[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 65 (Tuesday, May 23, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H3126-H3131]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND BORDER STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for half the time before midnight as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized and the 
ability to have the chance to address the House this night on the issue 
we all know is the most critical issue our Nation faces today, that is 
the security of the American borders and the sovereignty of our Nation.
  I rise because I am from Texas, and I grew up crossing the Mexican 
border with our neighbors from Mexico all of my life. I have even been 
several times to the great international celebration in Nuevo Laredo 
for George Washington's birthday, a time in which thousands and 
thousands of Texans joined their neighbors in Mexico for a great 
fiesta. I consider Mexico, my entire life, I have considered them my 
friend and our neighbor to the south. I actually went to school in 
Mexico. I am very familiar with the country, and I have a warm regard 
for the people of Mexico.
  However, the world we live in today is not the world I grew up in. I 
have had the occasion in the last 6 months to visit Nuevo Laredo with 
Congressman Cuellar on two occasions. I have been down there with 
Congressional delegations that have visited the border to talk about 
the incursions into the United States by literally hundreds of 
thousands and millions of people coming out of Mexico across our 
southern borders from San Diego to Brownsville.
  But the world I know is Texas, and I am going to talk about the Texas 
border that I am familiar with. I want to tell you that I sat out in a 
pickup truck on the side of the Rio Grande in a mesquite thicket in the 
dark with one lone border patrolman and his electronic equipment, which 
was a camera that scanned 2.5 miles in either direction, a stretch of 
the river, right in the city limits or on the edge of the city limits 
of Laredo, Texas.
  I got to sit out there on that lonely job with that young man for a 
pretty good while and talk to him about what he has experienced. He 
says what every rancher and farmer and homeowner that lives on the 
border of Texas today repeats: This is not the same bunch of people 
that used to come across our border.
  They are coming in waves, and they are doing damage and breaking into 
homes, and they are stealing things. Whereas they used to come by a 
pepper's house with their hat in their hands and the rancher wife would 
put dinner out on the back porch for them, today they break into the 
house; they have no regard for private property. They have no regard 
for anything that is going on in Texas. They just think it is their 
right to come into Texas, and they are acting that way.
  This young man told me, he said, I asked him, I said, how many 
people? The first time I visited was in the wintertime. I said, how 
many people will come across? He said, well, it is winter. Maybe a 
couple of hundred tonight. But in the summer, maybe a couple of 
thousand in my sector that I will turn back on some given nights.
  This is a number that way surpasses anything we have ever experienced 
in our State, and all the other States along the border are 
experiencing this problem.
  But, you know, I have been thinking about this, and this is not a 
problem that just started last week. I firmly believe that we enhanced 
the problem of the Mexican border, especially our southern border, with 
the amnesty bill that we passed in 1986. We gave a message, and in that 
message, it was clear: Come on in, boys, you are welcome, and in they 
came.
  Their thoughts were, I can go, most of them came for jobs. But I used 
to be able to say, when I was a young man and a teenager, the people 
who came over here are coming to work. I am telling you, you can't say 
that today. You can't say that every person that crosses that border 
comes to work. That border patrolman told me a tale that will chill 
your soul. In the El Paso sector in December, they stopped 15 illegal 
immigrants, all of whom claimed to be from Mexico, all of whom 
voluntarily agreed to return.
  So they fingerprinted them and processed them and took them back to 
Mexico. They ran those fingerprints through, I think it is NCI or 
whatever it is that they use with the Border Patrol, and about five of 
those finger prints had previously been recorded by the United States 
Government. Those prints came from a cave in Afghanistan. Now those 
were not people coming across our border from Mexico to get a job. But 
they were blending in with those who were.
  We live in the world of 9/11. We live in a time when an enemy has 
launched and successfully accomplished the worst attack on the United 
States in the history of the United States. We have people we don't 
know coming across our border.
  We are doing a lot of talk about enforcement. We are doing a lot of 
talk about writing new laws. We go, oh, my gosh, let us rush out, and 
we have got to come up and figure out how we get a work program. We 
have got to come up with citizenship for these people. We have got to 
know what to do with these people. Sure, these are problems that we 
have to address sometime, and I am sure soon.
  But my concern is, we are not analyzing this problem the way the 
problems should be analyzed. The legislation we are hearing that is 
coming this way from the Senate, and my way of thinking, is a totally 
improper way to analyze a problem of the United States.
  I spent almost 21 years as a district judge in Texas. I had many, 
many, times, where I had a multiple-issue case that I had to choose. 
But a jury would use the same analysis to try to figure out a solution 
to a problem. So I will use that example. But the same example could be 
used for a surgeon in an emergency room.
  You have a problem, and you look at that problem, and you say, well, 
this problem has multiple issues we have to deal with. We have evidence 
to cover these issues. We need to examine those issues, that evidence 
closely and come up with a solution to these problems.
  But first where is the ongoing harm? Where is the bleeding? You have 
got to

[[Page H3127]]

stop the damage that is there right now today before you move on to the 
damage that may be coming down the road or to work on other issues to 
determine the solution. I would say the bleeding is at the border. We 
have got to stop the bleeding.
  The surgeon that is at the emergency room when they are bringing 
someone, if there is arterial blood flowing, he is not worried about a 
CAT scan or an X-ray or whether this man might have cancer or diabetes. 
He wants to stop the bleeding.
  If we don't go and address the issues on the border as the House bill 
has done to stop the bleeding, if we don't do that, we are analyzing 
this problem wrong.
  You know, we could stand around in this House, and we can talk about 
whose fault is it. You know, hindsight is 2020, but the truth is, the 
fault lies across the board, and we ought to step up and say so.
  From 1986 until the present, we have had both Republican and 
Democratic administrations. We can all point the finger and say, you 
did it. But as you point that finger, point it back to you. The fact 
is, we have not met our duty to the American people.
  But now we see a crisis. Ask any American, where is the crisis in 
immigration, and something like 90 percent of them will say, at the 
border. Before we deal with anything, we have got to stop the flow. 
That is why the House bill is so very important that we go forward on 
it.
  You know, we took an oath in this House. The President of the United 
States took an oath. That oath was that we would, to the best of our 
ability, perform the duties of the office to which we had been elected 
and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. 
We took an oath to do our job. Those people we hire to work for us 
assist us in doing that job.

                              {time}  2230

  Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned that as we rush to judgment on the 
issue of immigration, that we start talking about amnesty and we start 
talking about creating a program where people who have broken the laws 
of the United States are going to be given special privileges that even 
people who are born here don't get. There are things now being proposed 
in the Senate bill as to collecting back Social Security, having the 
Davis-Bacon Act apply to all of your wages, and unbelievable things 
where even every American doesn't have those benefits. Talk to my 
teachers back in Texas about some of their missing Social Security 
benefits they have been trying to get for, Lord, it has got to be 50 
years. And yet we are looking at this and putting patches on it, and 
the patches are getting worse and the tire is going flatter.
  Mr. Speaker, the executive and those on both sides of the aisle have 
failed. When we wrote the law in 1986, we had laws that pertained to 
crossing our borders and we didn't enforce them. We had laws that 
pertained to employers and we didn't enforce them, and the Congress 
failed in its duty to do that also.
  I would argue the worst offender of all are the bureaucrats. But all 
that is beside us now. We cannot continue on with a system that doesn't 
work at the border, where some nights 16,000 people come across that 
border.
  I went out and pulled up some of the old law books just to find a few 
things, because you hear people say well, they are not really breaking 
any laws. Shame on you. Somebody wants to make this a felony. I don't 
think anybody has ever looked to see what it is. It is a civil, not a 
criminal file for the first crossing. But it continues on. Illegal 
entry carries a punishment of fine and imprisonment of up to 6 months. 
Harboring undocumented aliens carries a fine and imprisonment of up to 
5 years. Alien smuggling carries a fine and imprisonment up to 10 
years. Those are felonies, 5 and 10 year sentences, in my opinion.
  A crime that causes a serious bodily injury to any person, the 
penalty is a fine and a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Reentry 
into the United States is a felony charge punishable with fines and/or 
imprisonment for 2 or more years. If reentry is after a previous non-
aggravated felony, it is up to 10 years. If it is after an aggravated 
felony, it is up to 20 years.
  Now, I would like to know, are we enforcing those laws? I used to sit 
in the courtroom and do a jail call every Monday morning. I would call 
the jail and we would bring people over and find out who was in jail. 
Inevitably, once, twice, three times a month, we would have anywhere 
from two to 20 illegal aliens in the jail. Inevitably.
  We would call INS and tell them, we got some of your people here. You 
need to pick them up. They would say if they are there on Thursday, we 
will get them. They would all bond out on Tuesday and be gone.
  Now, is the Immigration and Naturalization Service doing the duty 
that our laws gave them to do? No. We have failed to enforce the laws 
that are on the books today. So we are not in a panic to create laws to 
prevent these people from coming in here. We have laws we are not 
enforcing. Now the tide has become overwhelming for law enforcement. 
This overwhelming of us is what we are talking about. This is where the 
bleeding is. This is where the bleeding has got to be stopped.
  The bill that we passed through this House, I would like to add 
things to it, were I given the opportunity. Hopefully there will be 
more resources for our Border Patrol, resources on the border, 
electronic surveillance, unmanned drones and all of the other things 
that technology provides for us today, to help us stop this invasion.
  I use the term ``invasion,'' and I don't take that hesitantly. While 
I was there, I saw a film of what now we are being told were drug 
dealers coming across the border in what looked like to everybody there 
Mexican military uniforms, carrying satchels of drugs with automatic 
weapons and vehicles. Now, it has not been resolved as to exactly who 
those people are, but, you know, if it looks like the Mexican army, I 
wonder if it is? I think we ought to know that. I think we ought to 
have an answer to that.
  Most of Europe went to war over an invasion in 1939 and it ended up 
being World War II. I am concerned about the invasion across our 
southern border. I am concerned we are not enforcing the laws.
  I am convinced that the solution to this problem is to do our job, 
and if we do our job and enforce the laws that are in place and make a 
conscientious effort to study the best possible solution for every one 
of the multiple problems that exist in this immigration and border 
security issue, let's stop the bleeding at the border and then let's 
put the good minds in this House on both sides of the aisle to work in 
cooperating to come up with real lasting solutions, and not forgetting 
that we have laws we can enforce now as we come up with solutions for 
these other things.
  That is basically the way I view this thing.
  I want to yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), 
who also would like to address this House on this important issue.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I thank you very much, and associate myself with 
your remarks. I think what is really important at this point is that 
every American understands that the massive influx of illegal 
immigrants into our country has not been an accident. It is, instead, 
the result of an intentional strategy on the part of America's 
political elite.
  Yes, the laws are not being enforced, just as you said. That is an 
intentional decision by someone that those laws are not enforced. The 
business community wants cheap labor. The movers and shakers of the 
liberal left, consistent with their Tammany Hall traditions want more 
political pawns who are dependent on government programs. They got what 
they wanted. Bear Stearns estimates that are there are between 15 and 
20 million illegals now in our country.
  By the way, one area I might disagree a little bit with my friend, 
although it is really not a disagreement, it is just not the border. Of 
the 15 to 20 million illegals, 4 to 5 million of them are visa 
overstayers, people who have come into our country on a visa and just 
overstayed their visa and melded right into the population. Many, many 
are from Mainland China, for example. And the decision of not having a 
visa system in which we check to see if anybody returns once they have 
come to the United States has been a conscious decision. We are not 
going to correct this problem.

[[Page H3128]]

  Well, my own subcommittee held a hearing on that, and it was 
demonstrable that over the last two decades we have had a huge influx 
of people just overstaying their visa and becoming illegally part of 
our country.
  The downside of all of this, 15 to 20 million illegals in our 
country, is becoming increasingly evident. In education we hear about 
overcrowding and the declining quality of our schools. The States are 
spending $7.4 billion annually to provide K through 12 education to 
people who aren't supposed to be here in the first place.
  Without school age illegal immigrants or the children of illegal 
immigrants, school enrollment would not have risen at all during the 
past decade. So when you hear about overcrowding or the decline of our 
education, that is where it starts. Our limited education dollars are 
being expended not for our children's benefit, but for children of 
foreigners who have come here illegally. That is a crime against 
America's youth. Our children are being denied a quality education 
because of our cowardice or incompetence to deal with this issue.

  Similarly, our health care system is under siege. Illegal aliens 
account for 43 percent of those without health insurance in our 
country. At least $9 billion then of our scarce health care dollars are 
being spent on foreigners who have come here illegally.
  Yes, business gets their cheap labor. The rest of us end up with 
closed hospital emergency rooms and skyrocketing health insurance 
costs, which can be traced, among other things, to the care that is 
given to illegal aliens, which is then simply added on to our bill and 
sent to our insurance companies.
  The effect on our criminal justice system has been no less 
catastrophic. Almost 30 percent of Federal prisoners are now foreign 
born. That is one out of every three Federal prisoners. In California, 
for example, about one out of every four persons in our prisons are 
illegal. The estimated cost, of course, of incarcerating an illegal for 
a year is $22,517 per year.
  And that is only a small price that the American people are paying. 
Think of the other price, the price of the theft and property damage 
that is traced to these criminal aliens. And who can put a price tag on 
the violent attacks, the murders, the rapes, perpetrated by these 
foreign marauders?
  And less easily recognized, millions of American families are being 
robbed of a higher quality of life and a higher standard of living as 
wages are bid down by hordes of job seekers who are not even supposed 
to be here in our country. A study by Harvard University professor 
George Boris shows immigration accounts for the entire decline of real 
wages that has affected so many of our countrymen in the past two 
decades. Competition from the growing number of illegal immigrant 
laborers in the past 20 years means American workers are earning, get 
this, an average of $1,700 less every year than they would have 
otherwise been earning.
  Now, who gets hurt? Well, unemployment among Americans with less than 
a high school education is at 14 percent. Fourteen percent of those 
Americans who don't have a high school education are out of work, with 
no hope. And who is taking their jobs?
  Many of our citizens find they have a decline in pay in terms of real 
dollars. And who are these people who are mainly finding that their pay 
level is going down? It is the people on the bottom end of the scale. 
The less fortunate Americans we are trying to help are the ones who are 
being hurt the most by illegal immigrants.
  So whether we are talking about education, health care, food stamps, 
housing assistance, school breakfast and lunch programs, all of which 
were intended for struggling Americans, all of these are being drained 
to one extent or another by people who have come here illegally, and in 
many cases these people have paid little or nothing into the system.
  It is estimated that the average illegal alien uses $2,700 or more in 
government services more than he pays in taxes. That is coming right 
out of the hide of America's least fortunate citizens. This is a crime 
perpetrated by America's elite on America's least fortunate people. It 
is a betrayal of our fellow Americans for whom these programs were 
intended.
  Now, we keep hearing we need these illegals. We need people coming in 
to do jobs that Americans won't do. Well, that is so much baloney. 
Americans will do these jobs. If Americans are paid a decent wage, 
Americans will do the jobs.
  I was on a TV show recently where a woman said she couldn't find an 
American woman to help take care of her children. This was a very 
wealthy person who ended up hiring an illegal Mexican woman. Yes, she 
hired her probably at about $50. She wouldn't hire the American woman 
down the road who would be glad to work for her for $20 an hour while 
her own kids are going to school, thus paying her $100 a day.
  Who was worse off? The worse off person is the American woman who 
would have loved to have worked for that job. Yes, the illegal got a 
little money, 50 bucks. Who is really better off? The rich lady who got 
that illegal at half the price she would have had to pay an American. 
This goes right down the line to so many other jobs.
  We say now there are a lot of jobs, for example, in hotels. Yes, 
hotels, they say they need illegals to change the sheets in the hotel 
rooms. There are lots of American women who would love so help us with 
child care and help with changing the sheets in the motel room if we 
would pay them a decent wage. But we have hordes of illegals coming 
into this country bidding down those prices so those American women 
stay at home and have no job at all. Who is being hurt? Regular 
Americans are being hurt by this.
  The open-borders crowd are now throwing their weight behind the 
current Senate bill. Wake up America. This is the same gang that 
brought this crisis upon us, and the Senate bill will make the 
situation worse.

                              {time}  2245

  Even the bill before us from the United States Senate is not an anti-
illegal immigration bill. It is a pro-immigration, a pro-illegal 
immigration bill, because that will be the impact.
  The core provisions of the Senate bill around which everything else 
orbits is the so-called guest worker program, and the legalization 
status of those 15 to 20 million illegals who are now in our country. 
The Senate bill changes the status of these millions of intruders from 
illegal to legal.
  The President does not want to call that amnesty. I call that 
amnesty, and there is no other definition I know for it. You are 
changing the status from illegal to legal of people who have come here 
in violation of our law.
  Whatever you call it, if you legalize the status of those who skipped 
the line and came here in violation of our country's law, we are 
telling hundreds of millions of foreigners who are waiting to come to 
this country legally, they are waiting in line overseas, we are telling 
them they are a bunch of saps.
  We will start a stampede towards America, just like what happened the 
last time we legalized the status of people who were here illegally 
back in 1986. No matter what is done to strengthen the border, any 
benefit from strengthening the border will be overwhelmed by the 
dramatically increased pull which is a result of legalizing the status 
of these millions of illegals who are in our country.
  Now, the rest of the Senate bill. What does it include? It guarantees 
in-state tuition for illegals. Your kid has to pay full tuition if he 
crosses a border of a State line. These illegals do not. Now that is a 
way not to give anybody incentive to come here to our country.
  And agricultural guest workers under this bill cannot be fired by 
their employers except for what the bill calls ``just cause''. However, 
American agricultural workers can be fired for any reason. Oh, well, 
that is going to keep them away from our country, isn't it?
  The Senate bill will make illegal aliens eligible for Social 
Security. Get that, America. Wake up, America. The Senate has voted to 
give illegal immigrants Social Security. Hundreds of millions of 
desperate people living in poverty throughout the world who have no 
pension system available to them now know that the United States Senate 
has voted to make them part of America's pension system if they can 
just get here.

[[Page H3129]]

  This is beyond absurd. This is bizarre. This is horrible. We are 
including people who have come here illegally in America's pension 
system and expecting that not to attract tens of millions of other 
desperate people from around the world. And, of course, Social Security 
is not just a pension system for people. It is also a survivor's 
benefit program.
  So when an illegal works here and then dies, we will take care of his 
or her children until they are 18 years old. The potential for 
corruption and the gaming of such a system boggles the mind. I can 
assure you right now, if this is put in place as the Senate has voted 
to do, we will be taking care and there will be payments from our 
Social Security system to millions of kids in China, and in Mexico, as 
people go back and their coroners claim they have died and their 
dependents are waiting for their check to be delivered.
  And of course all of this is happening at a time when we are trying 
to keep Social Security solvent. Oh, yes, the Senate bill, of course, 
gives all employers amnesty too. So now employers are not going to 
worry about enforcing the law. Who cares if Americans are being denied 
the jobs? Who cares? Because actually employers now can hire people and 
these employers are now no longer held accountable for the illegals 
that they have hired.
  And what is the final result? The insult, of course, is the Senate 
bill is providing money for those organizations that are helping 
illegals adjust their status. We are actually paying them to help fight 
our Government and our efforts to clear up the illegal immigration 
situation by sending illegals home.
  There are a number of other provisions in the bill that should alarm 
small business. For example, this bill, the Senate bill, requires us to 
pay illegals the prevailing wage. And then, of course, we are setting 
up an entire bureaucracy to determine what that prevailing wage is for 
various different professions.
  No, this will massively increase the bureaucratic power over our 
people and our country, and the private sector already. Illegal 
immigration has had a horrible, horrible impact on our way of life. 
Kids in my neighborhood do not cut the lawn any more. I used to cut the 
lawn. That is what I did for pocket change when I was a kid. Kids do 
not do that any more. Kids do not wash the cars any more.
  No. What we have done is our values have changed because illegals 
have come in and changed our way of life. And we are told we have to 
bring them in because, for example, the fruit and the vegetables will 
rot in the fields without illegals.
  Well, if we pay our American people they will do the job. And if they 
do not, we can be creative enough. For example, let us use prisoners to 
pick fruit, and pay them so that when they get out of prison, they will 
have $10,000 or $20,000 in their pocket and they will have contributed 
money to their own incarceration, or for restitution to their victims.
  We can come through this without importing millions and millions of 
people from foreign countries to come here and do this kind of work. We 
can. We can run the United States of America without a massive flow of 
illegals or a massive new flow of immigrants into our country.
  Now, I support legal immigration. I think legal immigrants, legal 
immigrants deserve every right as every American citizen. We have the 
most generous legal immigration system in the world. We permit more 
legal immigration into America than any other country in the world.
  The Senate wants to up that by so much, that if the Senate bill 
passed, we are talking about 100 million to 200 million more immigrants 
coming into our country over the next 20 years. Read that correctly.
  If you put illegal immigration on top of that, we are talking about 
hundreds of millions, perhaps 300 million people coming into the United 
States of America. Wake up, America. We are losing our country. We 
cannot permit this massive flow of illegals to continue.
  And we cannot just dramatically increase the number of legal 
immigrants coming into our country, which would then overwhelm our 
ability to assimilate them. We can be proud of legal immigration. We 
should keep it at the level it has been at.
  But, no, we have people who are not watching out for the interests of 
the American people. That is what we need to talk about right now as we 
close this presentation. The American people need to pay attention. 
This vote that is coming up on the Senate bill versus the House bill, 
which is based on enforcement and trying to stop illegal immigration, 
the Senate bill is a pro-illegal immigration bill. The American people 
need to look very closely who is watching out for their interests and 
who is against them.
  Who is on their side and who is on the side of foreigners who wish to 
come here? Again, these people who want to came here are wonderful 
people. Even the illegal immigrants who come here are wonderful people. 
95 percent of them are wonderful people.

  Our job is not to take care of every wonderful person in the world, 
providing them a pension, providing them health care, providing their 
children with education. Our job is to watch out for the American 
people.
  We accept no apologies for that. We should have no apologies that we 
put the American people's interests first. But that is not what has 
been happening. There has been some very powerful special interests, as 
I say, in business who want cheap labor, and on the left wing and 
liberal left wing of the Democratic Party who want political pawns out 
of illegals who come here and other people who immigrate here who are 
dependent on Government programs.
  The American people have the power in their hands to control the 
destiny of this country. They must pay attention if we are to succeed 
in thwarting this threat to our freedom and to our prosperity. Wake up, 
America. It is time to hold accountable your elected representatives. 
Study the issues. See who is supporting this program in the Senate to 
give away our Social Security, and destroy that system. See who is 
supporting actual border enforcement and changing our visa laws so they 
can be enforced and protecting us from an overwhelming flow of illegals 
into our country, which lowers wages and threatens our way of life.
  Hold those elected officials accountable, and kick them out of office 
if they are not representing your interests. They are supposed to be 
working for you. And with that I yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, can I ask how much time we have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Roughly 15 minutes.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to Mr. Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join both of my 
colleagues, the gentleman from Texas, Judge Carter, who is managing the 
hour with the gentleman from California that you just heard from, Mr. 
Speaker, my colleague, Representative Rohrabacher, who very 
passionately explained what the issue is.
  You know, and again, I think as I represent the 640,000 or so 
constituents of the 11th District of Georgia, West Georgia, great, 
great people. And when I go home, and I am sure Representatives Carter 
and Rohrabacher are hearing the same thing from their constituents, 
they say and I agree, that this is a country of law abiding people.
  And we have to have respect for the rule of law. I was real 
interested, Mr. Speaker, this weekend on one of the Sunday morning news 
shows, one of our colleagues, in fact, indeed one of my colleagues from 
Georgia, Representative Norwood, who is such a great spokesperson on 
this issue was debating one of the Senators who happened also to be 
from the Southeast, in regard to the Senate bill versus the 
Sensenbrenner, very sensible, as the name would have it, the 
legislation that we passed in the House before the first of the year 
that emphasizes border security and border security first.
  And that is what my colleagues were speaking about before me, that 
there is all of this talk about, you know, what to do with 11 or 12 
million people who are in this country illegally, and what to do about 
the fact that there are certain sectors of our economy that are 
dependent on a lot of foreign workers.
  Unfortunately, a lot of those foreign workers are among the 11 or 12 
million that are here illegally. So maybe we need a temporary worker 
program. I

[[Page H3130]]

agree with my colleague who just spoke that if the pay and benefit 
package and health care and these things that go with those jobs were a 
decent wage, I think in some instances, Mr. Speaker, they are, but in 
some instances, maybe far too many, they are not.
  If they were, then there are plenty of legal aliens, legal 
immigrants, United States citizens who are out of work today who would 
take those jobs. Now, everybody says, well, golly, we have this low 
unemployment rate of 4.5 percent. Well, that is 4.5 percent of people 
without jobs. Until it gets to zero percent, I cannot really see where 
we necessarily need a temporary worker program.
  But what I was saying about that program, Mr. Speaker, that 
television news show this past Sunday morning, we are talking about the 
rule of law. The Senator incredulously said, well, the law is okay as 
long as it is a ``just law''. You know, that is just shocking to me. I 
do not know what the Senator's occupation is or profession, I know 
there is a lot of lawyers over there in the other body. But our laws 
are our laws. If they are not just laws, we have a way in this chamber 
and that chamber to change those laws, because after all we are the 
ones that make them.
  If they are not just laws, then we change them, and we do it in the 
right way. We do not just ignore it, if we do not like the law. There 
are lots of laws that I do not like. But by golly I abide by them, 
whether I am on this Hill, inside the Beltway, or back home in Georgia. 
And that is the way my constituents feel, and that is the way my 
colleagues who are sharing this hour with me feel.
  I am dead set with them on securing our borders first and foremost. 
The President spoke to the Nation the other night, Mr. Speaker, talked 
about putting some National Guard troops, 6,000 I think he said on a 
temporary basis, to sort of back up the Border Patrol. We have got what 
10,000 or 12,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents on the southern border.
  I think we need more. I think my colleague, Mr. Norwood, on Sunday 
morning said maybe we need 30,000. But at least we need 18,000 or 
20,000. And we are going to get there. And we are going to, according 
to the House version of immigration reform to secure the border, we are 
going to build facilities and have more bed space so that we can retain 
these illegal immigrants that are referred to as OTM, that acronym that 
stands for Other Than Mexicans, that we have been catching and 
releasing in that catch-and-release program.

                              {time}  2300

  I think the whole point here is history: if you do not pay attention 
to it, you are going to repeat it; and you are going to make the same 
mistakes over and over again if you do not learn from the past. We can 
go back; my colleagues have probably already done that in the earlier 
part of the aisle. I may have missed part of that discussion, but that 
Bracero program that we had from 1942 to the 60s, dismal failure. That 
was a temporary worker program. Dismal failure. And then our great 
communicator and one of my very favorite all-time Presidents, Ronald 
Reagan, in the Immigration Reform Act of 1986, an amnesty, really 
pretty much a blanket amnesty for 3 million people.
  Now, that would probably have been okay 19 years ago if we had 
secured our borders, but we didn't. There was no border security that 
went along with that as a companion. And we estimate and, Mr. Speaker, 
do not take my word for it, this is a CRS report that I am reading in 
front of me dated May 15, 2006. That is pretty darn recent, I think. It 
is talking about the fact that there probably are today 11 to 12 
million illegal aliens in this country. If you do the math, that is 
about 500,000 a year that are coming through that border which is 
nothing but a sieve, and that hemorrhaging continues. And if we grant 
any kind of amnesty program today and we do not secure that border, you 
do the math. In 20 years from now, we will be talking about 35 or 40 
million illegal immigrants, illegal aliens in this country.
  My colleagues talked about the stress that that puts on public 
education, on our health care system. The fact that we do not know 
really that these, hopefully the majority are law abiding. I think they 
are, but in this day and time after 9/11 and with the threat of a 
global terrorism, how do you know who is coming in this country? Are 
they all coming to work? Absolutely not. Some are members of gangs. 
Some are involved in drug trade. So it is absolutely imperative.
  I commend Chairman Sensenbrenner, Mr. Speaker, and I commend my House 
colleagues. I commend the Speaker, the majority leader, this Republican 
majority in this body, this House of Representatives for doing what we 
did. In fact, the first bill we passed was the REAL ID Act and that was 
in complete and total lockstep response to what the 9/11 Commission 
asked us to do in regard to driver's licenses and this abuse of the 
claim of asylum, to be able to in an expedited fashion to get rid of 
someone who was allowed to come in this country and then was involved 
in terrorist activity. So these things are so important.
  I just thank my colleague, my good friend, classmate from Texas, Mr. 
Carter, for letting me come and just share a little bit of time with 
him because we are compassionate. Everybody talks about the President 
and his great compassion. I do not doubt that. I think he does have 
great compassion. But I think if he wants to insist on granting an 
amnesty program that even comes close to what is happening in 1986, he 
is dead wrong on this issue.
  I want to work with employers and I think in the House bill we do 
that. We are going to provide a biometric tamper-proof identification 
card so when we get this combined program done, and we do not have to 
do it all in the next 2 weeks, and I think if we can get the Senate to 
agree as my great colleague and Senator from Georgia, Johnny Isakson 
said, let's get the border secured first. We can do the rest of this 
stuff, which is in my opinion sort of cosmetic surgery, once you stop 
the hemorrhaging.
  If we go back and look at a temporary worker program and what to do 
with the 11 million that are here illegally, I personally think, yes, 
they should pay back taxes, pay a fine, pass a criminal background 
check and then be notified that they have got about a year to make 
arrangements to go back home, to go to the border and then get in one 
of three lines.
  One line would be to stay home, decide that they want to stay in 
their country of origin. The second line would be the temporary worker 
program. We could even give those who have been in this country for 
more than 5 years working and passing all those litmus tests, good 
people, we could put them in the front of the temporary worker line; or 
if they wanted to come back in this country as permanent legal 
residents and get on a track to citizenship, then they could get in 
that line.
  Maybe it is too simple. Maybe I am a simple kind of guy. That is the 
way I see it.
  I want to thank the judge for taking the time tonight and giving me a 
chance to share my thoughts with my colleagues.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I want to thank my colleague for 
joining us here tonight. He is always a very calming influence when he 
addresses the House, and I am always fascinated to listen to him speak.
  This is my whole premise that I was talking about, Mr. Speaker, is 
that it is time that we take a deep breath and address one of the 
biggest issues that this House has had to deal with in a long time and 
an issue that actually can be, as has been explained here tonight, a 
nation-changing issue.
  I personally have a great, as I started out saying, have a great 
compassion for our neighbors to the south. And I welcome good, honest 
legal citizens of this country as does everyone. And no one in this 
House is talking about the Trail of Tears massive deportation to the 
border. We have issues that have to be addressed. But the problem, the 
hemorrhaging, the bleeding is at the border today. That is where we 
have got to go and get this slowed down and get it ready. And then you 
know I would like to hear quite honestly from my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle. We have never really.
  The Democrats' plan for immigration does not seem to be out there 
today. I would like to hear their solution to the

[[Page H3131]]

problem. I would like for both sides of the aisle to sit down and say, 
let's work this thing out intelligently. And I will give you just one 
example, a couple examples not being addressed. One right now, there is 
a tremendous backlog on background investigations of people who are 
coming and have come into this country illegally to get their visas 
extended. They have to have a background check or to get into this 
country with a background check. That thing could take anywhere from 18 
months and the backlog just once they start processing it, it can take 
up to 18 months or longer.
  Right now in my part of Texas, our San Antonio office is working on 
the years 1998, 1999 and 2000. We are going to take that system in its 
present condition and dump 15 million-plus people into that system for 
background checks? Or do they get to miss that part that the legal 
immigrants have to take?
  Health exams have to be done for everyone that comes in the United 
States. What are we going to do to examine the health of 15 million 
people in this country to make sure that there are not communicable 
diseases in this country? This is an issue that is part of our law. It 
is required by law. If we are going to process them, that needs to be 
here.
  Then a question I do not hear anybody addressing is what do we do to 
the people who do not join our program? We love America and we think 
everybody comes here to be an American citizen. But I can tell you from 
personal conversations with people who have come here, I have worked 
building fences side by side with folks that, I never asked them, but 
since they did not speak any English and they told me they were from 
Mexico, I kind of figured they were illegal aliens. I can tell you, 
they didn't come here to be American citizens. They came here to work. 
And their families were back in Mexico, and they really wanted to go 
back there. And they sent 80 percent of their paycheck home because 
they were able to live on social services over here so they can afford 
to do that.

  Now, what about the guy who says, well, that is great, but I do not 
want to pay back taxes and I do not want to pay a $200 fine, and I do 
not want to get a health check, and I do not want to get a background 
check; I will just stay in the shadows. Are we addressing that issue? 
Are there going to be consequences to those people who continue to stay 
in the shadows? If you care about the people that come in here, do we 
want anybody in this country starting their life on American soil under 
the cloud of criminal behavior?
  But we know that 15 million people crossed our borders and broke the 
law. I did not say felony. I did not give a classification. I said 
broke the law. We have laws in this country, and it was broken. Let's 
be intelligent. Let's be smart. Let's seal the borders, put our 
resources there and then study this program and get a system that we 
can administer and we can work and we can pay for.

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