Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 34 (Wednesday, February 28, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 34 (Wednesday, February 28, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2028-H2035]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

IMMIGRATION REFORM

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Clarke). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Welcome to the Speaker's chair and the gavel of the
United States Congress. It is a big and important thing to serve in
this place, and it is always an honor to walk down here on the floor.
It is absolutely an honor to be seated there in the Speaker's chair
that has seated so many esteemed colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
And the kind of leadership that has come from there back through
history, the halls and the floor here echo with their influence, and
the destiny of America has absolutely been redirected by that seat and
by that gavel, and will continue to do so. And I very much look forward
to continuing to work in this capacity.
I come to the floor this afternoon, Madam Speaker, to raise an issue
here and carry on a discussion that is the most intense discussion item
across America. And I would challenge anyone to walk into a coffee shop
or a place of work or anyplace where Americans gather to talk about the
issues of the day, and you don't have to change the subject, just stop
and listen, ask a question and see what comes up first. Maybe the
weather, maybe a sports team.
But when it shakes down to it, Madam Speaker, and we have talked
about all of the amenities and the niceties and the general discussion
topics that don't have a lot of substance but carry on the day, in the
end, in America we get down to one of two subjects, and that is either
the global war on terror on which Iraq is a principle battleground, or
it is immigration. And sometimes it is both.
And having just come back from another trip to the border last week
about now a week ago, and having been flush full of the things that I
learned down there, I am compelled to come here to the floor, Madam
Speaker, and raise the issue and begin to examine this subject and
topic a little bit more.
We have now, for about 3 years, had an intense debate and discussion
on immigration, and there are those of us here in this Chamber, in
fact, this House of Representatives last fall voted to build a double
fence/wall on the southern border, and laid out the distances, the
locations and the distances from those locations. And, when calculated
and totaled up, it becomes clear that Congress has mandated, the House
and the Senate has mandated that there be 854 miles of at least double-
walled fencing, a double fencing or a double fencing and wall
constructed upon our southern border in priority areas, Madam Speaker.
And last week, I went down to review some of the beginnings of that
construction.
It also establishes a mandate that the Secretary of Homeland
Security, Mr. Chertoff, will establish interlocking cameras and other
technology along the border, and he has until May 31 of this year to
complete the construction of the interlocking technology according to
authorization of the Secure Fence Act, and another year to complete the
construction of the double fencing and that 854 miles of that priority
area. And then, with the exception of an area at Laredo that is 15
miles, that are 15 miles of either side of Laredo, and that those 15
miles can be constructed in the 2008 construction season on up until
December 30 of 2008, that is the congressional mandate, Madam Speaker.
That is the mandate that was passed by a significant majority here in
the House of Representatives, and a mandate that was passed by a vote
that I do remember in the Senate that was 80-19. It was bipartisan,
obviously. It had very solid support. And the reason that it had such
solid support is this physical barrier that is mandated by Congress and
signed by the President, bipartisan mandate, House and Senate, Madam
Speaker; these physical barriers or these pairs of physical barriers,
double fencing and walls, are something that is not an administrative
decision; it is not something that is necessarily prone to human
failure or human error or human lack of will to enforce. If you put
those barriers in there, they are going to do some good regardless of
whether there is anyone there that is maintaining and manning and
guarding them or not, which, of course, we need to do.
And any kind of a structure that we put in place must be maintained,
it must be guarded, it must be manned. It needs to have sensors on it.
But these barriers will allow our Border Patrol officers and other
backup enforcement officers that we have to be able to respond in a
more effective fashion. And if they are going to defeat the barriers,
it will take time to do that. And if they trip the sensors, and they
should, that will give our Border Patrol officers an opportunity to
descend upon that site and make the kind of arrests that are necessary
so that the word gets out that there are areas of this border at least
that you had better not try to cross.
Now, this area in San Luis, Arizona is just south of Yuma. It is a
community on the U.S. side that is as far southwest as you can get on
the border in Arizona. This is a location that has had some rather
permanent steel wall right on the border that has been there for some
time, and we have added to that. Now, this permanent steel wall, this
is a steel landing mat, interlocking landing mat that is welded
together along that border, is being extended in both directions from
San Luis. And I reflect also in hearing the remark from the gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) that we need some 200,000 welders by the year 2010
or 2012, I forget which exact year that was.
I have heard those kinds of cries for help before, and I have lived
through those deadlines, and we always seem to come up with the number
of people we need to do the job that is necessary. One of the things we
do is we just simply pay people what it is worth and they show up to do
the job. But if they are short about 6 or 7 welders in 2010, they can
get ahold of Secretary Chertoff who picked up a welder down there and
welded some of that steel wall together right on the border of San
Luis, Arizona. And that also was the case with Senator Johnny Isakson,
Senator Ben Nelson, Congressman Mike Pence. And I am not sure, that is
the ones that I saw, there were probably others that also lended a
hand, as I did, to weld some of that fencing and wall together. It was
more symbolic than production, but symbolism does matter in this
business, and it helps encourage the people that are down there
building those barriers.
And particularly, our National Guard that are down on the border,
approaching 6,000 strong, they freed up at least 500 on-line slots for
Border Patrol agents that can be up-front patrolling. And they are
constructing fence and wall with the time that they have down there on
the border. Their morale seems to be good. They act like they believe
in their mission. I believe in their mission. I am encouraged by the
fact that they are there, hands on, building, constructing, putting
barriers in place, because this Congress mandated and the President
signed, however unenthusiastically, he did sign the authorization of
the Secure Fence Act that mandates 854 miles of double fence wall on
our border.
And then, after the mandate and the authorization, the authorization
which is the mandate, then we heard continually from the critics across
the country, well, you will never fund it. And if you never fund it,
then it will never be built. So it was only, the allegation that it was
only the part of Congress to just simply make a promise that we

[[Page H2029]]

didn't intend to fulfill. And I heard that criticism all the way
through the campaign season to November 7 and all the way beyond that
well into December, and I have heard smatterings of it since then and
questions that come from the media. And at some point last month,
Congressman Duncan Hunter, who is the ranking member of the Armed
Services Committee and former chairman, and a real leader on this fence
on the border, and I and several others, did a press conference.
Actually, it was Duncan Hunter and myself on that particular press
conference. And we talked about how this fence will be built and needs
to be built and must be built, and it is a congressional mandate.
And I pointed to the line item in the appropriations bill that funds
the Department of Homeland Security, and their overall appropriation is
34 point something billion dollars. And in that 34 point something
billion dollars is a line item for double fence and wall and the
technology that goes with it, the interlocking cameras and the other
devices, and some of them now are ground based radar, funding for all
of that to the tune of $1,187,000,000 and change.
Now, that is the line item that has been appropriated. That money
goes to only one thing, and that is securing our border with either
technology or fence, and then the necessary support that it takes to
get that done.
We followed through, we mandated 854 miles of fence and wall, double,
and we have appropriated $1,187,000,000. Now that is probably not
enough to complete the whole 854 miles, but, Madam Speaker, it is a
great start. And we have given a great start here in Congress and
created this inertia and provided the mandate, and now the Department
of Homeland Security working with the National Guard has got a
beginning.
I won't say they have a great start or that they have even a good
start, but they have a beginning. And it is great to have a beginning.
We are able to do hands-on on the beginning. It is a triple fence there
south of Yuma in San Luis.
So as I ask the question, Madam Speaker, of how effective are these
barriers that we are putting here in place, the answer that I get back
down there is: In that area they had interdicted 2 years ago 138,000
illegal border crossers in that area. And, since October, they had
interdicted 15,000. Now, that is not quite apples to apples. You have
to calculate it out so much per month, but you get the idea that it has
been about two-thirds effective at this point. And as I ask the
question, has anyone come through the area where we have this triple
fence, this 12-foot high steel wall made out of landing mat steel, the
16-foot high steel mesh wall. And that is about 100 feet apart, and
then as you come into the United States going north, then there is a
10-foot high chain-link fence like a school playground fence with about
three or four bars on top, barbwire. Shorthand in Iowa as barbs.
And there, they said that maybe about three people had gotten through
that area. And upon further questioning, one or two through the
waterway, one or so around the end. Had anybody defeated the area where
it is triple fencing? And the answer was, they will defeat anything we
build. They will find a way to get over, under, or through it. And, of
course, then the follow-up question is: Has anyone defeated it yet,
this fence we are looking at? And the answer is no. To date, no one has
gone over, under, or through the triple fencing that is constructed
there south of Yuma at San Luis.
Now, I would like to hold that record intact. I don't know that we
will be able to hold it intact, but I think it is important to note
that that fencing has not been defeated yet. And, that as long as
illegal border crossers have an option to go someplace else to go
around, they are not going to try to go over, under, or through. And
that will be the case as long as we have a fence that doesn't extend
the full length of the border. Now, it is possible for us to supplement
those areas where there isn't a lot of concentration of pressure on the
border with technology, with ground-based radar, with interlocking
cameras, with a quick response force, with teams that can go out and
pick people up in the deserts that have 25 miles to walk to get
anywhere where they can pick up any transportation mode once they get
across the border. So we can use some of those kinds of methods, too,
until it becomes inefficient in that approach and we have to go back to
extending the fence, extend the wall, give the people on the ground
some tools to work with.
But continually, Madam Speaker, I get this answer when I ask our
Border Patrol about the effectiveness of structures like fences and
walls, and that they need more boots on the ground. And the answer is
always: Whatever you will do to fencing, there are places where we need
to do it in urban areas. We don't need to do it in rural areas. This is
their answer. And, we always need more boots on the ground. That is the
answer. The answer really isn't to build structure or to build wall.

{time} 1700

Well, I take issue with that philosophy, and I do so because of
looking at it from a bit of a different perspective. That bit of a
different perspective comes along like this. If we were to award
contracts to companies and pay them according to the level of
efficiency of being able to stop all human traffic coming across their
sector of the border, stop all contraband from coming across their
sector of the border, force all products, all contraband, all people,
legal or illegal, through the ports of entry, that is our objective.
That is what the laws that are established here in this Congress are
about is forcing all that traffic through the ports of entry.
In fact, that is what the law presumes that they go through a port of
entry. So anything we do to direct traffic through the port of entry is
the right thing to do. It has been a piece of wisdom for this country
for a long, long time, well over 100 years. Yet we have people that
argue well, no, we should just leave the border open, leave it
unmarked. I plead sometimes, can't we at least string up a number 9
wire and mark the border, so if you are out in the desert you don't
wander across into another country.
There are miles and miles and miles of our southern border that are
not marked in any way whatsoever, not a wire, not a post, not a fence
are not a road, not a wall, certainly, and not a double fence, and not
a virtual fence, virtually nothing is there. In fact, literally nothing
is there.
If you go into some areas of New Mexico, when they laid out the
border, the border is marked by a concrete pylon that is about 5 feet
high, poured on a base, about this big square, 5 feet high, tapers up,
and has a little insignia on it that says this is a border. That
concrete pylon will be standing on a ridge line, and then if you look
way down the border, you probably cannot see it from the naked eye,
miles away. Over on the next ridge line will be another concrete pylon,
and that is another mark for the border.
I will say that I think many people have crossed through that area
and never known that there was a mark for the border because they
didn't know where too look. These pylons, these markers were set up
back in those old days with an old brass transit, with whatever power
they had to set the cross hairs up, dial it in and look down range and
then give the motion to the fellow on the other end, who did not have a
walkie-talkie, did not have much optical equipment, but simply hand
signals.
Go ahead, drive your stake in here. We will put the pylon there. That
is good enough for this border. But that is all we marked it with, is
just concrete pylons from ridge line to ridge line, and there is not a
barrier, obviously.
So, if I were a contractor, and I were given the job to, say, guard
10 miles of border, and if the benchmark are for the amount of money
that I would be paid for that job would be the amount that we are
spending on the border today, that being $8 billion to protect our
southern border, and that amounts to $4 million a mile, let's just say
I were in the business of guaranteeing border security for 10 miles
across the desert, and I went in and bid that at the going rate of $4
million a mile.
Well, that would mean the Federal Government would pay me $40 million
a year to guard that 10 miles of border. Now, what would a rational
person do if that were their job to get 100 percent efficiency? If they
had a contract, the

[[Page H2030]]

amount of that contract would be deducted by the number of failures
that you have?
Let's just say the average crossing of interdictions last year across
our southern border, 1,188,000. I mean, that was the number reported by
the Border Patrol of border interdictions, that many fingerprinted and
returned back to their home countries. Perhaps 155,000 of them were
other than Mexicans. Most of the rest were returned back to Mexico.
That many fingerprinted, you could divide that out, and I have not
done the math. But you could figure out how many came through each mile
on average, and then determine that if your mile was successful, we are
going to pay you at your $4 million. Or if your 10 miles were
successful, we will pay you at your $4 million a mile. If you didn't
let anybody through, you are going to get to keep the whole $40
million, this year, next year, every year that you have the contract.
We would be getting far more for our money than we are getting today
for the $4 million a mile that we are paying and the $8 billion that it
costs us to guard that southern border. I can tell you that I would go
down, and I would bid my 10 miles or whatever link it was that I
thought I could manage and handle.
Then I would look at my contract for $40 million, and I would think,
you know, for about $1.2 million a mile, I could build a concrete wall
on here. I could put double fencing in. Maybe by the time I added
interlocking cameras and some sensors and some interlocking ground
radar, I may be even up to even $2 million a mile to build my double-
wall fence with interlocking cameras and sensors. Now what do I have to
do to make sure that no one gets through my 10 miles of border?
I would simply have to sit back and watch my monitors, have somebody
that is out there ready to respond if anybody does get through, but
monitor the situation, and we can monitor into Mexico. We can monitor
when they get over, if they should get over the wall, in the United
States, and do a quick response and interdiction.
I don't think you are going to spend a lot of money out of the
remaining $30-some million. I may have to back up here, for 10 miles,
if you built 10 miles, and you invest it all together up to $2 million
a mile, then you have $20 million invested in that 10 miles. But you
have a $40 million contract every year.
Then you have got $20 million to work with in order to hire personnel
to drive around in Humvees and react, respond, interdict. I would
submit that you could hire a helicopter for that 10 miles and do that
if you needed to guard it that way. There is plenty of money left over
to apply the labor and the patrolling and the maintenance for the
fencing that would be necessary.
In fact, it would be minimal. It would be minimal. It would take far
less labor, far less manpower, far less equipment, to monitor a border
that has sealed barriers, barriers. Some of those barriers, to date,
have not been breached by anyone.
That is far more effective than simply an open desert that will allow
people to run through, drive through, ride through on a motorcycle or a
horse or a donkey or a Humvee or an ATV or walk or run, daylight or
dark, winter, well, not much winter down there, but in rain, when it
rains, or in a sandstorm when the wind blows. I will be far more
effective to put the barrier in place.
Yet when I ask the question of the Border Patrol, be it the union or
be it the representatives of the Border Patrol and the administration
themselves, their answer always is, we can take some structures like
some fences in urban areas, because that gives us more time to react
when they jump the fence, but it is going to take more boots on the
ground.
I have tried and tried in hearings to ask the question in a way that
I can get an objective answer, what do we have to do so it takes fewer
boots on the ground? I will pose this question this way, and that is,
if we created an impermeable curtain that could not be cut, it could
not be torn, it could not be penetrated, but a magic kryptonite
impermeable curtain that would go from all the way up to the heavens
all the way down to hell, and all the way, 2,000 miles from San Diego
to Brownsville, if we could hang that there on the border, couldn't be
penetrated, couldn't be cut, couldn't be gone over, and it couldn't be
dug under, how many Border Patrol would it take then to patrol the
border? I would submit that answer then becomes none except for any
place where we would have ports of entry.
I hope I have illustrated the logic of why we need to build a fence
and a wall. This Congress understands it. They voted overwhelmingly to
support it here in the House of Representatives just a few months ago,
and the Senate, as slow as they are, to be proactive. As much as they
like to let the hot coffee cool in the saucer of the Senate, they also
moved, and three times they had votes on the floor last year to put a
fence on the southern border. My very liberal Iowa Senate counterpart
three times voted to put a fence on the border, and that vote in the
Senate was 80-19.
Yet I am watching the undermining that is taking place on the part
of, to some degree, the administration. Also the chairman of the
Homeland Security Committee is using his chairmanship to undermine
current law. I am watching the undermining that goes on the part of
some of the Democrat candidates for the presidency and people who
essentially don't appear to believe in American sovereignty.
Well, something that we need to simply know in America is that you
have to make a decision if you are going to be a nation. If you are
going to be a nation, and I will submit that over the last 200 years,
the most successful institution of government has been the nation
state. Can you imagine going to something other than the nation state?
Can you imagine going to the city states that we had at the beginning
of the industrial revolution when Machiavelli wrote his books, and when
the cities became the center point of government and control, and
everything revolved around the cities? What happened was that common
languages sprung up, and they began to be formed and shaped by the
people that had trade in commerce and travel in a common region. As the
languages defined themselves, the borders of the nations also defined
themselves along the lines of language.
There came from that, the nation states, a common belief, a common
history, a common form of communications currency, language, tied
people together. They voluntarily moved together and established the
nation states. Of course, the nation states have changed and shifted
over time.
We have tried to create unnatural nation states. Yet here in America,
we came together in these 50 States of the Nation State of the United
States of America, and we are unique in all of history. We are unique
because what we have done is we have welcomed people from all over the
world.
Let me point out that we continually hear the statement America is a
nation of immigrants, and it is stated to us over and over again, as if
because we are a nation of immigrants, then therefore we cannot have a
rational immigration policy that is designed to enhance the economic,
the social and the cultural well-being of the United States of America.
No, we simply have to open our borders, because immigrants came here
and helped build America. If some is good, more is better. If some from
anywhere is good, more from anywhere is better. That seems to be the
logic and the rationale.
I would submit there is a lot more to building an American
exceptionalism than simply saying we are a nation of immigrants and
that is all we need to know about this subject matter. No, this is a
very deep, very complicated subject matter that ties together
everything we know about history, everything we know about human
nature, everything we know about sociology and biology, and the common
sense of geographical origins that come along, and the commonalities of
language, common interests, those things all tie us together.
But what we have done here in America, founded a nation upon the rule
of law, perhaps I will get to that a little bit later.
But we are tied together by a common language. That is something that
is not unique to the United States, a common language has defined
nation states from the beginning. When we get

[[Page H2031]]

away from the common language that fractures the nation state, and you
become squabbling minorities that are bickering against each other,
forming and shaping ourselves in ethnic enclaves and pitted against
each other because one side of this aisle believes in rights of group
rights and victimhood.
The other side of the aisle over here believes in individual rights
and personal responsibility and the commonalities of equal justice
under the law.
But the things that tie us together are a common history, common
experiences, common goals, a common cause. But we couldn't understand
those things if we didn't have a common language. This great experiment
of America has been founded upon a common language. This common
language ties us together.
Then as we look across the vitality that we have within this country,
this American exceptionalism that I mentioned a little bit earlier, you
would be thinking in terms of where did this American exceptionalism
come from? Why do we have it here, and why is that vitality nonexistent
in many of the other countries that were donor countries to the United
States in the form of the immigrants that they sent to us over the
years, over the 200 to 300 years that we have received, accepted and
welcomed immigrants into America?
I would look back at that and think about my oldest ancestor that we
can trace back, at least on my mother's side of the family. One of them
would have been a gentleman by the name of Samuel Powell who came here,
and he was a Welshman who came over here in 1757 to become an
indentured servant.
He landed in Baltimore. He had nothing. He pledged to work for 7
years to work off his passage to the United States. So he worked in the
stables to work off his passage. This gentleman was kicked by a horse,
crippled for life. We know that as there is a little hardbound book
about it.
Still, through the course of his lifetime, he was the father of 17
children, and those descendents fanned out across the country, and they
added to the vitality of America, as many of the children of immigrants
and the children of immigrants have.
But there was something in the vitality of Samuel Powell, that
vitality that is a component that exists within many, many of, and I
will say most of, and perhaps almost all of those who come to America.
That vitality gives them the courage and the confidence, the fortitude
and the adventuresome spirit to get on a ship with everything that they
have, mortgage their future for their passage, and come here to reach
for their dreams in the United States of America.
That vitality that gave them that courage and that confidence, that
boldness of spirit was like a filter that skimmed the vitality off of
the other civilizations and cultures around the world. As they got out
of Ireland and Sweden and out of Germany and out of Italy, and as they
came from other places around the globe and came here, and certainly
out of Scotland and England as well, and this goes back to our history
100 years ago, as they came over here, they brought that vitality with
them. Often we saw that vitality within them, and we identified that as
a national characteristic that came from the country that they came
from.

{time} 1715

One of the questions that I ask in my district, I have a wonderful
Dutch region in the northwestern part of my district there in Iowa, and
it is idyllic communities that are the best combination that anyone
could ask for, the absolutely ideal combination of churches to banks to
bars in a community. Plenty of churches and a lot of capital in the
banks and just a few bars, not hardly any. And their quality of life,
and it is strong, and the young children grow up and they expect to
build their future in those communities. They are not taking that
diploma and going somewhere else in the world to cash it in for the
biggest paycheck they can get. Some do. Many come home. Many stay home,
rebuild and build their lives there and have their children there,
raise their parents' grandchildren right there within the same
neighborhood. That is an ideal circumstance that they have.
And I ask them, how is it that you have got such ideal communities
here in the Dutch areas of Iowa, and I go over to Holland, and there
they have abortion on demand, euthanasia, they have prostitution, they
have legalized drugs. They have one of the most liberal countries in
the world, one of the most permissive, but yet one of the most closed
societies in the world where you could never go over there and become a
Dutchman. And yet so many things that they do permit in that very
liberal society are things that we would reject in our communities, and
I have listed some of them. Why is it then that we have such a
wholesome, rich community in an area that I have described in western
Iowa, and we have the different environment in Holland entirely, and
especially in the communities like Amsterdam? And their answer to me,
with only a little bit of sense of irony is, well, the good Dutch came
here.
And, Mr. Speaker, I tell this story because it identifies the source
of American exceptionalism. The good Dutch came here. So did the good
English, so did the good Spanish, so did the good French, so did the
good Norwegians and Swedes and Germans and Irish and all the way down
the line. Western Europe were the first big donors to this American
society that we have here. And we have also picked up a significant
amount of exceptionalism and vitality from our neighbors to the south.
And so I want to point this out and emphasize in a very serious way
how important it is that we be smart and we be careful with our
immigration policy and understand that we are defining an immigration
policy that should enhance our economic, our social and our cultural
well-being here in the United States of America in a selfish way. Any
nation state should have that kind of an immigration policy. It should
be promoting them. They should be building their future, whatever
country they might be.
We need to do it here. We need to set this American destiny on a
glide path that soars way beyond the aspirations that I hear here in
this place and that I even hear out in the streets of America where
there is more optimism than there is here in this Congress, Mr.
Speaker. We need to set our destiny and control it from here, and we
have got to have a vision, we have got to have a dream, and we need to
understand the foundations of what has made us great as a Nation. And
we need to be looking for new things, new principles, new ideas, new
tools that might, just might, supplement the time-honored tradition and
principles and tools that were gifted to us from God through our
Founding Fathers that are the foundation of this great Nation.
But American exceptionalism is one of them. The foundation of the
rule of law is another one, Mr. Speaker. And in spite of all of the
things that we read about in our history and so much of the glorious
past and some of the marginal, shameful events that took place in our
history, this Nation has been a Nation that has been grounded on, built
upon, rooted in and a pillar of which is the rule of law. The rule of
law is sacrosanct in America. And when we set aside the rule of law, it
diminishes us all. It erodes everyone's constitutional rights when
someone else is given a pass by the law. And so if we are allowed to
drive down the highway at 70 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone,
and if we pass the Highway Patrol, and even if they happen to pull us
over and they say, well, you know, everybody breaks the law, so I am
not going to write you up on this 70 in a 55 zone, then pretty soon
everybody drives 70, and they will push it up to 75. If they don't get
a ticket at 75, then they may go 80. They will drive as fast as they
can until they get scared. Then they will slow down a little. That is
human nature, and we have known that from the studies on our highways.
But too low a speed limit breeds contempt for the rule of law, but
enforcement of any speed limit breeds respect for the rule of law.
The same is so with our immigration laws, Mr. Speaker, if we have
immigration laws that are not enforced, or the foundation of this rule
of law is it applies to everyone equally. So if our immigration laws
are not enforced equally to all people in this country, then also it
breeds contempt for the law. And if we allow the contempt for the law
to be bred, then it undermines the

[[Page H2032]]

rule of law, it undermines this Constitution, and it weakens the rights
of individuals.
This Constitution I carry in my pocket all days. I have sworn to
uphold this Constitution, and I will do so. It is an oath that I take
seriously, and, in fact, in spite of some of the news that has come
down here, that we don't swear in to the new Congress on the Bible,
some of us do bring our Bible down here and do swear in on the Bible,
and we take that seriously, as did George Washington. And some of us,
in fact, all of us, should add ``so help me God'' when we take that
oath.
But this Constitution is the foundation for our law. And, in fact, it
is the descendant of the Declaration of Independence, the foundation
for our law. It is the framework of justice in America writ large. It
is the framework of government in America writ large. And we need to
adhere to the language that is here and the intent that is here and the
original text that is here in this Constitution, Mr. Speaker.
And I continue to intend to do that, and I am sworn to uphold this
rule of law. And so when I go back to my district, and we have had a
finally, at long last, a Department of Homeland Security raid on some
of the meat packing around my neighborhood, within the adjoining States
and within the State of Iowa, and about 1,282 individuals were picked
up and loaded up, and charges were brought against many of them for
immigration violations and also for fraudulent documents and document
theft. When that happens, and there were truckloads of hogs that were
stacked up waiting to go into the packing plant, and there wasn't
enough labor there, and actually the plants were temporarily shut down.
The hogs had to stay on the trucks. There were a few that were lost.
Most were not so badly treated. That is one of the elements we don't
talk about so much. But also families were affected, children were
affected, and we have debated across that.
But when I go before the pork producers and they say, we need to have
people in these packing plants to process our livestock, we have got to
have a market for the livestock that we raise, we have got to make sure
that they can harvest on the days they are supposed to be, and that
meat can be processed, packaged and delivered to the meat case so we
have got a continuous supply and a continuous flow of our product,
however urgent they sense that to be, however focused they are on the
problem that is in front of them, and remember, people have a tendency
to look at the world through their straw. It is rare for us to step
back and look at the big picture and try to add up all the components,
or look at the world through somebody else's eyes, let alone look at
the world through everybody else's eyes if we would could possibly do
that. And that is partly my job is to ask people to look at the world
through somebody else's eyes.

And so as they say, we need that labor, we can't be shutting down
plants because of illegal labor, we have got to find another solution,
that is no solution. I ask them, point blank, I understand how
important this is to your industry, but are you willing to sacrifice
the rule of law in America to be sure that it is convenient, and that
you don't have to go out and recruit for labor someplace other than
outside the United States for people that will come into the plant?
Wouldn't you rather maybe pay a couple bucks more an hour and hire
people that are already here, hire some of the 30 percent of America
that are high school dropouts; hire some of the 69 million people in
America that are simply not in the workforce, but are of working age?
We only have about 6.9 million working illegals in America, Mr.
Speaker, and we have 69 million nonworking, not in the workforce,
Americans. So wouldn't a logical Nation just look around and say, well,
let's try and hire? First we would go hire some of those folks that are
on unemployment. And we are not at a historically low unemployment
level. That was 1.3 during World War II. And I recognize that was all
hands on deck. But still we have quite a ways to go, and we can drop
more than 3 points before we get down to the levels of unemployment
that we had during World War II. But that is not enough to fill the
gap. And if we take the people that are on welfare now and that are
hirable, and maybe if that is half, and that might be a lot, you put
those together with those that are unemployed. If you take the 4.4
percent unemployment and take that down to 1.3 percent, World War II
levels, and then reach in and hire half of those that are on welfare
and put them to work, you still don't have enough people there to
replace the 6.9 million working illegal immigrants in the American
workforce. But where you can find them is to go into the 69 million
nonworking Americans that are not in the workforce, many of whom are
presumably healthy and can be hired.
And the answer that I get when I propose that is, well, they aren't
in the right place. They don't live where we need them. They are not
sitting there next to the job. And so therefore, we should what? Let's
go 2,000 or 3,000 miles away and go get some people out of a different
country and bring them here, against the law, to replace the need for a
workforce that you could replace if you just simply went someplace else
in America and put some people in a car, on a bus, on a plane or on
Amtrak and send them down there.
I mean, I can give you an example, Mr. Speaker. When the raid came in
on the Swift and Company at Marshalltown, Iowa, and they picked up
about 90 workers there, so presumably there were 90 jobs that were open
at that moment, there was a couple, an African American couple, from
down in the Dallas area that loaded up and drove from Texas all the way
up to Marshalltown, Iowa, went to the H.R. office at Swift and Company
and said, we would like to have a job working here processing this
meat. We drove a long ways to get here, and now we would like to
resettle to Texas, to Marshalltown, middle of the winter, Texas to
Marshalltown for those jobs.
That kind of answers the questions that there are jobs that Americans
won't do. At least there is a personalized example of it, Mr. Speaker.
And statistically there are many. But the argument that the people
aren't in the right place doesn't hold up. In fact, the Okies weren't
in the right place in the '30s, and they loaded up the things that they
had, like the Clampetts in a way, and went on off to California and
built the economy out there, and they must have been pretty good
because the economy blossomed in California after the arrival of the
Okies. And so people can be transferred for labor.
There was a mass migration from the American South to the industrial
areas in the Northern States that took place also about that era. And I
recall that as that migration took place, we saw concentrations of
African Americans moving into the industrial cities. Detroit would be a
good example of that. Cleveland would be another good example of that.
They came and they took the jobs and went to work. They were good-
paying jobs. They did their jobs, and they raised their families there.
And some of those young people went off to college, became
professionals and moved off. Others went back and went to work in the
same plants that their parents did.
But I recall, Mr. Speaker, reading an article in the Des Moines
Register some years ago. They had gone into Milwaukee and picked a 36-
square-block neighborhood in Milwaukee, and it was a neighborhood that
was totally inhabited by people or descendants of that migration from
the gulf coast Mississippi area that came up into Milwaukee to take the
brewery jobs that were good-paying jobs then. Now, that was back in the
'30s, and now, by this time, oh, about the turn of the last millennia,
I will say, maybe 1998 or '99, they surveyed those, every house in that
36-square-block area. There wasn't a single working head of household
in all homes in that 36-block area. And the article was full of lament
as to why government couldn't figure out a way to move some jobs up
there to Milwaukee and establish those jobs close enough to the people
that lived there that didn't have work that they could then have jobs
again.
Well, how did government fail the people that are sitting in that 36-
square-block area, 6 blocks by 6 blocks in Milwaukee? How did
government fail was the focus of the article. And, Mr. Speaker, I will
point out that government didn't fail. It never was government's job.
It wasn't government that moved them from the gulf coast

[[Page H2033]]

up to Milwaukee in the '30s, and it wasn't government that moved the
Okies from Oklahoma to California in the '30s. It was the promise of
jobs that relocated people. They did it on their own.
I mean, after all, that is how the illegal immigrants got here,
wasn't it? Billboards in Mexico. People migrated up and took the jobs.
People move for jobs. I have done it. Many of us have done it. In fact,
most of us have done it. And to imagine that Americans can't relocate
to take a job is a pretty weak position to take if you are going to set
the direction for the destiny of America.
But the rule of law, the rule of law is a pillar, it is a foundation,
it is essential. And we are embroiled in a central debate here in
America on this rule of law.
Now, the Senate will be introducing legislation next week that will
be comprehensive immigration reform. That is White House language for
we are going to take some people that are here, and we are going to
give them the path to citizenship. And you are going to hear an
argument and a debate about what is the right, the just, the true, the
appropriate path for us as a Nation, a compassionate Nation, yes, a
Nation that cares about all people, not just within the borders of the
sovereign State of the United States of America. We care about the
well-being of people all over the globe.

{time} 1730

No Nation has been generous as the United States of America has been.
We have provided more resources for more people. We have sacrificed
more lives for liberty and freedom. We have poured more treasure out to
the rest of the world than any nation in history by any model or
comparison that anyone can create or come up with or convolute, for
that matter. And yet we are being accused of being a cold hearted,
unkind Nation because we have an obligation to control our borders so
we can define ourselves as a Nation.
And I will argue that if we give amnesty to the people that have
broken our laws and who are in violation of our laws and unlawfully
present here on the soil of the United States, if we grant them
amnesty, we have kicked aside the rule of law. We have knocked the
pillar out, the foundational pillar, from underneath this great citadel
of the United States of America. And if the rule of law is gone, what
then holds up our values here?
What then supports this Constitution that I have put back in my
pocket, Mr. Speaker? How do we argue ever again that there is a
foundation that exists that we should adhere to the rule of law, that
we should respect and protect and defend it, how could we, if this
Congress granted amnesty to law breakers in America, gave them a free
pass at the encouragement and behest of the White House and the
administration, who are focused on this, at the encouragement of the
left wing liberals in the United States Senate that are advocating for
open borders because they know they can count the masses of illegals
whether they are here legally or not, whether they are ever allowed to
vote or not, they know that it provides representation here on the
floor of the United States Congress.
There are Members of this Congress that won't need more than 30,000
votes to be re-elected or elected to this Congress. They are the ones
that represent districts that are full of illegal immigrants that are
counted in the census for reapportionment purposes. So my 600,000
people, where it takes over 100,000 votes to get re-elected in my
district even in a nonpresidential year, has less representation per
capita, the citizens in my district have less representation per capita
than the citizens in the districts that have high concentrations of
illegal immigrant population, because we draw the lines around about
600,000 people.
And if there are 400,000 illegals in a single district, that means
there are only 200,000 citizens. And if they go to the polls and
register and vote, that means there might only be 50,000 of them that
will actually vote that are of the age to vote and that will take the
trouble to do so. That is a gross distortion of the intent of our
Framers, and it is clearly a distortion of the concept of our
Constitution and it is a distortion of the understanding of equal
representation that the taxpayers and the citizens of America expect
from us. We need to address that. But before we do that, we are going
to need to address this amnesty issue, this amnesty question, that will
be before the Senate shortly and expecting to come over here to the
House some weeks or months after that.
What is amnesty, Mr. Speaker? Well, it is a simple question for a
person from my perspective. If you have a law and the law exists and
someone breaks that law, if you reduce or eliminate the penalty for the
law that they have broken after the fact, you have provided them
amnesty, whether you do it en masse in a group or whether you do it as
an individual. I guess as an individual you could call it a pardon. I
will say amnesty is a mass pardon for people who have violated an
existing law for which there is an existing penalty, and if that
penalty is eliminated or reduced, then that is amnesty.
Now, that is not a hard concept to understand. Something that I think
the vast majority of the American people will understand. I am very
confident that Ronald Reagan would have understood. He signed an
amnesty bill in 1986. It was one of only about two or three times that
that great man let me down. But at least he had the clarity and the
conscience to say this is an amnesty bill. He called it an amnesty
bill. He signed it, and he also said, and we expected, that there would
be enforcement of existing laws. And what happened from 1986 was the
enforcement of existing laws diminished gradually over time to the
point where in 2005 only three employers were sanctioned for hiring
illegal employees. Only three.
Now, in this virtual world, I call that virtually no enforcement in
the workplace. Virtually none. In fact, when I went down and welded on
the fence, I really wanted a virtual welder and a virtual welding rod
and a virtual hood so that I could weld some of that virtual fence that
I think will only virtually stop people in the end if we don't have the
manpower in there to do the job. And I think we have to put up literal
barriers to get this done and we can't rely on virtual anything because
we will virtually go through a lot of semantics, linguistic semantics,
to be able to reach our political goals, but the subject matter and the
efficiency is what we need to be after here, the rule of law.
Amnesty. There can be no amnesty, and that is where this fight will
turn. That is where this debate will turn. That is where it is going to
turn in the Senate, and I said last year that those that supported an
amnesty bill will be marked with the scarlet letter ``A'' for
``amnesty,'' and they will be held accountable by the voters in the
ballot box. And the House and the Senate heard that call and the threat
and the danger of those that came close to losing their jobs over there
and the ones that are worried about it in 2008. And yet I heard we lost
people here because they were for border control, and it is interesting
to me that those couple of Members, only two that I can think of, were
very strong on border security lost elections last fall. Their
opponents, the ones who defeated them, also were advocating for strong
border enforcement and employment enforcement in the workplace.
So I don't think there is a case that anyone lost an election because
they were for border security. I think there were those that were
jeopardized because they came late to the subject or they didn't
understand the conviction of it. But most, if not all, made some
commitment at some level that they are going to support it. Stop the
bleeding at the border. Get it under control. Push all traffic through
the ports of entry; all human traffic, legal and illegal; all product,
both contraband and legal product, through the ports of entry we should
support that in this Congress unequivocally.
There should be no effort to undermine that and there should be no
effort to create a scenario by which we can turn a blind eye to illegal
crossings on the border. That is something that is sacrosanct that all
of us should agreed to. And I would challenge anyone to stand up now or
later, and I would be happy to yield: Do you oppose the idea that we
secure our borders and seal them so that all traffic will go through
the ports of entry? If anybody wants to oppose that, I will be happy to
yield. I don't think that is going to happen. That is number one.

[[Page H2034]]

Number two means we have got to enforce our employer sanctions, and
employers have to understand that if they are going to knowingly and
willfully hire illegals, then we are going to have to knowingly and
willfully, with our enforcement mechanisms, go in there and punish the
employers that have a business plan that is premised upon the hiring of
illegal labor. And that happens all over this country.
I am watching it happen and it is permeating us more and more, and
our resistance is breaking it down more and more. Do we have an amnesty
plan for employers that are paying corporate income tax off the profits
that they made off the backs of cheap labor at the expense of America's
middle class? This middle class is forever shrinking because we are
growing an upper class. The elitists believe they have a right to cheap
labor, the servant class, as they see it, whether they admit it or not,
and the growth of this lower class, this servant class that is coming.
No nation ever failed because of a lack of cheap labor. Can anybody
look back at history and name a single nation that didn't have enough
cheap labor; so their economy collapsed? I would say none. It has never
happened in all of history. But many nations have descended into a
squabbling cacophony of minorities that couldn't get along, that didn't
have a sense of nationhood, didn't have a sense of common history,
didn't have a common language, didn't have literacy skills or job
skills but simply pulled the whole system down and put pressure on the
social services.
The wait that is there, we are growing our lower class, that class
that the elitists see as a servant class, and we are growing our upper
class because of the prosperity that comes really from the Bush tax
cuts that we have had for 2001 and 2003. And as this growth continues,
the upper class grows, they think it is all to their credit. Now, they
earned a lot of it. They got their education. They invested their money
wisely. They worked hard and smart and they made money, and I am glad
they are building their million dollar mansions. Maybe one day an older
used one will be a good place for me to spend my retirement. I am happy
for them.
And they will move out of a modest home so someone with a more modest
income can move in there. It is a natural progression. But they have no
right and essentially have no birth right to cheap labor to enrich
them.
America has been about expanding the middle class, making it broader
and making it more prosperous. And this immigration policy, or, I
should say, a lack of enforcement on this immigration policy, is
shrinking the middle class, compressing them so they can't make the
upward mobility, and it is narrowing the middle class because these 30
percent of the high school dropouts that don't have a high school
education and a greater percentage that don't have a college education
as a cumulative total at least, those people are dropping off into the
lower class too.
And where are their opportunities, Mr. Speaker? Where do they go to
get a job? How does someone with, say, my background, only the age of
17 or 18 or 19 or 20, get started in where my life has been, in the
construction business? If I had walked out on the pipeline at age 19
and asked for a job to swamp on the bending crew so I could run 10
miles a day in the dust with a hard hat on my head and get thrown
around on the end of a piece of pipe in August going through the
cornfields, they wouldn't give a job to a kid today, some blue-eyed
white kid that walked up there and wanted a job, because there would
already be some people there who had arrived in the United States that
were cheap illegal labor that would work cheaper and give them less
trouble and those that wouldn't have a workers' comp claim because they
would be afraid they would be deported. There wouldn't be an
unemployment claim. They wouldn't be any unemployment, any workers'
comp. There wouldn't be any lawsuits. They would either show up on time
or somebody else would show up to take the job.
It is a lot less trouble to work with people that are living in the
shadows because they are afraid that the spotlight will come on them.
And so you have a meek, docile labor force, and an employer that is
making a rational decision with his capital is going to go that route.
And we have enabled it here in the United States of America, and now we
have become dependent upon a pretty good size supply of illegal labor.
And every day that goes by, another person, another company figures out
a way to make some profit off of the illegal population that is here in
the United States.
And I feel a little guilty that I sold my construction business to my
oldest son because he has to compete against competitors who will be
knowingly and willfully finding that avenue to hire that cheap illegal
labor, and he has to find a way to be more efficient so he can compete
against them because he is going to follow the law. I know he will
follow the law. That is the way he is raised, that is the way he
believes, and that is his conviction. Those that follow the law are at
a disadvantage today because they are being undermined by people who
premise their business on hiring illegal labor.
And here we come to the financial institutions that are issuing
credit cards to people that don't have a Social Security number. What
an outrageous thing, to see large banking companies decide they can
find a way to turn a profit and undermine our immigration laws in the
United States and essentially provide another avenue that is going to
encourage people to continue to break the law, come here, stay here.
But amnesty, Mr. Speaker, is a central question that is before us.
Will we uphold the rule of law or will we kick the pillar out from
underneath the United States of America? Will we stand on the principle
of no amnesty no time for people who have come in here illegally that
we will uphold the rule of law, we will enforce it? And the people who
are going to advocate for amnesty, and it will be coming out of the
Senate and it is coming to this floor in here in the House of
Representatives sometime within the next few months, that path to
amnesty needs to be a trail of tears.
And that is a trail of tears that needs to be created by people on
the streets of America, in the homes, in the backyards, in the schools,
in the churches, in the workplaces. They need to get on their phones.
They need to get on their e-mail. They need to call their Members of
Congress. They need to write letters to the editor. They need to call
the talk radio shows, write articles and get them printed. They need to
gin up their neighbors. They need to come to the streets and stand up
for the rule of law and oppose amnesty and put that scarlet letter
``A'' for ``amnesty'' and brand those that stand up for amnesty here
because if you stand for amnesty, you are opposed to the rule of law,
and there is no other way to measure this.
And you can't say to someone you are going to go to the back of the
line. They are not going to send them to the back of the line. That is
not in the heart or the head of the White House. It is not going to
happen. Those that are here illegally, the only way they could go to
the back of the line would be to have to go back to their home country
and get into the line behind the people that are legally in the line
from their home country. No one has advocated that, Mr. Speaker. That
is not going to happen. They don't want to disturb the lives of the
people who came here to live in the shadows. They want to offer that
they come out into the sunlight and grant them a path to citizenship.
And if that isn't a blatant definition of amnesty, I have no idea what
is.
But there is actual a serious discussion about we could make them pay
a fine. We could penalize them by making them learn English.
Penalize them by making them learn English? I think that should be a
privilege and a goal because that will give access to the American
Dream. But if you are here as a criminal, and there is an objection to
that term, but if people have come into the United States illegally,
then they have violated a criminal misdemeanor for illegal border
crossing, unlawful presence in the United States, and that is
punishable by deportation. That is the punishment that needs to be
there. There can't be anything less. And to have them pay a fine of
$1,500 when a coyote is going to charge $2,000 to $3,000 for a trip
into the United States just says, well, the path to citizenship is for
sale for $1,500. If you can scratch up the scratch to do that, we can
give you a path to citizenship.

[[Page H2035]]

And the United States Senate and a lot of the liberals here in the
United States House would say, Fine. Here is your green card. Here is
your path to citizenship. Forget about that part about breaking the law
and getting your reward for breaking the law, but be a good citizen
otherwise. How can anyone who is given a reward for breaking the law
and gets to go to the front of the line, how can they respect the rule
of law?

{time} 1745

How can anyone who is given a reward for breaking the law and gets to
go to the front of the line, how can they respect the rule of law? How
can it be when you get stopped for speeding, if they give you a ticket
to speed, or if you get arrested for robbing a bank and they say, well,
okay, but we are going to give you amnesty, take the loot and go, be
happy; but just forget that one time we didn't enforce the law on you,
and so for now on respect the rule of law? Madam Speaker, it does not
work that way. That is not the nature of humanity. Humanity is going to
follow this path of least resistance; if they see an opening, they are
going to go. And if they have an opportunity that we give them, that we
grant them, they are going to take it.
And not only they will have contempt for the rule of law, a million
back in 1986, that turned into 3 million because of the phony
identification and the corruption in the Reagan amnesty, they and their
descendants and their friends and their neighbors, almost all of them
believe that amnesty is a good idea because they were the beneficiaries
of amnesty; just like a bank robber that gets to keep the loot thinks
robbing banks is a good idea and will go back and do it again if he
runs out of money.
Now, think about doing that with 12 million or 20 million or, by the
numbers that came out of the Senate the last time, 66.1 million would
be legalized by the Senate version. That would be the cumulative total
of all who were naturalized in the United States in all of our history.
I thank you for your focus, Mr. Speaker.

____________________