[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 96 (Monday, July 8, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H4207-H4210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
King) for 30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be
recognized here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I'm
hopeful that we can carry on some of this dialogue that Mrs. Bachmann
has led over the past hour.
I wanted to make a point about the fact we are a Nation of
immigrants. Yes, we are. And we're certainly the Nation that has the
most vitality that comes from immigrants. It's one of those things that
is embodied in the Statue of Liberty. When you talk about Ellis Island
and you look across to the Statue of Liberty, the image that's embodied
within her is the image of American exceptionalism, the pillars of
American exceptionalism. You see them all. Freedom of speech, religion,
the press, the rule of law. Those are central pillars. And property
rights, and you face a jury of your peers but you don't have to face
them twice. There's no double jeopardy. And states' rights. The list
goes on and on. Free enterprise capitalism. It is a Judeo-Christian
culture and society that founded this country.
You take out anything that I've said, you pull that out from
underneath, and the Shining City on the Hill crumbles. But when you
look at the Statue of Liberty and the people that love liberty all over
the world see that statue, they find a way to come here because they
realize that they can be the best they can be if they can just get to
America. That's why we have, in this country, so much vigor and
vitality. We have not just the pillars of exceptionalism that I've
listed, but also the vigor that comes with people who have dreams.
So they see the statue and they think, I've got a dream to come
there. And if I can freely speak and worship and preserve the rule of
law, I can operate in a free enterprise society, I can be inspired. If
you put that all together, it's a natural filter that goes across the
world. It isn't because we screened all of them here. We screened a lot
of them at Ellis Island. About 2 percent didn't make the grade, even
after they were screened in the old country. They came and landed at
Ellis Island and went through the filter and about 2 percent got sent
back to the old country. But we got the dreamers. It was almost all
dreamers that got on the ship to come here.
So we didn't get just a cross-section of every civilization from
Norway to Germany to Ireland to Italy, or wherever it might be, name
your country anywhere in the world. We got the vigor of every
civilization. We got some of the best and the most energy that came
from any civilization to America. So when you coupled that and think of
a giant petri dish with all of those rights there and all of the
freedoms and the pillars of exceptionalism that I listed, then you put
the best people possible in that environment--it doesn't mean they're
the smartest; it doesn't mean they're the richest; it doesn't mean
they're the best educated; but it means that they are the doers that
take that combination of brains and ambition and education and instinct
and know-how, and that's what built this great Shining City on the
Hill, this America that we are. We cannot let this be torn down. We
cannot let them chisel away with their word processor jackhammers,
their verbal jackhammers, or their legislative chicanery in order to
produce something that undermines this.
I know one of the people that understands that very well is the
gentleman from Louisiana, Dr. Fleming. I would be happy to yield to the
gentleman from Louisiana.
Mr. FLEMING. Well, I thank my good friend from Iowa for yielding and
for his words. And I'd like to build a little bit upon what you were
saying, and that is that everyone speaking in this room this evening
opposes amnesty--we've already said that each and every one of us
opposes amnesty--but we all celebrate immigration. We
[[Page H4208]]
come from immigrants. We're a Nation of immigrants.
Going all the way back to the 1700s, my forefathers were immigrants
from Scotland. They farmed the land. They were farmers all the way up
until my dad left the farm to go to World War II. I'm very proud of
that fact, and I'm very proud that other people want to come to this
country. I celebrate that. And I want to encourage them to come, as
long as they come lawfully.
We have a place for migrant workers, for guest workers to come. We
need them. They will do jobs that many Americans won't do, and it
benefits them and advantages their families back home, and they send
that money back. It's a great working relationship, but it must be done
legally.
And then we have the high-end STEM workers who come either with high
degrees or earn high degrees here. They bring them with them oftentimes
their capital. They start businesses. They start companies. And we want
to attract those and keep those. We don't want them taking back our
innovations to other countries and then competing with us. We just
simply ask that they come here legally. We, of course, as Members of
Congress have a responsibility to make sure that we do what's in the
best interest of the citizens who are here, whether they were born here
or naturalized here.
But I want to shift just slightly to this, and we've touched upon
this. One of the biggest fears we have about the Senate amnesty bill--
and there's no question about it, it's amnesty by any measure, by any
metric--is that we can't trust the President. We can't trust him.
Whatever we pass into law, we know he's going to cherry-pick.
How do we know that? Well, look at the Defense of Marriage Act. He
refused to defend that to the courts. Appointees to the NLRB, he did
that when, of course, the Senate was actually not in session. It's
against the Constitution to do that. ObamaCare, he's picking and
choosing the parts of the law that he wants to implement.
So I think we can create a long list here tonight of the fact that
this President is doing something I have never seen a President do
before. In a tri-partite government with its checks and balances, we
have lost the balances. We have a President that picks and chooses the
laws that he wants to obey and enforce. We have a head of the
Department of Justice who does exactly the same, even to the point that
Congress has held him in contempt.
And so for lack of any better term, that makes him a ruler. He's not
a President; he's a ruler. Because if he can just pass whatever laws
that are going to be passed and then pick and choose the laws that he's
going to enforce and he's going to obey, then we no longer have the
checks and balances that go along with the Presidency.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind all Members to
refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
{time} 2140
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, personally, I like the President. And
I will refrain from those kind of comments; although I will continue to
disagree with him on his approach to this.
I wanted to make a comment in response to the discussion here by Dr.
Yoho and Dr. Fleming.
Yes, we're a Nation of immigrants. I have continually heard that
testimony before the Immigration Subcommittee for over a decade now.
And so one day I just had this thought that was a little bit off the
wall. I just asked this question: Can you name me a nation--I had this
panel of experts in front of me--name me a nation that is not a nation
of immigrants. And the witness said, well, let's see, that would be--
well, name me a people that is not a nation of immigrants, a nation
that's not a nation of immigrants. She said, well, that would be the
Incas and the Aztecs. The Incas and the Aztecs are not immigrants. I
said who, according to anthropologists, came across the Bering Sea
about 12,000 years ago? Would you like to try again? Of course that was
it for her. She didn't want to try again.
I've asked that question a number of times, and I've been challenged
to do a little bit of research. I haven't found a nation that is not a
nation of immigrants. Some will say Japan is about as indigenous a
population as you can find, but even they, there are a couple of
definitions on where they come from. There are two distinct groups for
the Japanese, and some of their roots go down to the Polynesian
islands, they think--that they might have arrived there. Some of them
might have arrived from Asia. And their language and even their
appearance differs from the north to the south--I don't know that, but
they do.
So if Japan isn't a nation of immigrants, if they did come at one
time, name your country around the world. We're all nations of
immigrants. The history of the world has been about the migration of
human population. That doesn't mean that nations shouldn't exist or
shouldn't have borders. Look back over the last couple hundred years
and name for me an institution more successful than the nation-state.
The nation-states emerged from the city-states, which emerged from the
castles in the feudal era, where they had to build a castle and get
inside the moat to defend themselves from the marauding hordes that
traveled the countryside to rape and pillage.
So then the castles became the city-states, the city-states joined
together and became the nation-states, and the nation-states defended
themselves against the other nation-states. Nations have borders. You
can't be a nation without a border, and you can't call it a border if
you don't defend the border.
So if people are willing to argue against a nation-state--that's true
with the globalists. They argue against a nation-state. They think they
should be able to trade--buy, sell, trade, make gain, and move human
population wherever it suits their economy.
So I started to wonder about this. The nation-state is a successful
institution. There's nothing wrong with a border; you must have it.
It's Biblical as well. When St. Paul gave his famous sermon on Mars
Hill in Acts 17, he said: And God made all nations on Earth, and He
decided when and where each nation would be.
Well, this is the United States of America--a very blessed nation, a
nation that was formed with this religious concept, driven also by a
lot of other forces of manifest destiny. This country was formed and
shaped from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from sea to shining sea,
in the blink of an historical eye. How did that happen? How did that
happen that we happen to have all of these rights that come from God?
Not accidental.
We are an extraordinary nation for a lot of exceptional reasons, and
we've talked about those exceptional reasons. But nations should be
proud of the nations that they are, and no nation could be more proud
than the United States of America. We are the unchallenged, greatest
nation in the world, and we risk a decline if some of the people in
this Congress don't come back around to embrace the pillars of American
exceptionalism.
So I ask myself, what is it that the people on my side of the aisle,
but also across the country, what is in the Gang of Eight's bill that's
good for America and Americans? Who has benefited when you look across
the country? First I looked at it and my serious thought was, well,
nobody. Then I dug a little deeper, and I said I'm going to be
challenged if I say nobody in America is benefited by this. So I
produced a complete list. I think this is a complete list of the
Americans that are benefited by the Gang of Eight's bill.
First, the elitists--the elitists being those people that want to
hire cheap labor to take care of their gardens and their lawns and
clean their houses and their toilets and do those things that people
say Americans won't do or don't want to do. So they want to be able to
hire cheap labor to take care of themselves, and maybe paint the gate
in their gated community and oil the hinges for them and then lock the
gate outside, or however they might do that. Elitists benefit from
cheap labor.
The next group of people that benefit are Democrat power brokers--not
the blue collars, not, in the short term, the unions, not the workers,
but Democrat power brokers who have a long-term strategy--which isn't
very far down the line--to capitalize politically on the massive votes
that they would bring in if the Gang of Eight bill is passed.
You don't have to ask Democrats what they think--it's very, very
clear: they're political beneficiaries; if they're power brokers, they
want this done. Elitists and Democrat power brokers.
[[Page H4209]]
Third, employers of illegals, whatever their party might be. They
want to be able to hire cheap labor. And they would say, well, if you
legalize them, the cost of wages are going to go up. Well, they want to
have a continual supply of cheap, illegal labor coming in. That's why
this is perpetual and retroactive amnesty. It doesn't stop the flow of
illegal immigration, it just lets those that want to legalize
themselves get right with the law. It gives amnesty to the illegal
employers--they can't go back on them after the Gang of Eight's bill
might become law.
So that's the three groups of people that benefit from the Gang of
Eight's bill--elitists, Democrat power brokers, and employers of
illegals. By the way, go to any of those groups of people and ask them:
Do you want those folks to go back to where they are legal? Just
challenge them. I would tell you the elitists don't. They want their
cheap labor to clean their toilets and cut their grass and take care of
their gardens, their flower gardens for them. Democrat power brokers
surely don't. By the way, they understand this--that they have
political power anyway, legal or illegal, because the census counts the
people, not the citizens, for purposes of apportionment and
reapportionment. So what that means is there are 9 to 11 congressional
seats in America that would change hands politically if we counted
citizens instead of people. Because some of these districts are way
overloaded with illegal populations, they're counted. I didn't see how
many votes it took for--well, I'd better not get personal with this.
I'll just tell you it takes me 120,000 votes at least to get elected
before we redistricted. And there are seats here that it only takes
40,000 to win. That's because there are a lot of illegals in the
district that are counted. They have representation in this Congress.
So who doesn't want them to go home? Just ask them. Do the elitists
want them to go back to their home country? No. They're beneficiaries.
Democrat power brokers? No. They're beneficiaries. Then what about
employers of illegals? Certainly not. They're beneficiaries. They get a
continuing supply of illegal labor--a labor that is going to be
legalized. And then those folks that come in afterwards, that deadline,
they're going to be legalized too. That's the three groups. Otherwise,
there isn't anybody in America that's a beneficiary from this that I
can come up with. The rest of Americans are disadvantaged by this idea.
If you have two jobs and three people that are qualified to do that
work, then you've got at least somebody that can bid that work down. If
there are only two people available for that job or meet the
qualifications, they name their price. Well, multiply that out into the
millions and see what happens with the no-skilled and the low-skilled
workers. That's where you get double-digit unemployment, no-and-low
skilled.
Why would you bring in more no-and-low-skilled people--especially
those illiterate in their own language--to come in and do more of this
work when you've got an overload there anyway? And the supply and
demand piece of this tells it.
We listen to the numbers of 24 million unemployed Americans--that
would be those that are unemployed and those that are underemployed I
think that number adds to, if I'm not mistaken. But I know that Stuart
Varney said that there are 88 million who are simply not in the
workforce. That number now goes to 92 million. If I understand the data
right, you add the raw unemployed number to that. However you do that,
we end up with more than 100 million Americans of working age who are
simply not in the workforce.
Now, what kind of a nation would you have to be to decide that even
though you've got double-digit unemployment in the no-and-low-skilled
jobs, that you would go find a few more people that--go bring in
millions more to add them to the unemployment rolls and add Americans
or legal immigrants to the rolls as a consequence.
This is an appalling miscalculation on the part of the people that
advocate for this. They apparently have not done the math or they don't
care, or they fit within the category of elitists, Democrat power
brokers, or employers of illegals, or those who are, I'll say,
influenced by their opinions.
I want to yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota and then to the
gentleman from Texas.
Mrs. BACHMANN. I will just be brief.
It seems like you have the power brokers in this country act like
this is such a difficult issue to solve, that this is some big,
perplexing issue with immigration.
The fact is immigration policy worked beautifully for hundreds of
years in this country. And as recently as 1950, when my in-laws
immigrated to the United States from Switzerland, it was pretty simple.
You had to show that you were physically fit when you came into the
country; you didn't have a transmittable disease that other people in
America could pick up. That's pretty self-explanatory. You had a little
bit of money in your pocket. You didn't have to be wealthy, but you had
to show that you had a little bit of money on you. You also had to have
a sponsor. You had to have someone here in the United States who would
vouch and say if anything happens to that person, I'm the one who will
be responsible, I'm the one who will answer. And the person coming in
had to verify that they would not become a burden on the taxpayers of
America. Because they knew when they came in, they had to come in as a
net plus for the country. They couldn't take more out than what they
were bringing in. That was the agreement.
The other part of the agreement is, whoever came into the country had
to swear under oath they would learn to speak the English language--as
Mr. Yoho indicated--and they would learn the Constitution of the United
States and a little bit of the American history. They had to know that.
{time} 2150
My in-laws took that very seriously. They were farmers in Wisconsin.
They've been net plus to this country, proud Americans. They've fed
thousands of people with the work that they've done in Wisconsin. But
they kept their end of the bargain. America kept its end of the bargain
to my in-laws, but they kept their end of the bargain also.
Again, I think Dr. Fleming hit it earlier when he quoted Dr. Milton
Friedman, You can't have an open border in a welfare state. Because,
you see, in 1950 there was no modern welfare state. That is our
problem.
We have to deal with our current reality, don't we? Our current
reality is we have a gigantic welfare state. Knowing that, we cannot
bring people into this country who will not add to the economy. Why
would we import into the country people who are going to consume more
revenue than what they bring in when they are $17 trillion in debt?
This adds up. That's why this is not very difficult to figure out. It
is actually fairly simple. All we have to do is abide by the policies
that we embraced in 1950, and you've got a solution; you've got a
solution to the problem.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time for a moment, some of the
institutions out here that advocate for open borders will argue that no
matter who comes into this country, if they do an hour's worth of work,
they've contributed to the GDP; therefore, they're a net asset to our
economy. How would a tax attorney respond to such a statement?
Mrs. BACHMANN. What I would say is this: Who is benefiting? The
studies all confirm that it is the illegal immigrant who is the
recipient of that money. It isn't going to the taxpayers.
What we do know from a tax point of view is that illegal immigrants
on average pay somewhere about $10,000 in taxes, but they receive over
$30,000 in taxpayer-subsidized revenue benefits; therefore, they are a
net negative to the American Treasury of $20,000 a year.
Now, why in any universe would you import people into the United
States that cost us on average, not just $20,000 one time, $20,000
every year? As a matter of fact, Robert Rector has said in his work
that the average illegal immigrant cost the United States Treasury over
the course of their lifetime about $1 million. Why would we do that?
Why would we do that? Because we are robbing from our children. That's
why it doesn't make sense. We are hurting the American middle class who
are here legally.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota.
[[Page H4210]]
Reclaiming my time, I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Gohmert).
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. I too want to follow up on something Dr.
Fleming was referring to. The Senate bill was considered some great
panacea. It's going to solve all the problems. We are finally going to
get border security, we are told.
But I can think of at least a couple of times when this President has
said, if the Congress doesn't change the law, I will. Basically he
said, if they don't act by changing the law, then I'll act.
We've seen him do that. When he didn't like the law on immigration,
he changed the law just by his own decree. We've seen with regard to
even ObamaCare--his signature bill from his first administration--it's
not going well. He wouldn't come ask Congress, uh-oh, it's not going
well so let's change the law. So he just gave ``so as I speak so shall
it be,'' which is not reminiscent of normal Presidential conduct.
It is important that a President enforce the law, advocate for
changes in the law, but under no circumstances is the President
supposed to change the law to fit his own desires. I mean, you
advocate, but the checks and balances which are the real genius behind
the Constitution that do create gridlock, that create tensions between
the different branches are what keeps this place from becoming a
monarchy.
This President, when he says, If Congress doesn't act to change the
law, then I will take care of it, well, we've seen that with gun
control. He didn't like the fact that Congress was not changing the law
when we were demanding that he enforce the laws that are there. All of
these killers that have just been a plague on society, they violated
plenty of laws. But this administration may be the worst at enforcing
the gun laws. Certainly this administration has really been wanting in
the area of enforcing the gun laws; and instead they come around and
say, we want new gun laws. Well, that's not the way to do it.
I know that Republicans say, look, look, it's important we get this
off the table, let's just get it off the table so let's pass something
and that will get it off the table and then we can get on to the other
things. I have already mentioned I think the thing to do is say,
Resolved: the House is not going to take up an immigration bill until
the President, the executive branch, Homeland Security, secures the
border. Woodrow Wilson--and I'm not a fan of his historically--but in
1916 when Americans were threatened by rage across the border and
Americans killed, that President secured the border, pure and simple.
He secured the border, and he didn't go run around demanding that a new
immigration bill be passed and we give amnesty to people.
There is a great article that National Review had from Fred Bauer. He
said:
Any argument that says the GOP should support such a
measure to remove immigration as a political issue should be
treated with immediate suspicion. Millions would be left as
illegal immigrants under the Senate plan and most other
legalization plans a million more illegal immigrants,
according to the Congressional Budget Office, would arrive
over the next 10 years. Many provisions of the Senate bill,
from the law wait time for citizenship to the status of guest
workers, provide plenty of opportunities for the left to
demagog this issue. Any changes to U.S. immigration law also
change the future composition of the body politic.
Immigration as a national policy question has not been
``off the table'' since 1789. Don't expect the latest link
of congressional sausage to change that.
I think that's well said.
This is not going to be off the table. The way that we should deal
with it responsibly is hold the administration accountable. You enforce
the law and then we'll get an immigration bill done very quickly after
that. I know we will.
All my colleagues here know there are parts of the immigration law
that need to be fixed. But until the border is secure, not closed, but
secured, we are wasting our time talking about a comprehensive
immigration bill, or even good bills like Trey Gowdy or other bills
that people have had; we shouldn't even be talking about them. Let the
immigration secure the border and then we can work these things out
very quickly. It's like a huge flood in your basement. If you run down
and start with a mop while the water is still pouring in, you're making
a mistake. You first stop the flood, and then you can clean up the
problems after that.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from
Texas. I just think of Congressman Phil Gingrey, another doctor that
engages in policy here, who once on this floor, probably at least once,
said that when he is working in the emergency room and a patient comes
in on a gurney and there's blood pouring off the gurney, you don't just
go get the mop and the bucket and start to mop up the floor; you stop
the bleeding first. Let's stop the bleeding at the border.
I think how hard is it to secure this border? It is not that hard.
With the resources that we have, we are spending today--this is a
2,000-mile border, it's not just a rounded number, I mean, it is right
at 2,000 miles--we are spending over $6.5 million a mile on the
southern border each and every year. So I look at that and I think,
what are the economics of this? This is one of the advantages of being
a ditch digger, a construction guy, because I figure this stuff out on
what it cost to build things.
We are building interstate highway through expensive Iowa cornfields
for $4 million a mile, buying the right-of-way, doing the engineering,
the archeological, environmental, the fencing, the seeding, the paving,
the shouldering and the painting. All of that gets done for $4 million
a mile, and we are spending $6.5 million a mile to guard a long barren
desert that a lot of it doesn't even have one barbed wire fence on it.
It's just got a concrete pile on from horizon to horizon--$6.5 plus
million a mile.
So think of that. What would it take to build a fence, a wall and a
fence if we can build interstate for $4 million a mile and we are
spending $6.5 million a mile to--I guess they interdict perhaps 25
percent of the people that try? Instead, we can build a fence, a wall
and a fence, we can secure the border, and we can do it with the
resources that we have. We just have to want to. It has got to be about
the rule of law, it has got to be secure the border first, it has got
to be and who's going to be the metric. Let it be the border State
Governors, the border State legislatures passing a resolution that the
border is secure. Then let's have the balance of this conversation, not
until, not unless.
It's like your teenager coming to you saying, Dad, I need the keys to
the car. I know I've never mowed the lawn or carried out the garbage, I
promise I will, just let me have the car tonight. I'll be back
tomorrow. Is he going to keep his word? He hasn't even fired up the
lawnmower yet. He doesn't know where the gas is. He probably doesn't
know where the mower is.
Do the job first and then come back to us and talk to us, but let's
not destroy this rule of law that's an essential pillar of American
exceptionalism. Whatever it takes, we must block amnesty.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your attention and all of the
people that spoke here tonight for this hour and a half to preserve and
protect the rule of law, and I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________