[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 58 (Thursday, May 5, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H3034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 IMMIGRATION REFORM AND THE REAL ID ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, the House and Senate are finally taking the 
first small step in decades to address the hordes of criminal illegal 
immigrants who are undermining our Nation's laws, our culture, and our 
economy.
  We have agreed to pass the REAL ID Act as part of emergency 
supplemental appropriations. REAL ID holds the promise of attacking, 
finally, the underground fake ID industry in this country. This 
important legislation asks States to implement tough new standards for 
issuing driver's licenses, that is, if they want their State driver's 
licenses to be accepted as legitimate identification for Federal 
purposes. This bill does not force States to do so, nor does this bill 
implement a new national ID.
  The opponents of immigration reform, those who really want opened 
borders, are now screaming that this bill is ``too expensive'' and will 
``backlog'' the driver's license application process of legal 
Americans.
  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported yesterday the concerns of 
one bureaucrat at the National Conference of State Legislators. He 
complained that the REAL ID would cost States $500 million to 
implement. But my home State of Georgia, like many others, already 
require many of the standards in this bill. So this figure is very 
questionable, extremely questionable. But for the sake of argument, let 
us accept that figure as valid.
  Would it be worth $500 million to have avoided 9/11? The 19 attackers 
who killed 3,000 Americans in New York and Washington on that day had 
63 driver's licenses between them, which they used, as we all know, to 
board the airliners they crashed into the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon. $500 million would be the deal of the century to have avoided 
the loss of all these Americans.
  Beyond our battle against terror, this bill addresses a growing 
threat to our very culture, to our way of life, and the reasons that 
people all over the world want to come here to start with. We are a 
Nation that respects the law, abhors corruption and graft. And as a 
result, we have built the greatest economy on Earth by having 
established a firm foundation of public honesty; reliable documents; 
trustworthy personal, business, and official records. Those standards 
are in stark contrast to most of the Third World, where graft and 
cronyism and corruption are the norm. That is why people from those 
countries want out, because they cannot feed themselves under the 
economic conditions created by this corruption.
  But illegal immigrants begin their journey by bringing that 
corruption to this country, by intentionally violating our immigration 
laws and crossing our borders illegally, and with the help of their own 
corrupt government. Once here, they continue the process by falsifying 
identification documents, which they then use to corrupt our public 
records at both the State and Federal level.

                              {time}  1445

  In the process, they have created an underground criminal industry 
based on graft and deceit, with the sole purpose of undermining the 
public records of this Nation.
  To allow this to continue would be far more damaging than just 
allowing false information. It would allow a culture of corruption to 
take seed and grow in this country, until the weeds of graft choke the 
economy and the public integrity of America, as it has the nations that 
the illegal immigrants flee from, especially south of us.
  I urge the Senate, I urge the Senate to join us in passing this 
essential first effort against illegal immigration.

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