Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 49 (Wednesday, March 21, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 21, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2813-H2819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

{time} 2145
IMMIGRATION

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Klein of Florida). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Gingrey) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening on behalf
of the Immigration Reform Caucus of this House of Representatives.
Hopefully, as we go forward with the Immigration Reform Caucus in a
bipartisan fashion, and our new chairman hopefully will be joining me
during this hour, and that is Congressman Brian Bilbray from the great
State of California who is determined to make the Immigration Reform
Caucus of this House a bipartisan organization, and I really look
forward to that change.
As we reach out to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle,
both Republicans and Democrats, I think we can solve this problem of
immigration, and in particular, illegal immigration. We have to do
that, Mr. Speaker.
This is a hugely important issue. It is an issue to our security, it
is an issue to our economy, and it is an issue to this great country,
this sovereign Nation, the United States.
Tonight I come to my colleagues to talk about a problem not regarding
illegal immigration, we may have an opportunity tonight to discuss some
of those issues which are so important and which we have worked so hard
on in the 109th Congress and hopefully we will continue to do so in the
110th Congress; but my concerns tonight will be addressed toward a
legal immigration problem, Mr. Speaker. Let me repeat that, legal. That
is a situation that we refer to as chain migration. Let me try to
explain that to my colleagues.
I have here to my left a first slide, if you will, in this
presentation. As we look at it, Mr. Speaker, at first glance those in
the audience tonight might think, gee, Gingrey is up here with a chart
of his high school or college chemistry periodic table; or somebody
else may say, no, that is his grandchildren's Pac-Man game. It is a
confusing chart to look at, but I am going to hopefully be able to, in
a short period of time, to simplify this rather arcane, complex looking
first slide. But this really is what this whole problem, this legal
immigration problem is about, this chain migration issue, Mr. Speaker.

[[Page H2814]]

If my colleagues will focus their attention at the bottom of this
first slide, I point to this very prominent kiosk, this icon that would
be a legal permanent resident in this country. That individual, man or
woman, could be here through any one of several ways of entering this
country legally. It could be a skilled worker. And that is indeed why
we have an immigration policy, to make our country better, to bring in
skilled individuals from countries throughout the world, as we have
always done since we started this country. That is the whole purpose of
being able to bring individuals in based on what they can contribute.
Certainly we want to make their lives better as well, but we want them
to be able to contribute to our great Nation and enjoy the privileges
of citizenship eventually.
So this individual comes, maybe as one of those legal immigrants, as
a skilled worker; or possibly this first person that I am going to
refer to at the bottom of the slide is a part of somebody's nuclear
family, maybe it is the wife of a legal permanent resident who has
already come; or maybe it is a minor child who has grown up and become
of age to marry and have a spouse; or possibly this is an individual, a
third category, who has sought asylum in this great country. And
certainly that is what the Statue of Liberty is all about, that is what
the inscription of the bottom of Lady Liberty says in regard to opening
our arms to the oppressed and the people that need safety in this great
country. So any one of these three categories, Mr. Speaker, of legal
permanent residence in this country can start this chain migration.
Which clearly, clearly our country never intended that effect.
What happens is this legal permanent resident is able to bring in his
spouse or her spouse. And they can legally bring in their minor
children. And let's say, based on the current fertility rate south of
our border, our southern border, it is three children, three minor
children. Now, that is one individual that, by virtue of bringing in an
additional skilled worker under the quota for that particular country,
has brought in four additional people by virtue of genealogy. And this
is, of course, a nuclear family so far. We are talking then about a
nuclear family, a husband, a wife and their three children.
Now, once the husband and wife become citizens, then the real problem
begins, because at that point then each of the husband and wife can
bring in their parents. This is perfectly legal to do this. So there
are an additional, assuming that both parents of both the husband and
wife are still living, which is very likely, maybe it is a man and a
woman on each side who are in their late forties or early fifties.
In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, again, this
one individual that is in this country legally, as a legal permanent
resident, hopefully has become a citizen. At that point, then all of
his siblings and all of his wife's siblings can come into this country.
And that is where the chain really takes off, because you repeat this
over and over again. And at the end of 17 years, a short of 17 years
and two generations, what you end up with under this insanity of legal
chain migration is that one legal permanent resident who was brought
into this country as a skilled worker, as an individual seeking asylum
from a country in which they are suffering the devastation of
oppression, or it happens to be a spouse of a legal permanent resident,
that one person in a short span of 17 years can bring in 273 people,
Mr. Speaker; 273 people. And that counts against the quota for that
country.
So this is the problem, Mr. Speaker, that I think a lot of people
just don't realize. We worry about a porous border. We worry about the
fact that there are anywhere from 12 to 20 million illegal residents,
immigrants in this country, many of them, of course, most of them
probably are hardworking, God-fearing, good people, moms, dads, good
families, and they are trying to do the right thing. And the only thing
that they have committed, of course, is coming into this country
illegally. But it is a huge, huge problem for us, as I said at the
outset, in regard to the stress and strain on our economy, on our
infrastructure, on our safety net programs, on our public school
systems. But here we have something that is part of our legal
permission to let people come into this country, and then bring in 273
additional extended family members. Not, Mr. Speaker, what we
originally intended.

I want to go back and talk about the Jordan Commission. In the early
nineties, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas, a very, very
distinguished Member of this body, chaired that commission to study
immigration reform and clearly said as part of the recommendations,
there were a number of those recommendations, only some of which, Mr.
Speaker, were implemented, but one of them was to say very specifically
that it should only be a nuclear family, not this situation where
because of this chain effect, that in a very short period of time of a
couple of generations, or really a short period of 17 years, we end up
with 273 people. And they may be good, hardworking, skilled men and
women that can contribute to our society, can make their lives better,
can make our lives better. But it is really not based on that, it is
based totally on genealogy, by virtue of being related in some extended
way, first, second, third cousins, aunts, uncles, grandfather or
grandmother and on and on and on.
And what that does, other than just overwhelming the number of legal
permanent residents who come into this country from a specific country
on a yearly basis, indeed, Mr. Speaker, from Mexico to our southern
border we are talking about maybe 30,000 a year, and that quota is
surpassed in day one of the calendar year.
So you can't say, well, it just doesn't matter; that means maybe you
are going to push these skilled workers a little bit further behind in
the queue, but they will get there eventually. Well, they may get there
eventually, but instead of 2 or 3 years, Mr. Speaker, it may be 15
years, it may be far beyond the time that it would be any advantage to
them or us for them to remain in the queue. So this is the problem. We
have a solution. I have a solution for it, and I want to talk about
that as we go forward.
Mr. Speaker, this next slide that I have again just points out, and I
hope my colleagues, I hope this writing is big enough. In case it is
not for those in the back of the Chamber, I would be happy to go
through it bullet by bullet. But this says ``Chain Migration Equals
Inter-Generational Relocation Program.'' It gives visa priority to the
cousins, to the adult children and distant relatives of legal
immigrants. It creates a backlog of visa applicants. And it allows, and
this is the final point on this slide, Mr. Speaker, and of course I
have already alluded to these points in my opening remarks, but it
allows genealogy, not job skills, not education, not English
proficiency to determine who immigrates to our country. We just can't
afford that. We absolutely must use common sense and go back to the
Jordan Commission recommendation in regard to limiting genealogy entry
into this country based not on skills at all, but on just who you
happen to be related to. And I will get to that in just a few minutes.
My colleague from Iowa is with us tonight. We call on him a lot, but
he is always forthcoming with very, very good, useful information on
many subjects, not the least of which is the issue of immigration. I am
talking about Representative Steve King, my classmate. I thank him for
joining me during this hour, and I look forward to his comments.
I would like to go ahead and yield the floor to him now for however
much time as he would like to take. We can colloquy back and forth. And
I certainly appreciate him being with us this evening.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, for
stepping up here tonight and organizing this Special Order and bringing
this subject matter before you, Mr. Speaker, and before the American
people.

{time} 2200

This immigration issue that is before America is I believe the most
complicated and least understood piece of policy that I have seen
debated in this country in my lifetime.
I have been involved in the immigration issue since well before I
came to Congress 5 years ago. Today as ranking member of the
Immigration Subcommittee, I sit through immigration hearings two times
a week, sometimes three times a week, sometimes more than that.
Witnesses bring a lot of information before the committee, and

[[Page H2815]]

we are required to read a lot of information. And then one has to read
the press clippings to try to understand what the American people are
trying to divine out of the things that we are wrestling with here in
this Congress.
As I state how complicated this issue is, and I look at the chart
that Mr. Gingrey had up, the one that I believe demonstrates the 273
people that could be brought into the United States under the chain
migration program, the family reunification plan, the plan that
presumes that all family reunions, however minor or major, are reunions
that all must take place in the United States as long as there is any
one person of one of those families that is here. That is quite a
presumption, that you can't have a happy family reunion except in
America.
And the 273 that can generate from one individual that is lawfully
present in the United States and starts this process, this is a
calculation that isn't something that we happen to know in this
Congress, because Mr. Gingrey has presented that here tonight; this is
a calculation that is done by illegal immigrants and legal immigrants
across the world, not just across our southern border into Mexico and
points down south towards the Panama Canal, but China as an example. So
the going rate, if you are a pregnant Chinese lady, is $30,000 for a
roundtrip ticket to come illegally into the United States, have the
baby, get his little footprints put on a U.S. birth certificate and go
on back to China. Then after the 18th birthday, that child can start
the family reunification plan, and you start down the path of this
chart that shows 273.
Mr. GINGREY. And the same thing, as I said at the outset, anywhere
from 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants we estimate, and we hear talk
about the need for a comprehensive bill that would include letting them
pay a little fine and fess up and get a clear ID card, identify
themselves, and all of a sudden become a permanent legal resident on a
track to citizenship. Each one of those 20 million then could start
this chain migration.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, that 273, that is the calculated
number that one individual can bring in, and they might come in
illegally and find the path to a legal lawful presence and then start
the 273. When that chart was done, it was not really limited to 273
except space on the spreadsheet confined it to 273. The number could be
100 or more above that. And the size of the sibling unit, it might be 6
or 12. And if I remember right, the size of the unit for the chart was
3.1 siblings per family. A very conservative estimate.
So we have the automatic citizenship plan, the anchor baby plan, and
that will yield 350,000 babies born a year to illegal mothers but on
U.S. soil. Some argue their constitutional right to citizenship. I will
argue that they also have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the
United States when they are born. Therefore, it is a practice, not a
constitutional right. But we have 350,000 new citizens that would not
be citizens if we enforced our law on that. That is Nathan Deal's bill,
another leader on immigration from Georgia. I certainly support that
bill.
But the family reunification, the chain migration, 273, and this
usurps the kind of policy that the United States of America ought to
have. Every nation, and we are the most generous Nation in the world
when it comes to immigration, by raw numbers, by percentage of the
population, by having a standard there that isn't a very strict
standard at all, but we need an immigration policy designed to enhance
the economic, the social and the cultural well-being of the United
States of America.
As the gentleman from Georgia alluded, we are not measuring in this
chain migration plan the relative merits of the individual immigrants
that would come in. We are simply letting that be set by genetics of
the family, maybe that and marriage and whatever kind of familial
relationship they want to have. I would submit that we need to
establish in this Congress, first we need to get control of the illegal
flow over our borders. That is about 11,000 at night.
I have sat on the border and I have heard the fence squeak at night,
and I have watched the shadows go by me. It is twice the size of Santa
Ana's army pouring across the border. And then we have the 350,000
automatic citizenship anchor babies that are born, and the family
reunification plan. All of those things are out of the control of the
Federal Government right now.
Because we have those elements and we have the overstayers of the
visa that are not being enforced, because of that, the immigration
issue has become so chaotic that we cannot engage in a rational
immigration debate that can be designed to do the things I say and
enhance the social, economic, and cultural well-being of America.
If we can get enforcement back under the control of the American
people, then I believe we need to put together a matrix, a score
system, a score sheet that rewards potential immigrants for their
education level, for the capital that they bring into the country with
them, for the business acumen that they might have, for the likelihood
that they can assimilate into this broader, overall American culture
that we have, so we can have some cultural continuity in the United
States of America and assimilate and tie together and maintain this
vision of one people, one people under God. As we sit today, it is out
of our control.
Another thing that we are going to see, a White House initiative, a
Senate initiative, and I believe a House initiative coming together
trying to get a critical mass of voters between the Democrats and
Republicans in the House and Senate to work with the White House on
this bill that I believe clearly the American people understand, and
that is amnesty. That is the bill which has been dropped in the House
within the last day.

But the thing we must insist upon, however the issue of amnesty is
resolved, however the issue of the national ID card is resolved, we
must insist on an overall national cap. The aggregate of all of
immigration components that are there, and I think there are 30-some
different categories that people can come into the United States
legally under, that needs to be capped.
So if a family reunification plan takes up to a million a year, fine,
we hit the cap, we stop. No H-1Bs, no work permits. It is simply we hit
the cap.
Mr. BILBRAY. If the gentleman would yield on that, I think the
American people don't realize that we take more legal immigration than
all the world combined. We are taking now more than we ever have.
But first, I want to stop a second and thank the gentleman from
Georgia for hosting.
Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank him, and I would
like to do it formally. I would like to thank the gentleman from
California (Mr. Bilbray), who is chairman of the Immigration Reform
Caucus in the 110th Congress. I look forward to his leadership on this
caucus of the Congress, this bipartisan effort on his part. The
gentleman from California certainly knows of what he speaks.
Mr. BILBRAY. I would thank the gentleman from Georgia for hosting our
report on immigration to the American people tonight from the
Congressional Caucus.
People have to understand how really, really we have bent over
backwards to accommodate people to immigrate to this country. We have
about 800,000 people become citizens. We have a million that are
allowed to be permanent resident aliens every year, and then we have
another million-plus that are allowed to come here to work in the
United States. That is almost 3 million people a year that we are
accommodating from overseas in one way or the other. And when people
say we are a Nation of immigrants, we are a Nation of legal immigrants;
but there is a reasonable level of immigration. When the American
people realize that we just absolutely have our doors open, there is no
excuse for illegal immigration, and we have to make sure that our legal
immigration policies are reasonable.
I don't think it is much to ask, those of us who are sworn to
represent the people of the United States, to make sure that the
American immigration policy is for America first and for the immigrant
second. We not only have a right, we have a responsibility to make sure
that our immigration policy serves the American people. Like every
other policy that the Federal Government is initiating, the American
people should come first before anyone else.

[[Page H2816]]

This issue of the cost of just the legal immigration, let me give you
one cost that most people don't think about. The cost just in one State
of giving birth to the children of illegal aliens in California is $400
million a year. That is $400 million just for giving free birth to the
children of illegal aliens. In San Diego County, it is $22 million a
year just for birthing babies of people that aren't supposed to be in
the country.
You add that up, the impact on the taxpayers, there is no way in the
world I can believe that any man or woman can stand up in this Chamber
and say I am for a balanced budget, I am for fiscal responsibility, but
I am for giving amnesty that has been estimated to be $50 billion if
Mr. Kennedy and some people in the House get their way of rewarding
people for being here illegally.
I think there is a basic issue that we ought to call down and say,
since when does this country believe that those who follow the law
should be punished and told to stay at home, but those who break the
law get rewarded and get into this country?
And since when is it not the right thing to do to make sure that our
immigration policy serves the people we are sworn to represent in this
Chamber and in the Senate? It is a major issue that the American people
need to be asking those that they have sent to Washington.
I, as the new chairman of the Immigration Caucus, look forward to
working with Democrats and Republicans because I think in all fairness,
immigration is not a Democrat or Republican issue, it is an American
issue. And Americans across this country on both sides of the political
divide believe it is time we address this issue reasonably and not make
the terrible mistake we made in 1986 of rewarding people with amnesty
and not doing something about enforcement.
I appreciate the chance to be able to address the issue. That chart
scares me to death. And I just say this as a practicing Catholic with
five children. Your numbers are a lot lower than for those of us that
are in my Mass every day. I think we have to recognize this number as a
huge threat of really overturning the entire concept we have of
reasonable immigration levels, and those reasonable immigration levels
are not only our right to set here in Washington, it is our
responsibility to do that.
I yield back.
Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman, and I hope the gentleman will be
able to stay and continue as we have a colloquy on this issue.
Just by coincidence, we have the Catholic caucus here, as we have the
gentleman from California and the gentleman from Iowa and myself, so we
know about these large families.
But to put it in perspective, in regard to numbers, Mr. Bilbray
mentioned the fact that a million come into this country as permanent
legal residents every year. It varies from country to country and
hemisphere to hemisphere, the overall quota. And then that million
additional that come in under all of the visa programs, the H-1B, et
cetera, temporary agricultural workers and various skill levels, you
are talking about an additional million.
But from 1776 to 1976, 200 years of our country's existence, the
average number of immigrants was about 250,000. So that just shows you
where we are today; and of course we are not talking about the 3 or 4
million illegals if we don't close down our border and secure our
border. Not close it down, secure our border. Then you are going to
have 3 or 4 million illegals in addition to that.
The gentleman from Iowa has been mighty quiet for the last few
minutes, and I yield back to him.

{time} 2215

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.
The thought that goes through my mind as I listen to that discussion
about the cumulative total of legal immigrants in the United States, it
occurs to me that the Senate bill that passed last year that they said
was not amnesty, that the American people rejected because clearly it
was amnesty, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation,
would have legalized over the next 20 years, and that is the
calculation period of time that we have for immigration, 66.1 million
people.
It also occurs to me that back in 1986 when President Reagan signed
the amnesty bill, that was supposed to legalize 1 million people, and
that went over 3 million people.
Mr. BILBRAY. Actually, it was----
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I am happy to yield to the
gentleman to make any clarification he likes, but I have a flow in my
thought process here that I want to make sure I can stay with here.
The published numbers, though, was supposed to be amnesty for 1
million and ended up being 3.1 million the numbers I have. Then if you
go up to 1996 in California, when President Clinton accelerated the
naturalization of a group of citizens in the number of 1 million in
1996.
So I am pointing this out that 1 million people was an outrageously
high number in 1986, was an outrageously high number in 1996, and last
year, the Senate passed a bill that legalized 66.1 million people, and
we swallowed that and talked about it not in terms of the magnitude of
it but just simply is it amnesty or is it not amnesty.
But put this into the scope, that the point I want to make here is
that my numbers show, my census numbers, from 1820 until the year 2000,
and those would be the years when our census was keeping track of the
naturalization, that period of time, 1820 to 2000, the sum total, the
cumulative total of all naturalized citizens come into the United
States was 66 million.
So the Senate would have legalized a number in one of the stroke of
the pen equal to the sum total of all legal immigrants that have come
into America in all of its history and still leave these kind of
programs here. That is the essence of the point I wanted to make.
Mr. BILBRAY. I just remember I was involved with running the County
of San Diego in 1986, and I remember that before the bill was passed
the number estimate was 300,000. It was after the bill was passed that
they said, oh, it might be as high as 1 million, and then they kept
continuing the deadline and increasing those who qualified to apply,
and it ended up being 3 million. So I just think people have got to
remember, when the bill was passed, what was being told was 300,000,
and what ended up being the final number was 3 million.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from California.
So, picking up on this point, I want to broaden this discussion, if I
could, a little bit, too, and that is, the labor supply in the United
States of America. We hear continually from the other side the specious
argument that we do not have a labor supply in the United States, and
so since there is a demand for more cheap labor, therefore, you ought
to bring in more cheap labor, as if the United States of America was
just a giant ATM and there was nothing more to our Nationhood than a
giant ATM.
We are more than a giant ATM. In fact, we are a sovereign Nation
based upon a constitutional foundation, and we have a whole series of
foundations that have created and established American exceptionalism,
and without going down into the components of American exceptionalism,
I would point out that we do have a labor supply, Mr. Speaker. That
labor supply is not something where you just go looking at an
unemployment rate and say, well, traditionally, it is kind of low, it
is 4.6 percent. How many does that make? A few million out there you
could hire. You could add up a few that are on the welfare rolls.
It is more than that. Look at the whole United States of America as
if we were one huge company. If you were going to establish a company
in a locale, you would not just go into that locale to measure how many
were on the unemployment rolls and count them and say that is the only
available labor supply. You would hire a consulting company to go in
and survey that region and find out how many people were underemployed,
how many people were not in the workforce, and how many people were
unemployed so that you could look at the universe that could be hired
from.
I did that for the United States of America. It was not hard to do. I
am kind of astonished those big business interests did not do that. So
I went to the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site, and I started to add
up what about the people that are not in the workforce.
Well, between the ages of 16 and 19, there are 9.3 million that are
not even

[[Page H2817]]

doing part-time work, and then you go into the ages of 20 to 24, and
there is a number there that I believe is 5.1 million. 9.3 million for
the teenagers, 5.1 million for the 20- to 24-year-old, and you go on up
the line. So I began adding up these available workforce, and I went on
up to 65, and then I thought but you know Wal-Mart is hiring up to 74.
They get greeters there to hand you your cart at 74. So they are
available workforce, too, not a lot of them, but they are there. You
add this up, there are 6.9 million working illegals in America, and
there are 69 million nonworking Americans of working age.
So any company that is worth their salt would look at that and say
all we have to do is go hire 1 in 10 of those that are not in the
workforce. One in 10 is all it takes to replace the illegal labor that
is in America.
If you want to look at it from another perspective, Mr. Speaker, I
would submit this, that 4.7 percent of the workforce is illegal labor,
and they represent 6.9 million workers but they are not as productive
as more educated, more efficient and more effective workers that are
the American workers. So they are really only doing 2.2 percent of the
work. Well, if you wanted to replace 2.2 percent of the work, if this
great huge megafactory of the United States of America got up in the
morning and realized that 2.2 percent of your labor force was not going
to show up for work, it could happen all at once but it will not, then
you could make an adjustment on your production line and you would just
say to the people, well, you know that 15-minute coffee break that you
have in the morning and the afternoon, for the sake of this emergency
that we are in, we are going to shorten that down to 9.5 minutes in the
morning and 9.5 minutes in the afternoon, and you have picked up 2.2
percent of your productivity. Eleven minutes a day will more than
recover all the illegal labor in America in the size of the economy
that we have.
We are not in a labor crisis. We just simply always will have more
demand for cheap labor as long as we have more labor that makes it
cheaper.
Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I want to move back now
for just a moment and focus again on the solution to this problem of
chain immigration, and we will get into further discussion of some of
the many things this Congress, and the 109th Congress when we were in
the majority and led this great House of Representatives, some of the
many good things that have been done in regard to controlling illegal
immigration.
But let me just for the moment, before my colleagues some possibly
have to leave, refocus on this issue of chain migration, Mr. Speaker,
because we have presented the problem. We have spent maybe 20, 25, 30
minutes talking about the problem of chain migration, the one person
bringing in 273 others, not based on skill, strictly being, I guess,
based on the luck of your birthright, geneology, and how inappropriate
that is and how we cannot afford to continue to do this. We have a
solution.
But Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to call my colleagues'
attention to this next slide, and again, it depicts on this scale of
justice, as we have here in the middle of this slide, on the one side
you have an imbalance, too much emphasis, too much weight in regard to
the second cousin of an immigrant, i.e., chain migration.
On the other side, however, not weighing so heavily in this scale of
this balance of justice is the skilled laborer waiting to emigrate into
this country.
This is what this hour is mainly about, Mr. Speaker, that we need to
correct this. We need to get back to what Congresswoman Barbara Jordan
recommended to this House back in the early 1990s as she chaired the
Commission on Immigration Reform.
Basically, this is what she said, Mr. Speaker, in this next slide:
Proposed tripartite immigration system, legal immigration. That
basically, as I said at the outset of the hour, people come to this
country first and foremost maybe as a skill-based worker, skill-based
admission; or possibly on the far side of the slide, come in as a
refugee for humanitarian reasons, a humanitarian admission; and then,
finally, the nuclear family admissions that Congresswoman Jordan, the
distinguished lady from the great State of Texas talked about, nuclear
family admissions, Mr. Speaker.
That is the solution to this problem, and how we got away, how we did
not follow her recommendation, there were a number of things that were
recommended that were enacted by this body, but we missed the most
important, and that is in regard to nuclear family admissions.
This print is far too small for my colleagues to see, even in the
front of the room, so I want to point out, under nuclear family, the
first priority would be spouses and minor children of United States
citizens, under the nuclear family. The second priority would be
parents of the United States citizens, and the third priority, as we
talked about, would be spouses and minor children of legal immigrants.
Of course, hopefully they will become and we want them to assimilate
into our society. We want them to be part of this great country, the
United States of America, and at that point of course they could bring
their parents, both husband and wife, as part of this nuclear family.
Mr. Speaker, in my final slide, here is the result of that. Again,
this is the initial skilled worker that comes in legally. This is her
husband or his wife and their three minor children. That is a total of
five people, one permanent legal resident and an additional four. Now,
when husband and wife become citizens of the United States, then each
of them under this new Nuclear Family Act, and that is what I want to
present to my colleagues tonight, the bill that I have introduced, H.R.
938, remember that number, many of you on both sides are considering
signing on to this bill. Many of you already have. I think we are up
over 60 at this point, and hopefully, there will be many more when they
understand the magnitude of this problem that we are presenting
tonight.
So H.R. 938, the Nuclear Family Priority Act, taken almost verbatim
from Congresswoman Barbara Jordan's recommendations back in 1990,
again, a distinguished Democratic Member of this body, these two,
husband and wife, when they become citizens, they can bring their
parents. Assuming both parents are living, then that is four additional
people, and then they in turn having become citizens can bring their
parents in. There is a possibility that if the parents were divorced
and remarried, that instead of two on each side, there would be four.
I do not want to confuse my colleagues with another arcane slide, but
basically, this is the bottom line to take home. On this slide, if all
of these people came in under the Nuclear Family Priority Act, you are
talking about 35 people. Chain migration, which currently is the
policy, you are talking about 273 people.
So, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about cutting that down by 87
percent, and that is not small change. That is a significant solution
to this problem, moving in that direction to enact the Nuclear Family
Priority Act.
So, again, it is straightforward. I leave this slide up and let my
colleagues continue to look at it. I want to yield back now to the
gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray).
Mr. BILBRAY. Well, I would just like to congratulate you on
explaining exactly what your legislation is focused on. You articulated
the problem, the challenge, and it seems to me not only a very common-
sense approach but a very, very compassionate approach to the issue.
I think any American that thinks about hundreds of people coming to
this country because one person was allowed in sort of boggles your
mind saying why has not anybody brought this up before.

{time} 2230

I think that look at your diagram there, and the level of legal
immigration you are proposing per person, based on family relations, is
quite reasonable. I don't think any of us, especially those of us that
are a family from immigrants, my mother came from Australia, could say
that is an unreasonable and an unfair proposal and unrational proposal
at this time.
I really want to compliment you at actually addressing this issue,
because we are talking about a lot of other difference issues. But this
is one that is sort of below the radar, people aren't talking about,
and I am glad you are able to bring it up. I think that is why

[[Page H2818]]

our Wednesday evening reports to the American people on the status of
immigration is so important. I want to thank you sincerely for bringing
up this issue and for introducing this bill.
Mr. GINGREY. I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from California,
the gentleman from Iowa, for being with me tonight. The hour is getting
late. I appreciate their sharing their knowledge. It is so important
that our colleagues do that, because we have very bright Members of
this body on both sides of the aisle. We are not all experts on every
issue, but we help one another. We share our knowledge. We rely on each
other.
I am very grateful to Mr. Bilbray and Mr. King of Iowa for being with
me today, to help me talk about not just this issue of chain
immigration, that's the main focus of the hour, but to discuss the
overall problem of Georgia.
It is a huge problem. We can't really afford to turn our backs and
shut our eyes and bury our head in the sand with regard to 3 or 4
million additional people coming in every year illegally on top of
those 2 million that are coming, as the gentleman from California
pointed out in his earlier remarks. There is no way, this country
cannot sustain that.
He talked about the cost in California and their problem, indeed, as
a border State, is a lot bigger than it is in the State of Georgia. Of
course, their population approaches 55 million, and the population of
Georgia is 9.3 million. But on a percentage basis, we have a huge
problem in Georgia as well, maybe fourth or fifth number percentage-
wise of illegal immigrations of any State in this country. I think the
last count in Georgia was about 750,000.
We have got a problem. Certainly, we are a great country. I think
that we have done some great things in the history of this Nation.
Indeed in 1969, we put a man on the Moon. If we can do that, we can
solve this problem. We just need to have the will. I think my
colleagues are helping bring that to the attention of the Members of
this House and this Congress, both House and Senate, to the
administration, to the American people. I like it when we talk during
these times to our colleagues in a bipartisan way and say that, look,
we can do this together. We all worry about who has got the power and
who is in control, and who is in the majority, and who is the Speaker,
and who are the committee chairs, and who is the next President. Of
course, that will be upon us pretty soon.
But in the meantime, there are so many things that we can do in a
bipartisan way and really pat ourselves on the back, because I don't
think our constituents care whether the Democrats solve this problem or
the Republicans solve this problem. They want us to do it in a unified
way.
We have got such a few more on the Democrats side of the aisle in
this 110th, a few more on our side of the aisle in the 109th back to
1994, these things go back and forth. But we can't let that tie our
hands and keep us from going forward and getting things done for the
American people.
I know that my colleagues that are here with me tonight, and I think
all the colleagues of this 435-Member body would hopefully say, right
on, Gingrey, we agree with you on that.
Mr. BILBRAY. Let me say this as a Republican. I think the American
people will be so pleased if the Democratic majority would bring a bill
forward that addresses the major source of illegal immigration, and
that is illegal employment. If the Democrats were brave enough to just
come forward, not with an amnesty that rewards illegals for being here,
not pandering to the illegals and the whole industry that has been
built up around that, but went and actually did a project that
addressed the real source of illegal immigration; and that is, have a
simple employer verification system and a crackdown on the people that
are profiteering from illegal immigration, and that's the employers. IF
the Democratic Party did that, I think the American people would
embrace that.
I think it's a real chance for them to show that they can get the job
done and get this issue done that the Republicans didn't get done. You
know, as an American, I think that is more important than Republicans
having to take advantage of this issue. I just wouldn't be happy as an
American to see the Democrats sit there and actually get the job done
so I could join them, could vote with them at doing, actually getting
the legislation through that the American people have been waiting for
too long. I would sure love to be surprised, and I am sure the American
people would love to see us working as Democrats and Republicans for
America first, not our party first and our Nation second.
I just tell you, I think that our grandchildren would be well served,
because all of us, I know the three of us here, if it meant somebody on
the Democratic side getting credit for it, then God bless them. What's
important is that we leave an America for our grandchildren that is
worth our grandchildren living in, and taking care of this problem is
going to be part of the important part of doing that.
Mr. GINGREY. You know who else would be pleased, and that is the
employers in this country, and a lot of the industries. In Georgia, I
mean we have got agriculture, we have the poultry industry, we have the
carpet industry. We all have the homebuilding industry in every State,
and I know that most of my friends that are in those businesses pay
good wages, they pay good benefits, they are treating their employees
in a compassionate way.

In return, they are getting a heck of a day's work for their wages
that they pay, and I think they would welcome, I think that the
employers would welcome. I know Representative King, in a bill that he
introduced in the last Congress and has championed in regard to an
identification system that is foolproof, and we can do that, we can
have a tamper-proof, biometric identification card. And I think our
employers, and I have talked to many of them, and I commend them, but
there may be a few that are paying low wages and gaming the system. You
always have that problem. But we will ferret them out.
At the same time, kudos to those who are playing by the rules and
doing the right thing.
Mr. BILBRAY. I think the key is the fact that every legitimate
employer wants to have a simple system that lets them know who is
qualified to work and who is not. The employer doesn't want to be the
person having to make that determination.
We require every employer in this country now to get a Social
Security number for their employee. All we are saying now, with the
Silvestre Reyes-David Dreier bill, H.R. 98, is we will now give the
employee a card to prove that it's their number, so that the employer,
when they get this number, gets it from a card, doesn't just take
somebody's word. It gives us, as legitimate citizens or legal
residents, the ability to prove this really is our number, not 20 other
people that are using that number somewhere else down the road.
This issue of upgrading the Social Security card seems so simple. We
haven't done this since the 1930s, though every driver's license from
every State has been upgraded since then. Now that we have done the
real ID bill, where we are requiring finally that driver's licenses be
upgraded, isn't it appropriate that the Federal Government do the same
thing with our card, our Social Security, to upgrade it to be as
tamper-resistant as the new driver's license would be?
Mr. GINGREY. There is no question about that.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I wanted to make the point that we tried mightily
in this House last year to bring immigration reform, we passed H.R.
4437. It had a lot of the things in it that would clean up the problems
that we have with an enforcement here, internally, domestically, with
employment enforcement, as well as border enforcement. That bill, of
course, didn't make it through the Senate. The Senate passed their
amnesty bill, and we passed our enforcement bill.
We came back and we did the one thing that we could agree to, and
that was provide the online border security at the fence. That was
something the American people wanted and demanded, and it was right,
and it was appropriate, and it was just.
But the reason that that was the one thing we could agree on, because
there is a tug of war going on in this country, a tug of war would be
going on between big business that wants to have a supply of cheap
labor, and people that want to have a supply, a long supply of voters,
or at least people in the

[[Page H2819]]

United States they can count for the census purpose. There is a lot of
political power, most of that is on the left, and there is a lot of
business power, most of that is on the right.
We have this, it's an unusual, odd and some would say an unholy
alliance. I think of it as a set of barbells where you have the weight
on the right of the business interests, where you have the weight on
the left is the political power, and the barbell in the middle, that
handle that you pick it up with, the bar, that's the middle class. The
middle class is being squeezed ever more narrow because of the overload
on the upside and the overload on the downside our economy.
We got to this point last year, and we did all we could do. But the
American people became cynical because they weren't seeing legislation
get to the President's desk that fixed the problem. Now we are faced
again this year with trying to arrive at a consensus, trying to arrive
at something that preserves the rule of law, does not provide amnesty,
satisfies the interests on both ends of that barbell that I described,
and doing it quickly. Because once we get past the summer, once we get
past the August break, we are into the fast slide into the next
Presidential race, as well as the elections here and a third of the
Senate.
But the Presidential race, if it's done and if it's done right, we
will take this issue up in Congress, and if we don't solve it first, it
will be become the issue du jour of the Presidential debates. And I am
looking forward to a Presidential candidate that will step forward with
clarity on this issue and start that inertia towards the White House.
That is the one thing that can solve this issue. That is my best hope.
Mr. GINGREY. The point the gentleman from Iowa is making is that we
have really tried hard in this body to address this problem. We on this
side of the aisle, when we were in control and had the majority in the
109th, felt very strongly that first and foremost to solve the problem
and ultimately decide what to do with the 20 million that are estimated
to be here illegally, is to stop the hemorrhaging. As a physician
member, I use that expression a lot, having been a surgeon in my
previous life, OB/GYN physician, but you have to stop the bleeding. If
you sit there and let the patient continue to bleed, and that is
analogous to the porous borders, the 3 or 4 million that continue to
come in every year, in addition to the 2 million that the gentleman
from California was talking about earlier, then the patient is going to
die. That patient, as the lifeblood seeps out of us, is the United
States of America.
So it is so important to do the things that we have done, tried to do
in regard to Mr. Sensenbrenner's legislation. He was a champion in
regard to the REAL ID Act. Basically the REAL ID Act was just in
response to the request of the survivors of the 9/11 victims. As they
testified before the 9/11 Commission and made those recommendations, 41
or so specific recommendations, one of the most important ones was to
say you have got States that issue driver's licenses without requiring
any proof of legal residency. The 9/11 hijackers, 19 of them I think,
had something like 53, a total in the aggregate of 53 legal issued
driver's licenses from some 10 or 12 States.
So basically what we said is, look, we can't tell you, we the Federal
Government can't tell the States how to run their motor vehicle
department and how they issue driver's licenses and to whom and how
long and how much you pay for driver's licenses, what age you have to
be, whether you have to take driver's ed or not. That is a State
prerogative, certainly. But if they do not have proof of legal
residence, not citizenship, because a permanent legal resident
certainly can be granted a driver's license, then they can't use that
license from that State for Federal purposes, like getting on an
airplane and blowing it to smithereens or using it as a guided missile.
I see Mr. Speaker is tapping me down. I didn't realize, I was having
so much fun with my colleague from California, the chairman of the
Immigration Reform Caucus, that all of a sudden our time has expired.
I appreciate his patience and indulgence. I continue to promote the
Nuclear Family Protection Act. Let's all get behind it and thank you.
Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate our hour. I hope the people in
Colorado enjoyed prime time back there.

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