[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 70 (Friday, May 17, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H2754-H2761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          REFLECTIONS ON ABORTION AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it's my privilege to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  And listening to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, of 
course, a different opinion comes to mind, and that would be that, 
regardless of the discussion about the supposed anti-choice bill here, 
I didn't hear much discussion about ``Dr.'' and I put that in quotes, 
``Kermit Gosnell,'' who has been convicted of murdering babies while 
they're struggling after they're born, while they're squirming, while 
they're gurgling, while they're crying and ``snipping the necks of 
babies.''
  At least the jury has concluded that that is murder, and now it's 
come down to this point where society needs to ask the question, what's 
the difference between that baby that's born because he induced early 
labor to bring that baby into the fresh air, what's the difference 
between that baby and the same baby or maybe a twin that's 12 inches 
away?
  And I would say there's no distinction from a moral perspective. That 
little innocent baby is alive, a unique human life that needs to be 
protected in all of its forms. And that's the argument that's going on 
here.
  You'll not hear people on the other side of this argument bring up 
the brutal and bloody and ghoulish and ghastly Gosnell, but you will 
hear the argument about choice because that sanitizes this argument, 
and it tends to scrub the image out of our minds that we get when we 
think of that cruel Gosnell, who has now plea-bargained

[[Page H2755]]

himself into life in the penitentiary without the possibility of parole 
in an effort to avoid the death penalty.
  But think of this, Mr. Speaker. He executed, we don't know how many 
babies, hundreds, perhaps thousands of babies, many of them struggling 
for life. We don't know how many.
  He did that, he gets to spend the rest of his life, three squares a 
day in a cell with exercise time and reading material, and that's 
supposedly justice in this society.
  And the gentlelady from the District of Columbia talks about not 
having the right to vote, not having the voice of representation. There 
is a constitutional foundation for that, and the early people that put 
this Constitution together wrote in the original document how to 
establish the District of Columbia. Part of it was formed out of 
Maryland; part was formed out of Virginia.
  And if it's their determination that they want to be part of that 
senatorial representation, then we just simply draw a circle around 
this Federal complex, and the balance of that can revert back to either 
Maryland or Virginia, and there's your representation.
  But I would make a point about representation that is far more 
important than the dialogue that the gentlelady from the District has 
brought out within this last half hour or so, and that's this point, 
that if those babies that have been aborted since Roe v. Wade, if they 
had choice, rather than the mothers having choice, if they had a vote, 
if they had representation, if they could magically come alive today, 
53 million of them, and if they had the right to vote, and all of the 
districts across America where those babies have been aborted, we would 
have, by now, easily seen the end of Roe v. Wade, and this debate would 
not be taking place.

                              {time}  1420

  This society would have a full respect and an appreciation and a 
reverence for innocent, unborn human life if those voices of the 
silenced could be heard in a vote. That's the contradiction that is the 
undercurrent of this discussion that's been presented to us, Mr. 
Speaker.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I have a couple of random things to clean up on 
before I get to the topic that I came here to discuss. But I can't 
resist bringing up a resolution that emerged in my attention today, H. 
Con. Res. 36. It's a concurrent resolution. It is introduced by 
Representative Lee of California, and it is for herself, Mr. Ellison, 
Mrs. Capps, Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Christensen, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Honda, Mr. 
Israel, Mrs. Carolyn Maloney, Ms. McCollum, Ms. Schakowsky and Ms. 
Speier. These are the names of the original cosponsors. This resolution 
catches my attention, Mr. Speaker. It says this:

       Recognizing the disparate impact of climate change on women 
     and the efforts of women globally to address climate change.

  Now, that was news to me. I hadn't considered the idea that if the 
climate is changing--they think they know why but they dare not have 
that debate any longer because the data was fraudulent--but now they're 
suggesting that the Earth is getting warmer, that it is man's fault, 
and it's women that are disparately impacted by it. I hadn't seen such 
a theory, Mr. Speaker.
  And it goes on to say ``whereas.'' It has a whole series of 
whereases, as we know in a resolution.

       Whereas, women in the United States are the linchpin of 
     families.

  I agree that women are the linchpins of families, and it would be 
better if we had more men who were playing a more significant role. I 
don't think that is the position of the authors of this resolution. But 
it goes to say:

       Whereas, climate change contributes to the workload and 
     stress on women farmers.

  They suggest that women produce 80 percent of the food in the 
developing countries. Maybe. That would be a surprise to me. It says:

       Whereas, women will be disproportionately facing harmful 
     impacts for climate change.

  Different from men, for example?

       Whereas, epidemics such as malaria are expected to worsen 
     and spread due to variations in climate, putting women at 
     risk.

  Malaria discriminates on the basis of gender, Mr. Speaker? That also 
is news to me.
  As I read down through this resolution, the resolution on the 
disparate impact of climate change on women, this is the one that 
caught my attention above all others, Mr. Speaker. I'll quote from the 
resolution:

       Whereas, food-insecure women with limited socioeconomic 
     resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, 
     transactional sex and early marriage that put them at risk 
     for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy and poor reproductive 
     health.

  Climate change, Mr. Speaker? Who would have thought? Who would have 
thought that that temperature change, perhaps the humidity change, was 
going to bring about this kind of Earth-shaking discrimination on 
people based upon gender, or more technically, sex, Mr. Speaker?
  I'll go on:

       Whereas, women in the United States are also particularly 
     affected by climate-related disasters such as Hurricane 
     Katrina.

  I went down there. I made four trips down to Hurricane Katrina, and 
men and women were both affected, children, too. I didn't ask them what 
their orientation was. I took it as when weather strikes, when a 
hurricane strikes, it universally affects everyone in the zone without 
regard to race, sex, creed, color, national origin or whatever your 
ethnicity might be. When a hurricane hits, it hits everybody.
  Here is another whereas:

       Despite a unique capacity and knowledge to promote and 
     provide for adaptation to climate change, women are 
     disparately impacted.

  They encourage the use of gender-sensitive frameworks in developing 
policies to address climate change. So that's a little bit for our 
levity, Mr. Speaker. My constituents sometimes wonder why I come back 
from this town, and I have a little bit of trouble engaging in a debate 
and rebutting some of the things that come at me, I'm going to ask for 
a little help from around the countryside on how to actually rebut this 
argument. It's news to me. I appreciate your attention, Mr. Speaker.


                          Illegal Immigration

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I came to this floor, however, to address the 
situation of immigration and particularly illegal immigration.
  The first thing is that the people that have advocated for open 
borders have, for years now, worked to conflate the two terms 
``immigration'' and ``illegal immigration.'' They did that, by the way, 
if you remember, with ``health care'' and ``health insurance.'' When 
they conflated those two terms, what they did was they blurred the 
topic so they can say, anti-immigrant Congressman--I don't want to use 
a last name because I can't think of one, we don't have any in these 
435--X, Y or Z, ``anti-immigrant'' when they really mean someone who 
upholds the rule of law.
  We have them from many of the States, but not from every State. We 
have one who has stood up and defended the rule of law since well 
before he arrived in this Congress, and he hails from the State of 
South Carolina. He happens to be the lead deadeye in the entire United 
States Congress, the man who brought the shooting trophy home again to 
the House of Representatives Republicans, and a man whom I have known 
since he was one of a group of about seven who ran in the primary in 
South Carolina for his congressional seat.
  I'd like to yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan).
  Mr. DUNCAN of South Carolina. I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa 
for his comments and his dedication to immigration reform in this 
country.

  When I was running for Congress, I remember Congressman King coming 
to South Carolina and attending some of my events where we talked about 
immigration and we talked about the border. So I applaud the gentleman 
for his past work on that. I look forward to continuing our efforts.
  The past 2 weeks, the discussion in Washington has been about trust. 
It's been about trust, whether we're talking about the false and 
misleading talking points that were used by the administration in 
Benghazi, the wiretapping of reporters, specifically the AP, by the 
Justice Department or the IRS illegally targeting conservative groups, 
and the public trust in our government is rightfully at an all-time 
low.
  So when we're debating immigration reform, obviously trust is the 
number one issue on people's minds because

[[Page H2756]]

they know that the government often promises to do things but never 
follows through. And that is the case when we're talking about 
immigration. We're talking about the laws that are already on the books 
that I'll talk about in just a few minutes. But people have made it 
very, very clear, Americans have made it very clear that they want two 
main things. They want us to secure our border--primarily we're talking 
about our southern borders where the issue seems to be at hand today--
but they want our borders secured, and they don't want amnesty.
  They don't want to give away citizenship rights to folks who have 
broken the laws to come here because what happens is you water down 
what it means to be a United States citizen when you just carte blanche 
give those citizenship rights away to folks that are lawbreakers, that 
have broken the law to come here, regardless of how honorable and well 
intentioned their reasons for coming here are. They still broke the 
sovereign laws of the United States of America by crossing that border 
without permission and without legal immigration paperwork. They have 
broken the United States law.
  What's interesting is that currently almost half the people in the 
United States who are here illegally didn't walk across a southern 
border or they didn't walk across a northern border. They came here 
legally. They applied in their host country, their home country, at a 
United States consulate or a United States embassy, and they asked 
permission to come to the United States either as a tourist here on 
vacation, or they asked to come here to attend one of our fine 
universities in this country under an F-1 student visa, or they came 
here on some sort of work visa. They probably flew into this country 
through an airport or got off a ship.
  We know something about them. America, these visa overstays, people 
that came here legally, they had those interviews, we know who they 
are, we have their name, we have what they were coming here to do, and 
usually we have a last known address for that person. Folks, this is 
low-hanging fruit. And if we're going to talk about addressing illegal 
immigration in this country, we ought to first address the visa 
overstays. We ought to first address, America, the folks that came in 
this country legally, they asked permission to come here, and we 
granted them that permission. And then they just decided--and I 
understand their deciding because this is a great country--but they 
just decided they liked it so much they decided to stay.
  How do we know that? Well, we really don't know that they either have 
or have not left the country because this Nation has a failed exit 
system. We have an entry system where we know when they come into this 
country from another country under a visa where we granted them 
permission, but we really don't know when they leave. Japan knows when 
you leave that country if you're there as an immigrant or you're there 
as a tourist. Other countries do, as well.
  Currently over half or almost half of all our illegal aliens in this 
country came here legally. And we're not doing enough about it. We're 
not enforcing the laws that are on the books, and that doesn't do 
anything to build what I talked about in the beginning, and that is the 
people's trust.

                              {time}  1430

  And then you throw in the fact that the Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement--ICE, we call it--they just released thousands of 
detainees, people that they had detained for immigration violation. 
They just opened the door and let them go, many of whom had criminal 
records. This was a pre-response to the sequester.
  Before the sequester actually kicked in, across-the-board budget 
cuts, our immigration enforcement officials decided, You know what? 
We're going to go ahead and apply sequester because we don't want to do 
our jobs. We don't want to detain these people. We're going to open the 
doggone jail cells and we're going to let them go. Take that, guys in 
Congress. We're doing the sequester the way we want to do it. And they 
let these people go, many of whom, Americans, have criminal records, 
and they're on the streets now. That doesn't do anything to build the 
people's trust, not a thing. We're talking about trust.
  We've got to secure our border. We've got to enforce the current 
immigration laws that we have. We don't need some comprehensive 
immigration reform package. We already have the laws on the books that 
deal with immigration issues in this country, and we are not enforcing 
those. So why are we going to create a whole other set of laws and then 
fail also to enforce those? If our government can't first prove that 
our legal immigration system works and that they can enforce the laws 
that are currently on the books, then why in the world would we believe 
that adding more stress to the system will improve things?
  I think visa overstays are low-hanging fruit in the immigration 
debate. It's the canary in the coal mine. If we can't trust the Federal 
Government to enforce those existing laws of a list of people whom we 
know a lot about, then how do we expect the government to do what we're 
talking about government having to do in the new immigration bill?
  So I talked about entry/exit. We need to fix that. You need to be 
aware, America, that we need to know when people come here illegally 
and we need to know when they leave our country. When they don't leave 
our country in that allotted time that they're allowed to come in, we 
grant them permission, then we need to go knock on their door at their 
last known address--at that university, at that hotel that they put 
down that they were going to be staying at, at that place of business 
that they were granted a work visa to come here to work at. We need to 
pay them a visit. That's low-hanging fruit.
  We don't have to chase footprints in the desert. We know who these 
people are. They didn't just come across the border on their own. We 
know who they are. So that builds trust.
  I ask people, Mr. King, around my district, what does a secure border 
really look like? They struggle with that definition of a secure 
border, what that truly looks like in their mind's eye. I do as well. 
But the first thing I think of is concrete, steel, and barbed wire, a 
fully secured border where we control who comes across. We control it 
through natural ports of entry.
  But I realize--I've been to the border. I realize that's not 
feasible. Concrete, steel, and barbed wire doesn't work in a lot of the 
mountainous areas in Arizona. I get that. But a lot more concrete, 
steel, and barbed wire, a lot more fencing, vehicle barriers, or 
whatnot, that will basically push the bad guys, the folks, the 
smugglers and others who want to come into this country, into 
corridors. We can more actively enforce those corridors to apprehend 
those people when they do cross our border illegally. That works.
  Congress believed it worked in 2006, because in 2006 we passed the 
Secure Fence Act. We already have a law on the books that decides that 
we're going to build a secure fence on our southern border. 2006. It's 
2013. Seven years ago, we decided we were going to secure our border. 
What have we done about it? We've got several hundred miles of fencing 
out of a several-thousand-mile border. We need to build more fencing. 
And I realize, before the American people, that fencing isn't an 
answer, but fencing is a great start. So let's do that.
  Then we need commonsense reform to our current immigration system. I 
talk to farmers in my district who are concerned about the 
comprehensive immigration reform package that we're working on. In 
fact, the farmers in my district work with farmers all over this 
country to deal with the guest worker program for agriculture, and they 
were able to get the American Farm Bureau and some of the other farmers 
to finally agree on some language. I'm all for that.
  I think we need to expand the legal guest worker programs for this 
country--that's my personal opinion--to provide legal workers to the 
necessary industry, whether it's agriculture or others. I'm going to 
focus on agriculture because that's what's on my mind today. But a 
legal immigration system that provides the workers--whether it's H-2A 
or H-2B--some sort of new program that increases the number of legal 
workers that come here, and we get biometric data, we get a thumbprint 
from them, and it's not transferable. That paperwork is solid for that 
individual. You have some sort

[[Page H2757]]

of tie-in with the employer so the employer has some ownership, so to 
speak, of that record, that they asked for that employee, that employee 
is gainfully working with them. And when that employee decides to go to 
work for somebody else, that employer notifies the government, Hey, 
he's not working for me anymore, but he did go work for XYZ company. 
XYZ company says, Yes, he's a worker in my facility.
  Let's continue that. These are commonsense approaches that we need to 
talk about in this country before we grant amnesty, before we grant 
citizenship rights to folks who broke our laws.
  And that word ``amnesty,'' Mr. King, is thrown around way too much up 
here, and it gets watered down in the eyes of the Americans. But what 
it means, it means that everything that you're granted in the United 
States Constitution as a citizen of this country, what it means to be 
an American citizen, gets watered down when we give those citizenship 
rights away to people who broke our laws coming here. That's what it 
means. We need to remember that in this debate about immigration reform 
that, No amnesty, guys, no amnesty; and then let's approach a secure 
border.

  Let's talk about the low-hanging fruit of the illegals that are here 
that we granted them permission. Let's deal with those issues. That's 
half the problem right off the bat. We stem the flow of others coming 
here so we're not adding to those numbers, and then that other 50 
percent that aren't visa holders we can start dealing with at that 
point in time. These are simple things, Mr. King, that we have got to 
deal with.
  Every time we've granted amnesty in the past, we've regretted it as a 
Nation. We've regretted it. We've truly regretted it because we've 
failed to truly secure our borders. We've failed to truly reform the 
system. And every amnesty that's happened before--rewarding lawlessness 
and those who break the laws--has only encouraged more lawlessness and 
more illegal immigration. It's time to stop that cycle.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman from 
South Carolina coming here and delivering a perspective on the rule of 
law that we need so badly.
  I am a bit flabbergasted by the lack of the ability to reason by some 
of my colleagues, and that's on both sides of the aisle. It seems a 
little more rational on the other side of the aisle--I'll say, in fact, 
a lot more rational because there's a huge political gain on their 
side. On our side of the aisle, two plus two doesn't seem to add up to 
four for them. They come up with some number like 3.0, which would be 
Teddy Kennedy's amnesty bill 3.0. We had the '86 Amnesty Act, which was 
amnesty 1.0, and that was Teddy Kennedy involved in that, too.
  Ronald Reagan let me down in 1986. He only let me down twice in 8 
years, but they were a couple of pretty big times? This one, I think 
that he was influenced by the people who surrounded him and, out of a 
sense of decency and compassion, signed the 1986 Amnesty Act, all the 
while knowing it was going to erode the rule of law but judging that of 
all of the commitments that were made that there would be enforcement, 
that the trade-off was worth it. I remember him saying that to us. I 
remember Ronald Reagan being honest with the American people, and he 
called it the Amnesty Act. He didn't call it the Comprehensive Reform 
Act. He called it ``amnesty'' because that's what it was.
  Now, I appreciate the definition of the gentleman from South 
Carolina. I hadn't heard that definition before: all the rights 
embodied in the Constitution, granting all of those rights to someone 
who is here illegally would be amnesty.
  I've defined it this way. It's not a contradictory definition. It's a 
definition that I have long used. To grant amnesty is to pardon 
immigration lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their 
crime. It's a pardon and a reward. And I don't know why they came here, 
necessarily. We don't know. They might have come for a job--many did. 
Some came to trade in contraband; some came to live with their families 
and not to work. But the presence in the United States that's unlawful 
becomes lawful with amnesty, and the path to the reason they came here 
is opened. They didn't all come to be citizens and they didn't all come 
for a job. 42.5 percent of them are working in America today, not 100 
percent. That's a little better than five out of 12 that are actually 
working.
  We should also remember that 80 to 90 percent, according to the Drug 
Enforcement Agency, 80 to 90 percent of the illegal drugs consumed in 
America come from or through Mexico. Mexico doesn't produce them all, 
but 80 to 90 percent flow from or through Mexico.

                              {time}  1440

  That's a huge number, and the price for that is in the tens of 
billions of dollars to this society.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. DUNCAN of South Carolina. You mentioned the folks that are coming 
from Mexico. I was recently down at the King Ranch in Texas, which is 
eastern Texas--830 acres, a larger ranch than the whole State of Rhode 
Island. They own their own security force, Mr. King. I was talking with 
the security force about the illegals that are coming into this country 
that travel. They traverse the King Ranch.
  One thing he said, a term that he used, was OTM. I had to ask him 
what that was. And he said, Other than Mexicans. And I said, Well, I 
thought that was a little bit harsh. And he said, Well, what that means 
is they're not Mexican, they're not Honduran, they're not Nicaraguan, 
they're not Guatemalan. They are African, Middle Eastern, and Asian. 
And I said, you're kidding me? He said, No. He said, Congressman, we 
have apprehended folks that were Middle Eastern that didn't speak 
Spanish or English, that spoke Farsi--Africans or Orientals or Asians 
that were here that have come across.
  And it took me aback, because I started to think, well, I know that 
the Latin Americans, the Hispanics that are coming, are generally 
coming for work to provide for their families. I've been to Guatemala; 
I've been to Mexico. I understand that desire to come to America and 
chase that American Dream that I'm living today and try to make a 
reality and future for your children. But these were people other than 
that.
  And so being on the Homeland Security Committee and Foreign Affairs 
Committee, I'm concerned that we've got others coming here from those 
parts of the world--Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. What are they 
coming here for?
  And I'm reminded that Iran and its special Revolutionary Guard Quds 
Force hatched a plan to deal with the drug cartels to help them assist 
them to come across our southern border into this country into this 
very town to assassinate the Ambassador from Saudi Arabia at a 
restaurant in Washington. They were trying to utilize connections with 
the drug cartel in Mexico to come across our poor southern border.
  And so when I hear that we've got Africans or Middle Easterners or 
Asians coming into this country, I have to remember as an American, 
understanding the homeland security nature, I have to wonder what 
they're coming for. And I also wonder if we had a truly secure border, 
would we be seeing that.
  So I thank the gentleman for mentioning that other than Mexicans, 
others that are coming or may be coming into this country. I believe 
they are coming into this country. What are they coming for? We need to 
ask ourselves that question.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman from 
South Carolina bringing this up. I, too, have spent a respectable 
amount of time on the border. I've gone down there and sat at night 
next to the border fence--no lights, no night-vision goggles--just 
listening to the sounds of the fence creaking, listening to the 
vehicles coming in through the mesquite, the doors open, the doors 
close, the packs get dropped on the ground, they pick them up, they 
whisper, they come back across the desert, and come through the fence. 
You can put your ear down on the steel post and it transmits that 
sound. As they flow through, you understand that the flow across this 
border isn't just where I'm sitting that night, but it's in many 
locations across the border.
  We had testimony before the Immigration Subcommittee from the Border 
Patrol where they said they thought they, perhaps, interdicted 25 
percent of

[[Page H2758]]

those that attempted to cross the border--25 percent. And if you look 
at those numbers they had interdicted that year, the number was 
equivalent to--if you do their formula--11,000 people a night. That 
meant 4 million people a year that were coming across our southern 
border; 11,000 a night, Mr. Speaker.
  So I asked that question of one of my friends from Texas. He happens 
to be on the Judiciary Committee and is a member of the Immigration 
Subcommittee--Congressman Ted Poe of Texas. He always pays attention to 
what went on with Santa Anna and the Battle of the Alamo. He can quote 
to you Colonel Travis' letter.
  I asked him, What was the size of Santa Anna's army when they invaded 
Texas? And he said 5,000 to 6,000. Now, think of that, Mr. Speaker. 
Twice the size of Santa Anna's army--11,000 people a night, every 
night. Now, that's at the peak. Probably it's half that by now, more 
likely now, although it's increased over the last few months since 
we've had this dialogue on immigration that's going on and those border 
crossings are up dramatically. But during the lull, we still had the 
equivalent of Santa Anna's army come across our southern border every 
night.
  We're not alarmed by that, when 80 to 90 percent of the illegal drugs 
consumed in America come from or through Mexico? And all of the pain 
and the price and the heartache that comes from that? No, it's not all 
the fault of the people that are south of here. We have an illegal drug 
consumption and demand in this country that is a magnet for those 
illegal drugs, and that's something for this society and our culture to 
address.
  I don't deny that, Mr. Speaker. In fact, when I go to Mexico to have 
my dialogue with the Mexican members of their Congress, I just start 
out the dialogue with that, because otherwise they're going to remind 
me that America's demand for drugs has brought about a lot of violence 
on both sides of the border, particularly the southern side of the 
border.
  The numbers of fatalities in this drug war and Mexico over the last 6 
or 7 years number 50,000 to 70,000 people killed in that. That's a 
tremendous amount of carnage. And it does include those victims of the 
Fast and Furious fiasco that we still haven't put entirely to bed, Mr. 
Speaker.
  But the price for open borders is high. It's high in blood, it's high 
in treasure, it's high in the value to our families and our society. 
And Drug Enforcement tells me when I ask them: If magically everybody 
that's illegally in America woke up in their home country tomorrow 
morning--magically, of course--what would happen to the illegal drug 
distribution system in the United States? Their answer: It would 
immediately stop. All of it would be suspended overnight in that 
hypothetical scenario if magically all those here illegally woke up 
where they could live legally. Because at least one link in every 
illegal drug distribution chain in America is a link from someone 
that's unlawfully present in the United States, is an illegal alien, 
and likely a criminal alien. At least one link. In many cases, it's 
every link.

  The Mexican drug cartels control the illegal drug distribution in all 
of our major cities in America, also most all of our minor cities in 
America. When I see the number of those cities, it's so appalling. The 
scope of it is so broad that I'm reluctant to say so into the public 
record because it seems beyond reality when you think back 20 years 
when it was localized within some of the cities in the South and 
Southwest--mostly Southwest--and now it's pervasive across the entire 
country. They've taken over the illegal drug distribution in America, 
and at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in Mexico, at the cost of 
many lives here in the United States. A high price for that.
  As the gentleman from South Carolina says, fences are not the only 
answer, but they're a great start. And I have long said that we should 
build on the southern border a fence, a wall, and a fence so that we 
can have a couple of zones in between them that are no man's land in an 
area where the Border Patrol can respond when a fence is breached and 
be there to interdict so that we can assure people: don't bother to 
try, we're going to be there to enforce the law.
  That's what a smart and sane country would do. And I'm not 
suggesting, Mr. Speaker, that we need to build 2,000 miles of fence, 
although there's 1,960 miles of double fencing to go. I'm just 
suggesting that we build a fence, a wall and a fence--a triple fence--
with two no man's land zones, and build it until they stop going around 
the end. As the gentleman from South Carolina suggested, some of it's a 
little mountainous, some of it's a little rocky, and so you would build 
a fence where it's practical. And if they climb the mountain--I'll tell 
you that it's not impossible to build a fence on a mountainside either. 
We can build it on a vertical face if we need to. I don't know if we 
can build it quite upside down if we need to, but I don't think it 
calls for that. I spent my life in the construction business, and we 
spent our life moving dirt and building fence and setting up structural 
concrete and doing underground utilities and many other things.
  At one point, I came to the floor and designed and demonstrated 
really the simplicity of building the kind of barrier that would be 
effective. And if you think that it's not, take a look at Israel that's 
put up a fencing system. And, yes, it takes monitoring, and it takes 
guard towers along the way, and it takes the virtual support so that 
you reduce the amount of manpower that's necessary.
  But we've grown this manpower on the southern border dramatically 
over the last decade. And the results that we get are directly 
proportional to the will of the Chief Executive Officer to enforce the 
law. And we're spending at least $6 million a mile on our southern 
border--$6 million on 2,000 miles.
  Now, I'm going to boil this down so it gets a little more simple for 
some of the Members in this Congress, because the scope of that is 
beyond their imagination. How do you build a 2,000-mile fence? And, 
again, I didn't say we needed to do that. We build it until they stop 
going around the end.

                              {time}  1450

  I remind them that the Great Wall of China was finished, connected 
together, in about 245 B.C. It's 5,500 miles long, and it's wide at the 
top, and they march armies down the top of that Great Wall of China. 
So, if they could accomplish that in 245 B.C., we can accomplish a much 
smaller endeavor here, with a much simpler structure with some modern 
technology with it, and in an efficient way. We did the Manhattan 
Project in a short period of time. You can't convince me we cannot 
build a barrier on the southern border that's effective and $6 million 
a mile. Here is the equation.
  I live out in the countryside, and there is a mile of gravel going in 
four directions from the corner I live on. Now, if I just take one of 
those miles--and I would think that Janet Napolitano would assign me to 
provide the security for that mile and pay me $6 million to guard that 
mile for a year. What a lucrative contract that would be, wouldn't it? 
Now it's a 10-year contract, so it's a $60 million contract to guard 1 
mile of gravel road in Iowa. There is more population along that gravel 
road--and there isn't much--than there is along much of the southern 
border. So the pressure on that might be in proportion to the urgency 
that people wanted to get across.
  I, myself, wouldn't hire even more boots on the ground. I would take 
some of that $6 million a mile. I'd start out, maybe, in the first year 
by taking $2 million of the $6 million and I'd build myself a wall. 
Then maybe the next year I'd take another 1\1/2\ or so million and I'd 
build a couple of fences, one on either side of that wall. Then I'd put 
a little bit of technology on top, and after about 2 to 3 years, even 
just in tightening down my budget for my manpower, my boots on the 
ground--because you're always going to need some guards there and some 
Humvees and some retirement and benefits packages to go along with that 
and uniform costs and all--I would take about a third of that budget 
and roll it into infrastructure. In about 2 to 2\1/2\ years, I would 
have a fence, a wall and a fence built and a patrol road built in 
between those and in between the no man's land, and I'd have the modern 
devices up at the top. We would have video cameras so, if anybody 
breached that fence, wall and fence, even at the first barrier, video 
cameras with infrared would zero in on that location, and

[[Page H2759]]

we would deploy our boots on the ground to that location.
  As soon as people figured out that we were going to have 100 percent 
security on my mile of road--remember, I've got a $60 million contract. 
I can perform with a high degree of efficiency, far higher than we're 
getting right now. As soon as people figured out that we were going to 
respond and that it didn't pay to cut or to try to climb over or to try 
to dig under because we were going to be there with our vibration 
sensors and with our new technology, then we would have 100 percent 
efficiency along those stretches of the border.
  I would take some of that money for the next year and the next year. 
Then I would widen our legal ports of entry, and I would add a little 
manpower to those legal ports of entry so that we could move the legal 
traffic through and still monitor it even more effectively than we do 
today at those ports of entry. That's what a rational nation would do, 
and that would then shut off the bleeding at the border.
  There is a lot of pressure from the illegal drugs coming into 
America. Something greater than $60 billion a year would be the street 
value of illegal drugs in this country. When I first came to this 
Congress, the DEA couldn't tell me what that number was. In fact, I 
don't think they'll still tell me what the number was. That number is 
more published from the news media than it is from the people who are 
supposed to know the answer to that question. With that pressure from 
those illegal drugs, they'll find another way into America until the 
demand is shut off. I can tell you that we could raise the price of 
illegal drugs in America, the street price, by locking down and 
stopping the bleeding at our southern border. Then they'll have to find 
another way to get it in, and the price will go up. When the price goes 
up, fewer people use it.
  So that would be a helpful thing, but we can shut off the bleeding at 
the border, Mr. Speaker. Then we need to shut off the jobs magnet.
  Now, there is a bill that we had a hearing on just yesterday in the 
immigration committee, and it's a bill that has been drafted by Mr. 
Lamar Smith of Texas, who is one of our lead voices on immigration 
enforcement in this Congress, perhaps the lead voice. He has done an 
awful lot to introduce and to see to it that in 1996 there was 
immigration reform legislation that was passed that has an extremely 
useful utility today, and I'm glad he is here to defend the basis of 
that language: making E-Verify mandatory so that government employers, 
government contractors and all new hires in the private sector, too, 
would need to be verified under E-Verify, which is the Internet-based 
system where you punch in the I-9 data. I call it name, rank, and 
serial number.
  It will go out into that database and come back and tell you if it 
can affirm that the individual identified by that data can lawfully 
work in the United States. Now, it doesn't verify that the biometrics 
of the individual who applied with that information match the 
biometrics of that Social Security number. It just says, with this 
Social Security number and the data that is associated with it, someone 
can work under that. We can't identify necessarily of applicant A and 
applicant B which one it might be if they're using the same data, but 
it's a good step in the right direction to make E-Verify mandatory, but 
it falls short in a couple of categories.
  One of them is that it leaves the existing law that prohibits an 
employer from using E-Verify on current employees. Now, why would you 
do that? If an employer has a reasonable suspicion that someone is 
unlawfully working for their company, wouldn't we want them to go on 
the Internet and check that applicant to see if they verify to be 
lawfully able to work in the United States? I would want them to do 
that. If they're sitting in the break room and if one of their 
employees said, Ah, you know, I'm an illegal immigrant, and I duped 
you, and you can't do a thing about it, that employer may be able to 
report them to ICE, and maybe something happens, but they are 
prohibited by current law from going on that Internet, accessing E-
Verify and running that employee through to verify and then taking 
action accordingly.

  Some of the people who are advocating for this E-Verify bill say, 
Well, we have to protect employers from potential liability. They could 
be accused of discriminating against someone. I'd point out that that 
computer doesn't know race, ethnicity. It might know national origin, 
but you didn't get to queue it for that. There is no query for that. 
You put in the information--name, rank, and serial number--as I said, 
and it only comes back to you and says ``confirmed'' or ``can't 
confirm.'' That's all you know. So I don't know how someone uses the E-
Verify to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national 
origin, language barrier, whatever it might be. They make that decision 
when they hire. If H.R. is interviewing someone, then in all of the 
things that go along with an interview, they can sort all that out in 
their own heads and make their decisions. If they've already hired 
someone, if that individual has worked for them for years, then they've 
made their decision on whether they're going to discriminate or not. 
That's an entirely separate question from E-Verify's usefulness.
  I think we need to encourage employers to clean up their workforce, 
and by doing so, we should allow them to use E-Verify on current 
employees, especially if there is reasonable suspicion. I wrote a drug 
testing bill in Iowa that uses that standard, and it has not even been 
tested in court it's so solid. If there is reasonable suspicion to 
point to one person out of your workforce--if they don't meet the 
standards of work, if they cross a line by being chronically late, if 
their eyes are bloodshot and their work is slow, if they're 
temperamental and those things or erratic--we have an officer who is 
trained in that capacity, and he can say, You're going in for a drug 
test because we want to make sure that we have a drug-free workplace.
  That's a responsible thing for an employer to do. It's also 
responsible for an employer to want to have a legal workforce. It's 
what we'd encourage employers to do, but the law discourages them from 
utilizing the tools that they have. I'll be advocating strongly to 
change that component in E-Verify if it moves forward in this Congress.
  The second thing is it preempts local government from utilizing E-
Verify as a means of requirement for enforcement. It just simply says 
that the Federal Government is going to have the exclusive authority to 
regulate and enforce E-Verify. Well, that would be fine if they 
actually enforced, but, Mr. Speaker, you know I have very little 
confidence in the Federal Government's will to enforce E-Verify. There 
will be those who will comply because it's the law--they will be good 
citizens, and some will be very good corporate citizens--but we are not 
going to have the kind of enforcement that's necessary so that it's 
universal.
  I know. I've lived through this. Ronald Reagan wanted to enforce the 
'86 Amnesty Act, the I-9 forms. I got those I-9 forms. We had 
applicants come into the office. I made sure that they carefully filled 
out those applications according to the law, and we took the copies of 
the support documents that were necessary, and we carefully kept those 
I-9 forms and associated documents in our files for the day that INS 
would show up and say, I want to see all of your job applicants and all 
of your hires and all of your employees to verify if you have followed 
the '86 Amnesty Act law compliance terms for 
I-9.

                              {time}  1500

  They didn't show up in my office. They didn't show up in thousands of 
employers' offices. If the enforcement wasn't there after the 1986 
Amnesty Act, why in the world would we think there would be enforcement 
there with a President who has suspended immigration law because it's 
his whim and is for a President who has defied his own oath of office 
to take care that the laws be faithfully executed?
  He even gave a little talk--I was going to call it a lecture, but I 
think it was a talk--to a high school group here in Washington, D.C. 
The date was March 28. I think it was 2011. But I know the date. They 
had advocated to him that he should, by executive order, establish the 
DREAM Act. So the President answered correctly. He said, I don't have 
the authority to do that. Congress passes the laws. I, as the executive 
branch, carry them out, and then the court system rules as to the

[[Page H2760]]

intent of the legislation and the constitutionality of it.
  That's the kind of explanation you would get from a former adjunct 
constitutional law professor, which Barack Obama is at the University 
of Chicago, a simple and clear answer. He gave it to the high school 
students and then defied his own explanation and defied his own oath of 
office just a little more than a year later when the President had a 
press conference within a couple hours of the time that Janet 
Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and Director John 
Morton issued the Morton memos and the memo from the executive branch 
that set up four classes of people--not individuals, but four classes 
of people. It said we're going to exempt them from immigration law. And 
seven different times in that memo, Janet Napolitano's memo, they 
referenced on an individual basis, on an individual basis. I could 
repeat it five more times. They wrote it in there because they 
understand that constitutionally they have prosecutorial discretion to 
decide where to implement the resources for prosecution, and they can't 
prosecute everybody, but they have an obligation to take care that the 
laws be faithfully executed.
  So the courts have carved out, after years of litigation, this term 
called ``prosecutorial discretion,'' but it can only be applied on an 
individual basis only, which is why that memo has seven references to 
an individual basis only in it, but it doesn't apply to individuals. 
They carved out four groups of people exempt from immigration law. And 
then to add insult to constitutional injury, the President also created 
a work permit out of thin air.
  All of the visas that we have, all of the lawful precedents that 
exist in the United States, other than natural-born citizens, is all a 
product of Congress. It's interpreted that Congress has the full 
authority to establish immigration law. So we've set up visa this and 
visa that--temporary, permanent, a lawful permanent residence status 
green card. We set up the conditions for naturalization. But the 
President wanted one more. He wanted a work permit for the people he 
granted amnesty to by executive edict, and that's what he did in an 
unconstitutional fashion.
  We've litigated that in court, and a judge in Texas has upheld 9 of 
10 arguments. The 10th argument has been sent back, and he said to the 
government, Rewrite that. It is essentially unintelligible, and I don't 
want to rule on it until you try to straighten it out. It's like 
getting a term paper that a portion of it is so bad that you can't even 
give it a grade. Go rewrite it and come back to it.
  So I'm hopeful and optimistic that all 10 of those arguments will be 
supported by the Federal judge. Now, if that follows through to the 
United States Supreme Court, I expect they will litigate this out to 
either the end of the Obama administration or in conclusion at the 
Supreme Court.
  I would be astonished if the Supreme Court would conclude that the 
President has the authority to identify groups of people and waive the 
application of the law against groups of people and declare 
prosecutorial discretion to apply to groups rather than individuals. I 
would be astonished if the Supreme Court would rule that the President 
can manufacture immigration work permits or a lawful presence out of 
thin air.
  There's no reason for article I, then. Congress would have no 
function if the President could just write the laws, waive the laws, do 
whatever. That's what a king does. That's not what a President does. 
The damage to our constitutional structure and system has been 
appalling, and I don't know that it's settled into this society yet, 
Mr. Speaker.
  But the President has violated the Constitution and his own oath of 
office, and it's been litigated in court for the first round. It might 
be a long march to the Supreme Court. But we are on the correct 
constitutional grounds with this case, and the lead plaintiff is Chris 
Crane, the President of the ICE union, where the executive edict 
actually orders ICE to disobey the law. They take an oath to take care 
that the law is being faithfully executed, as well, Mr. Speaker.
  Then we have the situation of how do we shut off the jobs magnet if 
they're not going to enforce E-Verify. In fact, if they prohibit 
employers from using E-Verify, how do they expect them ever to clean up 
the illegal workforce?
  I have a simple bill that's been introduced in the last two or three 
Congresses. It's called the New IDEA Act. There aren't very many new 
ideas in this Congress. I think I actually just was able to get one 
passed in an amendment in the farm bill here a couple of nights ago, a 
new idea. But this is a new idea on immigration, and it is now about 5 
or 6 years old. New IDEA.
  The acronym ``IDEA'' stands for Illegal Deduction Elimination Act. It 
brings the IRS into this equation and declares that wages and benefits 
paid to illegals are not tax deductible for Federal income tax 
purposes. It gives the employer safe harbor if they use E-Verify. It 
grants them the authority to use it on current employees. And then the 
IRS, who would not be accelerating their audits but simply during a 
normal audit, they would punch in that I-9 data that I mentioned 
earlier into the E-Verify for the employees for the company they were 
auditing. And if they kick those employees out as unlawful to work in 
the United States, the IRS then would say to the employer, You're going 
to have 72 hours to cure this, but we're not going to let you deduct 
the wages and benefits paid to illegals.

  Why should those wages be deductible, especially when we give the 
employer safe harbor?
  So the result of that would be your $10-an-hour illegal would take 
the wages that are paid, they would come off the Schedule C, they'd go 
back into the gross receipts, and they'd show up at the bottom as 
taxable income. So if you paid a million dollars out in wages to people 
who are working unlawfully in the United States as an employer, then 
that million dollars would become a taxable income rather than a 
business expense.
  The net equivalent is this: a $10-an-hour illegal, after you add the 
interest and the penalty and the tax liability--I think I calculated 
that as 36 percent--comes to about $16 an hour. Now it's a business 
decision, Mr. Speaker. Now the employer takes a look at that and 
thinks, Just a minute now. I've got a discount on this cheap labor at 
10 bucks an hour, but I've also got this contingent liability of 
another 6 bucks an hour if the IRS shows up; and if they show up this 
year, at 6 bucks an hour, but if they wait another year and they audit 
me for the past 2 years, now it's 12 bucks an hour. And there's a 6-
year statute of limitations on this. So your $6 an hour becomes 6 years 
of liability. Now it's $36 an hour over 6 years. At some point it is 
compelling, and as an employer you decide, I'm going to clean up my 
workforce. I'm going to use E-Verify, and I'm going to get through this 
point where my workforce is legal.
  So two simple things can be done. One is build a fence, a wall and a 
fence on the southern border. We can do it with the money we have. And 
if you gave me Janet Napolitano's job and a President that didn't tie 
my hands behind my back, I can do it with the resources we are 
committing to it now. And we could pass New IDEA, the New Illegal 
Deduction Elimination Act; let the IRS come into this equation, provide 
an incentive for employers to make a positive decision to clean up 
their workforce. It shuts down the jobs magnet. Then people make 
decisions as to how much opportunity there is here in America. That 
means there's more opportunity for Americans.
  We have 100 million Americans of working age who are simply not in 
the workforce because we have created a cradle-to-grave welfare system 
that is an incentive for people to stay home rather than to go to work. 
We can't always blame them for that decision. Some dumb decisions were 
made here on the floor of the House of Representatives and the United 
States Senate, but none of them is as dumb as the one that seems to be 
emerging from the United States Senate today or maybe is churning 
around in a House gang of eight.
  This bill that is moving through both Chambers is the largest, most 
expensive amnesty bill that's had credibility and momentum in the 
history of this country. It is the always is, always was, and always 
will be amnesty bill.

                              {time}  1510

  If you is in America, amnesty will always be available to you. If you 
was in

[[Page H2761]]

America, it sends an invitation that says: Apply--we didn't meant to 
deport you. Come on back, y'all, ya' hear. We didn't mean it. And if 
you ever get into America, if you will be in America, you're going to 
get amnesty some day, too. That's what they're saying.
  And a Nation cannot be a nation if it doesn't have borders. If we 
don't secure those borders and determine what comes and goes across 
those borders, we lose our sovereignty. And if we don't put Americans 
back to work and give them opportunity, we're wasting a massive amount 
of human capital. And that wasting of human capital then diminishes our 
potential as a nation.
  And we have this workforce in this country that is oversupplied in 
the unskilled and low-skilled categories. And so the more people we 
bring in that are unskilled, the more it's going to suppress the wages 
in the unskilled and low-skilled jobs. The high-skilled pays pretty 
good and has pretty good benefits, and they contribute. They're net 
contributors. But people that are here unlawfully, those who are in 
America who are high school dropouts, they're not. They're a net drain 
on the Treasury. This group of 11.5 million which is the subject of 
this bill, which is likely to be 33 million or more, this group can 
never be net contributors to our economy, not in a single year of their 
lifetime, and neither can the next generation compensate for that loss. 
That's $6.3 trillion, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage 
Foundation.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that there are a lot of people that realize 
the magnitude of this colossal proposed mistake, and I hope that the 
good judgment and the constitutional sound thinking and the good 
conscience that comes from the American people, as manifested in the 
United States Senate and the House of Representatives--and that we put 
an end to any kind of an idea of an amnesty bill and restore the rule 
of law and restore American opportunity and do what's good for America. 
That's our job. That's our oath. It's the patriotic thing to do.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________