[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 47 (Wednesday, April 10, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H1867-H1868]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Vargas) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. VARGAS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of comprehensive immigration 
reform.
  I would like to thank my colleague from Illinois, who spoke earlier 
about his experience, saying that he believes in comprehensive 
immigration reform. I do, too. I just wish that when he was asked, or 
when he asked the Border Patrol agent, ``If there was one thing you 
could bring back to Congress, one thing, what would it be?'' I wish 
that that gentleman would have said his Bible, because that's what he 
should have said, ``Bring your Bible. That will give you the best 
guidance. Bring your Bible.''
  I believe, Mr. Speaker, I'm allowed to read from the Bible. Is that 
correct? No one will come and tackle me? I'm new at this. It's my first 
year here, and I hope I'm not violating any law. But if I am, I'm going 
to do it anyway.
  I would like to read from Matthew 25, because Matthew 25 speaks to 
the judgment. I think it's very important for us to read this section.

                              {time}  1040

  It reads like this:

       When the Son of Man comes in His glory, escorted by all the 
     angels of Heaven, He will sit upon His royal throne and all 
     the Nations will be assembled before Him, and then He will 
     separate them into two groups as a shepherd separates sheep 
     from goats. The sheep He will place on His right hand, the 
     goats on His left. The King will say to those on His right, 
     ``Come. You have my Father's blessing. Inherit the kingdom 
     prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was 
     hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me 
     drink; I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.

  ``I was a stranger and you welcomed me.'' Who is the stranger? Who is 
the stranger among us that we welcome? I'll tell you who the stranger 
is among us who we welcome. The stranger is the wife of the soldier 
that we spoke to 3 weeks ago here in Washington when he came and he 
testified and said:

       I'm not afraid of dying in Afghanistan or Iraq. I've been 
     on three tours of duty. What I'm afraid is that my wife will 
     get deported because she's undocumented, and then who will 
     take care of my children?

  She is the stranger, the soldier's wife.
  Who is the stranger? Who is the stranger among us? Who is this least 
among us? I'll tell you who it is. It's the child and the parents who 
are here, where the child is born here. He's an American citizen, but 
the parents weren't, so the parents can get deported and you break the 
family apart. We deport the parents and we don't know what happens to 
the children because they go to strangers. We break this family.
  Who is the stranger? Those parents, that child. How we treat them is 
how we're going to be judged.
  We have an opportunity here before us, and I'm very thankful now for 
the churches in this country. The Catholic Church for many years has 
been saying, We need humane, comprehensive immigration reform. They've 
said it loud and clear. And now the evangelical churches are out there 
saying the same thing. God bless them. And I know that they're praying, 
and I know that my parish is praying that we'll all open our hearts to 
this.
  I have to tell you, I haven't been here long, but I do get the 
opportunity to pray with my colleagues on the Republican side, and they 
are great people with great heart, and I hope that God speaks to them 
at this point in time and says: The stranger is the soldier's wife; the 
stranger is the child whose parents are going to be ripped away from 
them. He is, in fact, the people

[[Page H1868]]

that died crossing the border because they want a better life for 
themselves. Those are the strangers. We are going to be judged on how 
we treat them. So we have an opportunity here.
  But also, stepping apart from that, people say, But it's illegal, 
what they've done is illegal. You know, the law is interesting. I 
happen to be a lawyer. There are two ways to look at the law. There's 
the law that says it's malum per se--it's bad or evil in itself. Malum 
per se in itself. Murder is malum per se. It's always evil, it's always 
wrong to kill.
  On the other side you have malum prohibitum. What is malum 
prohibitum? Malum prohibitum means it's bad or wrong or illegal because 
we prohibit it. For example, if you drive 56 miles an hour in a 55-
mile-an-hour zone, you've broken the law. Have you done anything 
illegal? Yes, you have. Have you done anything immoral? No. The road 
was built to go faster than that, your car was, the brakes are good. 
You violated the law. What do we often do? In fact we change the law 
and we say 55 miles an hour doesn't make any sense. We change it to 60 
or 65 or 70. I've been through Texas; now it's 75 there. I'm from 
California. We only have 70. Why? Because the law doesn't make any 
sense.
  Our immigration law doesn't make any sense. So, yes, they've broken 
the law, but a law that doesn't make any sense. Let's change the law. 
Let's open our hearts. Let's take this Bible and let's take a look and 
see what it says to us. What it will say is this: that how we treat the 
stranger is how we are going to be judged as a Nation.

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