[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 161 (Tuesday, October 23, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H11925-H11931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DREAM ACT IS AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mitchell). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, I very much appreciate the
privilege to address you here on the floor of the United States House
of Representatives.
Having sat here and listened to the discussion that was presented by
our gentlemen from the Carolinas and talking about the drought in the
Southeast, I am quite interested in the map that they have laid out for
us to see.
Coming from an agriculture State and district myself, I will say I
have significant empathy for the drought plight in that part of the
country. That huge area of bright red tells me how tough it must be
down there where it hasn't rained very much in a long time and gives me
a sense before how long it will be before you can see green again in
your part of the country, Mr. Etheridge. We have lived through that in
past years, and I can tell you, it goes deeper than just looking at a
picture. It goes to the very lives of the people you represent.
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I remember when we went out to South Dakota and through Iowa and how
tough it was when it was dry. I will always remember with my good
friend, Jerry Moran, we flew into Kansas last year to do a hearing on
the ag bill. Lo and behold, when we flew in, it was raining like the
dickens. I said, ``Jerry, you have been talking about how dry it has
been for so long.''
He said, ``Yes, and all of a sudden we got plenty of water.''
Hopefully we will get back there, but you do understand. Thank you for
your help. I think this is an issue where we have to pull together and
help. I thank you for your leadership and help on the Agriculture
Committee, too. I appreciate that.
Mr. KING of Iowa. And I thank you. We will work together on this
issue. There is nothing your producers can do when it doesn't rain.
Perhaps we can have a hearing down there and it will bring rain like it
did in Kansas.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. That would be great. Thank you.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to express those sentiments,
but I come to the floor tonight to discuss a different subject matter.
{time} 2045
The subject that I've chosen to discuss tonight is the Dream Act, and
I do so because a vote on cloture is scheduled on the floor of the
United States Senate tomorrow sometime, I believe, in the afternoon.
The DREAM Act, Mr. Speaker, you will remember is an act that's been
pushed for several years here in the United States Congress and also
pushed at the State level. What it is about, it is a bill with a
wonderful name, and once you read through it and think about the
ramifications, it's not such a wonderful bill. It has actually meant
the demise of a number of public figures. People who have served in
this Congress, people that have served in the State legislatures and
people who have aspired to serve in this Congress have found themselves
enamored by the wonderful name, the DREAM Act, but also trapped up in
and captured in the pitfalls of the reality of what's behind this DREAM
Act.
So, Mr. Speaker, if you will permit, I will describe what the DREAM
Act does, and that is, it provides, let me say it this way, an
opportunity for in-state tuition discounts to go to people who are
otherwise unlawfully present in the United States, usually younger
people that have graduated from high school. It gives them in-state
tuition discounts, or allows the States to do so, and then gives them a
conditional legal status in the United States provided they enter into
college or enter into the uniform services, not always our military,
but some type of uniform services.
This sounds good over the top of things, but it works out to be this:
it defies a current Federal law. In fact, it has to amend a current
Federal law, a law that's been defied by at least 10 States, and it's a
law that was in the 1996 Immigration Reform Act, sponsored by now-
ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas.
This legislation in 1996, current Federal law, Mr. Speaker, prohibits
a State and institutions of higher learning from granting residency in-
state tuition discounts, breaks on the costs of the education, to
students who are unlawfully present in the United States, that's a nice
word for illegal aliens, Mr. Speaker, unless those universities and
those States that set that policy grant that same tuition discount to
all students who are lawfully present in the United States wheresoever
they might reside.
So let me just draw an example, being from Iowa. Let's just say, for
example, that there is a student that grows up on the east side of the
Mississippi River and a resident of Illinois who wants to go to college
at Iowa State University. And if Iowa had the DREAM Act as a policy,
and they defeated it in the State legislature a couple or 3 years ago,
actually let it die in committee as I recall. But if that student who
grows up and goes to a high school in Illinois, a resident of Illinois,
chooses to go to college at Iowa State, they will pay an out-of-state,
nonresident tuition of about $16,000 a year; and by the way, a resident
of Iowa will pay about $6,000 a year. So not quite three times as high
if you're a nonresident student.
And by anecdote, I can tell you that in California the numbers are
comparatively about $3,000 a year to go to school at a California
institution if you're a resident, and I believe it's about $23,000 a
year if you're a nonresident. You pay that kind of premium if you come
from out of state to go to school in-state. Each State sets their own
policies. These numbers aren't hard; but, conceptually, they're
accurate numbers, Mr. Speaker.
So the out-of-state student, the nonresident student, pays a premium
to go to college at an institution in a State that they're not a
resident of. That's been a longstanding practice so that the State can
encourage, foster, and subsidize the education of their residents in
the hopes that they have highly educated students that will stay at
home and grow the economy of the State that pays the taxes to support
those institutions of higher learning.
But that's a little too convoluted, Mr. Speaker. I'll just say that
States want to help their own residents. So they've set these policies,
and that's why it costs more money to be an out-of-state student going
to school in another State than it does to go to school in your own
State, a longstanding practice.
The DREAM Act turns that all on its head, and for illegal alien
students who have come into the United States in violation of the law,
whom if ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were to be required
to deliver this in-state tuition discount, let's call it a voucher,
it's not, it's a discount, but if they had to deliver it in the form of
check or a voucher and if ICE had to deliver that, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, they would be compelled to pick up that
prospective student and send them back to the country from which they
came so that they could be legally residing in their home country.
That's the law, Mr. Speaker, and the Dream Act turns this on its
head. It grants people who are here illegally, all the way up to age
30, if they will enter into a school and start their studies on a 2-
year study program or if they will go into the uniform services, not
necessarily our armed services, then they get conditional residency or
conditional legal status in the United States. And then, if they keep
their nose clean, they get a green card which is lawful, permanent
residence, and it's about 5 years to citizenship. And the formerly
illegal immigrants have access then to all the chain migration tools
that anyone else has who comes here legally for those who have
respected our laws.
Now, that means they can bring in their siblings. It means they can
bring
[[Page H11926]]
in their children. It means they can bring in their parents, and that
whole chain migration can start over and over again.
We had a chart that was put together on the chain migration that
comes with the policy that's there that's called family reunification,
and it looks like about one legal immigrant can bring in about 277
family members by the time you go out through the chain of the family
tree. That would also be true for an illegal immigrant who would be
granted amnesty under the DREAM Act.
So in-state tuition discounts, amnesty for illegal aliens, put this
bill, this bill that if the cloture as has been filed and if it
successfully passes tomorrow, then the Senate will go to a vote on the
DREAM Act. If they do that and the House should take up the same bill
and then the President should sign it, you will have illegal aliens who
will be sitting in desks in the institutions of higher learning within
our States studying, going to college at the expense of the taxpayers
and at the expense of the Federal taxpayers because we do appropriate
funds that go into these institutions.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, there are only so many desks in a
classroom. There are only so many slots in our institutions of higher
learning, and that's why we have admissions requirements. That's why
you apply and you put in your grades and all of the other
qualifications that are there, and very tough decisions are sometimes
made by these universities to allow people to come in and study there
or to cut them out.
You will remember some high-profile cases. For example, the
affirmative action cases at the University of Michigan and at the
University of Michigan Law School. There are only so many desks that
are available. Imagine granting an in-state tuition discount to someone
who came across the border and into the United States illegally and
someone who is getting a $6,000 education, when the student sitting in
the desk right next to them is a United States citizen, naturalized or
born in the United States, whose mother or father has served perhaps in
Iraq or Afghanistan, who has perhaps been killed over there to defend
our freedom, and that poor student without a father or a mother has
given their life for our freedom is paying out-of-state tuition prices
to go to school at their preferred institution, sitting in a desk next
to someone who is unlawfully present in the United States and would be
deported if it weren't for this DREAM Act that grants them amnesty.
Now, that sets up a friction in this society, Mr. Speaker, that's
illogical. It's irrational. It rewards the wrong thing, and in the end,
it would not be tolerated by the public if they begin to understand
what this really means.
The Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff's DHS, under
this DREAM Act would not be able to go in and use any of the records;
and so if they want to protect this society, if they want to go in and
apply the law, they can't even look at the records that are there that
are part of the data that's compiled to grant this supercitizenship to
people who are eligible for deportation. And I say supercitizenship,
Mr. Speaker, because this supercitizenship path, by the way, grants
more rights, special rights to illegal aliens to go to school in our
institutions of higher learning at a tuition discount.
For example, if you have a legal alien, someone who has applied for a
student visa or has lawful, permanent status, lawful permanent
residency here in the United States, a green card, and they're going to
school at an out-of-state institution, they have to pay the out-of-
state tuition rate. If someone comes in from Korea or Guatemala or
let's say Russia, Poland, comes into the United States legally, student
visa or under a green card, maybe even in a path to citizenship, and
they have a residency in New Jersey, they can't go to school in New
York with an in-state tuition discount, and they sure in the world
can't go to school in California for $3,000 because they'll be
considered an out-of-state resident and they will be.
That's the way it is for American citizens, both naturally born and
naturalized. That's the way it is for people who have followed and
respected and honored our immigration laws, whether they're on a
student visa or whether they're here on lawful permanent residency, a
green card. They all have to follow the laws of this country, and they
all have to pay the going rate that reflects their residency of their
State.
And consider, Mr. Speaker, if you will, consider the children of
military families, whether or not they've lost a parent in this global
war on terror. Those children move around a lot, and some of them don't
qualify necessarily for the in-state tuition discount maybe anywhere,
and they would be paying a premium as a son or a daughter of our
military veterans, sitting next to a desk of someone who before this
act would be passed today will be unlawfully present in the United
States, subject to deportation who would end up getting a discount for
the tuition.
This is the bill, Mr. Speaker, that the Senate proposes to bring up
tomorrow with their cloture vote; and if they vote cloture, and we'll
have this debate on the floor of the United States Senate, and you're
going to be able to, Mr. Speaker, look across over to the Senate and be
able to evaluate the set of values that the United States Senate brings
to the table and this set of values that produces supercitizenship,
superaccess to citizenship for illegals.
I recall some of the debates that we've had here on the floor of this
House. Discussions and speeches, I should say, rather than debates; and
I recall how easy it is for some of the Members to look at this and
conclude, well, this is the DREAM Act, and why would we want to punish
kids who are simply here unlawfully? Can't we give them an education,
and isn't that a better thing? Yes, if your view is that simplistic,
Mr. Speaker, if that's all the view is, isn't it better for the kids
that would be beneficiaries of this? The answer is yes.
But we could grant in-state tuition discount to every kid in this
country, and in my State it would cost several hundred million dollars.
The State legislature is not willing to do that. The current law is, if
you grant that in-state tuition discount to students who are illegal,
then you grant that same discount to everyone in the United States,
wherever their residency might be. And so all of those students that
are paying out-of-state tuition, that $16,000 in Iowa, would end up
getting the $6,000 annual education as opposed to the $16,000
education. A $10,000 premium that's there that's levied against all of
those students that come from other places around the country and the
world would all be level down to $6,000.
They can do that today if they choose, Mr. Speaker; but they will not
do that because the boards of regents and the State legislatures across
this land don't want to take the financial hit. They don't want to
level the premium. They don't want to give this kind of benefit to all
American citizens. They don't want to give this kind of benefit to the
sons and daughters of our military. They don't want to give this
benefit to those who are legally emigrating here into the United
States. And they don't want to give this benefit to those who are on a
path to citizenship here in the United States provided they're not
residents of the institution in question.
No, sir, Mr. Speaker. This is all about special right, special
treatment for people, for students that are unlawfully here; and the
numbers break out to be something like this. A million, more, we don't
know. There's not a cap on it, but the best estimates say more than a
million; and we know that when you grant benefits, it attracts more
people. And there will be people that will come into the United States
illegally and present themselves to go to college at a tuition
discount, and they will say, oh, yes, I've been here that 5 years or so
that the Senate bill requires that I'm here; and by the way, I have
these falsified utility bills and rent canceled checks and things of
that nature that say that I've been here so I meet the minimum
standards. Give me that tuition discount, too.
That's the view and the strategy, the special extra citizenship
rights that come with it for more than a million people. And we know
also, Mr. Speaker, that whenever you open the door up and you count the
numbers, the numbers get greater, not smaller. Ronald Reagan said, what
you tax you get less of; what you subsidize you get more of.
[[Page H11927]]
And we are here talking about opening the door to subsidizing
significantly a two-thirds discount, a 66 or 67 percent discount, on
college tuition for people who are eligible for deportation.
{time} 2100
I think it's breathtaking how far they are seeking to reach over in
the United States Senate. I think the people understand this. I think
they understand that this is a super amnesty plan. Whatever your heart
says, can we just please engage our brains for a little bit and think
about what this means; what it means if we give in-State tuition
discounts to people who are unlawfully present in the United States,
those who, as I said earlier, if ICE, Immigrations and Customs
Enforcement, had to deliver the paperwork that said here is your
tuition discount, they would be compelled to pick these students up and
send them home again. Some of these students up to the age of 30 are
taking advantage of the soft heart of Americans.
So extend this on out, what's the motive? Some is driven by the
churches, I understand. I appreciate the ministry that they provide.
You know, I am a strong proponent and adherent to the values that come
from our churches and the good movements in America that come from the
pulpit. But if the churches from America believe that we should be
providing in-State tuition discounts for those people that the law says
need to be sent home, can you please pass the collection plate. Don't
come here to Congress and ask that we squeeze that out of the sweat of
the taxpayers, because they are the ones in the end that pay the price,
and the American citizens that won't have a desk in a classroom,
because that desk is already filled by somebody who gets a cheaper rate
than they can get.
There is only so much room. There are only so many benefits. We can
help in the foreign countries better than we can open our doors here
for an unlimited amount of people coming in. When we undermine the
integrity of our immigrations system, when we do so, we take away the
options that are constitutionally bestowed upon this Congress. The
Constitution directs us to set the immigration policy here.
I recognize that we have a legal and appropriate right to deal with
acts like the DREAM Act. We ought to shoot it down. We ought to vote it
down. We should defeat it. We should not let it slide its insidious
policy across the halls here between the Senate and the House of
Representatives. It should not be passed.
In fact, the Senate has three times here in the 110th Congress, three
times just this year, voted to defeat the DREAM Act because they
understood the political repercussions from the American people who
understood what amnesty is. This bill grants amnesty. This bill says,
it says that if you are here unlawfully, if you are subject to
deportation, but if you apply for this DREAM Act and apply to go to
school, under a super discount, we will give you conditional lawful
status here in the United States. That's amnesty. It's also a path to
citizenship, and it opens the door for family reunification, the chain
migration that we talk about. It does all of those things. That's
amnesty.
Amnesty, to define it for the benefit of those who have heard a lot
of different definitions, the consistent definition of amnesty that
addresses this is the definition that we have used in the Judiciary
Committee over and over again. In our debates as we mark up immigration
bills, in our hearings as we cross-examine the witnesses on
immigration, to grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and
reward them with the objective of their crimes, to pardon immigration
lawbreakers and reward them with the objectives of their crimes. That's
amnesty. That's what the DREAM Act does. That's what's moving, that's
what's cooking, that's what is shaking over in the Senate.
By the way, the beneficiaries of this act don't have to finish their
college education. All they have to do is engage in it for a couple of
years. That starts the ball rolling. As I said earlier, they don't have
to serve in the military; they just have to serve in the uniformed
services. There are many holes in this act.
Let me take this, if I can, back to another subject matter that's
associated with this, and that's the subject matter that also threatens
to find its way into legislation that we expect will be moving in the
United States Senate, and that's AgJOBS. AgJOBS is a bill that grants
amnesty to people that are unlawfully here that are working in the
agriculture industry, people that are picking lettuce, as Senator
McCain has so well illustrated. And the AgJOBS bill says if you have
been here for 5 years and you apply under this AgJOBS, we will grant
you a lawful status here in the United States. That also is amnesty.
The AgJOBS bill that looks like it's most likely to emerge in the
United States Senate gives a path to citizenship, provides immediate
lawful presence here in the United States, a path to citizenship, a
reward to immigration lawbreakers, a pardon to immigration lawbreakers
and the reward of the objective of their crime, which is, we presume,
in most cases their objective was to get jobs here in the United
States.
I would point out that the low-skilled jobs here in the United States
have the highest level of unemployment. It's not the other way around.
There is no statistical data that supports that this country is starved
for low-skilled workers.
When we look at the low-skilled workers, the unemployment rates go
over 10 percent, well over 10 percent. American citizens are being
bumped from jobs, those jobs. Low-skilled, undereducated American
citizens who were born here and naturalized here are being bumped from
those jobs by illegal aliens who are taking those jobs cheaper.
Of course they can. In fact, they have to, because some of the job
market they can't compete in, in the legitimate part of the job market.
So they all come in and work cheaper, but on the other hand they don't
have the risk of liabilities that go along with steady employment like
a citizen does with a regular address who has the obligations to make
their contributions to the Federal Government, to the State government
and to the local government.
It's not to say that many of the illegals don't pay taxes, but here
is where it comes to me this way. Someone who presents a Social
Security number, that's often someone else's, and sometimes it's just a
made-up number. They then have been consistently hired to go to work
through a number of different professions; most, I will say, many of
the professions. They will often record the maximum number of
dependents with the H.R. team that's there for the company so that they
get the highest amount of take-home pay and the least amount taken out
for their Federal and their State income tax in the States that have
income tax, and that's almost all.
If you have someone come in, and let's just say they are making $10
an hour, and let's say it's 40 hours a week, and it's simple math, and
I am just doing it as I stand here, so that's $400 a week. The
withholding that would be there for the State taxes at $400 and for the
Federal tax at $400 a week, if you would claim a number of dependents,
let's just say six or seven or eight, you are already in the category
at that kind of wage where you wouldn't have any withholding for
Federal income tax, you wouldn't have any withholding for State income
tax. You would still have to pay the payroll tax, Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid.
That gets sacrificed to the no-match Social Security file, of which
there are hundreds of thousands of no-match Social Security numbers on
record. The deposits that go in on those keep growing in the Social
Security trust fund. Now, that's a whole different speech, but the
sacrifice is made on the part of those illegals who are working on an
assumed Social Security number, not their own, obviously. They
sacrifice the payroll taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
because it's cheaper to do that and it's possible to do that.
Their take-home pay is their gross earnings minus the payroll tax,
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, 15 percent of that, half of
that, and the employer matches the other half, but no withholding for
Federal and for State.
I get from the parking lot of some the companies that I represent the
check stubs from these workers. Americans will pick them up off the
parking lot where they get torn off and left in
[[Page H11928]]
the wind to blow. I have manila envelopes full of these that have been
kind of crinkled up, walked on, a little muddy, a little dusty. They
are like an accordion in a manilla envelope.
I take those out and look through them. Check stub after check stub,
not a dollar withheld for Federal income tax, not a dollar withheld for
State income tax. Of course, the payroll tax has been paid. At least
the names are not on those check stubs, and I don't recall if there are
Social Security numbers on them. That's the kind of thing that's going
on all over the country.
The taxes that are paid from sales tax, the contributions that go to
property tax, yes, there is a tax contribution, but there is a tax
evasion that's there, and it's obvious. To turn in no-match Social
Security numbers and go to work under those standards is a standard
practice. The AgJOBS component of this is amnesty. It does grant a
pardon to immigration lawbreakers, and it does reward them with the
objective of their crime, and it rewards an industry that's grown more
and more dependent upon illegal labor.
You know, I understand that when you have got a crop in the field,
you need to get that crop out. When you plan for this, you have to also
plan for the labor. I also recognize that there has been a growth in
the labor-intensive agriculture in this country, because there has been
an easy and a steady and a ready supply of cheap, illegal labor to come
in and do that work in the fields. So it's inhibited us from developing
the machinery that we might otherwise develop to more mechanically
plant the crop and harvest the crop and maintain that crop during the
growing season and to transport it.
If the labor is cheap, you are not going to develop those things, you
are not going to do the bioengineering that has been done with the
tomato plant that makes it mechanically harvestable. I can make a more
clear example that would be something like this.
I have a constituent, whom I have great respect for, that is a very
modern agriculture producer. I believe he has at least a 16-row planter
that he puts the crop in with in my part of the country. I also
understand that he has bought land in Brazil where they raise cotton
and soybeans. When I ask what kinds of chemicals he uses to control the
weeds in the cotton, he says, ``I don't use any.'' I said, ``Well, how
can you raise cotton without herbicide?''
Well, he says, ``I have 96 people, each with a hoe, that go down
through the rows of cotton that hoe that cotton. When they get down to
the other end, they turn around and they come back to the field in a
different row.'' Ninety-six people paid $3 a day cultivate that cotton
with a hoe.
Now, the only thing that has changed in that technique since the dawn
of agricultural time was we have a metal hoe instead of perhaps a bone
or a wooden hoe. That technology that has been there has been there for
hundreds and hundreds of years. It hasn't moved an inch.
Same kind of thing down through those rows of cotton, chopping cotton
with a hoe. That's what's going on from the same operation where you
have a man who is a very modern person with the most modern equipment
in the upper Midwest who markets his grain and does his purchases,
very, very astute, on the Internet, professional in his field, very
well respected, active in the professions that had to do with the ag
industry. But when the economics dictate that you can hire 96 people
with a hoe for $3 to $4 a day and it's cheaper than putting a machine
out in the field where you put a man on the machine and you buy the
fuel and provide the repairs and you have to buy some spray in order to
kill the weeds in that cotton, when the math works out that stoop labor
is cheaper than mechanized labor, that tells you something about what
happens when labor is cheap. It slows the growth of our society. It
slows the development of our society. It inhibits the development of
our technology and puts us in a situation where we actually de-adopt
the technology. You park the 16-row planter, that's only figuratively
speaking, and you put the people in the field with the hoe. That's
literally happening. It's not just happening there; it's happening on
thousands and thousands of farms in the areas in the world where labor
is cheap.
Our idea here in the United States is we don't have enough cheap
labor. I would look back through history and challenge anywhere over
here on the other side of the aisle to rise and ask if I will yield, I
would be happy to yield, if you can give me an example, if you can give
me a single example of a society, a culture or a nation that has failed
or collapsed due to a lack of cheap labor. I would submit it's the
other way around. Societies have been undermined from within because
they didn't have enough higher education or technological background to
keep up the paces or keep up with the times.
If you look at the States that are highly educated and highly
skilled. They have the highest income, the highest average income. They
have the highest household income. They are the most prosperous people.
And this Nation should be about raising the average annual productivity
of its people.
So one might submit, what are we going to do for the labor, how are
we going to harvest, how are we going to harvest that lettuce if we
don't have enough people who are willing to go down and pick that
lettuce? How are we going to do the celery? How are we doing to go into
the peppers, the strawberries, the tomatoes? We have that a little more
mechanized now. How do we do all of that?
If everyone woke up tomorrow morning in the country where they can
legally reside, not ICE doing their job, but if just miraculously that
magic wand, poof, caused that to happen where Michael Chertoff didn't
have that job any longer of providing the transportation to send people
to a legal country, if that happened, what would then happen to the
economy of this Nation?
{time} 2115
And I hear scare stories coming out of the Wall Street Journal, out
of Wall Street, out of, I don't know how to describe the words here,
kind of a nouveau aristocracy in America that seems to think somehow
they have a birthright to cheap labor and a birthright to somebody to
take care of their lawn and their garden and their mansions, and that
they will raise their children in a gated community and send them off
to an Ivy League school, and so they'll never really be burdened by
this growth of the lower class that they are promoting, and they think
they have a birthright to that.
But I would submit this: that's not what America is about, Mr.
Speaker. The strength of America has been an ever-broadening middle
class, a middle class that's ever been more and more prosperous. We
don't want to shrink this middle class. We don't want to suppress their
growth and their improvement. We want to broaden the middle class and
we want to lift it up.
And by the way, we don't want to expand the middle class, Mr.
Speaker, from the ranks of the upper middle class. We want to expand
the middle class from the ranks of the lower class. But for the first
time in the memories of living Americans today, and maybe for the first
time in the history of this country, we are seeing the lower class
expand, the middle class shrink and the aspirations of middle-class
Americans diminish.
Now, if we look at young people that grow up in Middle America that
decide a college education is not for me, I just want to get my high
school degree and go to work at the plant, punch the clock and earn a
pretty good wage, maybe earn a living wage, and go home and take care
of my family, my kids, play ball with the kids, cut the grass, go
fishing, take time off on the weekends and live this life of this
American Dream, buy a modest house and pay for it, send the kids to
college if they want to go. Does any child that gets that high school
degree and doesn't aspire to a higher education have a hope of being
able to do those things in today's economy, Mr. Speaker? And I'll
argue, it can be done. It's unlikely that it will happen, because the
wages of the lower skilled and lower educated have been so suppressed
by the ranks of illegals and unskilled lower skilled illegals who have
come into this economy.
And I'm hearing from the people on Wall Street and in the Wall Street
Journal that this country can't survive economically if we don't have
that 12 to 20 million people to do this work that ``Americans'' won't
do. All work Americans will do, and there's not a job in this country
you can't find an
[[Page H11929]]
American doing it. Americans are doing all kinds of work in this
country.
But here's the magnitude, and that is, there are 6.9 million working
illegals, by the statistics that are put out by the people that do this
analysis. That's 6.9 million out of about 12 million. That's the
standard numbers we've been working with. I think it's more than 20
million, but this proportion works out in any case.
Out of the 6.9 million working illegals, that's part of, that's 4.7
percent of a work force that is 142 million. So 4.7 percent of 142
million, and if you do the math I think it comes out to 6.9 million.
That's how many working illegals we have. Okay. That represents 4.7
percent of the work force. But they're only doing 2.2 percent of the
work, Mr. Speaker, because we measure the annual output under the gross
domestic product of our workers.
And because those who are here unlawfully working in this economy
are, on average, lower educated and lower skilled, their production,
even though they're 4.7 percent of the work force, is only 2.2 percent
of the work, Mr. Speaker. And so if you have a work force that's doing
2.2 percent of the work, and let's just say it's a factory that has
1,000 people in it, everybody working diligently, and that factory does
all their work in an 8-hour day, and you went to work as the CEO at
7:30 in the morning, sat down at your desk, and a memo hit your desk
that said you're going to lose 2.2 percent of your work force today,
they're not showing up.
Now, say that's at 7:30, and yet you need to meet your production
quota by 5:00 that night when everybody clocks out. They clock in at 8.
They clock out at 5. They need to get 1,000 widgets made that day, and
you have to figure out how you're going to solve that problem as a CEO
when 2.2 percent of your work doesn't show up. And I'll submit, here's
the answer. Any CEO can figure this out easily. They'd sit down and do
the math and say, well, we've got to get our production up. So people
aren't going to show up till 8:00, that's all right. When they get here
at 8:00 we're going to let them know that we're going to cut their
coffee break in the morning by 5\1/2\ minutes. We're going to cut their
coffee break in the afternoon by 5\1/2\ minutes. That adds up to 11
minutes out of the 8-hour day; 11 minutes out of an 8-hour day is 2.2
percent of the overall day.
And so the illegal work force in America, if you look at the United
States as one huge macrocompany, and if that work force just stopped
producing for that day, you would be losing 2.2 percent of that day's
production. If we did all of our work in this country in an 8-hour day
instead of a 24-hour day, that's 11 minutes out of 8 hours. And if it's
a 24-hour day, you've got about a little over 3 minutes out of each
shift is all that it amounts to.
I can't be convinced, Mr. Speaker, that this economy would come to a
screeching halt if that happened to gradually drift away from us
because the administration began gradually enforcing the law. I can't
think that it's a cataclysmic event that would be, that would come
falling down on this economy. I can't think it would slow us down. I
believe, Mr. Speaker that we would recover in a heartbeat from that
kind of a transition.
And that's presuming, Mr. Speaker, that that 2.2 percent of the work
force that's being done by illegal labor is all essential work. And if
we look across at some of that work, some people are taking care of
lawns. Some garden. Some are cleaning the houses. There's work out
there that we could find a way to recover from. Like somebody said to
me, oh you want to enforce a law, but who is going to flip your steak?
Who's going to cut your grass? Well, Mr. Speaker, I cut my own grass,
and I flip most of my own steaks, and if I had to flip every one of my
steaks to preserve the rule of law in America, I'd be very happy to do
that.
That's really the essential pillar here that we're talking about with
the immigration issue in the United States, and that is, what are you
willing to do to preserve the most essential pillar of American
exceptionalism, the rule of law? Are you willing to cut your own grass?
Are you willing to flip your own steaks? Are you willing to shorten
your coffee break up for a little while, by 5\1/2\ minutes, morning and
afternoon, or 3 minutes a shift out of a 3-shift day if you're working
24/7? Are you willing to do those things? Would you notice the
difference if you didn't? Would the nonessential work in the United
States shrink if we didn't have economical illegal labor to do that
work?
Mr. Speaker, if you bring me 100 people that will work for a dollar
an hour, I guarantee you I can figure out a way to make a living with
that. I can find a way to put them to work where they're going to
return four, five or six or seven or $8 an hour to me. And so the
cheaper labor gets, the more demand there is. And yet we have people
that are considered otherwise to be wise, economic gurus who seem to,
well, I will say just flat advocate that we should set the immigration
flow into the United States, legalize all of those who would want to
come here, legalize every willing traveler, Mr. Speaker, as long as
there's a demand for their labor.
And I will submit that the more labor there is, the lower the price
will be. The lower the price there is, the more demand there will be.
Labor, Mr. Speaker, is a commodity like any other commodity in that the
value of it is determined by supply and demand in the marketplace.
Labor is a commodity. Corn, beans, gold, oats, crude oil, you name it,
Mr. Speaker, you name it, they're all commodities. And the value of
those commodities are determined by supply and demand in the
marketplace. Corn's up, beans are up. Can't get the cotton out of the
field, I heard in the previous Special Order. It's not worth bringing
it out I guess if the price is that low, according to Mr. Spratt. But
the value of labor will be determined by the supply and demand, what
the market will bear.
And so if we flood this economy with low-skilled labor, as we have,
we will see unemployment rates in the lower-skilled ranks, the lower-
skilled jobs go up, as we have. Unemployment rates of over 10 percent
in some of the lowest-skilled jobs. Those rates go up. And that
shouldn't be a surprise to any of us.
But it might be a surprise to some of the elitists who have a
different view of this country than I have. I grew up in Middle
America, small town and rural America, a place where we understand the
value of hard work, a place where our parents, our grandparents, our
ancestors, if they were here in this country long enough, goes back
always to drive a stake out in the ground and homestead the land and
make your living out of that and start your business and grow your
community and your family and your churches and work with your
neighborhoods and make this place a better place than it was when you
came, and earn that with the sweat of your brow, and work hard, but
work smart and build for the future generations.
That's the roots that I represent from the middle part of America. We
respect hard work. We respect honesty. We respect integrity. We respect
the values of faith and family. And yet we are sons and daughters of
immigrants. And, in fact, I remember walking into a community building
in one of the small towns that I represent, and this is a very German
community. There were about 400 to 450 people in there for a benefit
auction for a friend of mine. And I began to ask the question, how many
people in here grew up in a German-speaking home or else their parents
did? It was almost everyone in that building, and yet they fly the
flag, they are some of the most self-sacrificing patriots this country
has produced. They understand these American values and they understand
the rule of law. They came here legally. They have great pride that
they have adapted themselves to the American society and culture and
prospered and handed to their children and their grandchildren the
things they dreamed for their children and grandchildren, but in a
society that was not just intact with the rule of law with respect for
the rule of law, but one that was actually strengthened by their
adherence and respect for the rules and for the law.
And here we are, in my opinion, the central pillar of American
exceptionalism is the rule of law. If we don't respect the laws of this
country, then what foundation have we?
And I will always make the argument that our rights come from God,
and that they're passed through the hands and the minds of our Founding
Fathers
[[Page H11930]]
who, I believe, were guided, they were guided by God to put down for us
the parameters of this free Nation to be a guiding light for the
freedom for the world. And who are we to trail in the dust the golden
hopes of men if we aren't willing to defend this rule of law, this rule
of law that preserves our property rights, our freedom of speech,
religion, press, assembly, all of the freedom from double jeopardy and
the list of all of those rights that were in the Bill of Rights. Who
are we to trail that all in the dust because what, because we have an
emotion that overcomes our intellect, because we've severed ourselves
from the thing that we've inherited from the Greeks, the age of reason.
We've lost our reason and lost our way if we believe that a good name
for a bad bill supersedes the rule of law. The DREAM Act is a good
name. I wish I'd thought of that. I'd have stuck it on something too,
only it would have been a good bill underneath the title. This is not a
good bill under the DREAM Act. This is a bill that directly undermines
the rule of law. It rewards law breakers, Mr. Speaker, and when we do
that, we can't hope to sustain the rule of law in America any longer.
If we have 12 million, 20 million people who are granted amnesty, maybe
under the DREAM Act it's only a million for starters. That will grow,
and the chain migration will grow from that, and your one million could
conceivably and I don't think literally it could happen but it could
conceivably go out to more than 200 million.
That's how the stats map it out. And we know that's pretty unlikely
that it would go that far. But if it's one million people going to 2
million or 3 million under the DREAM Act and we grant amnesty there,
and then we have the AgJOBS component of this that grants amnesty to
people who are here illegally, working illegally for about 1.5 million
for starters, and then, we work with this myopic idea that if there's a
demand, that must indicate how many we need, even though the more cheap
labor you have, the more demand there will be for more cheap and
cheaper labor. And it makes a simple economic equation. The unions used
to understand this, Mr. Speaker. They used to understand that they
wanted a tight labor supply. And so I'll go back to that.
But the DREAM Act is a bad bill that grants amnesty for a million or
more people that would do the chain migration for their families,
attract more, and more would be signed up.
{time} 2130
By the way, there is no cap on this. There is no deadline. The way
this bill is written, applications for in-State tuition discounts,
special super citizenship rights for illegal aliens goes on and on. It
never ends. It isn't that just the people that are here right now
today, but it's the people that would forever apply. So the number
clearly is over a million. And 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, we know
how these things go. It always gets out of hand. It's 1\1/2\ million
under AgJOBS, those who have been working illegally in our fields. But
that 1\1/2\ million is for starters and it goes on and on. And when we
get to the full amnesty package that the Senate three times has voted
down now and now wants to give us the components of their amnesty plan,
their comprehensive amnesty bill, one bitter pill at a time, things
that have bad bills with good names, slip them to us one at a time, put
them in a package into the Senate and send them over there in a must-
pass bill. Plan that strategy, and as this amnesty number grows from a
million under the DREAM Act, 1\1/2\ million under the AgJOBS piece to
the next component and the next component and the next component of
amnesty, and we end up granting, as the Senate advocated, a
comprehensive amnesty plan to not 6.9 million or 12 million, but
everyone who is here illegally right now. That number some say is 12
million. I think it is more than 20 million. We grant amnesty to them,
and they will do as those recipients of the 1986 amnesty bill did. They
will be the strongest advocates for another amnesty plan.
And if you will notice, no one here in the House of Representatives,
Mr. Speaker, and no one over across the Rotunda to the United States
Senate has said, well, this comprehensive amnesty plan is an amnesty to
end all amnesties. They haven't said that. First, they are still in
denial about it being amnesty, and yet not one of them will define
amnesty unless they have found a way to define it around where their
bill is exempted, but it isn't an objective definition. They won't
stand up and tell you to grant amnesty is to pardon immigration
lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crimes. But
those 12 or 20 million would be advocating the same way that the 1
million who were to be the recipients of the amnesty to end all
amnesties in 1986 that turned out to be more like 3 million who were
the recipients of the 1986 amnesty. They were advocates of more
amnesty. They say, well, that's been good for me and it's been good for
my family, so we need more of that. And all of them who advocate for
more amnesty are undermining the rule of law.
And they are a smaller number by comparison. It started out by being
1 million. It turned out to be 3 million or more. The 2 million
difference was mostly fraud, counterfeit documents, people that came in
here and took advantage of the sympathetic nature of the American
people. And so with 3 million advocates for amnesty, 2 million of them
beneficiaries of fraud, and 1 million were actually the target of the
1986 amnesty bill that Ronald Reagan at least had enough integrity to
declare it to be the amnesty bill to end all amnesties, they have been
advocates for more amnesty.
Imagine what 20 million beneficiaries of an amnesty would be. A mass
lobbying group for family reunification, chain migration. Bring in your
unlimited number of family members directly in here under that path and
then have them all. Not just those who received amnesty but those who
were beneficiaries of the chain migration from those who received
amnesty. They turn into the tens of millions and perhaps more, maybe
more than 100 million and on up who have little respect for the rule of
law, who have been rewarded for breaking the law, who have now come to
believe that if a law is inconvenient and enough other people don't
respect and honor that law, eventually Congress will capitulate and
change the law to accommodate your behavior.
That is no kind of a Nation to have; not when you have a Nation like
this Nation, the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. We are
beneficiaries of the sacrifice and the vision of our Founding Fathers,
and we are charged with defending those values and handing this country
over to the next generation in better condition than when we found it.
Not worse. Not digressing into anarchy where the law is disrespected
and where it has no value and no teeth. Not turning us into a class
envy society. Not turning us into a society where we are pitted against
each other, a society of victimology. Not that. Not a society where we
point our finger at people and call them names rather than make an
empirical argument. We need to be rational human beings. We're the
beneficiaries of the Age of Reason in Greece where they actually built
a culture around the idea that they could think rationally and connect
their thoughts in a rational fashion and defend the conclusions that
they had drawn by the sequence of the deductive reasoning that got them
there. That is a foundation for our science, the theorem, the
hypotheses, a number of other approaches to Western thought that was
founded in the Greek society 2 and 3,000 years ago that found its way
across through Europe and had a pretty good stay in France during the
Age of Enlightenment. And as the Western civilization, the core of it,
the dynamic moving force rolled out from France in the Age of
Enlightenment over into the United States and arrived here at a time
when we had a continent that was just begging to be settled, full of
natural resources, and a free enterprise economy with property rights
and low and sometimes no taxation and low and often no regulation, and
we had a people that set about the manifest destiny to settle this
continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean and did so in record
time, in an historical blink of an eye. We were able to do many of
those things because we had also learned the talents and the skills and
had built within our culture that ability to deductively reason.
[[Page H11931]]
And today we have people who emote, people who feel. We have college
professors who teach their students never say anything except ``I
feel'' or you can say ``I believe,'' but if you say ``I think this,''
your thoughts can be challenged, but your feelings cannot. So I feel,
and then someone will tell you I feel we should pass the DREAM Act. I
feel we should pass AgJOBS because I feel for the beneficiaries of this
program. And, by the way, I feel that we need more cheap labor in this
country, and I feel that food would be more expensive, and I feel that
there is work Americans won't do, and I feel we ought to bring people
in here or those who came here in here and legalize them because they
will do the work that Americans won't do. So in the end, even though
there isn't any data out here that supports my irrational feelings, I
just feel this, and therefore you ought to follow my feelings.
How can a Nation, Mr. Speaker, how can a Nation meet the challenges
of this global, modern 21st Century if we are going to be guided by
these feelings that trump rational thought and empirical data?
I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that one of the foundations, one of the
pillars of American exceptionalism, the central pillar is the rule of
law, but one of the pillars is this culture, this unique American
culture was the recipient of the work of the Age of Reason from the
Greeks and a recipient of the enlightenment from Western Europe and
primarily from France that came here at the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution with all the natural resources. And we grew this Nation,
yes, on a Christian-Judeo foundation, a work ethic, called a Protestant
work ethic until they found out that Catholics did pretty well with
that work ethic too. We understand some of the things that made this a
great Nation. But letting our feelings rule our thoughts is not one of
those pillars of American exceptionalism. That is an example of
American intellectual weakness, that we can't confront these issues
with our minds, with our reason, with our data, because with that data
we can see where this can take us.
The DREAM Act, the act that grants in-State tuition discount to
people who are eligible for deportation. Now, I just cannot rationally
get to a conclusion that that is the best way that we can spend
taxpayers' money or send a message to the broader society. I believe we
need to adhere to the rule of law. I believe we need to stand on the
rule of law, and we need to enforce the rule of law. And it needs to be
respected by the States, the States like California and Kansas and
about eight others who have decided to defy the Federal law and grant
in-State tuition discounts to illegals within their State institutions
but charge out-of-State tuition premiums to the residents of other
States who might want to go to UC Berkeley or the University of Kansas
or a number of other schools within those two States and eight other
States that are defying Federal law. And we are still taking this
through the courts. And the DREAM Act, Mr. Speaker, invalidates all
lawsuits that have been brought forward to enforce the Federal law
which establishes the requirement that these States grant the same
tuition discount to residents of other States that they might to
illegal aliens in the desks in their own schools in their own States.
AgJOBS, another amnesty plan. AgJOBS says if you worked in this
country and worked in agriculture, worked for the preponderance of, and
that is my word, not the bill's word, 5 years, we are going to grant
you provisional legal status here in the United States. Legal status
under the DREAM Act, legal status under the AgJOBS act. You add them
up, and by their numbers, that's 2\1/2\ million who get amnesty. They
won't call it amnesty, obviously, Mr. Speaker. But we know those
numbers would be significantly larger.
And then when one grants the special status, the special conditional
legal residence in the United States to these people, what's the
argument to deny it to anyone else? What's the argument to deny a
reward of the objective of their crimes to all who have broken
immigration laws except perhaps those who are convicted felons and
those who have conducted themselves in otherwise abhorrent fashion?
This is irrational, Mr. Speaker. The American people often don't
understand what this legislation is. That's why there is such a
concerted effort to strategize on how we name a bill here in this
Congress, how this bill is named, because that is all that people hear
is the name of the bill. They don't get to read it. Most Members don't
read the legislation that comes through this place. But the public
doesn't read the bill, and if they did, they don't really have the
opportunity to examine the components of it. So to critique the
legislation, they have to rely on somebody else. So the practice is
give it a nice sounding name, and then when I do my press conferences
and talk to the press, they will ask me, Here's a list of one, two,
three, four, five really nice sounding pieces of legislation. You voted
against all five of them, Mr. King. Why did you do that? And my answer
is it is a nice sounding title, but it is a horrible bill. And you will
see that happen often, especially since the gavels have changed hands
in here in the 110th Congress, Mr. Speaker.
So I reiterate to you and to the people that are overhearing this
conversation that we must draw the line. We need to pick up the phones
and call the United States Senate again. We need to shut down their
telephones in the switchboards in the United States Senate and tell
them we don't want a DREAM Act. We need that killed in the United
States Senate. We need to cease this amnesty. We need to preserve the
central pillar of American exceptionalism, the rule of law.
____________________