[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 99 (Tuesday, June 19, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H6727-H6733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE BUSH-KENNEDY AMNESTY BILL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is
recognized
[[Page H6728]]
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, it was a great victory for the American
people when the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill was withdrawn from
consideration in the Senate 2 weeks ago with such a stinging rebuke
from the voters, because we understand that the voters had contacted
their elected Representatives in such number that the bill was no
longer tenable. After that rebuke from the voters, one would think that
the White House and the congressional leadership would have listened to
the American people and concentrated on securing our borders and moving
forward with those activities to secure our country, and forget about
legalizing the status of 15 to 20 million people who are in our country
illegally. Well, how wrong we were. Like a bad horror movie, the
monster you thought had been killed is somehow being brought back to
life. It's rearing its ugly head again in the sequel. Well, here it is,
Nightmare on North Capitol Street, part two, starring the Bush-Kennedy
amnesty bill. This time we need to drive a stake into the heart of this
monstrous threat to the American people.
And what threat am I talking about? It is about time that the
Washington elite and the elite of America's business community
understand what impact this massive flow of immigration into our
society has had on the life of the American people.
What we face in California and now throughout the country is a
disintegration of our education system. Our schools, for which our
children are dependent on their education and the future of their
lives, are being diminished in terms of their capability of educating
our children because there is a massive influx of children into our
school systems, children who should not even be in this country.
We have a health care system that is in crisis. Today, we see in
California and we see in other States as well the closing of emergency
rooms. So American citizens whose children are out on the highways, if
there is an accident, may now not be able to go to emergency rooms to
get treated, to have their lives saved, where only a few short years
ago, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, there was an emergency room to service
that.
Why are these emergency rooms closing? Why is the health care system
in our country breaking down? This massive influx of immigrants,
illegal immigrants, into our society. In fact, many people today are
not able to pay for their health care insurance. And why is health care
so high? One of the major reasons health care insurance is so high is
when American citizens go to hospitals in order to be treated, their
health care policy, which is massively expensive, also has to take care
of those people who have no health care insurance, many of whom, a
large number of whom are of course illegal immigrants.
And what about our criminal justice system? Our criminal justice
system in California is breaking down. It's being crowded to the point
where if someone does commit a misdemeanor or a crime, even a violent
crime at times, they are let out on bond or sometimes they are let out
on their own recognizance because there is no place to put them. These
criminals, many of whom have come here illegally into our country, end
up coming here because they know the punishment here is nothing as
compared to the countries from which they are coming from.
Our criminal justice system is not protecting our citizens. If
someone in your family is raped or murdered or robbed or run down by a
drunk driver, well, now it is highly likely that, or I should say that
the chances are very good that the person who is victimizing our family
is here illegally and should never be in the country in the first
place.
And what about the wages of ordinary Americans? Ordinary Americans
now find that, yes, when they get out of school, they expect to get
good jobs and good paying jobs. But, no. What we have is, with the
massive influx of people into our country who will work far below the
wages that Americans will work for, they have bid down the wages of our
people. Now, that may not mean too much to the top 10 percent or the
elite of the business community, but that means everything, everything,
to ordinary Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. Our elite
has not been hurt, our elite has not been victimized, but ordinary
Americans find themselves not being able to get the paying jobs that
will help them pay what is necessary to be in a middle-class existence
in this country.
{time} 1915
At the same time, unfortunately, we see an unfortunate trend among
corporate executives, especially among the CEOs of companies, in paying
themselves 10, 20, 30, even $100 million in compensation at the same
time that the wage level of average Americans is under attack by a
massive influx of illegals which is supported by the business elite.
Whose side is our government on? Is it on the side of the business
elite that is willing to lay their own workers off, giving themselves
huge salaries, and then bringing on illegals or sending their
manufacturing to China so that slave labor can do the job and then
giving themselves huge corporate salaries? Are we on the side of people
who are coming here from other countries who, yes, they are benefited
by coming here at the expense of ordinary Americans?
It is no mistake that this is happening. All of these dire
consequences that are going on is not something that just happened. It
was not something that was unavoidable. What is happening is a product
of bad policy, policy that is not something that has been a mistake in
policy, but an intentional policy that has been in place for 20 years.
We now have 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants in our country. And
that is not just something that happened. It happened because it was
planned by those people who are making the policy in the last 20 years,
people who were paying attention to the corporate elite, who want to
bid down wages, and also to the liberal left wing of the Democratic
Party which controls the Democratic Party who think that with huge
numbers of immigrants coming into our country, they can change America.
Neither one of those two groups of people who have such enormous
influence in the Capitol of the United States are representing or
watching out for the American people.
Well, what we have done is given rewards to those people who have
come here illegally. And then we wonder why they come here. They say,
``Give it and they will come.'' Well, there is no doubt about it; we
give a reward to people who live in poverty, abject poverty, in
different countries. If we let them know they can have education
benefits that should be going to Americans, but they now can get them
for their children; if they know their children and their families will
be given health care and health treatment with money that should be
going to Americans; if they know that if they break the law that the
penalties they face here are actually much lower than in the countries
they are in; and if they know even if they are caught crossing our
border and caught here illegally, they will not be punished, why
wouldn't they come here?
This is not something that was unpredictable. We have 15 to 20
million people bidding down our wages, destroying our education system,
destroying our health care system, making our streets and our
communities not safe for our own families; and their presence here was
not a mistake. It was planned out. Because people knew that if we give
the benefits of jobs, good jobs, and the benefits that I just described
that should be going to Americans, that people will come here from
other countries.
No border protection will stop the massive flow of illegal immigrants
into our country if we continue to give huge rewards, a treasure house
of rewards, to those people who are coming here. Don't say that you
want to strengthen the border because you really are serious about
trying to stop illegal immigration if you are unwilling to cut off the
benefits that are the lure, which are the magnet that bring people
here.
Of course, there are those who claim that, who would like to say,
well, yes, we really are concerned about this, and we're going to
strengthen the Border Patrol. Let's just note that the Kennedy-Bush
amnesty bill that was in the Senate suggested that they were going to
strengthen the Border Patrol enforcement and enforcement mechanisms.
Yet, everything in that bill that
[[Page H6729]]
dealt with enforcement; strengthening the Border Patrol, strengthening
the fence, strengthening the ability of employers to be held
accountable if they hire illegals; all of those things are already law
but have not been enforced.
In fact, it is even worse that they haven't been enforced. This
administration has actually undermined the effort to try to enforce the
laws against illegal immigration, and they have done everything they
can. While the bill suggests they want to strengthen them, and the
President has had his picture taken many times on the border with
Border Patrol agents saying how important they are, yet there has been
no other administration that has so demoralized and attacks our Border
Patrol agents in doing their duty.
By now, most Americans understand that there are two Border Patrol
agents that are languishing in prison as I give this speech. But there
are many such Border Patrol agents, there are many such law enforcement
officers, who this administration has thrown the book at in order to
send a message to those law enforcement officers and those Border
Patrol agents who are there on the border trying to deflect this
massive invasion from our southern border, and this administration has
thrown the book at them if they make any mistake. A police officer who
makes a mistake, a Border Patrol officer who makes a mistake, now
understands that he or she will be prosecuted to the extent of the law,
and the benefit of the doubt will be given to the illegal alien, even
if the illegal alien is a criminal involved in such things as drug
smuggling.
What of course is brought to mind is the case of Ramos and Compean.
As I speak today, Ramos and Compean languish in Federal penitentiaries,
where they have been held for 133 days in solitary confinement.
Mr. and Mrs. America, do you understand that the people who went out
there to protect our families have been prosecuted to the fullest
extent of the law, while a drug dealer who they were trying to stop was
given immunity in order to convict them of mistakes? And those mistakes
were turned into what? Into felonies by this administration.
Johnny Sutton, who is the U.S. attorney, has a long-time relationship
with our President. One might even call him a crony, or some might call
him a member of the Bush family in that sense, that he has been with
him for a long time. He is a protege of our President. This man
determined that Ramos and Compean would be prosecuted to the fullest
extent of the law and that the drug dealer that they stopped on the
Mexican-American border would be granted immunity and that his word
would be taken over the word of the Border Patrol agents.
What happened was that 2 years ago, these two Border Patrol agents
who have unblemished records, these two Border Patrol agents who have
15 years of experience at the Border Patrol between them and a pristine
on-the-job record, both of them U.S. military veterans, one of them a
10-year veteran of the Naval Reserves, these men were on the job and
they saw a truck that had clearly come across the border. They tried to
stop it. The man in the truck ran out. They intercepted him. A scuffle
ensued. The man then, after being involved in a physical altercation
with a police officer, began to run toward the border.
His version is they immediately shot him in the back. Of course, the
U.S. attorney has repeated over and over again the lie that two U.S.
Border Patrol agents shot a man in the back as he was running away. How
many times have we heard Mr. Sutton say that? And then he also
insinuated that the two Border Patrol agents are corrupt, using the
word ``corrupt.''
This administration has backed up their prosecutor who used that
rhetoric, who threw the book at the Border Patrol agents, even though
the Border Patrol agents suggested there had been a physical
altercation; that the man who was actually involved with them at that
moment trying to smuggle $1 million worth of drugs into our country was
turning, and the two Border Patrol agents suggested they thought they
saw him turning with an object in his hand. The seconds were passing
just like this. What do you think when you see someone who is trying to
smuggle things across the border? You assume they are armed.
The Border Patrol agents, Ramos and Compean, shot at him, thinking
that he was armed, and he got away. They didn't know if they had hit
him or not. Well, the U.S. attorney took the word of the drug dealer
that he didn't have a gun.
Now, first of all, how do we know that the drug dealer didn't have a
gun? He had $1 million worth of drugs. Was he thus trying to smuggle
all those very expensive drugs, was he trying to do this unarmed? Is
that what the drug cartel does? No. If you have got a valuable
shipment, generally the Border Patrol agents understand that people who
are smuggling drugs are armed because they have something of great
value. Their drugs were worth $1 million in this case. Should we assume
that this man had a gun? I think that was a logical assumption.
What is more important is the only word that we have that he didn't
have a gun was that the drug smuggler himself made that claim. Should
we believe the drug smuggler over the two Border Patrol agents? That is
what our prosecutor did.
That is the policy of this administration. This administration gave
total immunity to the drug dealer and threw the book at the Border
Patrol agents, who have risked their lives to protect our families. If
they had been stopping a terrorist who had a truckload of nuclear
material, a dirty bomb aimed at El Paso or some other city, these two
Border Patrol agents would have been heralded as heroes. Instead, it
was a Mexican, instead of an Arab terrorist, and the Mexican drug
dealer was given immunity, and the Border Patrol agents are now
languishing in prison, having been charged with attempted murder.
The jury in that trial, by the way, was lied to. They were told that
the drug dealer had never done this before, even though newspaper
accounts suggest that his family said he had been hauling drugs for a
long time, since he was 14 years old, and that he indeed carried a gun
many times when he was smuggling drugs.
This administration decided that they were going to prosecute not
only the Border Patrol agents, but they were going to lie to the jury
and portray the drug dealer as this is the only time he ever did it,
and, guess what? He only did it because he needed to make money for his
sick mother's medicine. That type of tripe was allowed to be told to
the jury.
And let us note that three of the jurors after this was over broke
down in tears when they were told that they could have actually voted
not guilty, the foreman of their jury told them that if the majority
voted guilty, they had to vote guilty.
Johnny Sutton, our U.S. Attorney, claims that he didn't have a
choice. He did have a choice, and it reflects on this administration,
and that choice was to prosecute our defenders and give the benefit of
the doubt and immunity to a Mexican drug dealer. He had a choice of who
to prosecute.
They also had a choice of whether they were going to tell the jury
that this same drug dealer had been fingered for a second drug
shipment, even after the Ramos-Compean incident, before they went to
trial. But that was kept from the jury as well.
The U.S. attorney claims that Ramos and Compean were corrupt. Now he
defends that saying, well, anybody who would shoot an unarmed man is
corrupt. Well, let me tell you this, another bit of lawyer-like
legalese that the American people can understand: The Border Patrol
agents have no corruption in their background whatsoever. Yet the U.S.
attorney is calling them corrupt.
{time} 1930
Department of Homeland Security briefers who briefed Members of
Congress on these two Border Patrol agents claimed they said ``we are
going to go out today and shoot some Mexicans.'' And kept that up for
months and then had to admit it was a total lie.
Something is dreadfully wrong here. What is dreadfully wrong is we
have a President who is trying to send a message to the Border Patrol
agents that they should not use their weapons or they are going to be
prosecuted. Well, if you can't use your weapons on the border, how are
we going to protect the border? No drug dealer or smuggler or
[[Page H6730]]
terrorist is going to stop. If a Border Patrol agent says stop, but I
can't use my weapon, you have lost control of the borders over a
nonsensical policy and it has resulted in two of our heroes languishing
in solitary confinement.
This administration is so mean-spirited and so nasty that when one of
the Border Patrol agents was beaten up by a Mexican gang in prison,
they refused to even consider asking the judge to let them out on
appeal, which even common criminals are let out on appeal. No, they
went into solitary confinement, quote, ``for their own protection.''
My staff visited Agent Ramos who has been in solitary confinement for
133 days. He has lost 25-35 pounds. They are not giving him proper
medical care. This man, who was part of the Naval Reserve for 10 years,
who risked his life for us, put his life on the border trying to stop
drug dealers from bringing drugs into our communities, and this
President refused to even consider asking the judge to let them out on
bond until their appeal is heard.
Why is that? My guess is the President has made an agreement with the
Mexican Government that there will be no use of weapons on our border,
and this is part of a bigger picture, bigger understanding, bigger
vision of our President, that we should have an open border with Mexico
so we can have a country sort of like the border between Belgium and
France in the future.
How do we know that the President has bigger visions that he doesn't
let us know about? He made an agreement with the Mexican Government to
provide Social Security benefits to illegals who have worked here if we
indeed ever legalize the status of those people who are illegally
working in our country. So yes, we are going to provide Social
Security. That is part of the totalization agreement. And for 2 years
we couldn't get that information about that secret understanding
between our President and Mexico until Freedom of Information Act
lawsuits forced them to disclose that.
What other agreements do we have? One must be that we are not going
to use our weapons on the border unless our people are shot at first.
What does that do to control of the border? That means we have lost
total control. The Border Patrol agents understand this. They have
never been more demoralized. And you tell me that we should believe
that the President is serious about this issue and that Senator Kennedy
and President Bush will indeed strengthen the Border Patrol when they
have done everything in their power to demoralize the Border Patrol?
The bill that was being proposed in the Senate, that was withdrawn,
had one purpose and one purpose only. It was not to strengthen
enforcement or strengthen the Border Patrol or increase the number of
beds for detention for illegal immigrants. All of those things were
already done by law. And the bill that was being proposed actually
decreased the amount of enforcement already mandated by law.
There was one purpose and that purpose was to legalize the status of
15-20 million people who are in our country illegally. The enhancement
provisions of that bill were fraudulent because those provisions were
already mandated by laws that have already passed and are not being
enforced by this administration.
So the American people when they heard this and understood what was
being presented to them, and we kept hearing we have to have a
comprehensive bill. A ``comprehensive bill'' only means legalization.
Enhancement is there to cover up the fact that legalization is what is
going on.
The American people when they finally understood that, and thank God
we have people on talk radio shows around this country who alerted the
American people to the legislative threat that was coming down the
pike, the American people rose up in a righteous rage and made sure
that their Members of Congress and Members of the Senate were alerted
to the fact they would not put up with this betrayal of their
interests.
But the American people are up against an incredibly powerful
adversary in Washington. It is an unholy alliance between business and
the liberal left that controls the Democratic Party. The business
community wants lower wages. The business community wants to bid down
not only the wages of the illegal immigrants that are coming over, and
not only will they pay fewer wages to them, but they actually can pay
lower wages to the American people because having the presence of 20
million people here actually brings down the wage level that they have
to pay to get the job done.
So you have the business community pushing for policies that will not
inhibit the massive flow of immigrants into our society, and you have
the liberal left who really believe that they want to change the
fundamentals of America and that a massive flow of illegals into our
country, or at least a presence of a large number of immigrants, is
going to help them change America.
Well, the businessmen of course don't say that. That is not what
officially is the reason. That is not officially how they can claim
that they want to bring in people from other countries. They are
claiming that they can't find Americans to do jobs. Before it was there
are no Americans who will work at these jobs, and now they have changed
the word that there aren't Americans who are working at these jobs.
Let me note that I believe the American people will work on any job
as long as the pay is right. We have 60 million Americans of working
age who are not working in this country. But we are being told by the
business community we can't find anybody to do these jobs. The hotel
industry, for example, tells us they can't find people to change the
sheets and clean up the rooms at hotels. What we need to do is take a
picture in our mind of these big hotels and how many people they employ
and realize where these hotels are located. They are located mainly in
urban areas. There are millions upon millions of American women, and
also men, I might add, who would love to have a job that would permit
them to drop their kids off at school at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning
and come back at 3:00 in the afternoon and pick them up. That just
happens to be the time when you need people to work in those hotels.
But you know what, those American people who would love to take care
of their children and increase the take-home pay of their family, they
are not going to work for a pittance. What happens with the illegals
that come in, they work for a pittance. The hotels don't have to give
them health insurance, and the American people are taxed or their
health insurance has to pay for those illegals and they won't take the
jobs because the jobs are paying so little.
Yes, I believe we have plenty of people to clean those hotel rooms.
Let's pay them a decent wage. There is nothing wrong in believing that
people who clean hotel rooms should have a middle-class income.
We are told that we can't find people to work on the farms. The
farmers say there is not enough labor. There is a large number of
people who labor on farms, but there is, yes, a component of people
that we have brought in from other countries. We don't need to bring in
these people from other countries. But every time I mention there is an
alternative, people scream and yell. There is a big smoke screen that
comes up because everybody refuses to look at an idea honestly.
Instead, they want to negate the argument without actually confronting
the idea because there are millions of young men in particular who are
able to work on the farms; and millions, by the way, are in prison.
I look to see where the prisons are located in this country, and they
are almost all in farm areas. Is there any reason in the world that we
should just have prisoners beefing up at the gymnasium and watching TV,
that we can't also have them earning money that otherwise would be
going to foreigners, let them earn the money. Let them pay half of it
to pay for their keep so it brings down the cost to the taxpayers, and
let them walk out of prison 5 years later with half of the money that
they have made being paid a market value for helping pick fruits and
vegetables.
I have talked to prisoners and people who work in the prisons. They
all love this idea, but every time you bring it up in the Congress, no,
you don't hear a logical argument against it. You just hear no, no, no,
we can't do that.
I'm sorry, just raising your voice and saying that can't be
considered is not good enough. The American people understand that
prisoners can work. And
[[Page H6731]]
we don't have to bring in millions of people from overseas to take
those jobs.
Also, we, of course, understand that it is not just low-level jobs
with massive numbers of immigrants coming into our society. The
business community also tells us these are the jobs people won't take,
supposedly. We need to bring in hundreds of thousands of people with H-
1B visas to run computer systems and to be technical people. What's the
matter, Americans won't do those jobs?
I went to a function a few years ago and I will never forget it. A
middle-aged person stopped me, and said, Congressman, I came here
because I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to thank you because you were
the only one who really stood up and argued against the H-1B visas
which brought in hundreds of thousands of people from the Indian
subcontinent to do these computer jobs. He said, you said it is going
to bring down the wages of the American people, and I have the
newspaper quote. And he said, you know what, I was a computer operator
in Orange County earning $80,000 a year. They laid me off and a year
later when they called me back to the company, they said they were
going to pay me $50,000. He said, I had the same job and I was earning
$80,000. And they said take the job because we can get an H-1B visa
person from India to take this job for $40,000 if you won't take it for
$50,000. He said, I took the job.
And he said, Do you know, Congressman, what the difference between
earning $50,000 and $80,000 is? When you earn $50,000 a year in Orange
County, you never dream of owning your own home.
Why are we betraying people like this? Why are we bringing in
hundreds of thousands of people from overseas rather than have the
industry pay more money? No, no, they are keeping the wages down,
bringing in people who will work for a pittance while the CEOs of these
companies are paying themselves tens of millions of dollars a year.
There is nothing wrong with paying a CEO a good salary, but you are
doing that by destroying the middle class of our country by taking it
out of the mouths of working people, honest Americans who are willing
to work, but now you want them to work as if they are peons and people
of lower income are coming from all over the world?
Well, I was just confronted by this again in the health care
industry. People want me to agree to bring in 100,000 Filipino nurses
or 100,000 Indian or Pakistani nurses into our country. Nurses make
$65,000-$70,000 a year. Our junior college system in California, you
know, how many nurses are we graduating from there? No, in my own city
we have a junior college that has 25,000 students and they graduate 185
people from their nursing program a year, and they think that is a
great thing. What about those other thousands of kids? They are getting
prepared to do what, sell clothes at Nordstrom's, so they can be an
assistant manager at a 7-Eleven store and earn $35,000?
We need to remold our educational efforts to make sure that our kids
are equipped to do these jobs, whether it is in computers or whether it
is health care, rather than bringing in hundreds of thousands of people
from overseas. It is our kids who should be getting the jobs for
$65,000 a year when they start. But no, our system would prefer,
because the people in our system are lazy. They don't want to go
through the heartache of trying to reform the structure because a lot
of college professors, by the way, who teach sociology in junior
colleges, refuse to let the people who are teaching health care to our
nurses to make more money than they make, and of course a nurse makes
more money than a sociology professor, but they can't do it in our
schools. So instead of reforming our education system so we can have
more nursing people, rather than going overseas, instead we are just
going to go overseas and bring hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and
Pakistanis and Indians in.
This is horrible. H-1B visas are nothing more than an excuse by big
business to keep wages down and give these opportunities to foreigners
rather than our own American people.
{time} 1945
Our American people, especially the young people, are being betrayed
by this type of policy and this type of thinking.
There is a war that is being waged on the middle class in this
country. It's a war that's being waged, yes, by people on the liberal
left who have a radical agenda, never believed in the American way of
life in the first place, and yes, in the business community that has no
loyalty to their American workers whatsoever.
We see it in the China policy, where businesses will go overseas and
basically participate in slave labor in order to make a 20 percent
profit rather than a 5 or 6 percent profit here in the United States
paying people decent wages.
We end up having a government policy that subsidizes these
businessmen to go overseas, especially in China. There are loan
guarantee programs for people who invest in manufacturing facilities in
China. This is outrageous. We transfer our technology and our skills to
the Chinese people when their government is a dictatorship that is
opposed to everything we believe in and represses their own people,
especially the religious people.
But yet, we let our American business community ship our jobs and our
technology over there at what? The businessmen make a lot of money. The
business elite make their money for a few years, and in the end, the
American people suffer. Their high-paying manufacturing jobs are gone,
again, subsidized by the American taxpayer.
We can see it in the China policy. We can see it in our immigration
policy. There is a war being conducted on the American middle class.
And what do we have here? Our people work hard, and they have fought
the battles for freedom, and they have fought the battles to make sure
that the businessmen in this country have a right to private property.
Yet, those people who send the jobs to China are bringing illegal
immigrants to bring down wages. They do not care about the American
people.
It is our job, supposedly our job, to watch out for the American
people. However, we have various powerful interests at play right here
in the Congress that are stirring us away from watching out for their
interests. As I've said, we've got our health care system and our
education system and our legal system are all under attack. Our Social
Security system is under attack, and we are called bigots and hate
mongers because we want to watch out for the American people.
There was some suggestions by very high government officials and high
political people here that those of us who were opposed to this
comprehensive amnesty bill that, in some way, we're not for doing right
for America or that our hearts are filled with hate. Well, let me note
this. It is not selfish for the American people to demand that the
resources that we have in our country be used for their benefit and the
benefit of their families. That's not selfishness.
If being an American citizen means nothing, it means nothing, how can
we ever expect the people to go and defend our country? How can we
expect the American people to think that there's something special
about being an American if we give every benefit that belongs to them
to someone who's come here illegally?
And let us note this. We don't hate the people who come here
illegally. In fact, we have to note, yes, there are criminals that come
here illegally. There are drug dealers, but 90 percent of the people
who come here are probably very wonderful people. We would come here,
too, but it is the job of the United States Government not to help good
people who need help and would come here from all over the world. Our
job is to watch out for the interests of the American people, and if
that doesn't mean anything, why should the American people be loyal to
us if we're not being loyal to them?
We're not saying that illegals are bad people. We just know that if
they drain the education system, the health care system, if they come
in and they're poor, they're going to take $100,000 in their lifetime
more out of Social Security than they put in. It's going to bankrupt
Social Security. Is there anything wrong with saying that we're going
to watch out for our people first, our people being the people who are
citizens of the United States and people who have come here legally?
[[Page H6732]]
And again, let me note this. Not only do we not think poorly of
illegals, because we have to protect ourselves against diseases that
are coming in, criminals that are coming in, yes, but by and large,
illegal immigrants are trying to come here to better their families,
but they're doing it at the expense of the American people.
However, let us note that the people who are the worst hurt on this
are the legal immigrants. I had a telephonic town hall meeting last
night, and the number of the people who called in to complain about
illegal immigration are the people who came here legally, who are in
this country legally, most of whom have become citizens.
This flood of illegals into our society is the worst threat to people
who have come here legally, and once we legalize the status of the 15
to 20 million who have come here illegally, it is an insult and a slap
at the legal people, also the people who are waiting overseas by the
tens of millions to come here legally.
Now, we are not being bigoted. We're not being selfish. We're
watching out for the interests of the American people, and there's
nothing wrong with that, and the legal immigrants who are here fully
understand, and we are not in any way anti-legal immigrant.
Well, what's happening, of course, the Americans who are worst hit
are at the bottom end of the scale. Those people who are struggling in
the black community to get these jobs and would like good paying jobs
are being edged out by illegals. American citizens who happen to be
black should pay attention to how their elected officials are voting on
this illegal immigration issue. There's nothing more damaging to the
black community than illegal immigration that denies benefits and jobs
to our own citizens.
Also, the Mexican American community, proud Americans who happen to
be of Mexican descent, they are being hurt because they're being
stigmatized by a massive influx of illegals into our country from
Mexico. It is wrong and they know that. Americans of Mexican descent
are proud and patriotic people. They have earned more medals in
defending our country than any other ethnic group in the United States.
They are being hard hit. These are the people who would be the hardest
hit by the Bush-Kennedy so-called comprehensive immigration reform
bill.
What it is, of course, again is an immigration bill that the
enforcement part is just a facade and a fraud, but the real purpose is
to immediately legalize the status of 15 to 20 million people who are
in our country illegally.
Let's note, in that bill what was proposed, and we have no idea what
they're going to bring back at us, a Z visa would have had to have been
issued to any illegal immigrant who was applying to get this visa that
would give them a temporary status, but the temporary status would be a
legal status, and they could renew that visa as many times as they
want. There's no limit on how long they could stay here on a
``temporary'' visa, but the legal status permitted them to get all
these benefits that legal citizens would get except for voting.
And what would happen? The people of our government were going to
give only 24 hours to give a person who had applied to give them Z
visas. How many tens of thousands of criminals, of people who are ill
with communicable diseases, of terrorists would have been allowed to
come into our country on a temporary status but renewably forever, had
that happened, thank God that bill was held back. But that bill will
come back again and is coming back again unless we rise up again and
make our voices heard, because they are trying to bring back the
illegal immigration bill that would have given amnesty to those 15 to
20 million illegals.
Now, let me note that there has been a bill that has been submitted
by Lamar Smith, Brian Bilbray and others that is a bill here in the
House that is an example of the type of immigration reform that is real
reform, which is aimed at enforcement, which is aimed at trying to make
sure that employers can verify whether or not someone who's applying
for a job is an illegal immigrant or not, and strengthening the border
patrol and the agents and building a fence. This is in Lamar Smith's
bill. That is a real bill. That is a bill we need.
And I would hope that the American people say we don't need a
comprehensive bill, we need an enforcement bill. As I say, unless the
American people are paying attention, and becoming involved in the
process, those powerful interest works that are at play here, working
against their well-being, will carry the day. That bill will come back.
Unless we express our anger and our outrage over this betrayal of the
interests of average Americans, it will pass, just as it was on line to
pass before. Yet another attempt to try to get a bill through without
the American people understanding what is in that bill and how
threatening it is.
There is, of course, a lot of examples where the interests of our
people are not being watched here in this Congress, and there's no
doubt that there are interests at work. Unless the American people pay
attention, those special interests will succeed.
One of the powerful influences in Washington right now is based on
the concept of globalism. That's why we're trying to build up the
economy of China, because this strategy is that we're going to have a
global system of government and of trade and of economics. And that
global system is a dream that is a driving force behind many of the
policies that are so detrimental to our American people. Because if you
watch out for the globe, that means that you're going to be taking from
the American people.
By definition, our people, being in the richest country of the world,
are going to be the targets that are selected to try to extract
benefits from them and the wealth from them in order to have a better
globe, a better world. Well, I want there to be a better world, but I'm
not going to do it by taking away from the rights and the well-being of
the American people.
What we've got here in the immigration bill and our China policies is
a fight between those with a globalist approach versus a patriotic
approach. It's the patriots versus the globalists. Now, we care about
the other people in the world. Because we want to protect the interests
of the American people doesn't mean that we are nasty and that we hate
people.
But the people of the United States of America have a very special
role to play in this world. We're people who come here from every race
and every religion, every part of the world, and we have come here. We
are living together, trying to live together in peace and harmony,
trying to say to the world, as our Founding Fathers meant us to say in
the Declaration of Independence, that people have rights of life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that we are here to show a
better way.
If we diminish the well-being of the people of the United States of
America, we take away from their opportunity in order to build up
others. In order to build a vision of the globe, it will be a great
disservice not only to the American people but to the people of the
world.
It has been the American people that set the standard. It's been the
American people who stepped out and defeated Japanese militarism and
Nazism when it threatened the world. It's been the American people who
have stepped out and defeated communism and deterred the communist
expansion until that evil atheistic system had a chance to
disintegrate. It is the American people now who bear the brunt of the
war on radical Islam that would create Islamic dictatorships and treat
women all over the world as cattle.
We are the ones who are protecting the world against these evils, and
if the American people ever come to the point where they lose faith in
our system because we have not been watching out for their interests,
yes, it will be a horrible, a horrible outcome, not only for the
people, not only for our country, but for the entire planet because the
planet, the good and decent people of this planet, depend on us to show
the way.
We cannot just forget that the Social Security benefits of our people
will be damaged and be put in jeopardy if we allow poverty stricken
people to flood into our country. We can't forget what it's going to do
to the American people, what it will do to the United States. What is
the United States? The United States is us, U.S.
In 1986, we, us, the United States, the people of the United States,
were told that by granting amnesty to 3 million
[[Page H6733]]
illegals, that would end the problem because there would be enforcement
on employers and that would then stop this problem, and there was an
irritation of having 3 million people here illegally.
{time} 2000
Well, today, we are told there are 11 million. Most of us believe it
is more like 15 to 20 million illegals who live among us. What that
means is that if we end up now, giving them legal status, we will have
50 million to 60 million illegals here win 10 years. We will have lost
our country. America will be lost to people who have come here
illegally from other countries.
Wake up, America. We are losing our country, and it is not just a
mistake. There have been policies that have encouraged this invasion.
Now, we are told that those who are opposing this invasion of
illegals into this country have no alternative. Oh, you are saying,
well, you were opposed to legalization status.
Well, what's your option? There is an option. The most dishonest
argument that has been presented is that we have to either legalize the
status with amnesty, or we have to have massive deportation. That was
the most dishonest approach that I have heard, except for someone who
is trying to claim that the word ``amnesty'' doesn't mean what amnesty
means.
Well, there is an alternative to mass deportation or just giving
amnesty or legalization. It's called attrition. It means that when
people come here, we should not provide them free education, free
health care, free services. If their child is born here, they shouldn't
become a U.S. citizen automatically, because, by the way when they do,
automatically they get housing subsidies and everything else based on
the idea that they have got a U.S. citizen in their household.
No, if you deny them those things and you deny them jobs, first of
all, people will hear that overseas and they will quit coming. Those
who are already here illegally will find it hard to get by, and
eventually, slowly but surely they will eventually go home. It's called
attrition. There is nothing wrong with that approach. It is not massive
deportation, it is not legalization. It is the one thing that will
work. It is an alternative.
Those people who present the so-called comprehensive plan have only
one thing in mind, legalizing the status of those who are already here
illegally, and that will result in 50 to 100 million more illegals
coming to work for our country. Thus, what is the alternative? The only
alternative is to strengthen our border, yes, strengthen our border,
strengthen our visa system.
Most people don't understand that 40 percent of all illegals don't
come from our southern border, 40 percent of them are coming in with
visa ands just overstaying their visa. Again it was a conscious
decision not to reform our visa system so we would know if someone who
had come in has left.
Our system, right now, we don't know if they have left and gone home
or not. We could have reformed that. But, instead, we did not because
it was policy to bring in these illegals. Those who are talking about
comprehensive approach, they are the ones who back that policy.
Now, we have an alternative. The alternative, attrition, the
alternative is making sure that we strengthen the border, but then we
deny benefits and jobs to those who are here. We can do this. This is a
job that is not beyond our ability in this Congress to do. We could
certainly build a fence, and we can certainly have enforcement
mechanisms done right away, which is what the bill Lamar Smith has
recently placed in the hopper.
Now, Americans need to pay attention to what's going on. They need to
know the arguments. They need to know people, the arguments that people
are making, who are trying to fool them, and they need to speak up.
There needs to be the same kind of outcry that we heard about a month
ago, because that's when the powers that be were back down on the
Senate side with that amnesty, with the Bush-Kennedy amnesty
legalization bill.
It's time to step up. We cannot count on the government to protect
our interest, the elected officials. We all have to participate.
This is the United States of America versus those people who do not
have the interests of the American people at heart. It's time for the
patriots to be heard. We will lose this fight unless the patriots are
heard.
I would now like to thank the Chair for permitting me this time and
would call on the American people to be active, be patriots, and I am
proud to serve them here in the United States Congress.
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