[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 76 (Wednesday, June 14, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H3999-H4005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          IRAQ AND IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the privilege 
and the honor to address you and address the House of Representatives 
and the American people who are viewing these proceedings that take 
place in these Chambers continually as we deliberate and debate.
  I came here to take up another subject matter, but as I listened to 
the gentleman from Tennessee, he raised a number of points that I am 
compelled to respond to. I will just say I am glad I have a more 
optimistic viewpoint about the history of this country, about the 
current events, about the most recent current events and especially 
about the last 3\1/2\ years within Iraq. Further and longer ago than 
that, our operations within Afghanistan, about how this Nation has 
conducted its foreign policy, about how the Commander in Chief has made 
his decisions on foreign policy, and the direction for the future.
  I would just back up to this. I would say that the gentleman from 
Tennessee, when he states that we are the greatest Nation, I do agree 
with him. We are the greatest Nation. We are the unchallenged greatest 
Nation in the history of the world. Often folks on the other side of 
the aisle disagree with that statement, so I am very refreshed to hear 
someone on that side of the aisle say we are a great Nation. In fact, I 
look forward to us becoming an even greater Nation going into the 
future, and we can't do that if we are going to wallow in guilt and 
self-pity and pessimism. We have a positive track record. Did we think 
we could go to war and not face adversity?
  Some of the criticism is that Vice President Cheney and Secretary 
Rumsfeld and others said we would be greeted as liberators, according 
to the gentleman. He contends we were not.
  I was one of the first Members of Congress to arrive in Iraq after 
Iraq was liberated, and I recall and I have videotape of traveling down 
through a Sunni section of Baghdad, where we would be the most hated, 
according to national news media and the minority party; people that 
you would think would be throwing grenades and shooting at you, and 
perhaps throwing stones and making all kinds of vile gestures at 
American conquerors. In fact, we were liberators. As we rode down 
through on that convoy on those narrow streets in Baghdad several 
months after the liberation of Iraq, I looked out the window at 
military-age Iraqi men, and they looked into the window of my vehicle 
at me. I couldn't discern what they were thinking. They didn't know who 
I was. They just knew it was not your normal transportation going 
through there.
  So I did like we do in Iowa. We meet them on the road. We are 
uncomfortable with silence and without acknowledging someone we see, so 
I began to wave to these military-age Iraqi men, men between the ages 
of 16 years up to 45, standing along the sides of the street in groups 
of two to three, groups up to 18, and they may be 10 to 15 feet away 
from my vehicle. The instant I did that, they waved back at me. They 
waved back and smiled with a gleeful smile and gave me thumbs up.
  Here is an American in Iraq, a Representative, and just by the fact 
of the identification of being an American was all they needed, not 
necessarily a Representative of Congress, there to be part of that 
city, to see that country that now was for the first time liberated in 
the history of the world.
  No, we were greeted as liberators. We were greeted as liberators in a 
country that had not been liberated in their history. Of course, there 
have been difficulties since that period of time. It is odd to me that 
the gentleman from Tennessee takes issue with the decisions and 
strategy that were made. In closing, he said he trusts our military 
experts, not our civilian experts. The experts who put together the 
strategy to liberate Iraq were essentially the same people that put 
together the military planning and operational strategy to liberate 
Afghanistan.
  And the criticism of the Iraq operation is essentially the same 
criticism that we heard of the Afghanistan operation. The difference is 
that in Afghanistan it was over so quickly and over so successfully, 
and people there went to the polls and voted and elected themselves new 
leaders and directed their national destiny and live in freedom for the 
first time on that spot of the globe for the first time ever in their 
history. That all took place in Afghanistan, even though the debate 
over here on this side of the aisle, the debate on the part of the 
liberal pundits, was it's another Vietnam. You will never succeed in 
Afghanistan. No Nation has ever been able to go in and invade and 
occupy Afghanistan and get out of there with their military intact. 
That is a hostile area that can never be occupied and conquered, and 
history has proven that. That is the statement with Afghanistan over 
and over and over again. Afghanistan, another Vietnam.

  But, you know, military success, political success and economic 
success has a tendency to muzzle the critics. And the critics have been 
flat muzzled on Afghanistan. And yet they draw the same criticism 
towards Iraq. Afghanistan, 25 million people, liberated. Hostile 
terrain, couldn't be invaded. We didn't invade them, we liberated them. 
We worked with the Northern Alliance and we worked with the people in 
Afghanistan and gave them an opportunity at freedom.
  Their struggles are going on yet today. In fact, there has been a 
reignition of some of the opposition there. But we are not hearing 
criticism. We are not hearing the other side of the aisle say we never 
should have gone there because we knew that al Qaeda was operating in 
Afghanistan. We knew we needed to go in and knock out the Taliban. We 
knew that was a base of operations for terrorists who were sending 
people to come to this country to kill us because they believe that 
their path to salvation is killing people not like them, and we are one 
of their preferred targets.
  So all of this criticism of Afghanistan, 25 million people, mountains 
and difficult terrain and difficult transportation routes, has been 
muted by the resounding success in Afghanistan. And the same people 
gave the same advice on a country with the same population and 
different terrain, easier terrain but a different location, and 
different people, different countries surrounding Iraq, and we ended up 
with being greeted as liberators. And in the aftermath of the greetings 
as liberators, there was an insurgency that rose up; an insurgency that 
was founded and supported by a lot of cash dollars, billions in cash 
dollars that were spirited out of Iraq, American dollars out of the 
banks of Iraq by Saddam Hussein, his regime, into other countries where 
that money was used again to pay for terrorists to come back into Iraq 
and blow themselves up. To detonate and build, and make and set and 
detonate improvised explosive devices.
  Seldom do we see them come out of the shadows and attack our military 
troops straight up front. But the insurgency, what I call a terrorist-
organized operation, as it grew in Iraq, then so did the criticism 
grow. While this is going on, the lust for power for the White House, 
the people on the other side of the aisle are willing to put our 
military men and women at risk so they can achieve their political 
gain, which would be to win back the White House and seek to take over 
the majority in the House of Representatives and

[[Page H4000]]

convince the American people that they know what's best.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm not hearing a positive agenda. I am hearing 
this agenda that says pull out. Pull out to the horizon. Sit and wait 
until there is a problem and then move in. Somehow this same message 
that keeps coming from the ranking member of the Armed Services 
Committee would be one, conflicting with the same message that comes 
out of sometimes the same mouths that, well, we will pull out to the 
horizon in a country we should have more troops in, or maybe should 
have had more troops in, and never mind that we are up now to 267,000 
Iraqis in uniform defending Iraqis that are trained, uniformed, 
equipped, and in these operations and initiating operations as we speak 
today in that country over there and performing very well.
  For the first time Iraq does have a sovereign government that 
represents a sovereign people and a Nation where they can begin now to 
build their future. They have a Prime Minister who has named a full 
Cabinet. And this Cabinet can now resolve many of the sectarian 
differences that are there within Iraq itself and move them forward 
since now they have a Secretary of Defense and a Secretary of the 
Interior, a strong Prime Minister with some vision that has taken a 
role to lead. It takes time to put these pieces in place, and we have 
to let the Iraqi people make these decisions and do that, and it is 
taking place.
  So this criticism, why is it brought up now? Why do I hear the 
question, why did the National Guard have to scrounge around for metal 
to weld or bolt onto their equipment to protect them from IEDs?

                              {time}  2145

  This issue raised by the gentleman from Tennessee, Secretary of 
Defense Rumsfeld said, appropriately and accurately, you go to war with 
the Army that you have. And it implies you go to war with the equipment 
that you have, and then when the unforeseen happens, and it was 
unforeseen that Humvees would be used as military vehicles in that kind 
of a combat environment. No war in the past had seen improvised 
explosive devices. No war in the past had seen suicide bombers that 
would run into a crowd of soldiers and blow themselves up or a crowd of 
women or children, school children. No war had seen terrorists or the 
likes of Zarqawi. But yet, even though no one had ever seen these 
circumstances before, somehow the people on the other side of the aisle 
believe the President, the Secretary of Defense and these civilian 
leaders that are labeled to be so wrong, should have been able to 
anticipate something that had never happened before, that there is no 
pattern for and no indication for, and they want to claim that they 
were right, but I don't think any one of them are on record predicting 
we ought to watch out for improvised explosive devices and I don't 
think any one of them were on the record saying we are going to have 
suicide bombers in Iraq. And I don't think any one of them are on 
record saying that these suicide bombers were going to come from any 
place other than Iraq, coming in from all over the Arab world, places 
like Jordan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or Pakistan. All 
those countries have supplied suicide bombers to come into Iraq that 
detonated themselves because they have been trained in those countries 
to give up their lives in the idea that somehow their path to salvation 
is in seeking to kill those who are not like them, and that means us.
  The civilian leadership that led us into Iraq is the same civilian 
leadership that led us into Afghanistan. The military leadership that 
led us into Afghanistan is the same military leadership that led us 
into Iraq. If we are going to be critical of the judgment, the 
decisions and the tactics that were used in Iraq, and the people that 
made the decisions, then let's hear it from the other side. Let's hear 
their criticism for the same people, for the same decisions, for 
similar tactics that were utilized in Afghanistan. And the reason we 
don't hear that is because of the distinction between the easy results 
as opposed to a distinction between a philosophical or a judgment 
disagreement.
  This is Monday morning quarterbacking, Mr. Speaker, and nothing else, 
and it is done for political opportunism and no other reason. And while 
we hear that, however much is said about supporting our military, that 
language, that talk, Mr. Speaker, undermines our military, weakens 
their ability to be effective, and they have got to try all the harder. 
They have got to bolster their spirit all the harder, and they do. And 
I go over there and I meet them and visit them, and their spirit is 
strong and their morale is strong. And they did pick up metal and bolt 
and weld it onto their machines because that is what Americans do. We 
make do with what we have and we go scrounge and find what we need and 
we get things in the pipeline as fast as we can to get things up-
armored and we did. And today, and for a long time in Iraq there hasn't 
been any equipment leave the wire that is not fully armored. And it has 
been a long, long time since anybody left the wire without a 
bulletproof vest and the right kind of equipment to protect them from 
the flying bullets and shrapnel that takes place over there. And our 
medics and our medical corps, all of the people that are taking care of 
our wounded are doing a better job, far better job than ever in the 
history of the world and warfare. They have transferred, the last time 
I checked this number, and it is a little bit dated now, Mr. Speaker, 
but the last number that I had as I stood as we loaded a C-17 with 
wounded out of Landstuhl Hospital there in Germany to come over here to 
land at Andrews Air Force Base, and some of those wounded soldiers 
would go to Walter Reed, some would go to Bethesda. But as I stood 
there and lent a small hand in helping load some of those wounded as 
that plane was loaded, one of the officers there told me that they had 
transferred 36,000 sick and wounded, those that needed medical care out 
of that theater in Iraq from Iraq to Ramstein Air Force Base and from 
Ramstein over to Landstuhl hospital, from there back to the United 
States. And in those transfers, 36,000 transfers, and some of those 
people would have been transferred, I think, counted twice, however 
that worked out, they lost one, one soldier en route. And that one that 
they lost was due to cardiac arrest that was they believe unrelated to 
the injuries. It is an astonishing accomplishment. It is something that 
I can't imagine how one could even dream to have that kind of success. 
And they are, they are dedicated.
  The statement that our Republican leadership must feel insecure or 
wouldn't bring up this bill and not allow amendments, why would any 
leadership that was insecure bring up this bill, this resolution that 
supports and defends our efforts in Iraq? Why would they bring it up at 
all if they felt insecure, Mr. Speaker? I will tell you that we are 
very secure in this, very confident in this. The difference is we are 
not getting this message out to the people. This debate is so the 
American people can hear the truth about what is going on in this 
global war on terror, and in particular, the battlefield of Iraq. That 
is the mission that we are on here tomorrow, to uncover and speak 
truthfully and illuminate the good things that are happening, the 
progress that is being made. And I intend to engage in that debate and 
help with that cause and lend a hand, because every voice that stands 
on the side of our military is a voice that accelerates the end of the 
war and every voice that undermines or degrades or is detrimental 
towards the effort and erodes the credibility of our Commander in 
Chief, our Secretary of Defense, our General, our Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, all of our officers, any voice that weakens 
their credibility delays a successful end to this war. And delaying a 
successful end to this war doesn't just put our troops at risk, Mr. 
Speaker. It costs their lives. So I am proud of the work that is being 
done. I am proud of the character of the people that are serving there. 
I stand with them every step of the way. I have never met a more 
honorable people. And I believe in the history of America, in the 
history of the world, there has never been a better military go off to 
war than this current crop that we have. Our Army, Navy, Air Force and 
Marines, our Reserve personnel, and our National Guard personnel. And I 
don't say that to disparage the efforts of any previous war or any 
previous engagements or

[[Page H4001]]

any previous peace time service. But I will just, I say it to build on 
the honorable record that was built in all of those previous conflicts. 
And I say this because we have, first of all, an all volunteer 
military. There is no one over there in that theater that was drafted 
to go to this war. They all volunteered. And, in fact, everyone that is 
over there now has re-upped in this same climate of this war. So it 
wasn't that they happened to be a National Guard soldier that thought 
they would just train 1 weekend a month and get their 6-week active 
duty in and pretty much take life easy and cash the check. Those people 
had a chance to drop out. But they are re-upping in greater numbers 
than we ever anticipated. That is not a demoralized military. That is a 
high morale military that is reupping on these tasks, because they 
believe in this mission, as I believe in their mission. And we have an 
all volunteer military, and they are getting the best training there is 
in the world, build upon the culture of efficiency and proud combat, 
and we add to that the equipment that they have, the modern technology 
that they have, which eclipses that of anybody anywhere in the world 
today, let alone in the previous half a decade or more. They have the 
best equipment, the best training, the best personnel, they are all 
volunteers. And our active duty personnel are supplemented by our 
reserve troops and our National Guard troops. And those people bring 
with them the skills of their professional lives to supplement the 
skills of the training of their military lives, and that is a great 
combination for a highly technical military that we have today, and 
that is how we could have the technical ability to put a laser on a 
safe house.

  Now there is an oxymoron. I bet you that is what Zarqawi is saying in 
the next life. It is really an oxymoron. There I thought I was in a 
safe house. Well, it wasn't such a safe house for those people. But to 
lay a cross-hairs of a laser beam on a, quote, safe house, Mr. Speaker, 
and seconds later have that safe house just simply detonated by a 500-
pound bomb, and then to be sure, just drop a second 500-pound bomb in 
there.
  It puts me in mind of something that Rush Limbaugh said before Desert 
Storm back in 1991. He said, Mr. Saddam Hussein, I have got some good 
news and some bad news for you. Now, here's the bad news. Or actually, 
no, I tell you, here's the good news. He said we have a weapon, at the 
time he was talking about cruise missiles rather than J-DAMs. We have a 
weapon, and the bad news is, let's see. I am going to get this right. 
The good news is for us, we can take this weapon and we can fire it 
from wherever we choose into the country we choose, and we can fire it 
into the city within the country, and we can put it in the block within 
the city, and we can put it within the building within the block, and 
we can put it through the window of the building within the block 
within the city within the country that we choose and you know, the 
good news for you is we just shot off a half a dozen of those missiles 
and every one of them missed its target. The bad news is the most any 
of them missed by was an inch and a half, Mr. Saddam Hussein. And that 
was the way Desert Storm was. And we are more accurate today with the 
weapons that we have. And it saves lives. And it brings the close of 
this war closer, and it convinces the enemy that they can not win, and 
in fact, that they have lost and it is a matter of time, until they 
resolve to accept the reality.
  That is the object of war, after all, Mr. Speaker. And von Klauswitz 
wrote a book on war. And in that he said, the object of war is to 
destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct war. Destroy their will 
and their ability. You could be sitting there with ranks of tanks and 
all kinds of missiles and Air Force and Navy, and AK-47s, you can have 
all of this equipment. You can have an Army with 2 million people, all 
trained and ready. But if you don't have the will to conduct the war, 
all of the ability doesn't count because you can't unleash, you can't 
mobilize that effort. So Klauswitz saw, if you destroyed some of the 
ability, destroy some tanks, destroy some missiles, destroy some Air 
Force, take away the ability to provide fuel and food, that would 
destroy some of the ability, but also would deplete the will. If you 
could destroy the will to conduct the war, you have destroyed the 
ability to conduct the war. That was the philosophy of Klauswitz. And 
for years, since 1832, that has been the definition of war. Object of 
war, destroy the enemy's will and ability to conduct war.
  Steve King's definition comes like this. A war is never over till the 
losing side realizes they have lost. You have to convince them that 
they have lost. That is all you have to do. And if you can simply send 
them a letter or go down here on the floor and give a speech, put it in 
the Congressional Record and they would read that and say oh, boy, I 
guess we can't win against these people. I am going to surrender. Maybe 
Ahmadinejad would just come to that conclusion, because you know we are 
not going to give up on that. We are not going to let that man have his 
nuclear ability. But if we could just simply send a letter and convince 
them that they will lose the war, then they wouldn't engage in the war, 
but seldom will they give up quite so easy. And so that means that we 
have to turn up the pressure, turn up the diplomatic pressure and then 
maybe do some economic sanctions and then maybe do a blockade and then 
if things get bad enough, maybe we have to run a little operation in 
there. But at some point, this deterrent effect that says you are going 
to have to take us seriously, we will not blink, we are resolved to 
impose this war, this position of peace on this country, at some point 
the losing side, in despair, sometimes, but without having hope of 
coming out of it with any other solution, throws up their hands or as 
we say in a chess game, tips over their king and says I have lost. I 
surrender. I am willing to accept the consequences. I gave it my best, 
but the price is too great. I no longer have the will to conduct war.
  That is what we are seeking to do in Iraq. That is what we are 
seeking to do globally in this global war on terror. And we are a good 
long ways down that path, and we would be much further down that path 
and perhaps the battlefield of Iraq would be concluded if the naysayers 
and the detractors from that side of the aisle hadn't first sent their 
emissaries over there to surrender before we ever went into Iraq. And 
we have relentlessly been trying to convince the enemy that we will 
lose and they will win since that period of time. We will hear some of 
this debate tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, and I look forward to that and we 
will knock those arguments down in this chamber. And the American 
people will understand who supports the military, who doesn't, who 
supports the Commander in Chief, and who doesn't.
  And I would lay another principle out here that is not a negotiable 
principle, to say you are for the troops and against their mission.

                              {time}  2200

  You cannot separate those two. If you are for the troops, you have to 
ask them will you put your life on the line for the freedom of the 
people in this country, this great country? And the gentleman from 
Tennessee and I agree on that. This great country, the United States of 
America. But you cannot ask someone to put their life on the line for 
your freedom and tell them ``but you are on the wrong mission.'' You 
have got to support the mission. You have got to support the troops. 
And if you separate those two, if you say I am against your mission, it 
is the wrong mission, you never should have gone, you should not be 
there, you ought to get out and come home, but if something happens to 
you, you lost your life and it has been a worthless cause, that is what 
they are saying over on this side of the aisle. One and the same. You 
support the mission; you support the troops. You cannot support the 
troops and not the mission. These things are bound together, and they 
are bound together because we asked them to risk their lives on a 
mission that we believe in and we have endorsed that mission.
  And so the other morning not that long ago, al-Zarqawi went to meet 
his maker because of some really good targeting, some good 
intelligence, some cooperation from some other entities over there, 
some good work with the coalition forces, good work with the special 
task force that had been shadowing him and following him for a long 
time and gathering in all the intelligence and the intelligence tips 
from

[[Page H4002]]

400 a month a year ago to 4,000 a month today. They picked up enough 
information to track al-Zarqawi and put those bombs right down in on 
that thing that he thought was a safe house, that we call a safe house, 
that was not so safe for al-Zarqawi. But you know, blowing up that 
house made this world a lot safer for the rest of us; so I will call it 
a safe house by that standard.
  And I am pleased and extraordinarily grateful that our military are 
there doing the job they do with the professionalism that they have, 
Mr. Speaker. And I am looking forward to this debate tomorrow. It will 
not go long enough and it will not make enough points to satisfy me. I 
think we need to do this over an extended period of time. And I will be 
here to join in that debate.
  But I digress. I came to this floor to speak about a different 
subject matter, Mr. Speaker. And as I listened to the gentleman from 
Tennessee, I believe that I needed to provide an alternate viewpoint 
from some of those opinions that came out here. And I do respect the 
gentleman from Tennessee, and he is one of the more intellectual people 
that we have in this House Chamber, and his intentions are good and I 
believe he is a strong patriot. I am just hoping to redirect some of 
his perspectives and perhaps that of some of the folks that live in 
that region down there in Tennessee.
  But I came here, Mr. Speaker, to talk about another issue, and it is 
an issue that stands out everywhere most of any of us go in the entire 
United States of America these days. It is an issue that for perhaps a 
year has been front and center in all of the discussions that take 
place in the Fifth District of Iowa that I represent, this western 
third of Iowa. And certainly wherever else I go around the country, it 
is a subject that comes up. I see things happen in my office. There 
might be a group that comes over and they have met and their 
organization has produced one or two or three or five or maybe six or 
ten points that they want to discuss with me and their positions of 
their organization. We all do this on a regular basis. And as I sit 
down with them, I can see them going through those points kind of 
quickly, and as they get through those points, they want to reserve 
some time. And whether it is an issue that seems to be relevant to 
their organization or whether it is not, they will get down to where 
there is maybe 15 minutes left in our 30-minute meeting and then they 
will say, Now some of us want to talk to you about immigration, 
Congressman, and we have these issues we want to discuss with you and 
we are concerned a little bit about that. So they begin bringing up the 
issue. And I engage in those conversations, of course, and sometimes I 
find a little bit different viewpoint, a little bit different way to 
solve these problems. But the core of this, middle American knows this 
and the southern border knows this and even some folks out there on the 
left coast understand this and some folks over on the right coast also 
understand this because the American people are great respecters of the 
rule of law, and we understand that if we did not have the rule of law 
here in the United States of America, we would not be this great Nation 
that Mr. Cooper and I agree that we are.
  And now I am going on my own judgment here and not representing the 
gentleman from Tennessee except that we agree it is a great Nation. 
This Nation was founded upon the philosophy of the Declaration that 
sits in the back of this book and the Constitution that was written 
upon the philosophy of the Declaration. And these freedoms that we have 
and these responsibilities that we have are founded upon these three 
branches of government, not three coequal branches of government, not 
separate but equal branches of government, codependent branches of 
government, not equal. The founders established this country with a 
constitutional principle, Mr. Speaker, that gives the buck stops here 
to the legislature because we are the voice of the people.
  And so each branch has its own power base. And the executive branch 
is to carry out and enforce the laws. The legislative branch is to 
introduce and pass the laws, and here we start all the appropriations 
and the tax bills and they go over to the Senate where they get 
processed over there and bounced back here, and then often to the 
President. But it is our job to initiate the funding, initiate the tax 
bills, and to establish an immigration policy by a constitutional 
directive here in this Constitution, Mr. Speaker.
  And so the American people respect this rule of law that is built 
upon this foundation of the rule of law called the Constitution. And 
when they read that Constitution, they know that the rule of law covers 
immigration. And they know that we are obligated to establish 
immigration laws should the will of the people be such. And we have 
passed that legislation many times throughout the history of this great 
Nation. But even though we have, I believe, adequate laws to enforce 
our immigration laws, the American people understand that they have not 
been enforced. They have not been enforced with anywhere near the vigor 
required to slow down and stop the flood of humanity that is pouring 
across our southern border.
  As I speak here tonight, I just do a little bit of round number math, 
and we are in that area of 11,000 illegals a day pouring across our 
southern border; perhaps 12,000. So that comes down into the area of 
while I speak here, there will be perhaps 500 people who have illegally 
crossed the border, just our southern border from Mexico into the 
United States, while I stand here for this 60-minute period of time, 
perhaps 500 people. And it does come up, if I remember right, to about 
one person every 8 seconds coming into the United States.
  I have gone down to the border a number of times to get a better feel 
for what is going on down there. I have been there on what they call 
the red carpet tour with the Border Patrol. I met with the ICE people. 
I have flown in the helicopters over that border at night with the 
giant lamp that they have on some of those choppers, and I have done it 
also with infrared, infrared optical equipment. I have been to the 
stations. I have talked to the Border Patrol officers. I have gone back 
down on my own and slipped in on a surprise trip and arrived at the 
ports of entry and gone in and talked to our Border Patrol people to 
get a feel of what it is really like on the ground.

  And I have gone down to one of the most dangerous and active 
crossings on that entire border and sat there at night in the dark for 
hours, in utter silence, and listened as the cars came up across the 
desert from Mexico, stopped by a big mesquite tree. They opened the 
doors, let their people out. You can hear their backpacks hit the 
ground, pick them back up again. You could hear them infiltrate back 
through the brush to climb through the fence and come into the United 
States of America on a night where there was just about a three-quarter 
moon, not enough to actually be able to tell you exactly what I saw, 
but I know exactly what I heard. As I would hear those vehicles come 
down there, there is only one they would come there, and they came on a 
regular basis about every 20 minutes, shuttling people down, dropping 
them off, shuttle people down and dropping them off, and there they 
would come back across the border into the United States.
  Some of these people just want to come into the United States, they 
say, for a better life. And as I listened to that, I imagine that is 
true with some of them. And it is a fact that there are a fair number 
that are here that are working, that are raising their families, and 
are good citizens so far as we can see. And they are our neighbors, and 
they have actually built a pretty good appreciation and affinity within 
these communities. They have made themselves useful, and when that 
happens, they make themselves good neighbors.
  But the fact remains that those who came into the United States 
illegally are criminals. I see the signs in the streets that say ``I am 
not a criminal.'' Yes. If you violated the Criminal Code of the United 
States of America, you are a criminal. And if you came into the United 
States illegally, you are a criminal.
  And the penalty for illegal entry into the United States is 6 months 
in a Federal penitentiary and then forceable deportation. That is what 
is written into the law. I cannot think of a time when that law has 
been utilized and the penalty has been imposed. And the time that I 
have served on the Immigration Subcommittee here in the House Judiciary 
Committee, not one

[[Page H4003]]

that I know of. It may be the case that it actually has been utilized, 
but I cannot think of a single time.
  So people come in and violate our immigration laws. If they get 
caught, sometimes they get a bus ride down to the border. Sometimes 
they promise to appear. Sometimes they promise not to come back into 
the United States, and we know that people who break our Criminal Code 
probably are not going to keep their promise if it does not suit them 
to do so.
  So we have this border that is 2,000 miles long, 2,000 miles long, 
with 11,000 people a day pouring across that border, 500 an hour, one 
every 8 seconds. And where they will go is they will follow the path of 
least resistance. It is like electricity, just a natural equation.
  If you go to San Diego and build a wall there, which we have done and 
it is not quite finished but we are working on it, if you build that, 
they will go around the end. If you put some more pressure on there and 
put Border Patrol there, they go into Arizona and cross the border in 
the middle of the desert. And they will walk 20 to 25 miles from Mexico 
to get to the border sometimes. Sometimes they are dropped off very 
near the border. Sometimes they walk quite a ways. Sometimes they will 
walk 20, 25 miles up into the United States to get to a highway where 
there is a predetermined pickup place and they will jump in the back of 
a truck or in a van or in a vehicle, and as soon as they are on that 
highway and gone, that is the case. They are gone.
  And with the illegal drugs that come into the United States, the 
difficulty that comes with shutting that off, a lot of pressure says to 
push those drugs into the United States. So if we are successful in 
shutting those drugs down at our points of entry, and I am not 
convinced that we are, but if the odds are a little better to drive a 
truck across the desert and drive across the border into the United 
States, they do a lot of that. Stray trucks, sometimes a semi right 
down the highway even, with a whole load of marijuana in it.
  In fact, I was down there not too long ago, within about the last 
month, and as I was near the border, they picked up a white pickup and 
it was driven by an individual that was covered with tattoos from his 
waist to his neck, and he had a ``13'' tattooed on the inside of his 
forearm right here, and that ``13'' indicates MS-13, Mr. Speaker. And 
that is the most vile and violent gang this hemisphere has ever seen. 
And below in a false bed of that pickup truck, when we took the jaws of 
life and opened it up, there was about a 7-inch thick false floor in 
there with a false chamber. And in that chamber it was packed full of 
bags of marijuana, each one weighing a little over ten pounds. So 
approximately 180 pounds or more of marijuana under the bed of that 
pickup. And this MS-13 individual, he had gotten into the United 
States. We were 20 miles inside the United States, but he looked 
suspicious, drove erratically. And they converged on him, brought the 
helicopter, chased him around with a Black Hawk, brought the ground 
people in, and finally corner him and collared him.
  Now, why would someone who had 180 pounds of marijuana drive 
erratically and tip off the officers to go chase him down? Mr. Speaker, 
I would submit that 180 pounds of marijuana was a decoy, that it was a 
decoy that was designed to pull the helicopter in, to bring all of the 
Border Patrol officers in and the enforcement officers in so that when 
they converged upon that vehicle with that 180 pounds of marijuana, the 
vehicle with 2,000 pounds of marijuana could shoot on through the gap. 
It happens all the time. The officers tell me that on a regular basis. 
Sometimes they are able to catch the decoy and the other load. That is 
how they know. Sometimes that load goes through and they are unable to 
catch them.
  So those are the circumstances down there. And this border that 
sometimes is not marked at all, and in much of New Mexico it has a 
concrete pylon from ridge to ridge, as you can see through an old style 
transit, put the crosshairs on there. That is how the border is marked.

                              {time}  2215

  A vehicle can drive across that border anywhere. How do you control a 
border like that when you have $65 billion worth of illegal drugs 
coming across that border? That's billion with a B. $65 billion, a 
powerful force.
  I want to someday look that up and see just how that ranks in the 
gross domestic product of nations. Just the illegal drugs coming out of 
Mexico into the United States. Ninety percent of the illegal drugs in 
America come through the Mexican border. That is $65 billion worth. If 
you couple that with the $20 billion worth of wages that are earned 
here, much of it by illegals and wired back down to Mexico, those two 
things add up to $85 billion.
  How much is $85 billion, Mr. Speaker? I don't know. It is beyond my 
comprehension. But I can tell you, by comparison, the oil revenue from 
Mexico is $28 billion. Yet they have $65 billion worth of illegal 
drugs, another $20 billion worth of wages that come out of the gross 
domestic product of the United States. That is a powerful force.
  And so if we shut down some of these illegal drugs that are coming 
across our ports of entry, shut down some of the illegal people traffic 
across our ports of entry, then they simply go around, they go out in 
the desert, they cut through somewhere, and then we do this other 
thing, this other wise tactic, I will say, and put that in quotes, we 
build a vehicle barrier along on the border. That consists of some 5-
inch square tubing, drill a hole, set it in it, pour concrete in it and 
take this square steel tubing and set it up and then weld another piece 
of 5-inch square tubing, oh, about headlight high on a vehicle that 
runs along there. That is a vehicle barrier. It is not a fence. It 
keeps out cars and trucks. It is designed to let antelope and snakes 
and any other animals go back and forth because surely we couldn't 
upset Mother Nature by defending ourselves from all the illegal drug 
traffic that is going on. It is designed to let wildlife go through. Of 
course, if you can't drive a semi through there or a straight truck or 
a pickup any longer, then you just simply get your human mules there 
because they can climb through there as easily as an antelope can climb 
through that vehicle barrier.
  So they climb through with their 50-pound pack of marijuana and a 
human pack train of seven or eight or 10 or 20 or 25 or even, I heard 
one report, as high as 100 young men each with 50 pounds of marijuana 
on their back, trekking across the desert, crossing the vehicle barrier 
by throwing their pack through, go through, put their pack back on and 
walk across the desert, 25 miles to a highway, where there is a 
predetermined pickup location, throw their marijuana in the back of a 
truck, their bags of marijuana, some get in the truck and go on, now 
they are in the United States to stay if they choose. Some turn around 
and walk back to Mexico to get another load. This is going on night 
after night after night, bringing these illegal drugs into the United 
States of America.
  $65 billion worth, 11,000 people a day, 77,000 people a week, 4 
million people a year. And we are spending $8 billion a year to protect 
our southern border. That is $4 million a mile. $4 million a mile, and 
we can't stop $65 billion worth of illegal drugs? And why not?
  And so as I go down there and sit on that border and listen and I 
talk to the Border Patrol officers and ICE and the other officers down 
there, I am always asking them that question, how do we get to this 
point where we're successful? First of all, how do you define success? 
And how do we set things up so that we can shut off illegal human 
traffic and shut off the illegal drug traffic? In fact, I believe the 
illegal drug traffic is more dangerous than the illegal human traffic 
but they come together in a package, illegals carrying illegal drugs. 
They come in a package.
  And it is sometimes terrorists coming into the United States, people 
that are from nations of interest. Isn't that a nice politically 
correct phrase for a terrorist nation, a nation of interest? And we 
have caught people down on the southern border who come from terrorist 
nations, nations of interest, whose identification was in the high risk 
database for the Department of Homeland Security. When that happens, 
that is the last we hear of that. I don't know how many there are. I 
know it happens. I know it has happened fairly recently. I know that if 
we caught some, more got away. Those

[[Page H4004]]

that came here to do us ill are going to pay more money to get brought 
into the United States through the illegal traffic route across our 
southern border because they have the resources to do that. When they 
have the resources to do it, and instead of paying a thousand or 
$1,500, now I hear that the coyote prices have maybe gone up as high as 
$2,000. Instead of paying a couple of thousand bucks to come in, it is 
a $30,000 ticket on some of them, which means it is essentially a 
guarantee that you are going to be here. Once they are here, these are 
not the people that are carrying in 50 pounds of marijuana. They are 
the people that are in here to be part of an enclave, to be part of a 
cell that one day will rise up against us here in this country the way 
they rose up in France and in Spain and in Great Britain and also just 
most recently in Canada. It will eventually happen here as we are 
infiltrated by people who believe again that their path to salvation is 
in killing us.
  And so, Mr. Speaker, the solution to this is not a simple one. It is 
not a single component solution. But I have an addition to this 
component that is a very constructive one and an essential component to 
the solution. That, Mr. Speaker, is the necessity for us to not just 
build a vehicle barrier, not just build a simple fence, but to build a 
wall, to build a wall that can actually be utterly effective in keeping 
illegals out of the United States of America. If we can do that, we can 
shut down 90 percent of the illegal drugs that come into this country 
at the same time. We can force all of the traffic to go through our 
ports of entry. And if it is all coming through the ports of entry, 
then we can turn many more of our resources on our ports of entry, 
where now we have thousands of Border Patrol agents that are out there 
trying to chase people down in the desert that are scattered all over 
the place, they can patrol this wall that I propose we build, but they 
can focus a lot more resources on the ports of entry.
  I simply put it this way. This cardboard box I have represents the 
desert floor. The desert floor in a lot of these areas where it will be 
suitable working conditions. Sometimes we are going to run into rocks, 
sometimes into mountains. When you hit the rock, you don't have to dig 
any deeper. They're not going under there. So we will just pour the 
concrete on the rock and put some pins in there to tie it together and 
we will be fine.
  This represents the desert floor and a trench that I would dig 
through there to build this concrete wall. This looks at it from the 
end, a cross-sectional view, I would say. Sock a trencher in and trench 
this. At the same time we do it, we would pour a footing in here with a 
slot in it. And I would demonstrate, Mr. Speaker. This would be the 
footing that I would put in there. This would be a slip form footing, 
which means that the style that you see here with a slot in it that 
would receive precast concrete panels, the bottom of this would be 5 
feet deep. So it would be a trencher that you would sock in here. You 
would have some augers here on the side. You would pull that together. 
As you pull this down, you pump concrete in right behind it.

  I would put it this way. I would sock in here, dig this trench, and 
as this trench moved on, I would be pouring concrete in that trench. 
Maybe the way to go would be from about this end. Let's just say that 
we are pouring concrete here and trenching this way. As the trencher 
comes along, the concrete pours right behind the trencher, and you move 
along at the pace that you can deliver the concrete to it and dig the 
trench. This concrete will set up, and you would leave this slot in the 
middle. The reason for this slot, then, in the middle is so that it can 
receive the precast panels.
  So now I have this concrete footing. Actually the earth would be 
right to the top of this concrete here on each side. It sets in the 
ground 5 feet. It has got the stability that is there. It has got the 
strength. It has got a place to receive these panels.
  Then, Mr. Speaker, I would have trucks pulling in within about 2 days 
of cure time. We would start setting in precast concrete panels. They 
would be a finished height to 12 feet and about 10 feet wide. They 
would weigh about, oh, 9,800 pounds or so, 6 inches thick. They would 
beef them up a little on the bottom, taper them a little on the top. 
You would just take a crane and drop these in.
  I would tell you that our little old construction company would not 
be bidding this, I don't know if you would call it a conflict of 
interest or not, we wouldn't be down there bidding in Arizona but it 
has the kind of work we could do, Mr. Speaker. I would add that we 
could put together about a mile of this a day, just dropping this in 
with a crane, swing them in place. Actually they would go together a 
little better than that. Take these off the bed of the truck, swing 
them in, drop them in just like that, they drop in the slot, the slot 
holds them up. It's firm. It's fixed. And it's that easy to put 
together a 12-foot tall concrete wall, 6 inches thick, precast panels, 
reinforced, of course, tied together with tongue and groove in this 
kind of a fashion. And when we are done with this, this is a wall that 
they are not going to climb through and they are not going to cut 
through. They may try to climb over and they may try to dig under. It 
has not going to be that easy to dig under because we are deep, 
remember, 5 feet deep. Maybe we should go a little bit deeper. I 
wouldn't disagree with that.
  So they don't go over the top, Mr. Speaker. I happen to have this 
handy dandy little piece of concertina wire that I would put right on 
top here and install this wire like this. We could have a little bit 
more concentrated concertina wire so we could put two rolls on here. On 
top of this concrete we could also put on any kind of optical 
equipment, vibration sensers, any other kind of surveillance equipment 
that we so choose. This wall would not go exactly on the border in my 
mind but it would be back north of the border perhaps 60 to 100 feet so 
that there is a patrol zone between. I would have a fence right on the 
border and that would be the fence that thou shalt not cross. In fact, 
I would hang a sign on the south side in Spanish that says, check this 
web page, you can go to the U.S. consul and apply to come to the United 
States legally and that is what you ought to do. I would put that every 
mile. I would have a nice sign there that would say, You're welcome to 
apply. We welcome all people to come apply and come to the United 
States legally, but don't cross this path because you're violating our 
laws.
  Fifty-eight percent of the people in Mexico believe they have a right 
to come to the United States. And so this wall would have a value to 
keep out illegals. It would slow dramatically down. I think it would 
take 90 percent of the human traffic down. I think it would take 90 
percent of the drug traffic down. And it sends a message to the south 
side of the border that says, You don't have a right to come here. 
We're a sovereign nation and we take our applications at the U.S. 
consul.
  But this would be an effective structure that would free up the 
Border Patrol. They would still have to patrol. They would drive back 
and forth. They would cut sign here. They would check for tracks. If 
they caught anybody out here in no man's land, they would be picked up 
immediately. And if they got across this wall, it would be rare and we 
would see the tracks and we would be able to chase them down and I 
think we could catch nearly every one of them that did that.
  Maybe they would want to come with a ladder. Somebody said, well, if 
you show me a 90-foot wall, I'll show you a 90-foot ladder. It is hard 
to carry a ladder across one fence and get it to the next one, Mr. 
Speaker. If so, we have an opportunity to catch them in between. I 
don't think they are going to carry that many ladders across that many 
miles of desert. We will know what kind of tactics they are using, we 
can beef it up, but they are not going to breach this wall easily. They 
are not going to go underneath this thing in any short period of 
people. They are not going to go over it easily. They are going to look 
at it and try to find another way. Some of them will decide, now the 
transaction cost is too high. I believe I'm just going to stay here in 
Mexico and maybe go to work and help improve that country, because that 
country needs its productive people if they are going to have any 
economic future. You empty a nation out of its vitality and what do you 
expect is going to happen? I don't know why it is Vicente Fox is 
willing to see his best people come to the United States, because the 
solution to what is wrong in

[[Page H4005]]

that country is within the people that are leaving, especially the 
people that are leaving.
  They aren't all good folks that are coming here. A lot of them are 
but they come here for about three reasons. One of them is to come here 
and go to work, one of them is they are running away from something and 
maybe they are running away from the law down there, maybe they are 
running away for some other reason and maybe they are coming up here to 
do us harm. That is about the only three reasons why people are coming 
here. I cannot fathom why Vicente Fox would promote the exodus of his 
own people. In fact, 10 percent of the population of Mexico is here in 
the United States. That is a number that I believe is probably on the 
low side. The population of Mexico before the exodus was 104 million. 
If 10 million of them are here, let's just say that number is inflated 
a little bit. Let me round this down to 90 million just for the sake of 
discussion. If there are 90 million people left in Mexico and we pass 
the Senate version of this immigration that they passed here some weeks 
ago, and that version according to Robert Rector of the Heritage 
Foundation, the lowest number he has is that it brings in 59 million 
people over the next 20 years.

                              {time}  2230

  That is 59 million people, added to at least another 20 million 
people. So we are up to 79 million people coming into the United 
States. That is the lowest number.
  The highest numbers were pretty astonishing, up there around 200 
million, but I think that range falls between 59 million and probably 
92 million.
  Let us just say 92 million people in the next 20 years, and are 90 
million people left in Mexico? Some will come from those other 
countries down there. But I will say this that everyone who wants to 
come under the Senate version, everyone who wants to come to the United 
States will come to the United States under that bill.
  It will not be an immigration policy that is designed for the 
interests of the United States. It will be the immigration policy that 
is designed for the wants of people who want to come here. We have 
never had a policy like that in the past, Mr. Speaker. It is not the 
intent of our founders when they gave us the charge in this Congress to 
write immigration law.
  We are charged by our constituents, by the people in the United 
States of America, to devise an immigration policy for the economic, 
social and cultural well-being of the United States of America and 
nothing else.
  We cannot be a safety valve for all of the poverty in the world. For 
every 1 million people that we could bring in across our southern 
border, there are another 10 or 12 million people in the same region 
down there that are born. But for every person, the average citizen of 
Mexico, their average standard of living, there are still 4.6 billion 
people on the planet with a lower standard of living than the average 
citizen of Mexico.
  So if it does our heart good to not say no to some of people who are 
our neighbors, what do we have to say to people that aren't our 
neighbors who live in much greater poverty. What do we say to the 
poverty in Bangladesh, and what do we say to the poverty in Africa?
  The Senate bill leaves a lot of that open as well. The difference is 
it is easier to travel here from Mexico than it is from Bangladesh or 
Africa. So we would get more Mexicans than we would Bangladeshis. But 
that bill is wide open, and the future of this country, the destiny of 
this country, hangs in the balance.
  As the American people do this debate, we need to come to an 
agreement. The message needs to get over to the Senate, and it needs to 
get to the White House, that we are going to stand on the rule of law, 
Mr. Speaker, and that we are going to have enforcement of our 
immigration laws in this country, and that we cannot have, we cannot 
have an immigration policy that is essentially a guest worker, 
temporary worker, amnesty plan, that is built upon the false promise of 
enforcement, when we have had 20 years to enforce our immigration laws 
and over the last 20 years, there has been less and less enforcement 
and more and more accusation of that.
  Of the illegals coming into America, the numbers that were presumably 
1 million in 1986 became 3 million by the time the amnesty was done. 
Now these numbers, we are talking with a straight face, 10- to 12 
million people, and saying it is not amnesty.
  But in reality, this 10- to 12 million is more like 20 million, 22 
million, 27 million, somewhere in that category. The bill that has been 
passed in the Senate takes us up to 59 million or 70 million or 92 
million. The cumulative total for all the immigration legally in the 
history of America, from the time we began to keep records until the 
last numbers we could total in, and those numbers would be 1820 to the 
year 2000, the cumulative total, Mr. Speaker, was 66.1 million people 
coming into the United States.
  That is the immigration total for all of our history. Maybe it is off 
a couple or 3 million because I can't add those before 1820 and I can't 
add those after the year 2000. Statistics aren't available. There are 
66 million people. The Senate version eclipses the grand cumulative 
total for the history of America all in one fell swoop. They say it is 
not amnesty, and it really isn't any big deal. We can do this because 
we need somebody to trim our lawns and trim our nails and wait on us in 
our mansions and change our bedding and cook our steaks.
  How much of this work is not essential work? How much of this work is 
convenient because it is cheap? I can use a lot of servants, if they 
are cheap. So why can't I, you know, that is the attitude. We have this 
new ruling class in America. They made a lot of money hiring illegal 
labor, cheap labor.
  And they have got this attitude that they ought to be able to hire 
this cheap labor also to wait on them in their mansions and trim their 
lawns and wait on them and drive their cars. They want to be able to 
hire them cheap and make a lot of money, and they want to hire them 
cheap so when they spend their money they can be well taken care of.
  This is what is happening. The middle class is diminishing and 
shrinking. That strength of America has been a broad powerful middle 
class, not a shrinking middle class. We have never been an elitist 
country. We have never been an upper or lower class stratification. But 
the ruling class and the servant class are all that will be left if we 
let the open borders crowd rule in this immigration debate in America.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand first on enforcement first and enforcement only. 
If I am able to see a demonstration of that enforcement being 
effective, and it has to be demonstrated for a number of years before I 
am going to believe there is a commitment. Then in that case I am 
willing at some point to have a discussion about what to do with the 
people that might be left here.
  But in the meantime, I want to build this wall, and I want to put 
this wire on top, and I want to shut off illegal traffic at our border, 
and I want to shut off illegal drugs at our border. I want to end 
birthright citizenship, and I want to shut off the jobs magnet, and I 
want to hold the line on this until we can see that we have been 
effective.
  When that day comes, maybe there is time for another debate. But 
until that time we have this bleeding patient, and we have got to stop 
the bleeding. We can worry about what the therapy program is if this 
patient recovers.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence.

                          ____________________