[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 81 (Wednesday, May 26, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3862-H3868]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Murphy of New York). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always it's an honor and privilege 
to be recognized by you here in the House to address you in the 
presence of the folks that are here in this Chamber.
  I appreciate my colleagues in their presentation in the previous hour 
and their discussion about Jewish American Heritage Month. I want to 
say also to my friend, Mr. Donnelly, the support for our troops and the 
grief that we have for those that we have lost goes deep for all of us, 
and I appreciate that sentiment as well.
  I look at the democracy in the Middle East and the demonstration 
there that in 1948, a Nation that stood up and created a Nation, 
actually a people that stood up and created a Nation. I am very well 
identified with Israel, in particular because the generation of my life 
has almost mirrored the generation of the life of the Nation of Israel.

                              {time}  2210

  And so I would very much encourage the people in this administration 
to support Israel, support them in their self-defense in the Middle 
East, and understand that there have been some things that have taken 
place in this country that undermine the national defense of Israel and 
to send a message that might encourage their enemies.
  I would like to send a message here tonight to encourage the nation 
of Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and all the people 
that stand up for liberty and freedom in that part of the world. It is 
one thing to defend your freedom and your liberty throughout the 
generations as we have through this country; it is another to be 
completely surrounded by enemies that would like to annihilate you as a 
people and as a country. We have no neighbors that draw maps of the 
world that erase the United States from that map--we do have some 
neighbors that would like to take some chunks out of the great 
Southwest of the United States and change the map of the United States 
of America.
  We don't have any neighbors who seek to, when they educate their 
children, eradicate all of the United States of America. But that is 
the case with a number of the neighbors of the nation of Israel. And to 
be surrounded by those kind of people, people who raise their children 
and little girls to put suicide vests on at age 3 and walk them around 
to justify the homicide bombing activities that have taken place all 
over Israel over the years--and by the way, while I'm on the subject 
matter, many of those bombings have been reduced dramatically, 
significantly across Israel, and a lot of that has to do with the 
barrier they constructed between themselves and the West Bank. I've 
been there. I've seen that barrier and watched how effective it has 
been. And I've been a strong proponent of the construction of a barrier 
that would be that effective on our southern border in particular, 
where we have millions of illegal border crossers every year coming 
across our southern border into the United States. And there are those 
that will say that those that are coming across are just coming here to 
get a job. They just want to work. They just want to take care of their 
families. In fact, Mr. Speaker, many do, many do, but there are also 
many who do not.
  Ninety percent of the illegal drugs consumed in the United States 
come from or through Mexico. And out of that huge human haystack of 
humanity that pours across our southern border every night, while the 
numbers are down a little bit--at least by the way we keep statistics, 
we can't be sure because we don't know--but the numbers, when I did 
have a reasonable measurement, there were 4 million illegal border 
crossings a year. I think if you take--and this is from memory, Mr. 
Speaker, so hopefully the accountants in the world won't hold me too 
accountable, but 4 million illegal border crossings a year divided by 
365 days comes down to about 11,000 illegal crossers a night, on 
average, every night.
  I have spent some time down there on those crossings at night at 
places like San Miguel's crossing to sit down there on the border. And 
some of the places along there, at its best, is three or four barbed 
wires that are stretched apart where illegals cross through, 11,000 a 
night, Mr. Speaker. And so you can take your historical measure by 
Santa Anna's army of someplace between 4,000 and 6,000 that surrounded 
and attacked the Alamo. It's 11,000 a night. So one might argue, and I 
think very effectively, that it is two to three times the size of Santa 
Anna's army that invaded Texas, every night, on average. And no, they 
don't all come with muskets and they're not in uniforms, but that is 
the magnitude of it every single night, on average.
  And now I'm going to say, thankfully, the President of the United 
States has announced, I believe yesterday, that he was going to ask for 
$500 million and 1,200 National Guard troops to bolster the security at 
the border. Now, some of the people on my side of the aisle were 
immediately critical of it as being not enough, and I won't take issue 
with them on that part, it is not enough, but it is a good baby step. 
We have taken so many giant steps in the wrong direction, especially 
economically, in the effort to do so culturally and socially, that when 
I see a little baby step in the right direction, like 1,200 Guard 
troops going down to the southern border, that's a good thing. Little 
steps in the right direction are a lot better than giant steps in the 
wrong direction.
  So 1,200 Guard troops at $500 million works out to be this, Mr. 
Speaker. That is an increase of border patrol personnel security of 6.5 
percent, and it is an increase, from a budgetary perspective--$500 
million divided by the roughly $12 billion we're spending on the 
southern border comes to about a 4.2 percent increase in the budget 
part of it.
  Importantly, it sends the right message. And we need to emphasize and 
reinforce the message that's been sent, that this country, Democrats 
and Republicans--albeit in significantly different percentages within 
the parties, but it is a bipartisan position--that we need to stop the 
bleeding at the border, Mr. Speaker. All the rest of the things we 
might want to do don't account for much--as a matter of fact, they 
don't count for anything--if we don't stop the bleeding at the border.
  I just came from a dinner where I sat down and listened to the 
narrative of an individual--whose wife actually told the greatest part 
of the narrative--who was kidnapped by the Mexicans in Mexico. One of 
the cartels that were the top-of-the-line human kidnappers had asked 
initially for $8 million in ransom and for 8 months kept this man in a 
box. He watched his weight go from 165 down to 80 pounds. And finally, 
finally after those 8 months and down to 80 pounds, he was released. 
That doesn't happen to all. Some aren't released. Some are killed in 
captivity. Many of them are brutalized. But when you see a person's 
weight shrink in half, you know that is brutalization. And this is 
what's going on in Mexico. There are

[[Page H3863]]

these kinds of activities that are threatening to throw out the 
politics of South America in countries like Brazil, for example, and 
Colombia would be another, and Peru would be another.
  As I watch this unfold, it isn't a big surprise to us. When we see 
all the violence in the Southern Hemisphere and in Central America, it 
shouldn't be a big surprise to us when that violence spills over the 
border. And when Phoenix becomes the second highest kidnapping city in 
the world--and it would be first if it were not for Mexico City--I 
think it should be pretty clear to all of us here in the United States 
of America, Mr. Speaker, that the violence of the drug trafficking 
country of Mexico has spilled over into the United States, and the 
lawlessness that is a part of what goes on south of the border is now 
in greater numbers becoming the lawlessness that they are living with 
in Arizona and border States along the way. And when Arizona passed 
their immigration law, we heard, Mr. Speaker, what I would call a 
primal scream of desperation come up out of Arizona. And they passed 
the legislation that they could. They passed the legislation that they 
needed to protect and defend themselves.
  Mr. Speaker, that is a long and deep subject which I intend to go 
into a little more deeply, but I recognize that the astute gentleman 
from east Texas, the ``Aggie'' himself, the judge, Mr. Gohmert, is here 
with some actual facts and data that come off of a printed sheet rather 
than out of that globe of his that has so much knowledge in it.
  And I would be so happy to yield as much time as he may consume to 
the gentleman from east Texas (Mr. Gohmert.)

                              {time}  2220

  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I do appreciate so much the comments of my friend 
from Iowa, and we do appreciate the comments of our colleagues in the 
hour previous to this, about the wonderful Jewish heritage in this 
country.
  It is Jewish Heritage Month, and it does mean so much to this Nation 
when you look at the contributions of the Jewish immigrants into this 
country. This country has benefited so immeasurably from immigration, 
but it has to be legal, and there are a number of different aspects.
  First of all, we've got, basically, a Third World immigration 
service. It needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom and from side to 
side. It needs to be streamlined and made more efficient, more 
effective. That has got to be done. It wasn't done effectively in the 
previous administration. It has got to be done. It is not being done 
now by this administration, and it has got to be done. It has grieved 
me much, in my 5\1/2\ years here, to hear people come down to the floor 
who talk about laws, who are spouting off things as facts, which are 
wrong, because they haven't read the bills.
  My friend knows that, in our Republican Conferences, nobody had been 
more loud and emphatic than I in begging my colleagues, when we were 
going through the TARP bailout, to read the bill.
  If you'll just read the bill, you'll see we don't do this in America. 
We don't give one person $700 billion.
  We didn't have enough people read the bill. They didn't realize how 
much we were giving away the farm when the TARP bailout passed.
  Likewise, we have people, including down Pennsylvania Avenue here, 
who have talked about this Arizona bill. I've got it here. It's 19 
pages. That's with the amendments. It includes the amendments that were 
passed to make clear their position. I've gone through and, you know, 
I've highlighted different parts. It's what I do. I am not technically 
challenged. I love doing things on the Internet, finding things and 
doing good research on the Internet, but there is something about 
having a hard copy which I can go through and highlight, and that's 
what I've done here. This is not rocket science.
  If you have read the law as it has come down from the Supreme Court 
and as passed by this Congress, you'll find out that this Arizona law 
is actually not as tough, as stringent as existing Federal law. You'll 
find out what this Arizona bill talks about in terms of what a law 
officer will do because it reads: For any lawful contact stop, 
detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official--well, a 
``lawful contact stop'' means a law officer cannot stop you unless it 
is authorized under State or Federal law. In fact, if he were to 
violate someone's civil rights by unlawfully stopping someone, he has 
got a lawsuit. We've got a Federal law that allows you to go sue 
Arizona or the local law enforcement if they were to abuse their power. 
That's why the civil rights laws are there.
  Any lawful contact.
  There is a type of arrest that has been known since 1966 as a Terry 
Stop, and there is probably not a certified law officer in Iowa, in 
Texas, or in the country who has not had a class on what a lawful stop, 
a Terry Stop, is because under Terry vs. Ohio 1966, the Supreme Court 
discussed this. They said that you've got to have a reasonable 
suspicion that there has been some crime committed in order to have a 
detention stop. You can't just, you know, willy-nilly stop people.
  Also, it could be a lawful stop if you see that somebody is violating 
the traffic laws. Sometimes officers will have a lawful stop, and 
they'll give you a warning. They could have given you a full ticket 
because they saw that you had violated a law or that maybe you had a 
taillight out or something, but it's a lawful stop. They stop you and 
wonder, perhaps, you know, are you carrying illegal drugs or something. 
Well, they're authorized to stop you for violating the traffic laws, 
and they're not bound to put on blinders when they do in order to see 
if you've violated something else while you're there, but not 
unreasonably.
  If they've lawfully stopped a person for some purpose other than 
immigration and if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is 
an alien, that a person is not lawfully present in the country, then 
this law allows them to make, as it says here, a reasonable attempt, 
when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.
  Now, what Terry vs. Ohio made clear is a ``reasonable suspicion'' 
means you can't just say, Well, I suspected something. That's not good 
enough. In law school, when we studied Terry vs. Ohio, there was some 
terminology I had to practice saying before I got to class so that I 
could say it without, you know, stumbling and looking more ignorant 
than I might otherwise already look. The word was ``articulable.'' It 
rolls off pretty easily nowadays, but you can't just suspect. Well, I 
just had this suspicion. That's not good enough. It has to be a 
reasonable suspicion based upon articulable facts. If you cannot 
articulate facts that justify your suspicion, it's not reasonable. It's 
an unlawful stop, and it's probably a civil rights violation that's 
going to get the community or the State of Arizona sued successfully.
  The Federal law allows even further stopping just to check to see if 
somebody may be legally present in the country. Federal law officers 
have the ability to do that if they think it appropriate. Arizona is 
just trying to deal with the fact that they have so many criminals in 
Arizona.
  My friend mentioned a kidnapping. It is intolerable that one of our 
50 States of these United States would have a beautiful, wonderful city 
like Phoenix and that that United States' city, here in the continental 
United States, would be the second most prolific kidnapping capital in 
the world. This isn't a Third World country where we have coups d'etat 
constantly and governments constantly changing hands so that you don't 
know who is going to enforce the law. This is the United States of 
America. Arizona is not some Wild West territory. To have Phoenix have 
the second most kidnappings in the world is intolerable, and it is an 
embarrassment for which this Federal Government owes an apology to 
border States like Arizona for allowing this kind of thing to go 
unstopped, unchecked.
  This law is very reasonable. You know, basically, there is just one 
page--if people would bother to go check. On page 5, it talks about 
lawfully stopping someone who is operating a vehicle if he has a 
reasonable suspicion to believe the person is in violation of any civil 
traffic law. I mean, this is not an unreasonable law, but it does say 
repeatedly that a law enforcement official or agency of this State, 
county, city, town or other political subdivision may not consider 
race, color, or national origin in the

[[Page H3864]]

enforcement of this section except to the extent permitted by the 
United States or Arizona Constitution. Well, the Arizona Constitution 
cannot allow it if it is forbidden by the United States Constitution. 
So this is not some horrific bill as the President and others, 
including our President, have made it sound.
  That's why it is a little bit irritating to have the President of 
Mexico come into this body as an invited guest, as a guest in this 
House, and say: I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in 
Arizona. It is a law that not only ignores a reality, that cannot be 
erased by decree but that also introduces a terrible idea, using racial 
profiling as a basis for law enforcement.

                              {time}  2230

  That is why I agree with President Obama, who said the new law 
``carries a great amount of risk when core values that we all care 
about are breached.''
  He comes in here as an invited guest and completely misrepresents the 
facts, and tells the world here in this body to our faces that the 
Arizona law ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, and 
introduces a terrible idea that racial profiling is a basis for law 
enforcement?
  I am sure that he does not lie, but that statement is a lie; that is 
not true. He just needed to read the bill, and apparently no one, I 
don't know if the Attorney General has read it yet, he hadn't read it 
when he came before our Judiciary Committee. Secretary Napolitano, she 
owed the State of Arizona better than she gave it, and she had not read 
the bill, and she is out there condemning it. And then to have our 
invited guest come in here and condemn a law that he clearly had not 
read--I would be glad to give him a copy. It is not hard to get. But to 
come in here, that is just so outrageous.
  But then he comes in and says, ``Because of your global leadership, 
we will need your support,'' this is President Calderon, ``to make the 
meeting in Cancun next November a success.'' And that is because he has 
come in and touted global warming.
  For those that can't understand the politicalese that is used in 
here, what that statement means, and what all these 100 and some 
countries around the world have said, when they said we have got to 
have the United States' global leadership come into this global warming 
conference, what they mean is, if the United States doesn't come in as 
the patsy who is willing to pay all these other countries out of some 
guilt complex, then nobody else in the world is going to come in and 
start redistributing the wealth from America into all those other 
countries.
  I appreciate President Calderon saying that, but the trouble is we 
are distributing plenty of wealth to Mexico. He mentioned it himself. 
The Merida Initiative, as I recall. This body passed a bill to give 
them $500 million, as I recall, to use to buy law enforcement equipment 
to help enforce their laws. We are pouring plenty of money into Mexico, 
so he doesn't need to try to go to some global warming meeting and try 
to construct some method of extorting more money out of the United 
States. We are giving them plenty.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from 
Texas. I wanted to go back through a couple of points the gentleman has 
made with regard to the Arizona law.
  One of them would be, my recollection is that ``lawful contact'' was 
amended to say ``stop, detention, or arrest.'' I happen to have had a 
copy that has the amendment integrated into the overall bill, and I was 
able to sit down and read that on Saturday morning.
  Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman would yield, yes, it does say any 
lawful contact, stop, detention or arrest.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Didn't they strike ``lawful contact'' and just put 
in ``stop, detention, or arrest?''
  Mr. GOHMERT. This is supposed to be the updated law as amended.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Your copy doesn't reflect that. I recall mine did.
  Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman needs to understand that ``lawful contact 
stop'' means you can't stop them unless you have a reasonable 
suspicion.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me suggest that ``lawful contact'' would mean, 
among it, ``lawful contact'' would be ``stop, detention, or arrest,'' 
so specific within those individual subcategories of lawful contact. So 
I think I make a distinction without a difference in the language as I 
recall it, and that is carefully crafted language.
  When we look at the reasonable suspicion component of this, Mr. 
Speaker, I think about this; that I wrote the reasonable suspicion law 
in Iowa as a State senator for the Workplace Drug Testing Act that we 
passed in 1998. It has been in law for all of 12 years, and in that 
period of time, in fact 12 years and 2 months, I happen to remember it 
was St. Patrick's day in 1998 that it was signed into law, Mr. Speaker.
  But we provide for an employer or employer's designee to direct an 
employee to undergo a drug test, and generally that will be a 
urinalysis, based upon a representative of the employer declaring that 
the employee in question has a reasonable suspicion that they are using 
or abusing drugs. That might be any of the indicators that have to do 
with bloodshot eyes, or dilated pupils, or erratic work habits, or 
showing up late, or let me say agitated nature or nervous nature, 
something of that nature.
  So the designee of the employer can point to an employee and say, I 
have a reasonable suspicion that you are using drugs. Go get a drug 
test right now.
  That has been an Iowa law for 12 years. It is more draconian than the 
Arizona reasonable suspicion law with regard to requiring the law 
enforcement officer to draw their reasonable suspicion and make a 
determination when he has reasonable suspicion as to the lawful 
presence of the individual that he has had lawful contact with and had 
a stop, detention, or arrest.

  A reasonable suspicion, I would add also to the gentleman from Texas, 
who went to law school down there, that if I remember correctly, it is 
a specific, articulable fact, so that it has to be specified as well as 
articulable. I have trouble practicing that word too. I am doing it 
here. So I didn't go to law school to learn that.
  But the reasonable suspicion language that is there is well settled, 
and it has been completely utilized for decades in the United States, 
and for at least 12 years in Iowa. Maybe it is the janitor, or it is 
the nurse or the truck driver, or maybe it is the accountant or the 
keyboard operator that is the designee of the employer, that has 
received 2 hours worth of training to start out and one hour worth of 
training each year to refresh them, and they are the ones that get to 
point their finger at somebody and not say, let me see your papers; it 
is, we will send you into the clinic here, and you can fill this jar 
up, and we will check it out and see if you are using illegal drugs.
  I would submit that it is a little bit more invasive in a person's 
privacy to require a urinalysis than it is to require that they show 
their papers. Yet we have people across this country that are 
demonstrating against Arizona's immigration law, when all it does is 
ask the local law enforcement officers to carry out the function of 
enforcing immigration law, Arizona immigration law, which mirrors 
Federal immigration law in that practice, and it has been a requirement 
for a long, long time, perhaps half a century, that those who are in 
this United States that are not natural born citizens or naturalized 
citizens have to carry their papers if they are 18 years old or older. 
That has been a common practice. There appears to be no offense taken 
about that practice.
  But here, behind where I stand, Mr. Speaker, we had President 
Calderon take issue with Arizona's immigration law. He said he strongly 
disagrees with the Arizona law, that it is a terrible idea that could 
lead to racial profiling. That is pretty close to the quote, not exact. 
Mr. Gohmert provided it exactly.
  So if President Calderon is so offended by the law that Arizona has 
passed, I would take him back to the simplest lessons in deductive 
reasoning that were perfected by the Greeks 3,000 years ago, and it 
would be this: President Calderon, if you are not offended by the 
United States Federal immigration law that sets a standard that is more 
stringent than the Arizona immigration law, but you are offended by the 
Arizona immigration law, the only logical deductive reason that could 
remain is that he is offended that Arizona law enforcement will be 
enforcing Arizona immigration law. So that would tell me President 
Calderon is insulted or offended by Arizona's State

[[Page H3865]]

and political subdivision law enforcement officers.
  And I will suggest that the former Member of Congress from Colorado 
and my friend, Tom Tancredo, got it right when he said you can 
understand what is going on by the objectors of the Arizona law; the 
higher the level of hysteria, the greater their fear that the law is 
going to be effective.

                              {time}  2240

  They don't want the law to be effective. That's why they're 
demonstrating. They don't believe, if they've ever read the bill, they 
don't necessarily believe that it's unconstitutional or it violates a 
Federal preemption standard or that there's case law out there that 
prohibits local law enforcement from enforcing Federal immigration law. 
That isn't all a matter of their issue. They're contriving arguments 
that help them arrive at a result that they want, which is open 
borders, full-bore amnesty, paths to citizenship, more voters, more 
people coming into the United States to cash into this giant ATM called 
America.
  And there was a point that was raised this morning in a breakfast 
that I hosted for the Conservative Opportunity Society. I will put it 
this way, since it's a confidential discussion that takes place in 
there. It was raised by one of the members from the upper Midwest, and 
I'll call it a rust belt State, who said he has watched as generations 
of Americans have arrived here from foreign lands, different countries 
other than the United States because they had a dream, because they had 
a passion. They wanted to build on that dream, and here they could have 
the freedom to do so. They have all the constitutional rights and 
protections that man has ever known, the right to property, the rule of 
law, in a nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, which 
means we need less law enforcement than anybody else in the world. And 
people came here to build on that, and that vitality is a great core of 
the American experience and the American civilization.
  But he raised the point that, when you start bringing in tens of 
millions of people who come here for a different reason, a different 
reason rather than to build, that people coming here believing that 
they can cash in on the welfare state, that there is somebody else 
that's going to do the work and there's going to be money that gets 
kicked out of this government machine--this giant ATM is the shorthand 
that I use for it--he worries about the future of our Nation because 
they and their children and their children's children would have a 
different view about what the work ethic is, for example; the 
responsibilities we have to stand up and support the rule of law and 
hold everyone accountable to the American Dream, which embodies a 
responsibility that we have to utilize this blessing that we have 
that's passed to us from the previous generations and to leave this 
world and this country in a better place than it was when we found it. 
That's an American Dream obligation. And if they come here for a 
different reason, this is a new phenomenon that hasn't taken place 
because we've only been a welfare state about a half a century.
  When my grandmother came here a little over 100 years ago, she came 
into a society that was a meritocracy. And if people walked across the 
great hall at Ellis Island and they had a limp or a gimp or a bad eye 
or both eyes looked a little crazy or a little too pregnant, if 
something wasn't right, even though they'd been screened before they 
got on the boat, they put them back on the boat and shipped them back 
to the country that they came from. About 2 percent of those that 
arrived at Ellis Island were put back on the boat and sent back to the 
country they came from because the United States of America was 
filtering for good physical specimens, good mental specimens, 
generally, people who could sustain themselves in this growing country, 
a meritocracy. But today it's anything but.
  Only 7 to 11 percent of the legal immigration in America is based on 
merit. The rest of it is completely out of our control, with family 
reunification and a whole lot of other plans under the sun, but not 
based on merit. And what kind of a country would not establish 
an immigration policy designed to enhance the economic, the social, and 
the cultural well-being of the United States of America?

  That's one of my, I think, salient points, and I'd be happy to yield 
to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. And the point is quite salient. And it brings 
to a point something I think my friend from Iowa and I can agree with 
part of the quote from our President that was quoted by President 
Calderon. And to give you the exact quote again, President Calderon, in 
talking about the Arizona law said that ``it introduces a terrible idea 
using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.'' Now, that is 
just blatantly not true, absolutely not true. Using racial profiling as 
a basis for law enforcement. That is, it flies in the face of the facts 
and the facts of this bill.
  But then he goes on, and here's the part where I believe my friend 
would agree with me in congratulating the President, not on the first 
part of the quote, because he's applying this to the Arizona law, but 
he says the new law ``carries a great amount of risk when core values 
that we all care about are breached.'' But the part that is in there is 
so important to us in the United States, and that is that there is ``a 
great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are 
breached.''
  Now, I grew up with my mother and dad telling me if I ever have an 
emergency, if I'm ever in trouble, look for someone in uniform because 
I can trust them. That's the way I grew up in Mount Pleasant, Texas, 
and that's the way I have taught our three girls growing up their whole 
lives, growing up in Tyler, Texas, that if there's a problem, even if 
you're worried you might have done something wrong, you go to somebody 
in uniform. You can trust them. And I've taught them the same thing.
  You know, if somebody were ever kidnapped, no matter what the note 
said or whatever, you call the FBI. You can trust them. And I know so 
many FBI agents, and I do trust them. They're some wonderful agents. 
And I know they would lay down their lives in a second.
  But what about when we come to the point when the Federal law 
enforcement is told by their commander in the White House that 
enforcing the law is a bad idea? That's problematic. And then that 
spills over until you have somebody who is charged and his whole job is 
enforcing the immigration laws, and he says, if Arizona sends somebody 
that they have detained because they're illegally in the country, he 
may not even enforce the law. See, that flies in the face, just like 
the President's quote says. There's a great amount of risk when the 
core values that we've taught our children, that we all care about, are 
breached.
  And I'm telling you, when you have someone in the Federal Government 
charged with enforcing the law and they're being taught, and it's 
coming top down, ignore the law, don't enforce it, they're violating 
all the core values that we've tried to instill in our children and the 
things that we grew up believing, and this country is not the country 
we hoped for, that we dreamed for. It becomes like the country that so 
many immigrants flee illegally, because they're not based, their 
country does not have the rule of law that's in force. Too much graft 
and corruption.
  You come to this country, don't ask us to ignore the rule of law. 
Some of us, like 4 years I had in the Army, time as a prosecutor, as a 
judge, as a chief justice, 5\1/2\ years in Congress, taking that oath 
that was given by the Speaker to the new Congressman Djou from Hawaii, 
I mean, we took an oath to follow the law and we're supposed to support 
and defend the Constitution. This flies in the face of all those oaths 
when you say ignore the law, it means nothing; we'll get around to 
enforcing it some day down the road. It means I've spent most of my 
adult life for nothing because the rule of law means nothing.
  So I would implore people, do not come to this country and ask me to 
say that my adult life has been for nothing, because the rule of law 
means something. It means nothing to them. It does mean something. It's 
meant something to me, and it always will, because I know, and I know 
my friend from Iowa knows, I know the Speaker knows, if we don't have 
the rule of law that's applied across the board, and I think better in 
this country than in any country in the history of the world, then we 
devolve into the ashes

[[Page H3866]]

from which we rose, and we are just a historic memory and nothing more.
  I yield back to my friend from Iowa.

                              {time}  2250

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank my friend from Texas. I am standing here 
listening, thinking about what it means to be in a country that in the 
history of the world there has been no country that has more profound 
respect for the rule of law. And the thought that all this life in the 
law as a prosecutor, as a judge, as a Supreme Court Justice, all of 
that activity, to have someone declare that it's all for nothing, that 
it really didn't have any meaning, that behind it all it was a facade 
that was simply there to facilitate somebody's political agenda is what 
it would come down to.
  And I think back throughout this course of history. And earlier I 
spoke of the Greeks, but I would take this law, this rule of law back 
to Rome, Roman law, Roman law that survived the Dark Ages and 
manifested itself as the foundation of old English common law, that 
came across to this country and arrived here, let me suggest, with the 
Mayflower 390 years ago, with the Pilgrims who came over here for 
religious liberty and religious freedom to get out from underneath the 
thumb of the King, and also to be able to worship as they pleased, and 
those traditions of old English common law that came here.
  But the injustices that still came from English common law were the 
injustices that were corrected in a large way in the traditions and 
defined in the Declaration and corrected in the Constitution of the 
United States.
  We are here and one of the reasons that we are a great Nation, one of 
the reasons that we are the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world 
is because one of the essential pillars of American exceptionalism is 
the rule of law, Mr. Speaker.
  When we look at the difference between the country represented by 
President Calderon and the country represented by President Obama, our 
traditions are entirely different. As I listened to President 
Calderon's speech, he said we are founded on the same principles. He 
said they were founded 200 years ago on the same principles as the 
United States is my recollection from the speech. I don't have it in 
front of me.
  It struck me that I would like to ask that question of him personally 
to explain that to me, how we are founded on the same principles, the 
right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Could that be 
in a Mexican Constitution somewhere that is 200 years old? I am not 
aware of that. I hope it is. I hope I just missed it, but I am not 
aware of that.
  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Mr. Speaker. This 
country was founded for religious liberty. It was founded on the rule 
of law. It was founded on the basic principles that our rights come 
from God, and that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal, and we are endowed by our Creator with certain 
unalienable rights, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness, Mr. Speaker.
  And America was founded by a Nation who believed in freedom, a Nation 
of farmers and small shopkeepers, a Nation that rejected the 
aristocracy, a Nation that wrote in its Constitution that we are not 
going to confer any title or royalty on anybody in this country. We are 
going to shed those trappings of royalty, and we are going to be a 
Nation that is empowered from rights that come from God that come 
directly to the people, and the people bestow the responsibility on 
government. That's what America was founded upon.
  And we believed for a long time that our voices mattered. We have 
been engaging in these debates well before the Declaration of 
Independence. Patrick Henry's speech was a manifestation of many 
decades of Americans seeking to rule themselves before they threw the 
yoke of King George off in 1776 and culminated with the ratification of 
the Constitution beginning in 1787 and finishing in 1789.
  We are a different Nation. When I asked the Historian of Mexico in 
Mexico City a couple of years ago about the colonial experience of 
Mexico versus the colonial experience of the United States, his 
response was, well, about 7 percent of Mexico are the aristocracy, and 
they have run their country from the beginning. And 93 percent are the 
people who are being run. And they have no tradition of being able to 
have a voice that actually changed and shifted the government and 
directed the government. Not a government of the people, but a 
government of the aristocracy run for the aristocracy that managed and 
controls the people.
  Now, I hope President Calderon is breaking that mold. I hope Vicente 
Fox started it along the way, and I hope President Calderon is breaking 
that mold. And I applaud him for the courageous approach that he has 
had in taking on the drug cartels. They have suffered thousands and 
thousands of casualties in the middle of this war against the drug 
cartels, but they have a very heavy lift down there. It isn't that 
Mexico mirrors that experience of the United States, in my view. I 
think it's a different history, it's a different experience, it's a 
different culture, and a different set of traditions.

  And, yes, we can be friends, and we are trading partners, and we need 
to enhance those trades. And I want to be supportive of the effort to 
shut down the drug cartels. And we have, Mr. Speaker, a responsibility 
in this country to shut down illegal drug consumption so that we can 
turn down the magnet that draws so many illegal dollars out of the 
United States into Mexico and the violence that's committed there and 
points south, and there and points into the United States. All of that 
is part of the picture. We haven't addressed our side of this problem 
very well at all. And we point our finger at Mexico. I want them to do 
their job too.
  But we can, by golly, shut off the bleeding at the border. That we 
can do. And there are $60 billion a year that are wired out of the 
United States into the Western Hemisphere, points south. About $30 
billion of it goes into Mexico; about $30 billion goes into Central 
America, the Caribbean, and South America. And the Drug Enforcement 
Agency does not even have an estimate on what percentage of that $60 
billion is laundered illegal drug money.
  I would hang that point out there and yield to the gentleman from 
Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. Some say, well, if you are a caring Nation 
then you ought to just welcome anybody that wants to come. The problem 
is because this Nation has been so richly blessed, and because we have 
been a Nation that believed in the rule of law and enforced it more 
fairly across the board than any nation in the history of the world, 
then opportunities have abounded here. And so it has been a draw.
  And I know my friend from Iowa was chairman of the Immigration 
Subcommittee on which I was privileged to serve, and so I know he is 
aware of these statistics, but it's estimated that between out of the 
over 6 billion people in the world that 1 billion to 1.5 billion people 
in the world would like to come to America. And as most folks know, we 
have over 300 million in this country now.
  But if we were to just say there are no borders, you want to come, 
come on, we are just giving up on our obligation to protect the economy 
and the people and the way of life in this country, so come on. One 
billion to 1.5 billion people would overwhelm this Nation. It could no 
longer be the greatest Nation in the world because you couldn't have an 
organized, sustained society with a government that functioned. It 
would be overwhelmed.
  So in order to continue to be that light on the hill, that beacon 
that Reagan talked about, we have to make sure that we have managed 
immigration, that we continue to be a beacon so people want to come 
here, but that we control the immigration so it doesn't overwhelm the 
economy so that this becomes a matter of regret for those who have come 
here.
  Now, I know, as my friend from Iowa has done, and I guess most of us, 
assist people who have immigration problems. And so we have some 
wonderful dear Hispanic friends, constituents whom we are helping to 
try to legally get in family because they want to abide by the law. 
They want to do the right thing because they know the law is important.
  And some people that I love very dearly are Hispanic immigrants. And, 
you know, having been invited to come

[[Page H3867]]

to family functions and back when I was a judge, one of the great 
honors of my time as a judge was to marry a couple. And her parents 
were immigrants. And it was just so moving. It brought tears to my 
eyes. But I look around at this Hispanic group of family, and what 
comes to my mind when I am with them, when I see them is they believe 
in the things that made America great.
  This family, these dear friends, they believe in God, they have a 
love of family that's unrivaled, and they have a hard-work ethic like 
virtually nobody else can even aspire to. It's a beautiful thing. And I 
have great hopes that those three things that you find generally so 
often in Hispanic communities are what's going to reinvigorate this 
country and get us back on track and get us back to the very things 
George Washington prayed for this country when he resigned as commander 
in chief of the Revolutionary military. Those are good things.
  But we owe it to all of the people, those who have immigrated 
legally, those who have been here, grandchildren, great grandchildren 
of immigrants, people that are Native Americans, we owe it to all of 
them to keep this country strong so it continues to be a land of 
opportunity.

                              {time}  2300

  I come back to that prayer that George Washington had when he wrote, 
himself, that was at the end of his resignation, and of course, it was 
the only time in human history where someone led a revolutionary 
military, won the revolution, and then resigned and went home. Never 
happened before, never happened since.
  At the end, Washington's words were these, I now make it my earnest 
prayer that God would have you in the state over which you preside in 
his holy protection.
  I know my friend had people, as an employer, providing paychecks, you 
probably had people resign. You may not have had people put prayers 
like this on the end of their resignation, but Washington goes on that 
he, God, would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit 
of subordination and, get this, and obedience to government. To 
entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their 
fellow citizens of the United States, and particularly for the brethren 
who have served in the field, and, finally, that he would most 
graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice.
  That's part of the prayer. How can you do justice? You follow the 
law. You are just. To the rich and the poor you are just to everyone. 
Race, creed, color, nationality, religion, prayer, that was part of 
Washington's prayer.
  Then he goes on to love mercy, you can't have mercy unless you have 
justice in the first place.
  Washington goes on: And to demean ourselves with a charity, humility, 
and pacific timbre of mind which were the characteristics of the divine 
author of our blessed religion, and without an humble limitation of 
whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.
  He signed it, I have the honor to be, with great respect and esteem, 
your Excellency's most obedient and very humble servant, George 
Washington.
  Now, that's a resignation, that's a prayer.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Did he sign that in the year of our Lord?
  Mr. GOHMERT. This resignation he did not, but, of course, we know 
that most things were signed in the year of our Lord, including our 
Constitution. So I find it remarkable when some people around here have 
said, well, it would be unconstitutional to sign things around here in 
the year of our Lord. I pointed out how can it be unconstitutional to 
sign things in the year of our Lord, whatever the year number is, when 
that is exactly how the Constitution itself is signed and dated.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I reflect back on talking about George Washington 
and the eloquence that he had and the love for his fellow man and for 
his country and how great it would have been if Fidel Castro would have 
stepped down about the time that he finished a term or two in Cuba and 
how much different this Western Hemisphere would be.
  What if we didn't have people like Hugo Chavez down there that seek 
to be President for life and impose their version of Marxism, their 
version of emperor's law, which is one of the foundations of empire. If 
you look around and you look at empires, they are run by emperors. They 
are run by the law of the emperor, not the law that comes from God that 
sees justice blindly, and the level kind of justice for whomever it 
might be, rich or poor.
  I am thinking about this Arizona law again and how it's been 
misrepresented across this country. I am not very forgiving for what 
has happened here. When you have the highest official and officials in 
the United States Government that either shoot from the hip or 
willfully misinform the American people, and it starts with the 
President of the United States himself.
  When the Arizona law was passed he almost immediately said that a 
mother and her daughter could be going to get some ice cream, and they 
could be targeted because of how they looked and be required to produce 
their papers. That was a race card thrown into the middle of this 
debate based upon no fundamental facts, Mr. Speaker.
  Then behind that we had Eric Holder the Attorney General, testifying 
before the Judiciary Committee a week and a half ago, if I recall 
correctly, about a week and a half ago with Eric Holder. As he was 
asked these series of questions, he had made the point that he thought 
that there was a potential for racial profiling that could take place. 
Then, Mr. Speaker, we found out, and I think Eric Holder may know by 
now, that he misunderstood the law, but he hadn't read the law.
  We found out, when Congressman Ted Poe, also a former judge from 
Texas, asked him the question, have you read the bill? He said, no, he 
hadn't. He hadn't been briefed on the bill.
  But he had a few things to say about it, and prior to the Judiciary 
Committee, about its lack of constitutionality. Well, that's the 
Attorney General, who also testified that he is a nonpartisan office, 
that he is simply going to enforce the law.

  Then we have the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, 
and she had remarks to make about how the bill could be used for racial 
profiling. It's obvious that she didn't read the bill. In fact, she 
confessed to Senator McCain in a hearing that she didn't read the bill.
  Then we had the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, who heads 
up ICE, John Morton, who made a statement, I believe it was to The 
Chicago Tribune newspaper, that he wasn't committed to necessarily 
picking up the individuals that would be incarcerated by Arizona law 
enforcement that had violated U.S. and Arizona immigration law.
  The law enforcement officer, the chief law enforcement officer for 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sent a message, not yet to be 
retracted, that he wouldn't commit to picking up these individuals that 
had been picked up by Arizona law enforcement, because he disagreed 
with the law. Breathtaking.
  What would George Washington have said to think that the top enforcer 
of American immigration law, the Assistant Secretary of Homeland 
Security John Morton, would even intimate that he had any options about 
enforcing the law?
  I would say, Mr. Speaker, that it isn't his option. It's not the 
option of the President of the United States to decide whether to 
enforce the law. It's not the option of the Attorney General to decide 
whether to enforce a law, or, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or 
the Assistant Secretary of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement; 
none of them have the option. They are executive branch employees. 
Their oath is to uphold the Constitution to the best of their ability 
and to faithfully execute the laws. That's their job.
  This Congress sets the legislation and sets its policy. The executive 
branch carries it out. They don't get to have discretion. I will submit 
to John Morton, Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, or even President Obama. 
President Obama could do a John Adams.
  Come back here, run for office, come to Congress. If you like to set 
policy, get in the legislative business. Don't be in the enforcement 
business.
  I am not seeking to enforce a law myself. I am saying here is the 
law. The Federal Government has immigration law, and you have an 
obligation, if you are the President of the United States, or an 
executive branch officer

[[Page H3868]]

with that duty, to enforce that law. Our job is to set the policy and 
pass the laws.
  You know, I will go even further. Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary 
of State, he said he brought it up early and often to the Chinese that 
we had a problem with a law in Arizona that could bring about racial 
profiling. These are the people, we have got 40,000 Chinese in the 
United States that have been adjudicated for deportation. The Chinese 
won't take them back. And we are sending them some 550-year-old bones 
from paleovertebrates, so they can keep their artifacts straight.
  We need to send them the 40,000 Chinese that they won't take, deport 
them as well as the bones, Mr. Speaker. And, additionally, Felipe 
Calderon on top of this. The American people have been misinformed by 
the President, by the Attorney General, by the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, by the 
Assistant Secretary of State Posner. Then the President of Mexico takes 
his talking points from the White House and comes to this floor and 
lectures and chastises us that we have a law here, that I will say is 
completely constitutional. I will make this further prediction, Mr. 
Speaker, and that is that the announcement came out today that the 
Justice Department under Eric Holder now has a legal brief that 
recommends that they bring suit against Arizona.

                              {time}  2310

  Here is my prediction: ACLU has written that legal brief for the 
Justice Department. That apolitical, nonpolitical Justice Department 
has a brief that one day we'll get our hands on, a draft brief. Release 
the draft is what needs to happen from the Attorney General. But in 
that draft we'll find the ACLU that has already sued Arizona with a 98-
page case, there is the document that they're using to put their brief 
together in the Justice Department.
  The President gave the order to the Attorney General to look into 
Arizona's law. And the Justice Department, under Attorney General 
Holder, looked at the lawsuit that's been brought by the ACLU and 
MALDEF and other organizations that are hardcore left wing, including 
SEIU, and they have lifted the language right out of that lawsuit, and 
that will be the draft, Mr. Speaker. That's my prediction. I put my 
marker down. When we get our hands on the draft from the Attorney 
General's office, I will take that draft and I will take the language 
and I will highlight the language right out of the ACLU's lawsuit. And 
I'll show you how the Justice Department lifted that language out of 
the lawsuit of the ACLU and MALDEF--the Mexican American Legal Defense 
Foundation--and put it right into their draft advisory. And the Federal 
Government will be conducting and carrying out the order of the 
President--in a nonpolitical office, supposedly, according to Holder's 
testimony--at the direction of the ACLU and MALDEF and LARASA and the 
other organizations, SEIU and many others that are hardcore, leftist 
organizations in this country.
  If we're going to have the rule of law, it's got to be impartial. 
It's got to be objective. It's got to be constitutional. It's got to be 
statutory, and it's got to be consistent with case law. Arizona's law 
is all of those things, but this Justice Department's unjustified 
attack on Arizona is anything but.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from 
Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I just want to say, the President said he would 
fundamentally transform America. And when the executive branch charged 
with enforcing the laws of the country won't read them, won't follow 
them, and won't enforce them, that's a fundamental transformation.
  Our friend, Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming, prepared this chart. One 
final note on fundamental transformation: This chart, when you have the 
blue line, the private job sector hiring, shooting down like this and 
the red line, the public government hiring, shooting up like that, you 
have fundamentally transformed America.
  With that, I yield.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and, Mr. Speaker, yielding back 
the balance, should there be any.

                          ____________________