[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 16, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H2061-H2063]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION REFORM
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Iowa
(Mr. King) is recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee
of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my privilege to
address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
It's a bit of a frustration not to be picking up after Mr. Woodall in
support of the FairTax; although, I want to let you know that I had
long been a supporter of the FairTax before it had a name, before it
had a bill, before it had a concept that was nationally discussed. I
just began to discuss it from my own business perspective because of my
experience in starting a business in 1975, employing people and seeing
what happens when you have a tax system that doesn't tax consumption
but punishes productivity in America.
{time} 1520
But I came here, Mr. Speaker, to bring up the immigration issue,
which has been operating in the media to some degree, but mostly behind
the scenes, delivered by the Gang of Eight over in the Senate and a
group behind the scenes here in the House of Representatives. They will
put out a little
[[Page H2062]]
trial balloon of what they want the press to talk about, and maybe have
a little press conference to launch their endeavor. We saw that with
the Gang of Eight. And yet, the deliberations, the discussions, the
input, the ideas that are injected, versus the ideas that are rejected,
haven't had the light of day.
Now we understand that perhaps tomorrow there will be a release of a
bill, and I have in my hand a preview of what that bill is most likely
to be. Of course, there are changes that could be made, and I want to
qualify my delivery here, but I want to discuss what I think about the
pieces of it that I've read so far, Mr. Speaker.
So the Gang of Eight's proposal, which we think will emerge tomorrow
or perhaps the next day, it works out to be this: the case, the goal
for border security, Mr. Speaker, is for the achievement of a 90
percent effectiveness rate of border security. Ninety percent. How do
you measure that? Well, there are some metrics there, but it is an
equation that essentially says that those that we stop, interdict,
perhaps deport, divided by the number who attempt to cross. Now, that's
a nice little formula, and it would make sense until you think a little
more deeply into it. These are human beings that are being counted.
They act in ways that are perhaps wiser than the numbers. But in any
case, a 90 percent effectiveness rate can't be measured in an objective
way.
We know that there was a sector of the border that was surveilled by
drone; 150 square miles was reported to be surveilled, and I know
that's not linear, it's square. And out of that, there were nearly
4,000 illegal border crossings in that period of time in that section
of the border that they surveilled, for roughly not 24-7 but roughly 8
hours a day kind of on average for a period of time from October 1
until January 17 of this year. The border crossings that they
interdicted with the help of the drone came to a number in excess, some
number approaching 1,700 or so. And those who got by, even though they
were observed by the drone, was a number greater. Even with drone
assistance, they weren't able to interdict 50 percent of those that
they observed cross the border.
We don't have full-time surveillance over the border. And by the way,
that is not something that works as effectively in all weather
conditions and all light conditions. There are still circumstances
where we can't see from the air, certain conditions when we can't fly.
But even under the best of conditions when they had surveillance from
the air, they still, with all of the forces they could bring to bear or
did bring to bear on it, they still couldn't interdict half of the
people coming across the border through a 150-square mile section of
the border.
So the promise is that we would have 90 percent enforcement
effectiveness of the high-risk sectors of the southern border; high-
risk sectors of the border to be designated by the Secretary of
Homeland Security, who is no doubt presiding over the current situation
that we have. They would also appropriate $3 billion to implement the
strategy, and another $1.5 billion for infrastructure along the border.
That would be southern border fencing strategy established by the
Secretary. Now we're up to $4.5 billion additional dollars applied to
the southern border. We have applied billions of dollars to the
southern border. We've ramped up the number of Border Patrol agents and
CBP agents that we have on the southern border. We passed the Secure
Fence Act here in this Congress. It passed the House, passed the
Senate, and was signed by the President. And still, that was about 854
miles of border altogether, but the linear section, there are a lot of
crooks in that border along the way so it is roughly 700 effective
miles of the border. We can't build that because of political
opposition that took place on the Senate side. A former Senator who was
a Republican put an amendment in to block some of the construction of
the fence on the border. We can't get access to the border over some of
the areas because it's national park or national monument land, and so
we let that be under the control of illegal immigrants to a point where
a Member of Congress is locked out, blocked out of national park,
national monument land, because it's too dangerous from a security
standpoint for a Member of Congress to go down into that area.
Now I admit that this bill does address some of that, but I want to
point out, Mr. Speaker, that the last time I calculated the cost of our
investment to secure our southern border, and it has been several years
ago, we had gone from $4 million a mile to $6 million a mile in our
investment. And we've gone up substantially since then. But think of
what that means: $6 million a mile, and we still have a porous southern
border. That says lack of will. It doesn't say lack of resources.
Now for those of us that are thinking about how that applies, people,
especially rural people, and where I come from, we have a gravel road
every mile and a grid system. So where I live on the corner of a gravel
road, there is a gravel road that runs a mile in each of four different
directions. And if Janet Napolitano came to me and said, Steve King,
I'm going to offer you $6 million a mile to guard your west road, and I
want you to make sure that only 10 percent of the people who want to go
across there get across, and I recognize that 60, 70, 80 or more
percent of them are crossing now. In fact, we have Border Patrol
testimony that shows that they're only interdicting perhaps 25 percent
of those that cross the border, and those are the ones that we do see.
When I go down to the border and ask the people who are front line,
boots on the ground people, the most consistent number I get from them
is 10 percent. But even if it is 25, and even if at the peak of the
illegal crossings that we had several years ago, as reflected in that
fashion, that 25 percent, that means that we were having 11,000 a night
go across our southern border, 4 million illegal crossings a year.
Maybe that's down to only 2 million now, but I suspect it's more than
that. But in any case, the $6 million a mile, plus what we've added
since the last time I calculated it, plus the numbers they have here,
this $4.5 billion that they would add, takes us up to at least $8.25
million a mile.
Now if Janet Napolitano says, Steve King, I have $8.25 million for
you for this year, and I want you to achieve more efficiency and
security along your west mile than we've had before, would I then hire
myself a whole group of Border Patrol agents to stand there and buy
them Humvees and put on uniforms and buy their arms and set up the
health care plan and the retirement plan and take that perpetual
liability for the balance of their lives for the purpose of guarding
that mile? Some of it I would, Mr. Speaker. Some of it I would.
But some of it, I would put an infrastructure in place. I would build
a fence, a wall, and a fence across the areas where people are
crossing. And I have not advocated that we build 2,000 miles of fence
on our southern border, but I have consistently advocated that we build
it, keep extending our fence at the most illegally crossed places until
such time they stop going around the end. And if it happens that they
don't stop going around the end, ultimately we'd end up with 2,000
miles--a fence, wall, and a fence on the southern border.
If you think it's too expensive or too difficult, no, Mr. Speaker,
it's not--$8.25 million a mile. And we do our budgeting here for a 10-
year budget window, so that's over $80 million that Janet Napolitano
would offer me to guard one mile of it, if this were the scenario that
I painted. For $80 million and a 10-year contract, do you think we
couldn't find a little more efficiency on my west mile than we have
today? Of course we could. You could guarantee a very high degree of
efficiency, substantially higher than 90 percent.
I would submit that the Israelis, who built a fence on their border
to protect them from people that were coming in, have not spent as much
money on the border to construct a fence as we're spending every year
to watch the desert, and they get a 99-point-something percent
efficiency. In fact, I'd suggest it's 99.9 percent. And why? Why do
they have that efficiency, because their very lives depend upon it, Mr.
Speaker. Because they have people coming into Israel who are willing to
walk onto a bus with a bomb strapped on them and blow themselves up for
the purpose of killing Israelis.
Now most of the time in this country that's not the circumstance we
are faced with today, thankfully, but occasionally it is. And this
needs to be part
[[Page H2063]]
of our dialogue, too, Mr. Speaker. But the cost on the southern border
of adding another $4.5 billion, getting us up to over $8 million in
order to try to get the promise of security, and what's the tradeoff
that comes? The tradeoff is they want to promise border security. They
want to promise workplace enforcement by adding to this legislation
mandatory E-Verify. Now without looking at the language, I don't think
that language is going to include that mandatory E-Verify will even
allow the employer to check his current employees.
What they're going to say is, if you came into the United States and
you're unlawfully present in America, they under their bill will
instantaneously legalize everyone who's here illegally, with some
exceptions.
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Some of the exceptions would be if you've been guilty of a felony, or
if you're convicted of three misdemeanors, not serious, but three
misdemeanors, and then, if you have been in the United States since
December 31 of 2011.
Here's the inadmissible. You can't be admitted for criminal, national
security, public health or other morality grounds. No definition of
``other morality grounds.''
But if you were previously here before December 31, 2011. Why is
that?
Well, I think that probably is the date when they began talking
openly about their plan, so they don't want to have the responsibility
of being the magnet that has attracted people to come into the United
States illegally in order to access the amnesty plan that they're
devising in the Senate and they're devising behind closed doors here in
the House.
Now, amnesty. Some of them have even tried to define amnesty. I've
consistently defined it, Mr. Speaker. To grant amnesty is to pardon
immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their
crime. It's a pardon and a reward. That's exactly what is in this
document that represents a summary of perhaps 1,500 pages that's about
to emerge in a day or so.
And if we are to pardon and reward and instantly legalize everyone
that's here in the United States, with exceptions of those who have
committed a felony or those who have three misdemeanors, then what are
we to expect?
Oh, even with this bill, they would reach out and say to people, if
you have been deported, we invite you to come back to America and you
can sign up under our plan that is called the RPI plan. It's a little
bit bizarre so I didn't get the--it's the Registered Provisional
Immigrant status plan.
So this country would offer such a thing to people who have already
been adjudicated and already been sent back to their home country,
bring them back. This doesn't just grant amnesty. It reaches backwards
and gets people that have been sent home, where they can wake up in the
country legally.
And by the way, that's the minimum penalty that we can have. If we're
going to have any kind of immigration law at all in this country, if
we're not willing to put people back in the condition that they were in
before they broke the law, we have no enforcement whatsoever. There
will be no deterrent whatsoever.
And they would ask us to believe that, after they instantaneously
legalized everybody that's here in America, that they would slowly pick
out those who were felons and those who have been convicted of three
serious misdemeanors and slowly send them back to their home countries.
They would also ask us to believe that there's a longer waiting
period and a more difficult process to citizenship, so it's not a path
to citizenship.
Well, the first thing is, a green card is a path to citizenship. And
a path to a green card is a path to citizenship, just as surely as a
green card is a path to citizenship.
And they would have us believe that, in the period of 5 or 10 years,
depending, if they haven't reached operational control of the border,
that somehow this whole thing falls apart and there wouldn't be this
promise of amnesty any longer.
So can anyone imagine, after the decades of not enforcing immigration
law, if this Congress instantaneously legalized everyone who is here,
with exceptions, that after a period of 5 to 10 years of the failure of
enforcement--remember that promise of enforcement that Ronald Reagan
couldn't keep?
After 5 to 10 years of the failure of enforcement somehow there will
be a change of heart and there will actually be enforcement of
immigration law? No.
In fact there'd be a promise, if a bill like that is passed, that
there would never be enforcement of immigration law, that this would be
the most recent amnesty, and that anyone who could come in the United
States and live in the shadows would eventually be the beneficiary of
the next amnesty, at the price of the rule of law, Mr. Speaker.
And when I make the point for them, take a deep breath, step back,
look at this thing, get it in focus, turn it into focus, they say,
well, we recognize that maybe this doesn't do the things electorally on
the path of political expediency that we would like, but we have to
start the conversation.
Can anyone point to a successful model in history where any culture,
any civilization, let alone the unchallenged greatest Nation of the
world, sacrifices the rule of law, a pillar of exceptionalism, in order
to start a conversation?
That's what's happening coming out of the Senate tomorrow, Mr.
Speaker. That's what some would like to see happen here in the House of
Representatives very soon. That's what I will resist very vigorously.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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