[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 16, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2632-H2638]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H2632]]
                          ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always I profoundly appreciate the 
privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker, and to stand on the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives, make remarks for a period of 
time about issues that are so pertinent to our day. The future and the 
history of this country, many times, has been turned right here on this 
spot, Mr. Speaker, and we would like to believe that we are reflecting 
the will and the wishes of the American people but adding the level of 
knowledge and judgment has been endorsed by us, endorsed in us by the 
voters and the United States of America and the 435 congressional 
districts, Mr. Speaker.
  And I would point out as I listened to the discussion here in the 
previous hour that the word Republican, Mr. Speaker, is not a profane 
term. No matter how one says it, I am proud to be a Republican. I am 
proud to stand up for the values of fiscal responsibility and personal 
responsibility and limited government and lower taxes and lower 
regulation, a strong national defense, a vision that goes beyond the 
horizon for a strong energy policy that will expand the size of the 
energy pie and drill in ANWR and drill in the Outer Continental Shelf 
of Florida especially, so that we can get some natural gas into this 
country and some gasoline and some diesel fuel out of ANWR and out of 
our Outer Continental Shelf and expand our ethanol and expand our 
biodiesel and our wind energy, our renewable energies and clean-burning 
coal and expand our nuclear generating capability, along with a number 
of other, hydrogen, for example, a number of other energy alternatives.

                              {time}  1745

  All of these things are Republican principles, and all of these 
principles are blocked by people on the other side of the aisle who say 
the word ``Republican'' as if it were a four-letter word, Mr. Speaker.
  And, furthermore, they say the word ``democracy'' as if the United 
States of America were a democracy. Our Founding Fathers knew better 
than that, Mr. Speaker. In fact, at one time there was a display down 
at the National Archives that demonstrated the pure democracy that they 
had in the Greek city-states perhaps 3,000 years ago. Our Founding 
Fathers studied that pure democracy, and they saw where they 
blackballed the demagogues and banished them from the city-state for 7 
years because they had such an effective, rhetorical skill that they 
would sometimes lead the city-state and the masses that would follow 
that rhetorical skill in the wrong direction. That was for the 
diminishment of the greater good of the city-states in Greece.
  That is why the Founding Fathers did not set up for us a democracy, 
Mr. Speaker, but they set up a constitutional Republic, a 
representative form of government. And our job here, we owe our 
constituents and we owe all Americans because we swear an allegiance to 
the Constitution, we owe all Americans our best judgment; and sometimes 
that best judgment might not be the best thing for our particular 
district but the best thing for the United States of America. It is not 
a matter of whether we take the poll of the public and vote the way the 
polls are. If we wanted to do that, if we wanted to have a pure 
democracy, it would be far easier today in the Internet era than it was 
during the days of the city-states when the Greeks had to bring all of 
their of age males, the people who got the chance to vote in those 
days, into their coliseum or their city center where they would debate 
the issues of the day and the majority vote won. So they would 
introduce a motion, and if a majority vote prevailed, then that was the 
policy of the day until it changed.
  There were no guarantees or protections for minorities, for example. 
There were no constitutional protections like our Constitution. Our 
Bill of Rights, in particular, is drafted to protect the rights of the 
minority against the will of the majority and, in fact, to protect the 
rights of the majority against the whims of a court. All of those 
protections are in our Constitution. But continually I hear the word 
``democracy,'' ``democracy,'' ``democracy,'' as if that were somehow 
such a high and shining ideal, that that solved all of nature's ills 
and cured everything that there was on the globe. Truthfully, our 
Founding Fathers came to the conclusion sometime well before 1789 that 
a democracy would not succeed in this country and, understanding human 
nature, a democracy just simply could not succeed; so they crafted out 
of whole cloth a constitutional Republic: a balanced three branches of 
government, checks and balances on each one. Not three equal branches 
of government, but three that were balanced with the natural tension 
between the judicial branch of government, the legislative branch of 
government where we stand, Mr. Speaker, and also the executive branch 
of government where the White House stands.
  That is what we have. We have a constitutional Republic, a 
representative form of government. And our job is to be as informed as 
we can be; to be in tune with the events of the day; look into the 
future and anticipate what the future might bring; prepare this country 
for the future as much as our vision can allow; receive all the input 
across America; sort the good ideas from the bad, the wheat and the 
chaff, so to speak; and implement the policies that are best for 
America and debate them here on this floor.
  That is the challenge that the Constitution lays out for us, and that 
is the challenge that our Founding Fathers envisioned: a deliberative 
body and a constitutional Republic, a representative form of 
government. Not a democracy.
  And we have Republicans and we have Democrats that have divided 
themselves in this country in a two-party system, which our Founding 
Fathers did not envision. But when you look at the structure of the 
legislative branch, it is inevitable that we have a two-party system 
because we have a winner-take-all system. That means that the majority 
in the House and the majority in the Senate select the committee chairs 
and they make their appointments to the committees in greater numbers, 
sometimes by one or two, sometimes by a little more than that, in each 
of our committees so that the majority party has majority control of 
each of the committees.
  If the public is unhappy with the direction that that is going, then 
it is their ability to go to the voting booth and elect people from the 
other party who would then come in power, as the power changed here in 
1994 because the people at that time were fed up with the kind of 
policies that were rejected in the elections of 1994 when the 
Republicans took over the majority here in the House of 
Representatives.
  That is the system that we have, Mr. Speaker. I am proud of the 
system we have. It is the best in the world. It is far superior, I 
believe, to any kind of a pure democracy and superior to a 
parliamentary form of government because we have a guaranteed 
protection of rights, and those are limited in their scope and the 
government's powers are limited, although sometimes we go beyond our 
constitutional authority.
  Well, today, Mr. Speaker, brings us to a point, a point within this 
great national debate, an issue that was envisioned again by our 
founders, and we have a constitutional responsibility here in the 
Congress to establish an immigration policy. Our founders envisioned 
it, it is referenced, and it is our duty to have this debate and to 
shape a policy that is good for America.
  We are having a national debate, finally, and this national debate is 
a national debate that was, as I recall, called for by Pat Buchanan in 
1996, Mr. Speaker, when he said we must have a national debate on 
immigration. He knew then and I knew then that this issue was getting 
out of control and out of hand. It was only 10 years since Simpson-
Mazzoli, the 1986 amnesty legislation that was signed into law by 
President Reagan. And it was designed to provide amnesty and it was an 
admission of amnesty then, they did not try to redefine the word 
``amnesty,'' to about a little more than 1 million people, 1.2 million, 
perhaps 1.3 million people. And the trade-off for amnesty for a little 
over 1 million people was enforcement, employer sanctions, strict 
enforcement of laws that required employers, and I was one at that 
time, Mr. Speaker, to fill out the I-9 forms,

[[Page H2633]]

check the identification of the applicants for jobs in my company, and 
verify who they were and carefully dotted the I's and crossed the T's 
of the regulations, because I was sure that there would be a Federal 
agent who would walk into my office, demand to see the I-9 forms for 
all of my applicants, make sure they were in order and make sure that I 
had taken a look at their Social Security number and their driver's 
license, at a minimum, and verified who they were.

  Well, I filed all those records, Mr. Speaker, and I carefully 
followed the law. And here we are, 20 years later, and no one has come 
along to check my I-9 forms. And I have to say I believe that would be 
consistent with the vast, vast majority of the employers in America who 
have followed the law but slowly begin to realize, month by month, year 
by year, that there was not going to be enforcement. And as we see 
illegal workers flow into our communities and take up jobs all around 
us, we begin to realize there was not anyone enforcing against those 
companies either.
  And as a company, if you look at your competition and they are hiring 
cheap, illegal labor, labor that they may not have to have Workers Comp 
on, probably do not have health insurance on, probably do not provide 
for a retirement benefit, maybe do not pay overtime to, maybe pay them 
off the books, sometimes on the books, all of those competitive 
advantages and be able to bring people to work, work them when you need 
them, and simply discard them when you do not need them, more like a 
machine than a worker; that kind of workforce in the hands of your 
competition makes it very difficult to hire people who are legal to 
work in the United States, green card holders, American citizens, 
lawful residents, people who have lawful presence in the United States, 
and pay them the wages necessary and the benefits necessary.
  We for years and years provided health insurance and mostly 
retirement benefits and year-around work in a seasonal business so that 
we had high-quality employees. And we have been able to compete for now 
going on what must be 31 years that we have been in business, and in 
that period of time we have been able to keep people on year round and 
be able to have long-term employees, but compete against those people 
who have discount employees.
  And we had testimony in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, to that effect 
and people who have lost their business because of that kind of 
competition, who refused to break the law, refused to hire illegals, 
and saw their competitiveness diminish on them to where they could not 
function any longer. And that is the kind of thing that is happening 
across America.
  Well, the scope of this is far bigger and far worse than I described. 
And so that 1 million people that turned into 3 million people that 
received amnesty in 1986, we know that the counterfeiters kicked into 
gear when the amnesty was passed and signed by President Reagan, 
Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986, that is why it went from 1 million to 3 
million, because a large percentage of that extra 2 million that got 
added on there were people who came into the United States, rushed in 
here illegally, and then had to have counterfeit documents to 
demonstrate that they had already been here, like maybe a heating bill 
or a light bill or a gas bill or a telephone bill, some kind of a 
document showing that they had been here, maybe a paycheck or two or 
four or five.
  Those kinds of records were generated by the counterfeit industry 
back then so that people that just came into the country after Simpson-
Mazzoli was signed could find themselves on the path to citizenship, to 
receive the amnesty. And the people that worked with that paperwork 
very well know this, Mr. Speaker. It is something that I have not heard 
come out in the testimony and the discussion and the debate. The people 
who are for guest worker/temporary worker will do or say almost 
anything except respond to the facts at hand. That is one of the facts. 
And if the people who are advocating for guest worker/temporary worker 
are right and there are only 12 million people here, then I will submit 
that you will see that number at least double and probably triple 
before they get finished processing all of the counterfeit documents 
for the people who allege that they were here longer than 2 years so 
that they can get the path to citizenship.
  Those are the circumstances we are dealing with. And the strategy of 
the people who are coming into the United States know that we have 
actually had seven amnesties since 1986. The most famous was Simpson-
Mazzoli. There are six others that were listed throughout that period 
of time. Sometimes we missed some people with amnesty and maybe they 
were not adept enough to bring their counterfeit documents to the 
front; so we had to go ahead and pass another amnesty for this 400,000, 
another amnesty for these 300,000; and pretty soon we have logged seven 
amnesties since 1986 and including 1986, Simpson-Mazzoli.
  This Congress, the Senate, is poised to pass the eighth amnesty in 20 
years. And the numbers in this country have grown and grown and grown 
and no one really knows how many. But we have testimony from the Border 
Patrol, and I agree with this number, and the President made it in his 
speech last night, that they turned back more than 6 million illegal 
crossers at the border since he came into office 5\1/2\ years ago.
  The numbers that I know are numbers for 2004. The Border Patrol 
intercepted on our southern border 1.159 million and presumably turned 
back 1.159 million. They only adjudicated for deportation 1,640. That 
would be a fact.
  For 2005 the statistical number is 1.188 million that were 
intercepted at the border, collared at the border, I say, and turned 
back. I do not know the number that actually were adjudicated for 
deportation.
  But the Border Patrol also testified, Mr. Speaker, that they stopped 
one-fourth to one-third of the illegal entrants into the United States. 
One-fourth to one-third; 1 out of 4, 1 out of 3, as the best that they 
can hope for. So if 4 million come across the border, which would be 
the statistical number, 4 million, and we turned back 1 million, that 
means each year the population of illegals in this country grew by 3 
million. And, yes, some of them turned around and went back and some of 
them died and some of them became citizens through some fashion; so 
maybe that number of growing illegals is not quite 3 million. Maybe it 
is not even quite 2 million, but I do not believe it is less than 2 
million myself, and I do not know that it is only 4 million that came 
across the border.
  I was down on the border a week ago last weekend, Mr. Speaker, and I 
spent 4 days on the ground down there, in the Tucson sector mostly, but 
overall, the Arizona-Mexico border. And I asked a question consistently 
of the people who work that border, and these would be officers who 
have been there for a period of time. They had hands-on experience. And 
I took the testimony that I received here in the Judiciary Committee, 
in the Immigration Subcommittee, the testimony of the Border Patrol's 
stopping one-fourth to one-third, that being 1.2 million in a year, and 
also the President's statement that in his administration they have 
turned back more than 6 million. I pointed out the 25 percent 
interception rate, perhaps the 33 percent interception rate. And of the 
people who have hands-on experience on the border, no one would agree 
to that number. No one would say, ``I think that is an appropriate 
number.'' They all had a number lower than that. The most consistent 
number that they gave me in their judgment was we stopped perhaps 10 
percent. Ten percent.
  Now, I am not sure I can calculate how we could have 10 million come 
across the border and only stop 1 million out of 10 million.

                              {time}  1800

  So maybe some of those people come back over and over again and keep 
trying. We are re-catching a lot of the same people, and they try until 
they get here.
  One thing I don't accept is the idea that a high percentage of them 
go back to Mexico, for example, because those who walk across 5 or 10 
or 20 miles of Mexican desert to get to the border, who walk across 10 
or 20 or 25 or even 30 miles of American desert to get to the highway, 
where they can get picked up and get a ride, it is so difficult to come 
in and the journey is so arduous, it might require three to six

[[Page H2634]]

days on the ground in the desert with little water and a little bit of 
food and having to travel mostly at night, that kind of arduous travel 
into the United States isn't going to be taken lightly, especially if 
they pay a coyote $1,500 to come into the United States.
  You can't afford to come back and forth a lot, if that is your path 
into the United States. So I think a significant percentage of those 
who come into the United States will stay here, for those who succeed 
in traveling into the United States.
  The numbers that are here are so astonishingly large, and the 
American people are so, I don't want to say ill informed, they have not 
had access to empirical studies that show what would happen to the 
immigration numbers in America if the modern version of Simpson-
Mazzoli, amnesty plus the path to citizenship that was advocated by the 
President last night, if that should become something that would be 
policy.
  So I submit as I picked up the paper this morning, Mr. Speaker, and 
began to review some of the language that is in here, and after I had 
listened to the speech last night, I was aware there was a study being 
done by Mr. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a very careful, 
conservative study that kept low assumptions and tried to keep low 
numbers so it would be credible and believable by the American people, 
rather than high numbers that might be somewhat suspicious. These are 
low, careful numbers in this study.
  This study, and it is in the headlines of the Washington Times, it 
says the bill, and this would be the Hagel-Martinez bill from the other 
body, the bill would permit as many as 193 million more aliens in the 
next 20 years, by 2026.
  Mr. Speaker, I will repeat that: the bill permits up to 193 million, 
that is million with an M, more aliens in the next 20 years, until 
2026.
  Now, this 193 million would be 60 percent of the current U.S. 
population over the next 20 years. According to Mr. Rector, the 
magnitude of changes entailed in this bill are largely unknown, but 
they rival the impact of the creation of Social Security or the 
creation of the Medicare program. Mr. Rector is a senior policy analyst 
at the Heritage Foundation that conducted this study.
  He also backed down a little bit from that and said that is the high 
number. But if we go to the low number, the lower number of his 
prediction, he said it is more likely that about 103 million new 
immigrants actually would arrive in the next 20 years. 103 million.
  It just so happens that the population of Mexico, Mr. Speaker, is 104 
million, or it was until maybe the last couple of weeks when the 
population got diminished substantially again. We are taking in from 
across that border some Central Americans, the vast majority are 
Mexicans, we are taking across that border 11,000 a day. That adds up 
to 77,000 a week, roughly a little bit smaller than the population of 
Sioux City, Iowa, which pours across our southern border every single 
week. And we don't seem to be outraged by the magnitude of that kind of 
a migration, to use a nice term for it. An invasion, to use a more 
accurate term for it.
  We saw people marching in the streets, Mr. Speaker, and particularly 
in the streets of Los Angeles, half a million or maybe more than that 
in the streets. Some of the people that were there just got across the 
border illegally the night before, and they picked up the flag of 
another nation and joined hundreds of thousands of their former fellow 
countrymen and marched in the streets and demonstrated because they 
want to be made citizens of the United States of America. Even though 
they have defied our laws and they defy our majority rule, they demand 
that we provide for them citizenship and all of the benefits that go 
along with it, the welfare benefits and the vast welfare state that we 
have would grow dramatically if we went down that path and granted that 
citizenship.
  But there is the image of more than half a million people with flags 
from their home countries, mostly Mexican flags, pouring into the 
streets of Los Angeles, demonstrating in the streets Los Angeles.
  Then what I hear from the liberals in America, Mr. Speaker, I hear 
them say, well, why would you be offended because someone flies a flag 
from their home country, they are proud of their home country?
  It is true we fly Irish flags on St. Patrick's Day. In the small town 
where I live of Kiron, they fly the Swedish flag on the flagpole from 
time to time. It is true we do celebrate our heritage from our other 
countries. Those are appropriate things to do in this country, provided 
that our allegiance is to Old Glory and to the United States of America 
and the flag of a foreign country is simply a flag that demonstrates 
heritage.
  But when you fly a flag of a foreign nation like a Mexican flag above 
the American flag on the same flagpole, and the American flag upside 
down, that is not a message of celebrating your heritage if you come 
from that country. That is an insult to the United States of America. 
The upside-down American flag is a sign of distress, and in fact I 
think there is distress in this country if we tolerate things like that 
without objection, if we move on and think there is nothing wrong and 
stick our heads in the sand while 11,000 people every day pour across 
our border.
  This is the magnitude of immigration, far greater than anything we 
have ever seen in the history of the country. I am doing the research 
now, Mr. Speaker, and I expect to come back to this floor, perhaps 
sometimes this week, with the totals for all the numbers of legal 
immigration in all of the history of America.
  I am willing to speculate here tonight that the total for all of the 
legal immigration, those that came through Ellis Island, those who came 
through other ports such as San Francisco or Seattle, those who came to 
the United States in a legal fashion without violating American laws 
and accessed a path to citizenship, and those who have built this 
country with those born in this country and teamed up and worn the 
uniform and fought under that American flag, those people that are the 
heritage of this country but came across here legally, I believe are 
far outnumbered by even the lowest number that is presented by this 
study that is printed here in the Washington Times today, far 
outnumbered by the 103 million, which will be the lowest number 
projected under the only empirical study that we have to work with, Mr. 
Speaker; 103 million people in 20 years. The population of Mexico in 20 
years.
  This bill, Hagel-Martinez, advocates for adopting all people from 
Central America, including Mexico, into the United States. It is the 
same thing as annexing everything down to the Panama Canal minus the 
natural resources. This is moving the Rio Grande down to the Panama 
Canal without taking the natural resources, but moving all the people 
up here into the United States so that they can, yes, go to work here; 
yes, contribute to our economy; but also access the welfare benefits, 
which will cost significantly more to fund them than the amount of the 
economy that they generate.
  Now, someone out there is thinking that is not true, because I have 
heard them say in the public arena for months and months and perhaps 
for the last couple of years that all immigrants that come into the 
country, legal and illegal, grow our economy, and so therefore we can't 
get along without them because they are the reason our economy is 
growing.
  I will submit there is a difference between highly educated, 
technically skilled immigrants who come in here on an H-1B program, who 
are going to step in here and make $75,000 a year, Mr. Speaker, and 
someone who comes in here who is illiterate in their own language and 
doesn't have a high school education.
  But I submit that those Americans who are high school dropouts put 
more pressure on our welfare than those who have graduated from high 
school. High school graduates put more pressure on our welfare system 
than those who have a college education or college degree.
  A significant majority of illegals who come into the United States 
are illiterate in their own language. They don't have a high school 
degree. Those that do have, there are only 7 percent that have a 
diploma. More than that have a high school education, but at least 60 
percent do not. Statistically,

[[Page H2635]]

there is no way to avoid the facts that people that match those 
demographics are going to put more pressure on the welfare roles here 
in the United States. The demographics of the illegal immigrants coming 
into the country show that there is 45 percent out-of-wedlock 
childbirth. That is another guarantee for poverty.
  So if you are underemployed and your children are not being born in 
wedlock, the pressure on this society to fund your well-being, to be 
able to provide the welfare benefits is tremendous.
  There was a study that was done by the former Secretary of Education 
who laid out something that is just an empirical fact. If you want to 
solve the pathology of America, a solution to that is get an education, 
get married, stay married, get a job, keep the job. That solves most of 
the pathologies of America. Statistically it is an easy thing to sort 
out.
  But if we are going to bring into this country 103 million to 193 
million people, with the majority of them without a high school 
education, the majority of them not literate in their own language, Mr. 
Speaker, the burden on us is going to be great; and it is going to cost 
us at least $50 billion a year.
  The study goes on, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to pick up where I 
left off, and that is the balance of this study shows that the Senate 
is ignoring the scope and the impact of the bill. It goes on and says 
the impact this bill will have over the next 20 years is monumental. It 
has not been thought through. That is the Hagel-Martinez bill. It says 
the population would grow exponentially, because the millions of new 
citizens would be permitted to bring along their extended families.
  The bill includes escalating caps which would raise the number of 
immigrants allowed as more people seek to enter the United States. 
These escalating caps essentially go up as the request for more and 
more H-1Bs or temporary workers or agriculture workers raises the 
number, and the cap that grows out of this takes us out to this.
  Even the chain migration that comes from family members, when one 
accesses citizenship or even green card holder access, then they can 
bring in their parents. Certainly if they are married, they can bring 
in their spouse, their dependent children. Then those people then 
extend that out and then they offer the opening to go to their family 
members and their extended family members. This chain migration 
continues on and on.
  I have stood on this floor and submitted that everybody that comes 
into this country on average would have about four family members at a 
minimum they would want to ask into the United States once they access 
this path to citizenship, and those four family members I thought was a 
rather conservative estimate. This study, Mr. Speaker, only claims six-
tenths of a family member total with regard to the chain migration. 
That formula that is here I believe is significantly understated. This 
number will be much greater.
  So this 103 million people over the next 20 years, I will submit, by 
2026 will be larger than that, because chain migration, in my opinion, 
and I am not critical of the Rector study except to say I think it is 
very conservative and I think the numbers will be quite great, we are 
really talking about emptying out Central America into the United 
States and a population that is perhaps as much as two-thirds, at least 
more than 60 percent of the population of the United States of America, 
increase that much again. We can see in 20 years a population growth 
here in America that would take this 300 million on up to 500 million, 
and by the next generation we are well on our way to 1 billion people 
here in America.

                              {time}  1815

  Now I am not saying that we cannot feed them. I am not saying we 
could not build the infrastructure. But what I will say, Mr. Speaker, 
is we need to have our eyes wide open. And America needs to have a 
debate on this cost.
  But the numbers aside, the pressure aside, the $50 billion a year and 
the escalating number, the cost to the taxpayers to fund the deficits 
that are created by the pressure on the public services and on the 
welfare roles, all of that aside, to me the central point is this, 
America is a Nation of laws.
  It was founded and people will say it is a Nation built by 
immigrants. Well, every Nation is built by immigrants. I think that it 
is a redundant point, except we have got more richness from our 
immigrants here than maybe any country in the world. But we are founded 
on the rule of law, Mr. Speaker.
  That is the principle that I wish to take. And the advocacy last 
night in that address from the Oval Office was an advocacy for a path 
to citizenship for people who have broken the laws in the United 
States, and those who have broken the earliest and the longest and the 
most often would be the ones rewarded first.
  At the same time, Mr. Speaker, I hear, well, we have to make people 
go to the back of the line. We cannot put them to the front of the line 
and reward them with citizenship when other people have followed the 
law.
  But there is not a way to do this under Hagel-Martinez without people 
going to the front of the line. They are already in the front of the 
line. They are already in the country. They already have roots down. 
They already have jobs. And some of them already have families.
  And the advocacy last night was, give them a path to citizenship. 
Yes, make them learn English and demonstrate good citizenship, pay 
their taxes, and then the reward for that is going to be this precious 
reward of citizenship.
  And then help us choose the next leader of the free world. Send some 
people to Congress here who have capitalized on contempt for the rule 
of law, Mr. Speaker. That is the path that is being chosen by the White 
House.
  That is the path that appears to be chosen by the United States 
Senate. It is an erroneous path. It is a path that is not thought out. 
And the cost to this society, again Mr. Speaker, is tremendous.
  I advocate for this. There is no requirement that when we do 
enforcement, as the House passed under H.R. 4437, we can do enforcement 
without guest worker. We can do enforcement without temporary worker. 
In fact, we must do enforcement before we can have a legitimate debate 
on guest worker or temporary worker. That is our duty and that is our 
responsibility.
  We take an oath to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law here 
on this floor. We passed that legislation off the floor. And that is 
the first responsibility of the President of the United States, is to 
enforce our laws, protect our Nation and enforce our laws.
  In this case the two things are tied together. But guest worker and 
enforcement of our laws are not linked together, Mr. Speaker. They are 
separate subject matters. We can do enforcement without doing guest 
worker.
  And the President argues to the opposite. In fact I would submit, Mr. 
Speaker, that if you simply want to have guest worker or temporary 
worker, if you designate anyone who wants to come to the United States 
as Hagel-Martinez does essentially, anyone who is not a felon, anyone 
who is not objectionable and does not have a record, that they would 
have a path to come to the United States.
  That is simply opening up our borders to everybody but a few 
undesirables. If you do that, then you do not need to have border 
control, Mr. Speaker, because you have already allowed everyone into 
the United States who wants to come, and they do not even have to 
hurry, they can come in their own good time, because now we will put it 
into statute that we are going to have an open door and a red carpet.
  And that the people who lined up the right way were really wasting 
their time, they should have rushed to the United States, come across 
the border, gotten themselves a job and simply waited for amnesty 
number eight over the last 20 years, so that in the next 20 years we 
can have 103 or 193 million people here in the United States, at a cost 
of least $50 billion extra a year, an expansion of our welfare state, 
and one of the most significant transformations of America that this 
country has ever seen.
  Now there are other things that matter. And it matters, culture 
matters, and values matter. And I think for the most part, those who 
are coming across from our southern border are consistent with the 
American culture and American values, they are Christians, for the most 
part they are Catholic.

[[Page H2636]]

  They think a lot of families, even though the illegitimacy rate is 
high, they are tightly bonded together as families and they work 
together as families. Those are rich qualities. They go to church as 
families. And they work together as families.
  Their commitment to assimilation is not questioned. I would question 
that after seeing the streets of Los Angeles. But we need to reach out 
to that, and we need to promote assimilation to the people who are here 
legally.
  But the people who are here illegally need to go home, they need to 
go home and grow the country that they came from, solve the problems 
there. You know, Mexico seems to think it would be an insult to them, 
and they will say that it is, if we would build a wall from San Diego 
to Brownsville and seal off the border. And it would be, I am going to 
say, 90 percent effective if it is patrolled right.
  And I have drawn up a design for a wall like that, Mr. Speaker. But 
Mexico says, no, we would be offended by that, in fact we do not like 
the idea that the National Guard would be coming down to the border, 
because that sends the wrong message, you are talking about 
militarizing the border.
  But meanwhile, Mexico pushes their young people into the United 
States, tells them, come here, go into the United States, enter the 
United States illegally, stay there, get a job, send your money back 
home, do not learn the language, do not assimilate into the culture, 
effect the policy of the United States vis-a-vis Mexico in favor of 
Mexico.
  That was a stated policy by the former minister for Mexicans living 
in the United States named Juan Hernandez, who now is a high profile 
individual apparently here in the United States, and claims to be an 
American citizen, I expect he is.
  But that was the Mexican policy, unload your excess young people into 
the United States, and go tell them, do not build an allegiance with 
the country who has welcomed you, but keep your allegiance with the 
country that you left, send your money back down there and vote in the 
United States, and speak up in the United States and vote on a 
bilingual ballot, I would add.
  Also, Mr. Speaker, there is no excuse for producing multi-lingual 
ballots of any kind here in America. There is a requirement when you 
are a naturalized citizen that you demonstrate proficiency in English. 
And so therefore if you come into this country legally and you acquire 
citizenship, which is a requirement for voting in America, you will 
have been required to demonstrate proficiency and literacy in English.

  That means then that you can go into a voting booth and vote in any 
voting booth in America on an English language ballot, not another 
language ballot. And the only other scenario by which one might be 
sitting in the United States and eligible to vote and not have command 
of the English language would be if they were born here in the United 
States, they had birthright citizenship, which I reject that idea, but 
it is our practice today, someone with birthright citizenship, and by 
the time they get to be 18 and register to vote, they go into the 
voting booth and they had not had enough exposure to English to be able 
to understand a simple ballot, and so we would give someone who was 
born in America, an American citizen, lived in an ethnic enclave, never 
learned English, and give them that interpreter in the voting booth so 
we can find a way to coddle them and be an enabler, just like an 
enabler for an alcoholic, hand them a bottle of booze so they do not 
cure themselves.
  But why do not we give them an incentive then, if they are not 
learning English in their enclave, let them learn English when it is 
time to go to vote. They could take pride in that. They could 
assimilate into the society. They can be far more successful, make more 
money and contribute more to this society and live a richer, fuller 
life.
  But we have a bilingual provision in the Voting Rights Act. That was 
wrong on its original premise. It is wrong in the language that is 
there today. It will be wrong when it comes to the floor of this House 
of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. It needs to be amended. And I intend 
to seek to try to amend that legislation, that being another piece of 
this overall puzzle, Mr. Speaker.
  But what I am for is, I am for building a wall from San Diego to 
Brownsville, 12-feet high, concrete wall, precast panels, dropped into 
a footing that has got a notch in it and a cut-off wall so it is hard 
to dig underneath, the kind of stability that it needs, something that 
will look like the barrier that the Israelis built to defend themselves 
and protect themselves from the bombers that were coming over from the 
West Bank.
  That barrier has been 95 percent effective, even though people are 
determined to come across to kill people. We can do something very 
similar to that for less money than the Israelis are spending.
  Now but the scope of the dollars that we are spending on our southern 
border are astonishing, Mr. Speaker. I would submit that the 
authorization request for the Border Patrol, for the air and marine 
division, for ICE, for the Customs border protection division all 
together that will be allocated for our southern border, and this would 
not include significant resources and assets that come from the 
National Park Service and other agencies down there that have 
jurisdiction in the area, that request is over $6 billion for the 2,000 
miles of our southwest border, over $6 billion.
  Now when you divide that out, it is a little less than that, say a 
2,000-mile border just for round numbers. You come back with a cost-
per-mile, Mr. Speaker, of $3,181,336 per mile. $3,181,000 per mile to 
defend our southern border, to stop 10 percent, maybe 25 percent, 
probably not 33 percent of the illegal traffic.
  So we have got maybe 25 percent effectiveness for a price of $6 
billion. So when we quadruple that then to go to $24 billion to defend 
our southern border at 2,000 miles. Would that get 100 percent control 
of the border? I say not. Not without a physical barrier that is 
effective.
  And so for $3 million a mile, $3,181,000 a mile, I wondered what 
would happen if we applied the free enterprise solution to this task? 
What would happen if we simply put out a request for proposals and 
offered companies that had insurance, that had professional 
credentials, that could bond the job, to bid a section of the border 
under an open, competitive, low-bid contract that met standards?
  And if there were companies out there that wanted to be in control of 
security in the border between San Diego and Tijuana, let them bid for 
that for an appropriate price and see if that competitive bidding will 
come up with some more creative ways and some more effective ways to 
control our border.
  Me, I would be interested in, had I been back in the private sector 
where I spent 31 years in the construction business, all together about 
35 years in the construction business, 31 years in the construction 
business actively owning and operating.
  But I would be interested in the stretch across the desert where you 
did not have intense, I will say intense urban areas to deal with, that 
stretch across the desert, some of it does not have a marker at all.
  If you go down into New Mexico, there is a concrete pylon that stands 
on the horizon. And you look across that horizon, you go to that one, 
you look at the next horizon, and you can see the next one, and the 
next one. As far as you can see with these high-powered big old brass 
transits that they had back in those days when they laid that out.
  Mr. Speaker, I imagine that was about 1848 or so when they laid out 
the border between Mexico and the United States, horizon to horizon, 
concrete pylons that high, poured, set on the border.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the only marker. And so when people walk across 
the desert, they do not know where the United States is and where 
Mexico happens to be. I would want to bid that stretch of the desert. 
But I do not think they want to pay me $3 million to protect that 
stretch of the desert.
  But you know for $1 million a mile, I could do quite a job. So could 
many American companies enter into a contract and say, I want to bid 
this 100 miles of border, and I will bid you X dollars per mile. And I 
have got insurance. I have got bonding. I will perform.
  And if anybody gets across here, we will have the Border Patrol count 
the

[[Page H2637]]

footprints of those that get across and dock it from my contract so 
that there is a penalty if I am not efficient.
  Now, we do could do that, and we could control this border in a year. 
We could have the contractual structures all in place. Some of those 
people will say I want to build a wall. I want to build a wall to keep 
people out. And I want to bid this accordingly.
  Mr. Speaker, I drew up a little diagram for a wall that I think would 
be effective. And I did this, Mr. Speaker, because we have a little 
trouble dealing with concepts. And so this wall that I propose works 
something like this.
  I would go in and build a concrete footing, and this concrete footing 
would be perhaps 2 foot over, 8 inches down, put you a notch in there 
like that, and that would be the footing. This would be about 4 foot 
deep in here. This would be about 8 inches of footing all together.
  This would be 6 inches wide in there. And then I would put on a 
precast concrete panel that would be about 12 feet high. It would drop 
down into this notch and go up like this.

                              {time}  1830

  Now this, Mr. Speaker, is a very rudimentary drawing of the kind of 
concrete wall that I would construct, and this kind of wall is very 
simple, and it would be cheap to make. You could trench this and you 
could slip-form that with a machine. And then this represents a 6-inch-
thick wall from a cross-section end, just like if you were going to 
slice a loaf of bread and look at it from the end. Twelve feet high, I 
would put wire on top, a little constantine wire on top, perhaps 4 feet 
of that sticking up there, 12 feet of concrete sticking up out of this 
footing. These could be precast panels, you could set those in, it 
wouldn't be hard to make a mile a day of that with a small crew. It 
would go very quickly once the footing was poured.
  This kind of a wall, allowing a little bit for sensors and some of 
the bells and whistles that one would have, this kind of a wall can be 
built for about $500,000 a mile, when we are spending $3 million a 
mile, Mr. Speaker, for our Border Patrol to drive back and forth and 
watching maybe 75 or more percent of those illegal border crossers get 
through. This kind of a wall, if patrolled, if managed, if maintained 
would cut down on illegal crossings by, I am going to say, at least 90 
percent. And if it is well manned, it can go very close to 100 percent.
  Now, people say walls don't work. Then why do we put fences around 
prisons? Why is there a fence around the White House? How many people 
got across the wall in Berlin? How successful was that? Extraordinarily 
successful, I would say, Mr. Speaker. And then those who say that the 
Berlin Wall was an offense to humanity, I would agree to that. But the 
Berlin Wall was a wall that was built to keep people in. This wall 
would be a wall that would be built to keep people out, and that is a 
180-degree philosophical difference. It should not be offensive to 
people who live in freedom to have to protect their freedom by building 
a wall. That is the most cost effective thing we can do. For every $6 
that goes down to the southern border to fund our Border Patrol down 
there for 2007, for every $6, if we would just take one of the $6, we 
can construct this kind of a structure for 2,000 miles along our 
southern border, and you know that it would make the Border Patrol far 
more effective and that they would be able then to be able to utilize 
their time chasing people down and actually catching people and 
deporting them instead of being flooded by this mass of humanity that 
comes pouring across the border every single day.
  It would make the Border Patrol more effective, and it would honor 
their work. It would save lives, Mr. Speaker.
  I visited the location where a young forest ranger park officer named 
Chris Eggle was killed in the line of duty 3\1/2\ years ago just across 
the border. There was a drug smuggler, they were under the Mexican 
police who were in hot pursuit of a drug smuggler who drove across the 
border where there wasn't a barrier, and his vehicle broke down on the 
U.S. side of the border where the Mexican person, the Mexican police 
officers continued in their pursuit at least to the border, and Chris 
Eggle came in with his partner, closed in on the suspect, and the 
suspect let off four automatic rounds of an AK-47 and Chris Eggle was 
killed on that location.
  I visited that location, Mr. Speaker. If we had had even a vehicle 
barrier fence which exists there today in the Oregon Cactus National 
Monument, Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument, that vehicle barrier 
would have saved Chris's life. This kind of a barrier would have easily 
saved his life.
  Every major city in America has at least one police officer who has 
been killed in the line of duty by an illegal here in the United States 
of America. That is over 70 police officers who have been killed in the 
line of duty by illegals. All of their lives would have been saved if 
we had enforced our border as I propose, Mr. Speaker. And that is just 
the police officers.
  The numbers of those who die at the hands of those who should have 
been apprehended and deported escalate day by day by day. Twenty-eight 
percent of the inmates in our prisons in the United States between our 
city, our county, our State, and our Federal penitentiaries, 28 
percent, Mr. Speaker, are criminal aliens. They didn't all come into 
the United States illegally, but they were unlawfully present here when 
they became criminal aliens and sent off to prison. That is the 
percentage of crime that is being created that could be prevented if we 
enforced our laws.
  And that is why 13 people every day die at the hands of negligent 
homicide, generally a drunk driver who is unlawfully present in the 
United States. Twelve people every day die at the hands of a first-
degree murderer, second-degree murderer, or manslaughter violently at 
the hands of someone who is unlawfully present in the United States, a 
criminal alien here in the United States. That is 25 people a day.
  This is slow-motion terrorism taking place in the United States. I am 
not implying that everyone who comes across this border is a criminal, 
or, I will say, wishes the American people ill will, Mr. Speaker. I 
will apply that everyone who comes, I won't just imply, I will state 
that every one who comes into the United States illegally is a 
criminal. They are guilty of a criminal misdemeanor for illegally 
entering the United States, and I find it ironic to see the 
demonstrators in the street carrying signs that say, ``I am not a 
criminal.'' Well, does the other sign say, ``I am an illegal alien, but 
I am not a criminal''? You can't have that in the United States of 
America. If you are in the United States illegally, then you are guilty 
of a criminal misdemeanor that is punishable by 6 months in the 
penitentiary and then deportation. That is the law here in the United 
States. Denying it with a poster in the streets doesn't make it not so. 
It is the law, regardless of whether H.R. 4437 passes which makes it a 
felony to enter into the United States.
  The reason for that is so that the law breakers will be entered into 
the NCIC computer database, the National Crime Information Center 
computer information database and we can keep better track on them. 
Sometimes because it is a misdemeanor, they don't get booked, they 
don't get printed, and their prints don't go into the records so that 
they can be searched and scanned. Sometimes we don't know whether it is 
catch and release for two or three violations or whether it is seven or 
whether it is 20 different violations, because it is not always 
recorded the way it needs to be. And sometimes they are not booked at 
all. Sometimes they are simply released because of the urgency of the 
moment.
  The drugs that come into this country, Mr. Speaker, it is an 
astonishing number. The Federal Government keeps track of these things, 
and their number is at 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America come 
across the border of Mexico. That is the Federal Government's fact. And 
it is not one that they very much relish repeating, but it is the 
Federal Government's fact: 90 percent of the illegal drugs, amounting 
to, amounting to $60 billion, that is with a B, $60 billion worth of 
illegal drugs.
  And you match that up with the slow-motion terrorism that comes with 
the loss of 25 American lives every day at the hands of criminal 
aliens. Far more have lost their lives at the hands of criminal aliens 
than were victims of

[[Page H2638]]

September 11. And you couple that with $20 billion that is wired into 
Mexico every year from the wages of many of those who are illegally 
working here and another $10 billion that goes to the Central American 
countries, $30 billion of wages wired south and $60 billion worth of 
drugs hauled north, and you have got a $90 billion economic problem. 
You have got a $90 billion drain on the gross domestic product of the 
United States of America, and it is a $90 billion injection into the 
economy of Mexico.
  And people wonder why Vicente Fox doesn't step in and do something 
about the meth labs that are in northern Mexico, the marijuana 
smuggling and the marijuana harvest that is taking place, about the 
thousands of pounds of drugs that pour into the United States, one 
report, 2 million pounds of illegal drugs in a year. Two million 
pounds.
  And I watched down there, Mr. Speaker, as we took 18 bales of 
marijuana, each about 10 pounds or more, out from underneath the bed of 
a pickup. Eighteen bales of marijuana smuggled into the United States. 
And the officers who made the interdiction said sometimes 200 pounds, 
and this was maybe 180 pounds, maybe as much as 200 pounds, sometimes 
200 pounds is a decoy; it is simply a decoy, Mr. Speaker, and the 
effort to run the gauntlet with 180 to 200 pounds of marijuana would 
just distract the officers so that they can get by with a 2,000- or 
2,600-pound load in another vehicle going through the gap that was 
created while they were distracted picking up the 200-pound load. That 
is a lot of drugs, Mr. Speaker, and a lot of damage here in the United 
States of America.
  And I don't make excuses for the drug users here. There is a demand 
here that draws those drugs into the United States. We need to deal 
with that, too, Mr. Speaker. But meanwhile, we can raise the cost of 
the transaction; we can make it a lot harder to get those drugs across 
the southern border.
  If we could shut off this southern border and just simply allow legal 
entrants into the United States at our ports of entry, if we could do 
that, then at least in theory, and if we could do it overnight, we 
could cut off 90 percent of the illegal drugs in America. That means 
some people will not get their drugs, some people won't go on drugs, 
some people will wean themselves off. Every time that happens, there is 
another life that has been improved, another standard of living that 
has been improved. Sometimes a life has been saved. Sometimes a little 
boy or a little girl gets a new pair of tennis shoes instead of their 
daddy or mommy buying drugs. Sometimes that daddy or mommy gets off 
drugs and spends their time raising their children and loving their 
children and nurturing them in the fashion that God intended, Mr. 
Speaker. Every time we can make an improvement in that drug equation, 
we are improving the lives of children in America somewhere sometime.

  And so I would submit that we need to enforce this border. We need to 
build a wall similar to this design that I have with a 4-foot wide 
footing, a 6-inch wide notch in that footing, probably have to brace it 
right there and right there. I didn't draw that in. And then at least a 
4-foot deep cutoff wall, and then drop in a 12-foot high pre-cast 
concrete panel, 12-foot high, 10 feet long would be my guess.
  So that, as we lay those panels out, every time you set a panel you 
build another 10 feet of wall. We could do this for less than $500,000 
a mile, a half-a-million-dollar a mile, for one out of every $6 that is 
spent protecting our border today before the increases that will be 
necessary for 6,000 more National Guard troops on our border. This is a 
capital investment that could be amortized over 40 years or more, and 
it doesn't cost that every year. It is only one-sixth of budget. That 
is a one-time expenditure and then a small maintenance fee, and we 
could easily fund the maintenance fee by requiring fewer personnel down 
on the border because this would be so much more effective.
  So I would submit, Mr. Speaker, we need to have enforcement first and 
enforcement only until enforcement established, and the American people 
will agree that the administration has made a real commitment to uphold 
the laws of the United States of America including our immigration 
laws. Seal the border, end birthright citizenship because that is 
another magnet: 300,000 to 350,000 babies born in America that in the 
practice of birthright citizenship can start the chain migration to 
bring their families in.
  The misconception idea that somehow all family reunions have to take 
place north of the Rio Grande instead of south of the Rio Grande, I 
don't know how that ever got started into our verbiage and accepted as 
an institutional commitment by the United States of America. Seal the 
border, end birthright citizenship, shut off the jobs magnet. That 
means sanction employers, require them to use the basic pilot program, 
the instant-check program so that they check their employees. And I 
don't mean just the perspective employees or those they have just 
hired, but check every employee so we can process that through and let 
those go who are not lawfully present and can't legally work here in 
the United States, and pass the New IDEA bill, the new Illegal 
Deduction Elimination Act, IDEA, I-D-E-A, Illegal Deduction Elimination 
Act. That lets the IRS enforce the law.
  When they do a normal audit, which they do on many of the larger 
companies every single year, they would run the employees' Social 
Security numbers that are on the 941 form through the instant-check 
program on the Internet. Punch those Social Security numbers in there, 
and it will go out to the Social Security Administration database and 
the Department of Homeland Security's database, NCIC again, and 
identify if that number, that Social Security number and the other 
identifiers that would be entered with it would identify someone legal 
to work in the United States.
  If an employer uses that method, they would get safe harbor, Mr. 
Speaker, and the IRS would not bother them. But if they didn't use the 
instant-check Internet-based program, or if they did use it and ignored 
the results and hired them anyway, then the IRS would deny the 
deductibility of those wages. So the business expense that would be 
wages, say $10 an hour, would be denied. Now that is no longer an 
expense; that goes over into the profit column presumably, and that $10 
an hour that was a write-off or an expense becomes taxable income. And 
if they are a corporation in a 34 percent bracket, that is a $10 an 
hour wage, then the 34 percent tax on it plus the interest plus the 
penalty kicks that fee up to about $6 an hour added to the $10, and 
your $10 an hour worker becomes a $16 an hour illegal worker, and the 
notice goes off to the Department of Homeland Security that we have an 
employer here that is violating the law, step in and sanction that 
employer also with the fines that are appropriate for the violations 
that are in place.
  We can shut off this jobs magnet, Mr. Speaker. And if we do that, 
attrition, the time when people make a decision to go back home, they 
can go back home with the skills they have learned here, they can go 
back home with the free education that we provided for tens of 
thousands of children, an educated nation south of us that can be 
renovated by the new blood that comes from us saying we are going to be 
a nation of laws, Mr. Speaker.

                              {time}  1845

  We must be a Nation of laws. We must defend our borders. We must 
defend our sovereignty, and if we do not do that, we will not have a 
country. The American people know that, Mr. Speaker, and I wish that 
the people over in the other body and the advocates for this thing 
called a guest worker or temporary worker knew that.
  When you grant citizenship to someone, they are no longer a temporary 
worker. Citizens do not go home. We do not have temporary citizens, and 
we must not have 103 million to 193 million new residents here in the 
United States, unless the American people debate that and say that is 
what they want. If the American people want to open up their doors to 
that kind of numbers of people, then they should step up and say so.
  Until that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to stand on the rule of law, 
defending our borders, enforcing our laws, and perhaps if that 
enforcement can take place for 3 to 5 years, we can have then a 
legitimate debate on those who would be left in this country and how to 
deal with them in an appropriate fashion.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence.




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