expense of our own people. It should be 
a fundamental principle. If we can give and help provide and support 
people who are building free societies and democracies overseas, their 
societies will progress, they will have prosperity, they can take care 
of themselves rather than having their people having to emigrate and 
flood into the United States.
  We have a great challenge ahead of us, to be the leader of a free 
world and to stand for decency. The first and most important 
responsibility we have in meeting that challenge is to watch out for 
the interests of the people of the United States of America.

                          ____________________