[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 63 (Friday, May 19, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2946-H2953]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BORDER IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States 
Congress. Our work here today, like it is every day, is exceptionally 
important. There are a number of subjects that are on the minds and the 
hearts of the American people, and one of those subjects is what I 
intend to focus on, Mr. Speaker.
  That subject is going to be the subject that brought the President to 
Arizona yesterday, along with Air Force One that had a pretty 
substantial congressional delegation from Arizona on board it.

                              {time}  1515

  They visited down there around the Yuma area. I would hope there were 
some local people that had objections to the position that has been 
taken by the White House with regard to the guest worker, temporary 
worker, and I hope they had an opportunity to speak to White House 
personnel as well as our Commander in Chief.
  I find myself occasionally addressing that White House from this 
microphone or other microphones, not as often directly as I think it 
should be. I am wondering sometimes if the message is actually heard.
  But I have made several trips down to the border myself. I have made 
at least one trip which was essentially a red carpet trip, maybe 
similar to the one that took place yesterday with Air Force One. It is 
impossible as a President of the United States Commander in Chief to go 
into a location like that and be able to actually observe and 
experience the full, unvarnished events that are driving the issues at 
the border. It is not something that any President would be able to do 
unless he wore a disguise and went on his own because the security has 
to be so tight. Events have to be planned, strategized. There has to be 
security that has to be built in. It cannot be spontaneous.
  For those reasons, Mr. Speaker, and more, the trip for the President 
yesterday could not have been a trip that was rooted in fact-finding, 
but a trip that was rooted in sending a message to the American people 
that the President is committed to border security and border patrol. 
We know without doubt that he is committed to guest worker, temporary 
worker and a path to citizenship as we listened to his speech last 
Monday night.
  As we address this subject matter, I have the privilege of exchanging 
some words with my good friend and colleague who I have known--grown to 
know and respect for his input to this process and the character that 
he brings to the floor, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin).
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman taking the time to 
take a look at this subject that obviously is so important to us, the 
whole area of border security and immigration. There are so many 
different facets to this. I just wanted to ask a question or two.
  Aside from the technology of how do you enforce the border, how do 
you build at least from a physical point of view or a deterrent point 
of view, some of the different aspects of this question because the 
more that people look at it, it seems like there are more and more 
questions.
  One is you have a couple of parents that are illegal immigrants. They 
have children. My understanding is that some of our judges have decided 
those children become automatically American citizens. But I also 
understand that could be very easily challenged, whether the 
Constitution should be understood in that way. I think that is one of 
the issues that we are dealing with.
  Another one is the question of English as a language. Do we enforce 
the things that have made us unique as a Nation? Do we make English the 
official language of the United States? We assume it is, but we have 
never passed a law to do that very thing.
  There are other questions. There are questions about the employees, 
whether employers should check Social Security numbers, names and 
birthdays before they hire somebody. Are we going to enforce that law 
or are we going to ignore it and go in the other direction?
  All of these are significant questions. If it is all right, I would 
just inquire if you would like to talk about those questions in a 
little more detail with the time we have.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri. 
As I listen to the subject matter, I am interested in all of them. I 
point out first the subject matter that you brought up, what we call 
birthright citizenship. It says in the Constitution that any person 
born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof shall 
be a United States citizen.
  I have not done a thorough, scholarly analysis of that, but 
rudimentary analysis boils down to this: The language was written into 
the Constitution with

[[Page H2947]]

the idea in mind that Native Americans would not necessarily be 
citizens because they are not necessarily subject to the jurisdiction 
of the United States--being a separate nation. That is an issue that 
Native Americans can answer more succinctly than I can answer. But I 
understood that was the root of that exception clause in there, and 
subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
  Yet today we have a practice of granting birthright citizenship, 
anyone born on U.S. soil is a United States citizen by practice, not 
necessarily by Constitution. Some would argue we would need to amend 
the Constitution to end birthright citizenship. I would argue that our 
most efficient path to that would be to pass a statutory change that 
would make it clear that it is not the intent of Congress and our 
interpretation of the Constitution would be to end birthright 
citizenship and confer that upon someone who was born in the United 
States if one of their parents is a citizen. That is the position I 
would take.
  Mr. AKIN. My understanding is the same thing. The understanding of 
that section in the Constitution dated back about to the time of the 
Civil War and it was dealing with a different situation and it does not 
necessarily apply to two people who are here illegally, or just the 
automatic granting of citizenship just because of where are you born.
  From my understanding, we could pass a law, and it might be 
challenged and the courts would have to take a look at that, but there 
is a good case that could be made to support what you are saying, which 
is if we are going to talk about birthright, there needs to be at least 
one parent that is a citizen of the United States.
  Also, it troubles me that America, and one of the things I love about 
this country is the fact that America has always been a place where 
there is just one class of people. We call them Americans. From our 
Declaration of Independence it says ``all men are created equal.'' That 
means equal before the law. Nobody is better than anybody else. We have 
one class of Americans.
  Yet by us ignoring our own laws on immigration, de facto we are 
starting to move into or create sort of a second class of citizen that 
does not really have any rights. They are not subject to the minimum 
wage or any of those things. They do not have a chance to be part of 
organized labor or anything like that. They simply come here and if 
they say anything, they are threatened that they can be sent back over 
the border. We are almost creating a second class of citizenship, and 
that concerns me a lot.
  I think it is absolutely time that we start to enforce the laws that 
apply to immigration in this country. There are some people who want to 
argue that we do not have a right to make any laws that control 
immigration. That is an interesting question, but we really have two 
choices. We either say we are going to open the borders wide open and 
no law is legitimate whatsoever, or we are going to enforce the laws we 
have. If we cannot enforce them, we can take them off the books.
  The thing that concerns me is this whole idea of shifting what 
America really is, which is one people, Americans, instead of us being 
so weak in terms of enforcing law that we are starting to create a 
different America and one where people are not all equal.
  I do not know if you have thought about that concept of two classes 
of Americans. It is very distasteful to me.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I have given 
considerable thought to this and have done some research and a fair 
amount of writing on this subject matter. We have an upper class in 
America that has gotten richer and richer, and I am for that. I am for 
success. Some of those people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, 
and they are at the economic pinnacle in this country and in the world. 
A person like Bill Gates, for example, is a fine and shining example of 
somebody who had an idea, some creativity and some business skills to 
put that all together, and he put some good people together. He and 
Steven Jobs both have done an amazing thing in this era, and they have 
gotten very wealthy, but they have also created a lot of jobs. And the 
trickle-down of that wealth has been wonderful for America, as well as 
how the technology that they have produced has made us all more 
efficient and improved the quality of our lives as well as our 
production.
  Mr. AKIN. The American dream, live and well.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Entrepreneurship is growing. There are many more 
people at the upper echelons of our economic society than there was a 
generation or two ago. As I watch that happen, I think that is a good 
thing for America. But I would point out that the strength for America 
has been in the breadth for a prosperous middle class that began to 
grow in a dramatic way during World War II when Rosie the Riveter went 
off to work. The middle class grew. We had 1.2 percent unemployment 
rate back during those years.
  As the paycheck came back into the household, and I should also 
credit Henry Ford because when he put his automobile into production, 
he wanted to make sure that the people he hired had enough money to buy 
one of his cars, so he paid them a good wage. That was competitive and 
that spread across this Nation. So the prosperity of the middle class 
grew, and it grew from the early part of the 20th century and it grew 
dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. As it did, the 
greatness of America grew with it.
  You could maybe be a high school dropout but if you were a good 
worker, you could punch a clock at the local factory and take home a 
paycheck that was adequate enough that you could buy a modest home and 
raise your family with dignity and pride and values. That middle class 
got broader and broader up until perhaps 10 years ago when we began to 
see it shrink. There was pressure on the middle class from the upper 
class. That is really not a bad thing, to have people moving from the 
middle class to the upper class. I applaud that.
  But the other pressure comes from the lower side of this when many of 
the elitists in America figured out that with the click of a mouse, 
they could transfer capital around the world.
  The impediments to business transactions diminished with the computer 
technology that was developed by Steven Jobs and Bill Gates and many, 
many others. As that happened, they began to feel the frustration that 
they couldn't transfer cheap labor as efficiently as they could 
transfer capital. So with that frustration, and business will always 
work on the most important issue, they began to transfer cheap labor. 
They wanted cheap labor in the United States because that is where the 
factories were. As they brought that cheap labor in, the wealthy got 
wealthier off that margin of profit they were making, and they had a 
competitive advantage against those who did not hire illegal labor. The 
Federal Government did not enforce that and so the wealth that came 
began to also put into people's minds that they had an entitlement to 
hiring cheap labor to work in their factories doing, quote, ``the work 
that Americans won't do.''
  And I reject that concept. And at the same time, they wanted cheap 
servants to take care of their mansions and trim their lawns and nails. 
As this happened, this servant class which has been created by the 
elitists, the new ruling class, the servant class has grown and the 
elitist class has grown, and this has been at the price of the middle 
class. It has been at the price of the middle class so that an 
undereducated, American-born citizen that does not go off to college 
does not have nearly the opportunities that they had 10 or 20 years 
ago. Cheap labor has taken that away.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, some of the studies that I have seen, the 
people that get hurt the most by having illegal immigrants working are 
the people at the lower end of the wage scale, because those are the 
people taking the jobs that would have been taken by people who are 
legal citizens of this country, people who waited in line, people who 
took the classes on citizenship. Now all of a sudden they want to be 
able to take a job and there is somebody who is taking the job for a 
couple of dollars less. Those are the ones that are hurt the most by 
this process of what is going on.
  I guess the bottom line is that one of the things that people say is 
if you want less of something, you tax it. If you want more of it, you 
subsidize it. My concern is that some of the discussion I am hearing 
from the other body

[[Page H2948]]

and not so much from the House here is the idea that we are going to 
make it easy for the illegals just to basically give them citizenship 
or amnesty. My concern is whatever you reward, get more of.
  In 1986, we granted amnesty to a number of people, and then we had a 
huge wave of other illegals coming here saying pretty soon they will do 
that again.
  We need to avoid making that mistake, make the tough decision and say 
no amnesty and say we are going to enforce our laws. We have to say we 
are going to let the people waiting in line trying to follow our laws, 
we are going to reward those people and not reward law breakers.
  My concern is that any proposal we deal with would not be rewarding 
law breakers because if we do, we will encourage more of them. I think 
those reasons, economic reasons and many others, we need to take a very 
good look at our policy on border security and immigration.
  I know that you have done some innovative work in terms of what can 
be done on the border.

                              {time}  1530

  In some ways to have certain crossings where everybody knows that is 
where you go through and we stop just these hordes of thousands of 
people coming across every day. I really appreciate your imagination 
and your good work and also your scheduling this time to talk about 
what I believe is one of the questions that is really foremost on the 
minds and hearts of many Americans.
  We all have a great deal of respect for the American Dream and for 
the fact that we are really all Americans. I do not even like to use 
the word ``class.'' I do not think it applies in America. But I know 
that you have that love and respect for this country, and I appreciate 
your taking a tough issue this afternoon and dealing with it, and I 
appreciate the fact that your views on this subject are ones which are 
going to strengthen our country overall. So thank you very much for 
taking a little time on that subject.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Akin, I thank you for your contributing to this 
debate in the fashion that you have and your willingness to be flexible 
in the manner that you delivered it. I really do appreciate that.
  I would like to just take a couple of minutes and address the issue 
of English as the official language, which was part of the subject 
matter that you raised, and it is something that I have worked on for 
what is my 10th legislative year that I have promoted establishing 
English as the official language of the United States. And I spent 6 
years actually working to establish that in Iowa to help paint our 
piece of the American map the color of English, so to speak. And that 
was a 6-year endeavor. It was far more difficult to accomplish than you 
would realize from talking to the American people, who out there are 
almost universal in their support of establishing English as the 
official language of the United States.
  And those numbers are something like, which I saw some today, 
Democrats, about 82 percent support English as the official language; 
and Republicans, about 92 percent support English as the official 
language of the United States. I did not see what the Independents 
think, but one would think being a little more independent minded they 
might want it even more than Democrats or Republicans, but I am 
confident they are in that similar zone between 82 and 92 percent. 
There are not many issues in America that we can find that kind of an 
agreement on, but official English is one of them.
  And as I brought legislation here to the House and I ended up with 
150 different cosponsors on the legislation that would establish 
English as the official language, I have been trying to find an avenue 
to bring it through committee and bring it out here.
  But what happened in the United States Senate yesterday was Senator 
Inhofe's bringing an amendment to the immigration bill that was before 
the Senate yesterday and remains before the Senate today and presumably 
for several more days before such time that it might be ready for final 
passage; and he was able to successfully introduce his amendment that 
would establish English as the official language of the United States 
and bring it to a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.
  Now, we all think in this House that we are the quick reaction group, 
that we are the ones that are the most in touch with the feel and the 
mood of the American people. That is how our Founding Fathers 
envisioned it. They wanted us to be responsive, and that is why they 
required that we go back for reelection every 2 years. And generally we 
are substantially more responsive. We feel the mood of the American 
people. We hear from them. We have to go back and look them in the eye 
and explain to them what we have done on their behalf and how we have 
conducted ourselves in office, and they explain to us what they want us 
to do. And I continually hear from them, they want English as the 
official language of the United States.
  So, happily, yesterday the Senate heard them and they moved and with, 
I believe the number was, 63 votes, passed English as the official 
language of the United States.
  Now, it is interesting that the President has called for immigrants 
to learn English and, in fact, to demonstrate a proficiency in English 
in both reading and writing, essentially the same standard, as I 
interpret him, that is provided in the citizenship requirements, which 
are statutory and something that we require of everyone who is 
naturalized. So with the President advocating for the learning of 
English for newly arriving immigrants, both legal and illegal, and the 
Senate's passing legislation that establishes English as the official 
language of the United States, we sit here now in this House playing 
catch-up rather than being the leaders.
  And I always want us to be the leaders in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. 
I want us to be the ones that are out there on the vanguard, out on the 
front, the tip of the spear, so to speak. We need to be the ones that 
initiate spending by the Constitution. It is our job to initiate the 
appropriations bills, and we need to be initiating the policy. But we 
have an opportunity now to link onto the initiation of good policy that 
was introduced by Senator Inhofe yesterday and introduced several days 
before, actually, debated to conclusion and voted upon yesterday with 
63 votes. It is common sense.
  And not only is it common sense; I did some research once to 
determine why does this make such simple sense to me and why does it 
make such simple sense to the American people. And I thought, well, I 
wonder how many countries have an official language. So I got out an 
almanac and I looked up the location where they have the flags of all 
the countries in the world. So there I found the names of the countries 
in the world, and I got out the only research that I had. This was 
several years ago, before the Internet, and I had the World Book 
Encyclopedia.
  So I thumbed through there and I started with the first country, and 
I looked up every single country in the World Book Encyclopedia because 
there they have a list that shows the official language of each country 
as you look it up. I looked up every country that you could find in the 
almanac, looked up their official language, and I found that every 
single country according to that study, in the world, except the United 
States of America, had at least one official language. And for many of 
the countries, and it would be surprising, English is their official 
language. So I thought, well, there is one other sovereignty out there 
that I had not really checked on, and because of some issues that I had 
heard that were raised, I thought I should check out the official 
language of the Vatican. So I looked up the Vatican.
  They are a sovereign state, yes. They have their independence within 
that part of Rome and that part of Italy. But the Vatican actually has 
two official languages. One is Latin and some of us grew up around 
Latin. And the other one is Italian. So if it is good enough for the 
Vatican to have an official language or two, it is good enough for the 
United States to have one. And throughout all of history, God 
recognized this, and I do not need to repeat the story of the Tower of 
Babel, but God recognized this when he scattered people to the four 
winds by confusing their tongues.
  But a common language, a language that would be the same language for 
all

[[Page H2949]]

of us to speak, is the single most powerful unifying force known to all 
humanity. If you want to be unified as a nation, you need to speak all 
one language. And if we do that, we can work together, we can cooperate 
together, we can identify ourselves as Americans. There is a 
camaraderie involved there. There is a bonding agent involved in that 
language. And to be able to go anywhere in America and pick up a 
newspaper or go to a public meeting or walk into a business place and 
communicate in a single language is a very, very good thing for the 
future of this Nation.
  And it is important for us to establish an official language. And I 
would tell you that if we had another language here that had the kind 
of penetration and usage that English has, I would be for that. If it 
were Swahili and 90-some percent of us spoke Swahili, I would be saying 
Swahili needs to be our official language. It is not the point of what 
the language is. It is the point of having one language that is 
official that binds you all together.
  Now, the bill that I have and the bill that is in the Senate, as I 
understand it, does not preclude at any point utilization of other 
languages. It does not disparage any other languages. In fact, my bill, 
I believe, has language in it that says one shall not disparage any 
other language.
  We think it is a good thing, and I think it is a good thing, for 
people to have multiple language skills. Those that are proficient in a 
number of different languages have an ability then to do business in 
other countries. And with the communications that we have today with 
the Internet and with the telephone prices being what they are with 
voice-over Internet, those who have more language skills have more 
business opportunities. That is a very good thing. Knowing that we need 
diplomats and diplomats that can go to foreign countries and be able to 
step in and understand the cultures of these foreign countries, it is 
important to encourage and promote the teaching and learning of 
languages in such a global country as the United States is, where we 
have people in every country of the world.

  There is no country that has a more effective and more diversified 
diplomatic mission than the United States of America, and we need to 
draw for those missions from people that are trained in languages, and 
we need to exchange with other countries so that we can train our young 
people in languages.
  But all of those things notwithstanding, Mr. Speaker, we must 
establish an official language for a number of good, logical, rational 
reasons. And among those reasons are, for example, if we do not have an 
official language, if we have two people that come together and they 
write up a contract on a business deal and one of those contracts is in 
German and the other one is in Japanese, and they say, Here, I have my 
German version and you have your Japanese version, let us sign these. 
You can keep the one that is your language and I will keep the one that 
is in my language. And those two people get into a disagreement and 
they go to court.
  Now we bring those documents before the court, and the court has to 
rule on which one is the one we are going to go by, the Japanese 
version or the German version. And if so, is it an appropriate 
interpretation of one or the other. And often we come up with 
disagreements on interpretations, and that is why we need to have one 
official language. That would be the English language, one that 
everything is anchored back to, one that everything that is interpreted 
is interpreted from.
  So as we watch what is happening here, we will see the Voting Rights 
Act come up on this floor sometime relatively soon, Mr. Speaker. And in 
that is the reauthorization of the bilingual ballots. And I have taken 
a stand, and I will continue to take the stand, that there is no reason 
in the United States of America to produce a bilingual ballot for 
anybody. This is not something that was part of the Voting Rights Act. 
There are not people that were being disenfranchised because they did 
not have ballots in different languages. In fact, because we print them 
in different languages, people are being disenfranchised. The bilingual 
ballot provision should be stricken from this bill.
  There are only two reasons by which you could even ask for a ballot 
in a language other than English. And one of them is if you are a 
naturalized citizen to the United States and you did not speak, read, 
or write English. You could say, I came over from France and I only 
speak French, so I want a French ballot, and I am a naturalized 
citizen. You have to be a citizen to vote in America. And I would say 
to those people, whatever they might be from, naturalized in the United 
States of America, welcome. Welcome here. We are glad we have you as a 
fellow American. But I am sorry, we are not going to give you a ballot 
in French or any other language because you have to demonstrate 
proficiency in English in order to gain citizenship in the United 
States. And if you have somehow duped the system, I do not want to 
reward you by giving you a ballot and making us jump through hoops and 
come up with an interpretation that may or not be an accurate one. That 
is one example.
  So a naturalized citizen already had to demonstrate proficiency in 
English. Therefore, there is no reason for them to ask for a ballot in 
a language other than English.
  So the only other scenario would be if there is a birthright 
citizenship that Mr. Akin raised a little bit ago. Someone is born in 
the United States. That makes them automatically an American citizen, 
at least by practice today. Not by Constitution, but by practice. And 
if that individual, by the time they are 18 years old, has not learned 
enough English to read a ballot that essentially has titles and names 
on it, for the Fifth Congressional District, Steve King, and my name is 
going to be the same whether it is in Spanish or French or English; so 
it is simply the title that you have to learn, if that situation where 
someone who is born in this country can get to be the age of 18 or more 
and not understand enough English to read a ballot, which I think I 
could learn to do, in at least anything but the Asian ballots, in a 
matter of a few hours, then I do not believe they understand the 
culture well enough in America to give them the authority to begin to 
contribute to establishing who will be the next leader of the free 
world, Mr. Speaker.
  It would have only taken 527 different votes, half of them changing 
their minds in Florida, to give us Al Gore for President instead of 
George W. Bush. And how many of those instances does it take for people 
who are requiring a ballot in different languages, who have not learned 
the culture of the United States, and who were born here? So under no 
circumstances would I grant a pass, but I would encourage people to 
learn English, and that is the way we can do that. We do not need to be 
enablers. We do not need to be handing people ballots in languages when 
they did not request them, and we do that under today's bilingual 
ballot system.
  We need to tie that all together, Mr. Speaker, and we need to have 
this single most unifying characteristic known to all humanity: a 
common language, an official language. The American people want it. The 
American people demand it. The Senate has reacted. The President has 
spoken favorably about learning English, although he has not endorsed 
the bill, to my knowledge. We need to bring it here to the floor of the 
United States Congress.
  That would help bond us together as a people. And, Mr. Speaker, we 
are sorely in need of being bonded together as a people. We are so 
sorely in need that I am watching Republicans that are running scared, 
afraid that somehow they are going to alienate an ever-growing segment 
of the population of the United States. I think there is a lot more 
that qualifies people and a lot more to celebrate in people than 
necessarily their national origin.
  I will argue this, Mr. Speaker, that we are all created in God's 
image. He draws no distinction between his creation. He blesses us all 
equally. We are born in different places in the world, citizens of 
different countries, but created in His image regardless of our 
ethnicity, our national origin, our skin color, whatever the case may 
be.

                              {time}  1545

  For us to draw distinctions between perceived differences in people 
based upon those things is an insult to God, because he draws no 
distinctions between his creation. He has created us

[[Page H2950]]

all equally. We are all created in his image. He doesn't draw 
distinctions, and neither do I, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I applaud 
everyone who can pull them up by their bootstraps. The spirit of 
humanity, the competitive nature, the need to take care of your family 
and the desire to do so.
  But I also applaud patriotism. I applaud the things that made this 
Nation great. We very seldom talk about the things that have made this 
Nation great, but I submit in a short order this Nation derives its 
strength from a number of things, and that is the United States of 
America, of which Iowa is a vital constituent part, is the unchallenged 
greatest Nation in the world, and we derive our strength from Judeo-
Christian values, free enterprise capitalism and western civilization.
  When you anchor those things together, when our ancestors and the 
predecessors to us in this country came over across mostly the Atlantic 
Ocean and settled on the East Coast, where we stand today, they gave 
their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to building a nation 
that believed in manifest destiny, and that was a nation that had low, 
and in many cases no taxes; in many cases low, and in many cases no 
regulation.
  One could invest their capital and sweat equity in work and watch it 
grow. You had to work hard at it and be smart, and surely there were 
fetters along the way, there always are. That is part of the system. 
Some will succeed and some will fail. If we were guaranteed success in 
everything we do, then it wouldn't be any fun and we really wouldn't 
try. We would sit back and let it come to us.
  But because there is failure, there is also something to measure on 
the other side for success. And that success allowed for the manifest 
destiny, for the settlement of this North American continent, for the 
Transcontinental Railroad to be built and the golden spike driven, tied 
the two continents together, and this continent was settled in the 
blink of an historical eye because of free enterprise capitalism, low 
and almost no taxation, low and almost no regulation.
  Free enterprise capitalism and manifest destiny, on the back of 
western civilization, which gave us the understanding of science and 
technology, it was a foundation for this dynamic economy that came and 
this robust American experience that was the characterization of this 
great American experiment, which still is a robust Nation, still the 
unchallenged greatest Nation in the world, with the unchallenged 
dynamic economy that is rooted in free enterprise capitalism, that has 
grown from western civilization and the science and technology that 
goes clear back to ancient Greece. We learned from that, we built upon 
that, the Age of Reason to the Age of Enlightenment, to the North 
American continent to the United States of America.
  But what has been so good about us is that we would have become, I 
believe, the most imperialistic, power hungry conquering Nation in the 
world if we hadn't been limiting our appetites for imperialism and 
conquest because of our religious values and our religious beliefs, our 
sense of humility, our sense of duty, a sense of being blessed by God 
with this Nation, and the governing aspects of holding back and giving 
to the rest of the world rather than taking from the rest of the world. 
That is what is different about the United States of America, and that 
short background that I have given is the biggest reason why people 
want to come here.
  We sometimes have people leave the United States to go live somewhere 
else in the world, but they are few and small in numbers compared to 
the people that will do about anything to come to the United States to 
live here. In fact, we have seen plenty of that.
  We have the most generous legal immigration policy in the world, both 
in terms of sheer numbers and as a percentage of our population. We 
have been extraordinarily liberal with our immigration policies, and 
yet every Nation must establish their immigration policies.
  There has been a backlash to that in Europe. You will see in 
countries like Denmark, where they have started to shut down their 
immigration. The Netherlands, they have shut down to some degree, they 
started again to shut down their immigration. We saw what happened in 
France with thousands of cars that were burned. That is the results of 
essentially having more of an open borders policy, and you will see 
them tightening that down.
  We did that in this country too in 1924 when we saw that the massive 
legal immigration that was coming into the United States that started 
in the last quarter of the 19th century and ended in the first quarter 
of the 20th century, the wisdom of the Members of this Congress in this 
very Chamber, Mr. Speaker, took the position that we needed to allow a 
rest time, a time out, so-to-speak, a break, so that there could be 
assimilation take place and that newly arrived immigrants could be 
assimilated into the American civilization, to the American economy, to 
the American culture and the American way of life.
  Had we not done that, we wouldn't have this distinct character and 
quality that we have. We wouldn't have had this robust Nation, this 
sense of togetherness and patriotism that allowed us to fight and win 
World War II and essentially emerge from that conflict as the world's 
only surviving industry. The world's only surviving superpower was the 
United States of America, up on the world stage because we got 
assimilation right, we got free enterprise capitalism right, we got our 
values right, our faith in God and the qualities of that foundation 
that grew from old English common law and their faith that came with 
that, tied into our Declaration and Constitution and fused into the 
culture of America, and we have that dynamic, the Protestant work ethic 
some say.
  But we emerged from World War II this dynamic Nation. And we held 
down the immigration throughout World War II and throughout the 
fifties, all the way up until 1965, and we did that because we wanted 
to allow for assimilation. We had a high birth rate. I am a product of 
the baby-boomer generation, as most of us in this Congress are, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Then as the laws were changed in 1965, they put in place a thing that 
allows for the thing we now call chain migration. The chain migration, 
once you come into the United States, presumably legally, with the 
exception of the `86 amnesty and the six subsequent amnesties to that 
which we passed, you come into this country during chain migration, 
then if you become a citizen, even as a green card holder, you can 
bring in your spouse and your dependent children. When you become a 
citizen, then you can bring in your parents, your spouse, your 
dependent children and I believe your siblings.
  But this allows for an uncontrolled immigration that is no longer 
controlled by statute, no longer controlled by Congress, it is 
controlled by the people who want to come to the United States, not by 
the people in the United States and not by the people in this Congress. 
At least we haven't intervened.
  Yet we find ourselves today watching 11,000 people every single day 
pour across our southern border. I have gone down less than 2 weeks ago 
and sat in the dark on the border and listened as I heard the cars come 
up, and this is the Arizona-Mexico border, and sat and listened as I 
heard the cars come up across the desert with their lights out, about 
an a three-quarter, and I could hear the cars. I could hear one of them 
dragging a muffler, driving around the brush. They came to the same 
location each time, a larger mesquite tree, stop. You could hear the 
doors open, you could hear people get out, you could hear a little 
chatter. The doors would close, they would talk a little bit more and 
then hush. And then they would infiltrate through the trees and across 
the fence and into the United States.

  I sat there and listened to load after load after load after load in 
one spot that I had, I will call him a guide pick, to take me down 
there to get a feel for what it is like.
  Now, I don't know that they were bringing illegal drugs across the 
border, but I am very confident they were coming down there for the 
purposes of crossing the border. And all they had to do was take a five 
strand barbed wire fence and just cross through the spots that had 
already been stretched in the same places where the tracks already were 
and walk into the United States.
  So some places we actually have a human barrier, a steel wall that is

[[Page H2951]]

maybe 20 feet high and actually in some cases, mostly, it is not that 
high. We installed it in a way that there are horizontal ribs, so they 
are like little steps to climb up. But those are short little sections.
  Then we have some longer sections where we have vehicle barriers, and 
the vehicle barriers were a negotiation between the environmentalists, 
who wanted to make sure that you could get, well, let me see, I know 
for sure one of the species would be a desert pronghorn, so it could 
get down and walk underneath the barrier that is there. They did not 
want to upset the ecology.
  Never mind all the damage that is being done to our natural 
resources. If the Members of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, could see the 
litter that is scattered over our national parks and the parts of our 
parks that are off limits to American citizens because they have been 
taken over by drug smugglers and illegals.
  Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is one of those places where they 
simply said we can't do this anymore, we are going to mark this off so 
that we will keep the Americans out of here. It is too dangerous, 
essentially owned by smugglers and coyotes, and I don't mean the fury 
kind, I people mean the people smugglers that are there.
  I have been to those places when I had some security, and it is a 
tragedy that we can set aside American property, set it aside for 
illegals who have invaded that part of our world and not let American 
citizens go there because it is occupied.
  In fact the regions down there, many of them, are occupied. The peaks 
that are good vantage points along the drug smuggling routes are 
occupied. There are lookouts there. I could take you to any number of 
them, several dozen lookout locations where there are two men on top of 
a mountain, 24/7, with AK-47s, with infrared technology, with fine 
optical equipment, with solar panels to keep the batteries recharged, 
and they are being resupplied on a regular basis.
  They sit up there with their radios that have encrypted messages in 
them so we can't hear them talk, and they are listening with their 
scanners to everything that our Border Patrol says. They know where our 
people are all the time. We don't apparently know that they are there, 
or for some reason we don't go pick them up off of these peaks.
  I would not let the sun rise on a single pair of them if I were in 
command of this operation. I would have them off of there every single 
time. If I had to mount a raid every morning, we would go up there and 
lift them off or we would do it in the night with our infrared 
technology.
  But we cannot allow the Mexican drug dealers to occupy the military 
positions in the United States, as much as 25 miles into the United 
States of America, for the purposes of smuggling, according to our 
Federal Government statistics, $60 billion worth of illegal drugs into 
the United States every year.
  Ninety percent of the illegal drugs in America come across the 
southern border. Ninety percent, Mr. Speaker. That is $60 billion. 
There is $20 billion worth of wages, most of those wages earned by 
people that are in the United States illegally, that get sent back to 
Mexico. There is another $10 billion that goes to other Central 
American countries.
  But the economic force on that border is $60 billion worth of drugs 
being sold, pushed into the United States. Now, the demand here is 
another subject entirely and it is something I am more than happy to 
address with my colleagues.
  But I will address specifically the narrow part of this, which is 
drugs coming into the United States, $60 billion going to the other 
side of the border, $20 billion in wages matching that, $80 billion for 
Mexico alone, add another $10 billion to the Central American 
countries, there is $90 billion worth of pressure on our southern 
border, $90 billion.
  And the cost in American lives is staggering. The loss of American 
lives to the people who came across the border illegally is in 
multiples of the deaths of September 11. That easily documentable. 
Twenty-eight percent of the inmates in our prisons in America, city, 
county, State and Federal, are criminal aliens; 28 percent. And they 
don't comprise anywhere near that percentage of the population. Perhaps 
5 percent of the population are alien in one form or another.
  But 28 percent of our prisons are occupied by criminal aliens. They 
aren't in the jail because they broke an immigration law. That hardly 
exists at all. They are there because they have committed murder, rape, 
assault, dealing in drugs, theft, grand larceny. That is costing us $6 
billion a year in order to incarcerate the criminal aliens in America; 
$6 billion with a B, and that is a low number, Mr. Speaker.
  We are spending another $6 billion to guard our southern border, the 
2,000 miles down there; $6 billion. That comes out to be $3 million a 
mile.
  So I had this thought. Me being a capitalist, and I have spoken 
favorably of capitalism here, what would it be like if you would give 
me $3 million and say pick your mile, Steve King, and go down and guard 
that. And you have got $3 million to work with for that mile.
  I believe that I could set that mile up real easily so that there 
wouldn't be one soul get across my mile. I would bond it and I would 
guarantee it and I would make a ton of money doing it, and I would end 
up the first year a millionaire. Easy enough. $3 million a mile.
  Why don't we open up a contract and allow entrepreneurs in America to 
bid these contracts and say pick out your section of the border that 
you want to defend and we want to take the best deal we can.
  We are spending $3 million a mile. If you can come in here and 
protect a border for $1 million a mile, that saves $2 million a mile. 
That is a lot of capital to have left over.
  If the Minutemen want to come in and bid that thing and sit in lawn 
chairs next to each other for a mile, let them bid that mile that way. 
Then we could count the footsteps, the tracks in the dust of those that 
get by. We will make them bonded, and for every one that gets by, we 
will dock their paycheck for that, because they did not do their job on 
that, and we will pay a unit price. Free enterprise capitalism. And 
whatever we dock out of the contract for those that get past that mile, 
we will give that money to the Border Patrol to chase them down.

                              {time}  1600

  We can set this structure up easily. And I can tell you what I would 
do. I would want to bid a lot of these miles. I would want at least 
1,000 of them if they would let me do it. Maybe I could only get a 
mile. Maybe I could only get a demo, Mr. Speaker. But I happen to have, 
by happenstance, a demo next to me on what I think we can do with this 
border.
  Mr. Speaker, this represents the desert. Pick your place. New Mexico. 
That is not the Rio Grande, so I do not presume it is Texas. I have to 
be a little gentle in this chamber when I talk about Texas. I do love 
Texas, and maybe one day maybe they will adopt me, not as a favored 
son, but just as a fellow colleague.
  However, New Mexico, Arizona, parts of California, it is a desert. 
And it has got sand there. And now it has got a few rocks. But this 
would represent just the old flat desert. Now imagine a little brush 
growing back and forth here. So we go in there and we decide we are 
going to build a wall.
  I do not want people going across my section, because I do not want 
my contract docked. I want all the money that I have contracted to 
earn.
  So I go in here and I set a trencher in there on that end and I 
trench this on out. I cut myself a groove, at least 4 feet deep, a toe 
wall down through the middle. That is the hole we would have. I know 
there are rocks there. And we can kick some of those out, and some of 
them we are going to have to stop and go down and maybe drill and put 
some foundation rods in.
  But we have this trench across the desert. Now, we have got a company 
up there that is a neighbor to me. And they can go in, and I talked to 
them the other day. I said, could you make me a machine that would 
slip-form a footing with a 4-foot deep trench and with the capabilities 
of going 6 foot deep, but also have it so I can have a 4-foot wide 
trench, 4-foot deep, 6 inches wide down below, but 4 foot wide up on 
top for 8 inches so that we can have a foundation to put in a 12-foot 
high concrete precast wall.

[[Page H2952]]

  Now, here is what we have. This is the footing for the wall that I 
have designed, Mr. Speaker. And it is pretty simple. This is a 4-foot 
deep trench, 6 inches wide. Fits right in this trench. That is the 
trench. You go down, trench that out and pour that full of concrete 
with a slip-form. And that slip-form also lays the width of this 
footing, this side here is going to be another 2 feet on this side, and 
on that side, with a notch in the middle so we can put our precast 
concrete in there.
  Now, as we run along with this trencher in this trench, and go right 
with the trencher integral with it, we come with a slip-form machine, 
and we pour this concrete footing. And it fits in the ground just like 
this, Mr. Speaker.
  Now we have got a foundation for our wall. And that foundation will 
hold up to precast concrete. And it is at least 4-foot deep. And we can 
make it 6 foot or deeper if we choose to do that. That is actually a 
pretty cheap piece. That is a matter of the cost of the digging and the 
machine and laying the concrete. And you put some steel in here so it 
ties together. We let that cure for a couple a days, then we come along 
with these precast concrete panels.
  They look like this. They are 12 feet high, they are 10 feet wide. 
And we simply set these precast concrete panels in this foundation with 
a crane or an excavator. And they go in just like this. And my little 
old construction company could do this. Now I am really out of the 
business, it is my son's construction company. I do not have any doubt 
they can throw these precast concrete panels together and drop them 
into this footing, they can pour the footing too, along with a lot of 
other skills that they have developed over the years.
  But this is how you build this wall. Pick them up with a crane or the 
excavator, swing them in place, drop them down like this, sits right in 
there, put a little expansion in here so it does not buckle on you in 
that hot Texas sun, and keep throwing this wall together.
  Now, we can build a mile of this a day, Mr. Speaker, with the 
operation that I have spent my life working with. And that is just a 
little old company. Think what you could do if you were somebody that 
was a little bigger, maybe like Haliburton or Bechtel or something like 
that.
  But here we have now, in this little bit of time while I stood here, 
built this nice wall. It is 12 feet high, these are 10-foot wide 
panels. It is 6 inches thick. It has got steel in it. It has got 
reinforcement in it. We have got little eyes tied on top here. And that 
is not really a coincidence, Mr. Speaker, and the reason that it is not 
is because, you know, there are some folks that actually could find a 
way to get over the top of this wall.
  And our military has determined that a safe and efficient way to keep 
people from going across those kind of places is if you just go in here 
and you put a little concertina wire right there. Okay. Concertina wire 
right on top. And you string that along. Now this is not going to be 
too fancy, because I am not going to take your time up with a lot of 
artwork here. But you are going to get the idea when I get done, that 
this is not all that complicated. Then I am going to tell you what it 
costs.
  All right. I am going to leave that just lay. You get the idea. We 
have a little wire here on top. We can do that three rolls on top, if 
you like, it does not have to be one. And it will be easily affixed so 
that it stays.
  We can also put infrared sensors up here, vibration sensors, and 
motion sensors, inside or outside of the wall. We can monitor this 
thing. We can put lights on the inside of it. One thing they cannot do 
is shoot through a concrete wall so good. And so the optical equipment 
that we put on the inside would be protected from the kind of rifle 
shots that generally come from the Mexican side of the border shooting 
out the cameras we have down there now.
  Now, build this wall, Mr. Speaker. And the reason is because there is 
no amount of Border Patrol people that you can put down there, and no 
amount of National Guard people you can put down there that are going 
to keep the hoards of people from infiltrating across 2,000 miles of 
border.
  If you think you are going to do that, you might as well go to the 
barn with a fly swatter and swat flies and think you are going to 
finish you job. You are not. You have got to do something that will 
actually stop the flow of human traffic.
  And I will say this wall itself will be 90 percent effective. And 
then you have got to support it. You have got to support it with border 
patrol people and you have got to drag the wall and track people, and 
cut that sign and chase them down and catch them.
  And over time they will decide it is not worth trying. And they will 
do something else with their time, Mr. Speaker. So now I have built a 
wall here pretty fast for you. And you are wondering, this probably 
costs a lot of money. Well, the reason that I brought this to the 
attention of the Congress is because it does not cost very much money.
  We are spending $6 billion over the 2,000 miles of our southern 
border, $3 million a mile. The President has asked for another $1.9 
billion to be able to start hiring more border patrol and fund 6,000 
National Guard troops additionally.

  That takes him up actually over $8 billion for our southern border, 
over $4 million a mile. This wall to these dimensions that I have drawn 
here can be put up, and I would bid it and I would bond it today, for 
$500,000 a mile. 500,000, $1 out of the $6 we are spending today, or $1 
out of the $8 they will spend tomorrow under the President's proposal.
  Mr. Speaker, it will do far more than 6,000 National Guard troops. 
Far, far more. It will be effective. It will be efficient. And it will 
send the right message.
  Now, I am okay with putting a little website on the other side here 
in Spanish that tells how to come to the United States legally. I think 
we ought to do that on every single panel. Here is where you go to see 
the consulate to sign up for citizenship. I would cast it right in the 
concrete, just like it says, here is the boundary of the United States 
on those concrete pylons down there on the border from horizon to 
horizon.
  I would put it right in there. Here is where you go. Hit this 
website. And then we have established now something that is due, the 
symbolism of a wall that says, you cannot come here. We are a sovereign 
Nation. We will establish our own immigration laws.
  We are not going to allow people from other countries who have shown 
disrespect for our laws to establish immigration laws in the United 
States of America. That is our job here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker.
  It seems as though as bright as they have been in the Senate in a few 
times in the last few days, it is not necessarily the way that they see 
that over there. And I am concerned. But we can build this cheaply, 
$500,000 a mile, instead of wasting all of that money that we are 
spending swatting flies in the barn, as I said, Mr. Speaker.
  So this sends a message. It sends a message to Mexico. And it says, 
clean up your act. Clean up the corruption in your country. Give your 
people an opportunity. Look around the world and see where it is 
successful. Emulate those people that are successful. Adopt the 
policies that you covet. If you want to come to the United States and 
you want to live with the prosperity that we have here, you also have 
to learn the reasons for the prosperity of the United States, it is not 
just because we are a few hundred miles north.
  It is not because we are any different as human beings than anyone 
else. We are created in God's image, as I said. The difference is, we 
have far less corruption in the United States. We do not have in 
existence a patronage system like you have in Mexico.
  You can learn from us. You can adopt us. But the people of Mexico 
have got to rise up and change their country. And the very people that 
will be the change and the salvation in Mexico, are the ones that are 
coming here.
  So one of the good things that can happen is, this free education 
that is being provided to the children that are in this country 
illegally gives them the background and the skills to one day go back 
to their home country and help grow that economy. And when that day 
comes, when that day comes, then we can say, we can say then to the 
leadership in Mexico and points on south, Mr. Fox, Vincente Fox, 
General Fox, because I think he commands a lot of troops that he is 
sending up this way, you need to clean up your act, you

[[Page H2953]]

need to get prosperity in your country. And when you do so, Mr. Fox, 
then and only then can we tear down this wall.
  Clean up your country, Mr. Fox, so we can then tear down this wall 
and we can live together in peace and harmony. And I would happily go 
down there and pull these panels off and stack them in piles and wait 
for the next corrupt government to show up in Mexico, Mr. Speaker, and 
put the wall back up when that time came.
  We are fighting a corrupt government in Mexico that is sending us $60 
billion worth of illegal drugs, wiring at least $20 billion down south 
of real earned wages, which I do not really begrudge that so much, and 
another $10 billion to other parts.
  But this policy that is over in the United States Senate today, this 
Hagel-Martinez policy, you can ask them how many people do they 
authorize into the United States? Is it 11 million? Is it 12 million? 
What is your number?
  And they might concede 11 or 12 million. But I guarantee you they 
will not give you the real numbers. Robert Rector's study at the 
Heritage Foundation rolled out a number based upon language that was 
very conservatively founded. And that number was 103 to 193 million 
people legalized into the United States, not at the choice of 
Americans, but at the choice of the people from the other countries 
that want to come here.
  And then they passed the Bingaman amendment, a Bingaman-Feingold 
amendment that capped the guest workers, took them from 325 and open-
ended growth each year down to a 200,000 per year cap.
  Then that number, when you only calculate that each of them would 
bring in 1.2 members of their family, then that number is only, only, 
only, Mr. Speaker, 66.1 million. Not 11 million, 12, million, 66.1 
million people.
  Ironically, when we go back to the beginning of the records of legal 
immigration in the United States of America, we only have records back 
to 1820. And we take those up to the year 2000. What is the number of 
people who have come into the United States legally in all of history?
  66.1 million people. The very number that is authorized by Hagel-
Martinez, if you low-ball it and each of them only brings in 1.2 people 
as their chain migration number for spouse, families, children. If you 
take it up to four, which is the number that is used by the United 
States Citizenship Immigration Services, four per every authorized 
guest worker, I will say illegal given amnesty, then that 66 million 
goes to 88 million.
  And Lord knows when it stops. So I have to submit this question. And 
that is to the people that are advocating for open borders, is there 
such a thing as too much immigration? And, you know, you cannot get 
them to say yes to that question. They will not say yes, because they 
know the next question is, then how much is too much?
  They will not put a number on that, because they do not want to 
discuss the numbers that they are legalizing and authorizing now. I 
will submit that there is such a thing as too much immigration. And 11 
or 12 million is too much. We have our doors open to more than 1 
million a year, the most generous of any place in the world. We have 66 
also, well, this is actually a number that is not quite correlative, 
60.1 million nonworking Americans between the ages of 16 and 65.
  Now what country in their right mind, when they looked around and 
said we need the labor, and in fact if we do need the labor, would they 
go to a foreign country and bring in people that were illiterate and 
unskilled to do the work for people that have 60.1 million people that 
were sitting around not working?
  And we would pay a good chunk of them not to work as American 
citizens and bring in other people to do our work for us. How rational 
is that? And they argue that there is work that Americans will not do? 
What is the most difficult, hot, dirty and dangerous job in all the 
world? I would say it is rooting terrorists out of Fallujah.
  And what do we pay a young marine in 130-degree heat with a flack 
jacket on, his life on the line for you and me? $8.09 an hour if he 
gets in a 40-hour week. But it is more like a 70-hour week, so he is 
down to about $2.75.
  There is no job Americans will not do, Mr. Speaker. And Americans 
will do the hot, dirty and dangerous work. We can seal this border. We 
can end birthright citizenship. And we can shut off the jobs magnet. We 
need to do all of that. Then and only then can we have a legitimate 
debate on whether or not we ought to have guest workers.

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