[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 11, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H5023-H5030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McHenry). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the profound
honor to address you in this Chamber. It is a privilege that has been
experienced by only a small number of Americans throughout the years.
I come to the floor this afternoon and evening to address the issues
that are important to us today. I intend to bring up the issues that
have to do with our border control, border security and enforcement of
our Nation's laws, and to talk about the facts behind them, the reasons
that the American people clearly see this issue as a necessity for
enforcement, and the reasons why establishing a guest worker/
[[Page H5024]]
temporary worker plan in the middle of an unknown set of circumstances
with regard to enforcement simply has too many hypotheticals involved
in it to be able to build a good logical plan.
And to make that case, I would state that there are times in one's
life when we are called upon to make large decisions, decisions that
have tremendous impact, decisions that reflect and echo across through
the generations. It might be the generations of our family, it might be
the generations of our neighborhood. In this case, we are talking about
the generations of Americans for a long time to come.
There are two opposing competing forces in this immigration field
today. One of them is this powerful force that is the heart and soul of
the center of America, that we need to enforce the laws that we have.
We need to control our borders. We can't be a Nation if we don't have a
border, and we can't call ourselves a Nation if we don't enforce our
border.
That is something that is a basic fundamental that the American
people know. They may not sit down and articulate it every day. They
may not actually intellectualize it. They may not go back and read all
of these immigration laws that we have. They may not look back and see
the responsibility we have constitutionally to establish immigration
laws here in this Congress. They may not do all that. They might just
have a subliminal sense that is what we should do because it is common
sense; it makes sense. To some it is in their gut instead of their
brain, but they can trust their gut because their instincts are right
on this.
They understand we have to enforce the laws here in America; and if
we don't do that, we won't be forever America. That is the position on
the enforcement side. That is in one corner of this prize fight debate
going on across America.
In the other corner are the people that say that they are for a
policy for guest worker, temporary worker. They are for a policy of
amnesty by any other name, but amnesty. They have been seeking for
years now to redefine the term ``amnesty.'' You can look it up in the
dictionary, but the definition I keep being told I should accept is the
argument of what would not be amnesty. It would not be amnesty if
someone came into this country, broke the law to come in here and broke
the law to stay here, and they stayed here a long time, 5 years or
more. Their roots went down. They made some money. They sent a lot back
to their home country. They started a family. Maybe they bought some
property. Maybe they are a valuable employee to an important business
that is in the community. They sent their roots down.
Now, they are law breakers. Whether they overstayed their visa or
whether they jumped the border illegally, they broke the law. So then
the argument is it isn't amnesty if you just say to them we think you
are a pretty good citizen, other than the fact that you broke the law.
We would like to just give you amnesty, but in order to avoid this
argument, because we know Americans reject the idea and the concept and
the real definition of amnesty, we are going to redefine it. So if you
just pay a fine of $1,500 or $2,000, or the Senate kind of ratcheted it
up in some cases to as much as $3,200, if you just pay the fine, that
takes care of your punishment.
{time} 1730
So it is no longer going to be amnesty because you have paid a price
for breaking the law. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is not
necessarily so much as pay the price as that it puts these people on a
path to citizenship.
The Senate language does that. The path to citizenship is an
objective that is more than was asked for by the people who came here
illegally. Many of them just wanted to work here and make money and
send their money back home, or save money and go back to their home
country and perhaps retire. But we are offering them the plum of
citizenship for a price. And the price is maybe $1,500 or $2,000 or
$3,000 or $3,200. But citizenship for a price.
And that price, I believe, is cheap; and I think it cheapens the
citizenship. Citizenship should be sacred. It should be precious, and
it is to those who are Americans by choice, who got in line, waited
long years to come into the United States, came here, learned to speak
English, learned to write English, learned about our history, learned
about our culture, learned about our civilization and went through that
process of naturalization and became Americans by choice, naturalized
American citizens.
And I have had the privilege to speak at a number of those
naturalization services in my district. And those are some very, very
proud days for me, Mr. Speaker, but they are far more, as far as proud
days are concerned, for the naturalized citizens. That is a highlight
of their life. And in their lifetime, of the things that matter to
them, the day of the citizenship ceremony stands out. It stands out and
maybe stands with the day they get married perhaps, maybe the day of
their first-born child, those kinds of milestones in life.
The naturalization service and ceremony is a milestone that stands
with the very finest events in our lifetimes. And so those people that
came here and became naturalized citizens, they don't want to see
amnesty for people who jumped the border to get here or broke the laws
to stay here. They know what amnesty is, and they don't want to see
their citizenship cheapened by having it for sale, putting it up for a
$1,500, $2,000 or $3,200 check.
What price citizenship for America? Priceless. But you have to
demonstrate that you are going to respect the laws and live by the rule
of law.
And so, some time back, I went to a groundbreaking ceremony for a, it
was an $81 million expansion of a plant in my district. There was an
individual there who was protesting me, and his signs said things such
as, I am a former or a current illegal immigrant, and I believe that we
ought to give amnesty to these people that are here illegally, and they
should have a path to citizenship--different phrases to express what I
have just said.
And so I find out afterwards that he is not shy about saying he is
also a former illegal immigrant who was granted amnesty in the 1986
amnesty that was signed by Ronald Reagan.
So here is an individual who jumped the border, came here illegally,
living presumably in the shadows. 1986 rolled around, and by the stroke
of a pen over at the White House, he and more than 3 million others
received amnesty. Now he is out protesting in the streets, declaring
that 10 or 12 million or, more appropriately, 60 to 90 million people
should have the same path to citizenship that he achieved by the stroke
of a Presidential pen 20 years ago. And he is advocating that people
break the law, jump the border, come here and make demands on American
taxpayers and demands for a path to United States citizenship after
they have shown contempt for the laws of the United States of America.
And their first act was to break the law of the United States of
America. The very first moment they set foot on this soil across that
border, they broke American law. And they march in the streets and
demonstrate in the streets, with flags from other countries often, and
argue that they are not criminals.
But I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that if they cross the border
illegally, they are guilty of a criminal misdemeanor. By definition, it
is a criminal misdemeanor punishable by less than a year in jail. I
think it is 6 months, actually. But that is a criminal misdemeanor.
That makes them criminals if they are guilty of this crime.
It isn't the Congress that has passed a law in H.R. 4437 that makes
them criminals. That would make them felons. And they are arguing that
they are not criminals.
Yes, they are. They are criminals. They haven't been adjudicated to
be criminals yet, but they admit to their criminal action. They just
say, don't call me a criminal.
Well, respect our laws, please. And if you do that and you don't
break our laws, then we won't call you a criminal. And, in fact, we
wouldn't be moving legislation that would identify felons either by
that standard, Mr. Speaker.
And so people who are granted amnesty, who have broken our laws, have
contempt for the rest of our laws because they have profited from
breaking our laws. And that is the wrong kind of reward. If we reward
lawbreakers with citizenship, what are you going to get? More
lawbreakers.
The same Ronald Reagan that only let me down about twice in 8 years
in
[[Page H5025]]
office, and I have mentioned one of those times. That same Ronald
Reagan said, what you tax you get less of. What you subsidize you get
more of. And you know if you subsidize law-breaking you are going to
get more law-breaking, Mr. Speaker, not less. You aren't going to be
able to draw a line in the sand and say now we are not going to
tolerate any more law-breaking.
There is no will in this country right now within the administration
to enforce the laws we have. And the White House is working against the
laws that we are trying to pass asking for more enforcement. And they
are working with McCain, Kennedy, Hagel and Martinez over in the
Senate, working on their version of amnesty, saying we are for this. We
are opposed to amnesty, but we think we ought to be giving people a
path to citizenship who broke the laws to come here. They just should
have to do this rigorous process of moving towards American citizenship
and finding this path to citizenship, and it includes learning English
and keeping a job and paying some of your taxes.
That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Paying some of your taxes should
give you a path to citizenship, not all of your taxes, some of your
taxes, 3 out of the last 5 years. You pick the 3 years to pay the taxes
in.
Well, I would like to be able to do that. I had a couple of good
years out of the last 5. I would like to take those out and say, send
me my money back, Uncle Sam. That was a little tough on me. And I want
to do this. If we are going to give this to people who broke the laws
to come here and who aren't paying any taxes, to offer them, you pick
the lowest 3 out of the last 5 years and pay your taxes, and we will
give you this plum of citizenship, I think we are going to have
millions and millions of people who don't pay any income tax at all.
In fact, we have that today. So this function of just pay your taxes
3 out of the last 5 years, it will be okay. That is not amnesty. I am
saying that, itself, is amnesty to not require them to pay those taxes.
Another argument that is in the Senate bill is, well, they have been
here working, they have been paying Social Security taxes, so surely
you will want to grant them credit for the money that they earned so
that they can collect their Social Security and put pressure on that
system when they reach that retirement level.
Mr. Speaker, they earned the money illegally. If they weren't here
working here legally, their earnings are not legal either. And to
reward them with a retirement fund when our Social Security is going to
go bankrupt if we don't overhaul that Social Security, and on that
case, the President has been right all along, the need of a personal
retirement accounts, need to overhaul Social Security, put more
pressure on it because the Senate somehow believes it is not fair.
It isn't just if we don't grant people that have been working here
against the law the benefits that come with that in the form of
retirement and SSI. Their families are going to benefit from this as
well, the death benefit that goes along with it, the disability benefit
that comes along with it, because they have been earning money under a
false Social Security number. And somehow we are going to ratify and
certify and give people a benefit for having broken the laws of the
United States of America. That is wrong, Mr. Speaker.
And so, Social Security is one piece of this. And putting citizenship
up for sale is another piece. And how do you determine the value of
that citizenship? Do you grant that by what is a coyote charging today?
Is it $1,500, $2,000, $3,200 in order to get passage into the United
States illegally? Whatever that price is, it seems to be indexed pretty
closely to the price that citizenship is for sale over in the United
States Senate. That is how I would describe what is going on here:
citizenship for sale in the United States Senate, running contrary to
the rule of law, undermining American values, weakening our entire
culture and building, not shutting off the jobs magnet, but turning on
the current to the jobs magnet with even more amperage, Mr. Speaker.
Because once this carrot of citizenship, this path towards amnesty
that would be granted under the Senate language happens, there will be
untold millions more come across the border that want to come here and
take advantage of the amnesty that has been offered, or if they aren't
able to get on that particular bandwagon, then they will want to take
advantage of the next inevitable amnesty that will come along.
There have been seven amnesties in the last 20 years. We talk about
the 1986 amnesty; there have been six others. Smaller, lesser, they
came about because we missed some people in 1986, so we had to pass a
few more amnesties to catch up and kind of clean up those people that
are here in this country. And the promise in 1986 was, well, but this
is the last time. This time we really mean it, in 1986; this time we
are really going to enforce the law. This time we are going to make
sure that we seal and control our border. This time we are going to be
100 percent confident that the Federal Government is going to do their
job. 1986.
And, you know, there was some enforcement going on in 1986. And it
didn't take very long before we had a new President and then another
new President, and then in 1992 we got President Clinton. And I was
appalled at the lax approach that President Clinton had in enforcing
our immigration laws. That is when I started to pay attention because I
saw that there were people that were being naturalized before the 1996
election, particularly in California, perhaps a million of them, who
were hustled through the process and went to the polls and voted. And
they knew their duty. Go to the polls and vote. Vote for the President.
That is the way you say thank you for getting hustled through the
citizenship process. That was appalling to me. A million people, many
of them in California.
Those people, some of them have, for want of a better term,
matriculated to Iowa in order to, and gone to work there, and that is
how I hear these things, they come up there, a million people.
Today, a million people sounds like chump change, Mr. Speaker. A
million people coming into the United States quickly under the Clinton
administration. But, the facts are, employers during the Clinton
administration were far more likely to be sanctioned and punished for
hiring illegals than they are today. Under the Clinton administration,
they were 19 times more likely to be sanctioned by the administration
for hiring illegals than they are today. The risk was 19 times greater.
That is how much enforcement has diminished over the last 20 years.
1986 to 2006 enforcement of immigration laws has gone down to the
point where it is almost nonexistent. Border control has not been
anything that alarmed anyone in this administration until they got an
alarm that they weren't going to be able to get their guest worker plan
passed, and then that alarm sent out the message that said, we are
going to have to position ourselves so that America sees that we are
going to enforce the laws. So we have got a few more Border Patrol
agents. We have got a commitment to send the National Guard down there.
We have got speeches that talk about a virtual fence. And I would say
that a virtual fence is not going to keep out the forces that are
pushing on that border.
Now, I could talk about this border to significant lengths. I have
been there about four times in the last year. But I think that those
trips down to the border are far less than those that have been made by
my friend from Colorado. And my friend from Colorado has been on this
issue, I believe, his entire congressional life.
I have been on it my entire public life and before. I grew up
believing in the rule of law. It wasn't something that we conceived of
sanctuary policies, or we didn't think that because we were a
municipality or a county or a State that we didn't cooperate in
enforcing Federal law. Law is law and we have to work together at all
levels to enforce all laws.
And issue after issue has been brought to this floor and before the
American people by my colleague from Colorado, and I would be very
happy and honored to yield so much time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Tom Tancredo.
Mr. TANCREDO. I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate his efforts on
[[Page H5026]]
behalf of the American people. I appreciate especially his efforts on
behalf of those of us, well, in fact, the American people who are
demanding that something be done here in the Congress of the United
States to deal with the fact that people are coming into this country
by the hundreds of thousands, in fact, by the millions. And they are
coming in without our permission, and they are coming in without our
knowledge, and they are essentially destroying the concept of the rule
of law which is, of course, one of the building blocks of this great
Nation.
And it is right that they should look to the Congress of the United
States for some sort of action. And it is only because so much pressure
has been placed on this body and on the Senate that we are seeing the
kinds of bills coming forward that are ostensibly designed to deal with
it.
I believe that the House bill we passed last December was a good step
in the direction of dealing with illegal immigration. It was an
enforcement-only bill. It did not provide amnesty to anyone who is
presently here illegally. And that is the definition.
By the way, if you say to someone, let's get this straight, because
this has really been the bain of our contest between the House and the
Senate, in terms of what do we mean by ``amnesty''?
{time} 1745
The President has said and many Members of the Senate have said that
their bill and that their idea is not amnesty because it does not
provide automatic citizenship to people who are here illegally. And you
have to ask yourself, as we ask them all the time, What law dictionary
did you ever read that had that definition of ``amnesty''?
Amnesty is, of course, when you do not provide the penalty that is
prescribed by the law that has been violated. That is amnesty. So if
you have come into this country illegally, there is a law that you have
violated. What is the penalty? It is, under the law today, that you be
deported.
Now, when you say to people that we are going to disregard that; that
you can, in fact, be here illegally; that we will ignore that entirely,
that now you may have to pay a fine or may have to do a couple of other
little things; and, therefore, what I am saying is not amnesty, that is
wrong, and it should not be allowed to go without being called because,
frankly, they are trying to confuse the American people. And they want
to go out and tout some sort of bill that will be, ``enforcement
only,'' but it will have this component: It will have a guest worker/
amnesty component. Every single one of the bills over there has that.
Some of the bills that have been introduced over here have that
particular component.
So it is our duty, and my colleague has done a great job on this, to
identify the problems and pointing out when people over on our side,
even, try to introduce legislation and, again, cloud the issue of
amnesty, that we have got to be clear with the American people. This is
far too important, and we cannot allow ourselves the great latitude
that is designed in most of these bills to go out there and say we have
dealt with immigration, because we have not.
You can see the fact that it is reaching a boiling point in America,
and one way of determining that is to see what is happening in the
States. And it is amazing because States now are taking on this issue
because the Congress will not. States like Georgia and Alabama and
Florida, and now we can add to the list Colorado, which recently passed
a bill that came out of a special session called by the Governor. Now,
this is amazing in and of itself, a special session of a State
legislature. They had gone out of session.
The Governor called them back and said, You have got to deal with
something here. And what was that something? Was it the prison system?
No. It was illegal immigration, because, of course, the State of
Colorado, like every State, is being impacted by this problem and
impacted negatively. The costs are enormous. And so they were called
into special session, and Colorado did pass a bill. By the way, a
Democrat legislature that could not figure out a way to not pass it. I
mean, they tried everything imaginable to avoid it, and finally they
had to come to the point where they did pass legislation that will
restrict social service benefits to people who are presently legally in
the State of Colorado. And this is an amazing thing.
Like I say, Georgia has passed, I think, perhaps the best series of
laws on this issue. The State of Alabama has contracted with the
Federal Government in a memorandum of understanding saying that the
State police will identify to ICE, the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, officials everyone they come in contact with who is an
illegal immigrant and those people will in turn be taken away by ICE.
That is an agreement they have come up with. Florida is following in
their footsteps.
This is happening throughout the United States, and I am happy to see
it. But it only points out that there has been a dereliction of duty
here at the Federal level because clearly this is one of the
constitutional areas that is clearly defined as Federal. I mean, it is
our role. It is our responsibility. It falls on our shoulders.
Sixteen sheriffs along the border in Texas formed together an
alliance to try to defend their border. I mean, what does that tell us
here? They look to us for support. And one of the things they were
asking for, by the way, was just financial aid so they could buy
equipment and arms to be as well armed as the people they were facing
on the other side of the border.
It is about time that we do something, but that something has to be
substantive. It cannot be eyewash. And it is going to be our duty,
yours and mine and others who care about this issue, to bring to the
attention of the American public exactly what is going on here, the
nature of the bills that are being introduced. We have to be very
specific, and we cannot let people cloud the issue.
So I just again want to thank my colleague from Iowa for the yeoman's
work he has been doing on this and the fact that he has done exactly
what I have said. He has identified bills that have been introduced,
even by our own colleagues over here, specifically Mr. Pence, and
explained why those bills are, in fact, also amnesty. I mean, that bill
is, in fact, amnesty, and others like it have an amnesty provision to
it that people can get citizenship if they are here illegally under
those bills. Even though there are all these protestations to the
contrary, the fact is that that is still what is being pushed. The
other side will do anything to get a guest worker/amnesty plan,
including the suggestion that it will all be done under a guise of
enforcement first. We have to be very careful.
And I just, again, want to thank my colleague for his efforts on
behalf of the people of this country on especially this issue.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado.
It is important, I think, Mr. Speaker, that we are able to hear that
direct message from the Colorado State legislature. That is an amazing
thing beyond the conception of us, I think, here a year or two or three
ago, let alone four or five or six when this issue first came up. And I
would even go back to my recollection in 1996, when Pat Buchanan ran
for the Presidency and he said, I will call hearings. I will make sure
we have a national debate on immigration.
And that was what we lacked in 1996. That is what Mr. Tancredo has
been working for for all of these years he has been in this Congress.
We are at this point now where you cannot avoid a national debate on
immigration. It is everywhere. It is in the coffee shop. It is at work.
It is here in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. It is in our churches. It is
in our homes. It is absolutely everywhere. And the reason is because it
has gotten so bad that Americans are being personally impacted piece by
piece by piece. They are standing up saying, What can I do within the
jurisdiction that I have, within the resources that I have? How can I
step in and fix this? And we have seen other States take action too.
There have been 8 or 10 States that have had some kind of legislative
immigration activity going on. And so I applaud them for that.
And the Minutemen, I had the privilege to go down to the border of
Arizona and Mexico and help build some fence to get some of that
project started. And I happen to have a list of 25 Members of Congress
that would be happy to help put some fence up to be able to control
this border.
[[Page H5027]]
But I want to lay a little groundwork for that before I yield to my
colleagues. And that is this: that an administration that had the
determination to shut off the jobs magnet and enforce the laws at our
borders; if we had the ability and the will to enforce our borders and
shut off that jobs magnet, and add into that shutting off birthright
citizenship, which is another magnet that brings people here and starts
that chain migration for up to 350,000 babies every year that should
not have been born in the United States of America, those kinds of
decisions from an administration that was committed could have kept
this under manageable proportions.
But what really has happened is that lack of commitment has allowed
for a lack of enforcement. The lack of enforcement, that message echoes
through the entire countries south of our border, on the Rio Grande and
at our border with Mexico. When that happens, it magnetizes and more
people come into the United States.
Now we have a situation where 4 million people a year pour across our
southern border. Four million. And I went down there and repeated what
the Border Patrol tells me here in hearings, that they stop perhaps 25
to 33 percent, a fourth to a third of the illegal border crossers. And
they are not very free about talking about what percentage of drugs
they interdict coming down there. They will talk about the tonnage, but
not the percentage. They say 25 to 33 percent of the border crossers
they stop.
And I say that to the Border Patrol people who are down there sitting
in a nice quiet place where they do not have to worry about a superior
listening in on them. And some of them laughed when I said, You are
stopping 25 percent, maybe 33 percent? Some of them laughed. None of
them said yes. One of them went into hysterics and said, 25 percent? We
are not stopping anywhere near 25 percent.
I asked them all what is the number. The most common number I got was
perhaps 10 percent. I had one of the high-level investigators tell me
we stop about 3 percent of the illegal crossers and about 5 percent of
the illegal drugs. But the power and the force of this is just awesome.
It is $65 billion worth of illegal drugs coming across our southern
border, and that is a powerful force, Mr. Speaker. That force is so
powerful that even if we shut off all illegal people coming across the
border, even if we shut off the jobs magnet here in the United States,
even if we end birthright citizenship to shut off that magnet, that
does nothing to shut off the $65 billion worth of illegal drugs.
And that is why we have got to build a fence, and that is why we have
got to build a wall. That is not an administrative decision on whether
to enforce or not, whether to deploy people or not, or whether to
actually arrest them and prosecute them. That is a physical barrier,
not an administrative decision. That is why it is important, Mr.
Speaker.
And I would be happy to yield to my friend from Virginia who raised
this issue with a powerful voice on immigration.
Mr. GOODE. Thank you, Mr. King. I want to thank you for having this
hour to address this most important topic. I also want to thank
Congressman Tancredo for his tireless efforts over about an 8-year
period.
I was thinking the other day when the Immigration Reform Caucus first
started that there was a handful of Members, and I believe it was
around 1998 or 1999 when it first began. And now I think there are over
100 Members in that caucus. Well over a third of the House is in the
Immigration Reform Caucus. And the issue received very little attention
prior to September 11. After that the issue received greater attention.
I will have to say that I remember the days in the late 1990s when
Mr. Tancredo would come over here, and others who would talk on this
issue, and it was almost as if he had leprosy. They did not want to
talk about the issue. But the issue is probably the burning issue in
the country today. If not, it is certainly in the top three.
And I want to thank Mr. King, Mr. Tancredo, Mr. Miller, Mr. Gingrey,
Mr. Wilson, and a number of other persons that are here tonight
focusing on this issue which is so crucial to the future of the United
States of America.
If the massive invasion is not stopped, we are going to be flooded to
the extent that we will drift into third world status. For our children
and for our grandchildren, we cannot fail on this issue.
You mentioned magnets, and that is the reason so many come.
Let us talk for a minute about amnesty. In my district there are some
persons, I am pretty sure, here illegally, in the United States, and it
is common sense, street talk about why they come. They say if we can
get across the border, swim the Rio Grande, or walk across the
mountains, avoid the dangers and the pitfalls of the gyrating
temperatures, if we can get to this country and we just stay here a few
years, history tells us we will get an amnesty and we will be okay. We
can avoid the checks that all the others go through. We can avoid the
background checks. We can avoid the health checks. We can avoid the
security reviews that going through a regular visa process or becoming
an H-1B or an H-2B or an H-2A worker involves.
{time} 1800
Amnesty is the magnet. Other magnets that you mentioned are anchor
babies who get benefits in this country and employer deductions for
employees, even if they are here illegally, which Mr. King is
addressing. There are a number of other magnets, but probably the
biggest magnet is the notion, if I can get there just for a little
while and stay a couple of years, I will be safe; I will never have to
go back.
There will be some in that body across the hall or in the executive
branch down at Pennsylvania Avenue saying there is nothing we can do;
they are here now, we cannot be firm. But I would submit to you, as
some of you on this issue have stated in the past, if we were to draw a
line in the sand and say the Senate bill that includes amnesty would
never become law, we will never have it in this country, we are putting
a line in the sand tonight in saying no amnesty under any conditions,
those that marched in by the tens of thousands would likely march out
by the tens of thousands because they would know then that their hope
for an amnesty like that which occurred in 1986 and like that which
occurred under President Clinton would not happen again.
Failure to address this issue with firmness and forcefulness is
creating a dangerous situation in this country. We have all talked
about how those who would do us harm can infiltrate and become part of
the flood that rolls into America day after day, hour after hour, and
week after week. We must secure our borders.
We only have to look at the prison population in the United States. I
serve on the Commerce, Justice, State Subcommittee of Appropriations.
The head of the Department of the Federal Bureau of Prisons testified
before our subcommittee just a couple of months ago, there are 189,000
persons incarcerated in the Federal penal system. Of that 189,000,
50,000 of them, according to him, are illegal aliens. Think how much we
could reduce the Federal prison costs if we had no illegal aliens in
this country. Think how much you could reduce local jail costs and
State prison costs. That percentage of incarcerated illegal aliens far
exceeds the percentage of illegal aliens in our current population.
I would like to close by mentioning deficit reduction. I hear many
persons across the 5th District of Virginia, around the Commonwealth
and in other parts of our country say, we need to get the deficit under
control, we need to be in a position in this country of not having a
deficit. When you add up the impact of illegal immigration on our local
governments, our State governments and our own Federal Government, you
are talking around $70 billion per year, and that is probably a low
estimate.
Stop illegal immigration by saying ``no'' to amnesty ever, and by
adopting a number of the measures that the fighters for border security
support, and we will go a long way towards ending the deficit in this
country.
Mr. Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to address you.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia
[[Page H5028]]
(Mr. Goode) and appreciate particularly the strong voice that you have
been, solid and consistent and strong. I remember you were at one point
saying, I want a wall and I want it 2,000 miles long and I want it from
San Diego to Brownsville. I am looking forward to the day when that
last mile gets built, and by then maybe we will have the kind of border
security that we need.
But Californians have a long experience with the border control
issue, and one of the leaders on this issue is the gentleman from
California (Mr. Gary Miller), and I am very happy to yield to him.
Mr. GARY G. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much
for yielding.
I represent the 42nd Congressional District in California, and for
those of you who have not been to California, I do not truly believe
you understand the concept of illegal immigration.
When I hear my colleagues, and individuals I consider friends, they
get up before us and say, a guest worker program is needed to fill
those jobs that Americans will not do, I guess you have to define what
are the jobs we are offering Americans. What wages are they offering
Americans to work is probably the best question.
The National Journal, in fact, did a study that I know determined in
1973 that the average manufacturing job in nonmanagerial service work
paid about $15.24 an hour. At that time, you could get a job in
construction, in manufacturing, most businesses. A man or woman could
afford to own a home, send their kids to school, live a good, quality
life and plan for the future. The problem was that in 2004, those jobs
that in 1973 paid $15.24 an hour, paid $15.26 an hour.
Talk to the individual who was a carpenter, who was a plumber, who
poured concrete, who did masonry, who was honorably employed by a
manufacturing company, that was paid good wages, and you saw this
dramatic change start to occur during the recession in California of
the 1990s. All of the sudden things were tighter. People started hiring
individuals here in this country for a much lesser wage than the
American citizen was willing to do that job for.
A good example, I remember seeing dry-wallers being laid off and an
illegal being hired. It is not that illegals are bad people. By and
large, they are really good people. They are just trying to come here
to better their lives. So it is not a matter of race or discrimination.
It is just the fact that can the United States accept all the poor that
this world wants to send here? And if we decided to do that, why not
accept them from India? Why not accept them from Asia? Why not accept
them from anyplace in the world and double, triple, quadruple our
population if we are just going to be benevolent and accept people who
are poor and want to better their lives?
But the problem you have, and this is back to the dry-waller, then
you see an illegal hanging dry wall and his wife and kids are going
behind him nailing the dry wall off to get the job done quicker so the
husband could produce more at a much lesser rate than the American
citizen was paid before.
Now, how do you explain that to the American who was born here, who
was educated here, who perhaps does not want to put a suit and tie on
to go to work in the morning, who wants to work with his hands in that
job that he is very capable of doing, but cannot afford to do for the
reduced rate that an illegal is willing to work for? How do you tell
that man he cannot support his family, educate his children and cannot
afford a home anymore?
In the National Journal, it is not me saying it, it is them saying
it, that over 30 years later we are paying 2 cents per hour on average
more than we were paying in 1993. I do not think Members of Congress
who, as I say, get up and put a suit on in the morning and wear ties
understand that people working for a living in this country are those
who are most impacted by what we have done.
We have to hold employers accountable. For an employer to say, well,
I just do not know; well, that is unrealistic, because we have a pilot
program today that any employer in this country can go verify whether
that individual is a citizen or not. If you are unwilling to do that
and you hire questionable employees that you know or you suspect are
not here legally, you are violating the laws of this country. The sad
thing is, the violation of that law is hurting American workers who
would love to have that job.
Are there some jobs in this country that I think we maybe need to
look at? I think after we enforce the current laws that are on the
books, or we pass new laws to stop illegal immigration, then let us
look at the jobs that we do need to fill. I do not think there is an
argument by many people that the agricultural industry, farmers, are
probably going to need some labor. We have needed them historically
since World War II, and before we had a program that took care of that.
So there are certain industries, whether it be landscaping,
gardening, I do not know if we have got to have them for food services,
but I think there are certain industries where we are probably going to
recognize that we do need some guest worker programs.
But to come in with a concept, let us just have a guest worker
program for anybody who wants to hire somebody at a wage an American
citizen is not willing to work at is an absolutely unreasonable
approach to a very real problem that is not getting better daily.
We talk about an amnesty program, which is what I consider the Senate
bill to be. In 1986, we allowed amnesty, and what did it get us?
Nothing. It created more citizens of those who were here illegal, but
we did nothing to enforce the law after we allowed amnesty for those
that were here illegally.
The American citizens, the people I represent, do not believe us
anymore, and they do not believe us for good reason. What we told them
that we were going to do in 1986 we did not do.
I think we need to go pass a law today, a new law that is strict,
enforceable and specific on what we are going to allow and not allow.
We need to prove to the American people that we are going to send law-
breakers back and we are going to hold employers accountable for hiring
people that are here illegally.
Now, one argument that I hear repeatedly is, well, what are you going
to do with all the people that came here illegally? They came here for
a job, and if there is no job, they will go back home. The government
does not need to provide buses. The government needs to remove the
incentives that allow people to live here.
There are many. We need to crack down on employers, number one. We
need to prohibit access to credit and financial service. We need to
prevent illegals from gaining access to food stamps, low-income housing
and health care.
I cannot go to Mexico and buy a house. They will not allow me to.
Well, why should somebody come to this country illegally, violating the
laws of this country, and be eligible to do something that they will
not allow us to do in their own country?
Can you imagine going to Mexico and saying, I want a ballot printed
in English? I want you to teach my children English in school? I want
you to provide free health care at the emergency ward at the hospital
for them? And I want you to allow me to stay here when you know I am
staying in violation of your laws?
If I go to Mexico illegally, they will arrest me, confiscate my
assets and deport me immediately. Those who come here from those
countries act like we are being abusive when they came from a country
where they have not in any way tolerated what we are told we have to
tolerate here.
Now, it does not amaze me that when we send a bill out of the House
to stop this problem, that Mexico and South American countries would
oppose it. Well, why would they not oppose it? It does not benefit
their interests. Their interests are sending anybody to this country,
helping them come to this country, provide information to them to come
to this country so they can earn money and send it back to their home
country. Well, that is wrong.
This is the Congress of the United States of America, and this
Congress should protect American citizens first, understanding that in
South America and Mexico there are very good people. They are our
neighbors; there is no argument about that. But if they want to come
here, they should come here the same way I have gone to their country;
[[Page H5029]]
and that is go there with a visa, go there with a passport, and when I
am through, I come home. I cannot just overstay my welcome as long as I
deem that I should be there. I have to come home or they will send me
home.
We welcome them into our country if they want to come on vacation,
come to visit their families or come to do what they want to do, but at
the given time, you go home and you do not come here illegally to get a
job thinking you are going to stay in violation of the laws this
country has placed upon the books.
Now, we are either a country of laws or we are not a country of laws,
and today, we do not enforce the laws of this country at all. This
concept we have in the Senate bill of earned citizenship will
absolutely bankrupt our social fabric in this country. We cannot spend
$50 billion a year, as it is estimated, on those coming to this country
who, once they become citizens, are eligible for every program on the
social books that we have in this country. We cannot afford it. We
should not tolerate it.
Go to California and look at the impact on schools. I have talked to
teachers who said they are holding this class back because the bulk of
the student body in that class do not speak English. Now, yes, it is a
benefit to those kids who are here illegally because they are being
educated, but it is a tremendous detriment to the children of American
citizens who are being held back because the rest of the class cannot
speak English to be moved forward.
{time} 1815
Go to an emergency ward in California. You will wait for hours.
People go there that are illegal, cannot speak English, for a sprained
ankle, for a headache, for a cold, for basic health care. That is not
what an emergency ward is for. And who is paying the bill? The people
who use the hospital, who are having to subsidize it because they are
losing money treating illegals.
We are a compassionate country. There is no doubt about it. If
someone is here and they have had an emergency and they need to go to
the hospital, they should be treated. You should allow nobody to
suffer, nobody to die, but you cannot tolerate 12 to 20 million people
coming here with this concept that health care is free, because when
they get it they do not have to pay it.
Well, you cannot blame them for that. The people you can blame are
the people in this room, for not making sure the laws passed by this
Congress are enforced in this country. We can no longer tolerate it.
Once again, they are good people that are trying to get here, by and
large not bad people. But the American citizen cannot afford it.
It is our responsibility, first of all, to protect and defend our
borders. We are not doing it. And we should be concerned about the
future of America and American citizens. Hopefully, when this debate
continues and enough good people come here and talk about the impact on
this country, we will fix the wrong that has occurred and make sure it
does not happen again.
Thank you.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California
(Mr. Gary G. Miller) for that presentation and that perspective. It is
a little bit different one than I often bring to this debate, and very
glad that it is here on the floor, Mr. Speaker, and am glad that it is
something that the American people can pick up on as well.
Before I yield to the gentleman from Georgia, I am going to do the 2-
minute drill on the King Wall on the border. I come to this conclusion
this way. As the gentleman, Mr. Miller, made the statement that people
come here and work and send their money back. And that dollar figure
now is $20 billion that gets sent out of the labor here in the United
States. Many of it is the labor of the people that are working here
illegally. $20 billion to Mexico. Another $20 billion to Central
America and the Caribbean. $40 billion out of this economy being sent
out by people who come here that undercut the wages of American people.
$40 billion going south. $65 billion going south to pay for the $65
billion dollars worth of illegal drugs that come across our porous
border. And they used to take that, and maybe still do, bring in some
of those drugs on semis. There are places that the border is not even
marked. So they can drive across the desert; they can drive their own
road. In New Mexico, for example, the border, you would never know you
crossed the border there, because when they finally set that border up,
they set one of those big old big brass transits, probably not a lot
different than Lewis and Clark had back in those days, and looked
across at the horizon and put a concrete pylon up on top of the highest
point of the horizon, lined up on that and then said, okay, now we will
go to the next horizon, put up another one. That is all that is there.
And so there are roads that are made that cross the border a lot of
places; the channel of the Rio Grande River gets driven across a lot of
places. A place that is infamous, now called Neeley's Crossing, where
they bring drugs across there and defend that border and threaten
Americans that want to seal that off.
All this is going on, Mr. Speaker, and a lot of it is not just the
force of people that want to come here for a little better life, not
people who just want to pick lettuce or tomatoes or go work in a sheet
rock crew or whatever it is, but $65 billion worth of illegal drugs.
So whatever we might do to shut off the jobs magnet is not going to
shut off those illegal drugs. That is another force. And that force is
far more powerful than the desire for people to change their lifestyle.
So when I go down there and sit on that border, what I do is I have
come to this conclusion: we cannot shut that off unless we build a
fence and a wall. I want to put the fence in, but I want to put a wall
in. I designed one. And this just simply is the desert floor. Put a
trench in that desert floor.
We have the ability to put together a machine that would be a slip-
form machine that would lay a footing, about like this, Mr. Speaker, if
I give you a look at the end of that, so you would have that about 5
foot deep underneath the ground. That would keep the wall from tipping
over.
We would pour a notch in it that allows us to put precast panels in.
It would look like this, only this would be flush with the desert
floor. And then you would bring in precast concrete panels, 10 feet
wide, 13\1/2\ feet tall. They would construct it to be a 12-foot
finished wall, just like that, Mr. Speaker.
Drop these panels in together, in this fashion, just take a crane and
drop them in, Arnold Construction Company could build a mile a day of
this pretty easily once you got your system going. And it is not all
going to work, the whole 2,000 miles are not going to work that way,
but a lot of it will work this way, Mr. Speaker.
And so just to wrap up this construction, this would be an example
then of how that wall would look. Now you can also, you deconstruct it
the same way. You can take it back down. If somehow they got their
economy working, and got their laws working in Mexico, we can pull this
back out just as easy as we can put it in. We can open it up again and
we can open it up and let livestock run through there or whatever we
choose.
I also say we need to do a few other things on top of that wall, and
one of them being to put a little bit of wire on top here to provide a
disincentive for people to climb over the top or put a ladder there.
We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that would
not kill somebody, but it would be a discouragement for them to be
fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time. So I
submit we build a wall like this, we do it for as many miles as we can,
as many miles as we need, but it is roughly going to be 2,000.
And when you do that, then the Border Patrol that we are spending $8
billion to protect 2,000 miles of border, $4 million a mile, we can
build this wall for about $1.3 million a mile. If we do that, then that
frees up our forces to be effective. And this would force the traffic
through the ports of entry rather than across that vast open space that
we have between San Diego and Brownsville.
This will be economically feasible. The $4 million a mile, we can
make an investment of about $1.3 million for each mile, and that is
only one time one year. Otherwise, we are paying Border Patrol $4
million a mile every single year. What do we get out of it?
[[Page H5030]]
$65 billion worth of illegal drugs and 4 million people coming across
the border. This will shut off almost all of that. This will direct
almost all of it through our ports of entry.
Those are the reasons, some of them, not all of them, Mr. Speaker, on
why we need to build a wall. But in the brief time that we have, I want
to make sure that I can yield to the gentleman from Georgia who has
been such an eloquent voice on this issue.
Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. King very much for controlling
the time in this hour. I thank him for yielding, and certainly Mr.
Miller and Mr. Tancredo, Mr. Goode and others that have spoken during
this hour. Those are the eloquent voices on this issue. They are not
crazy voices. They are voices that are basically saying, you know, we
got laws in this country and we need to enforce them.
We need to secure our borders first and foremost before we consider
any other options in regard to things like a temporary worker program
or what to do with the estimated 12 million people here that have been
in this country for various and sundry periods of time illegally, most
of them working, yes. There is no way in the world you can determine
really how long they are here because of fraudulent documents.
But the ideas that have been proffered, like the idea that my friend
from Iowa has suggested in regard to this, because I do not know if we
need a fence, Mr. Speaker, for 2,000 miles all of the way from
Brownsville to San Diego, but we definitely need some fencing. There is
no question about it. There are certain areas of our southern border
that you cannot control without the type of fencing that Mr. King has
described.
And we need to do that. In fact, in this body, in this House of
Representatives, in our bill that we passed, actually we passed two
bills over the last couple of years, the first one being the REAL ID
Act, which is exactly what the 9/11 Commission has asked for, that
bipartisan commission in unanimous fashion, we responded to exactly
what they were asking us to do in the REAL ID Act.
Then we followed up with the Border Security Act toward the end of
2005, calling, Mr. Speaker, for 750 miles of fencing, not 2,000, but
750. What does the Senate do? They come along with a bill that calls
for about maybe 300 miles of fencing, at the very most 370 miles.
My friend, Mr. King, who has been such a strong advocate on this
issue of border security knows that that is totally, totally
inadequate, particularly if you are talking about the dense population
centers below our border States. I know in the REAL ID Act, we finally
completed 14 miles of fencing at the San Diego border that the
environmentalists had blocked for years because of some endangered
shrub the hordes of illegals that were crossing trample those shrubs
down pretty effectively, taking care of any concerns that the
environmentalists may have had.
But listen to some of the things that are in the bill on the Senate
side compared to what we have passed on the House side. They would
allow guest workers, so-called guest workers to be paid the prevailing
wage. That is the Obama amendment, when American citizens do not have
to be paid prevailing wage.
They expand the visa waiver program to countries in the European
Union in good standing with the United States and allow the State
Department discretion for adding new member countries. Mr. Speaker, we
need to suspend the visa waiver program. We absolutely, after 9/11,
this idea of saying that people can come into this country with a
passport, no visa, and stay for 90 days, no way of knowing exactly who
they are, just a routine stamp of a passport, and then they may or may
not go home after that vacation or that summer that they spend in one
of our colleges or universities, and we do not know where they are.
We need, and we called for this in the PATRIOT Act, we called for
this in the 9/11 Act, that we knew, we could verify entry and exit.
Until we can do that, the idea of expanding, Mr. Speaker, the visa
waiver program is ridiculous.
The bottom line is this. I think the House has got it right. I think
the Senate has it wrong. We need to secure our borders first and
foremost. And no amnesty. I yield back. I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I yield back,
Mr. Speaker.
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