[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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