[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 107 (Wednesday, July 24, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H5044-H5048]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE RULE OF LAW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Minnesota 
(Mrs. Bachmann) for 30 minutes.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, thank you, and thank you to the 
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and to the rules of this 
body that allow for Members to come down to this well in the most 
important place where free speech is allowed, and I am extremely 
grateful for that opportunity to be here tonight.
  One subject that I would like to focus on this evening is the issue 
that is being taken up here in Washington, D.C. It has gotten some 
attention in recent weeks--certainly with a bill that came through the 
United States Senate--and that was a bill that granted amnesty to 
illegal aliens. That bill passed through the United States Senate. 
Unfortunately, that bill does nothing about the main problem that we 
deal with in immigration, and that's border security.
  Twenty-seven years ago, Ronald Reagan made a deal with the American 
people, Mr. Speaker. He said this, that we're going to have a onetime 
deal. We're going to deal with immigration right now.
  It kind of sounds like very familiar rhetoric that we're getting 
today--we're going to deal with this issue once and for all. We're 
going to take this issue off the table. Then President Reagan said, 
We're going to secure the borders. We're going to make that happen, but 
we're also going to grant amnesty to the illegal aliens who are here in 
the United States. He estimated about 1 million illegal aliens would be 
here in the United States.
  Once the bill was passed, the American people found out it wasn't 1 
million illegal aliens. It was 3.6 million illegal aliens who were 
granted amnesty status. Once that amnesty status was granted, the 
United States had a policy of dealing with chain migration, and pretty 
soon that turned into 15 million foreigners or illegal aliens who were 
allowed to come into the United States as immigrants.
  Now, we're all immigrants. I'm an immigrant. Mr. Speaker, I imagine 
you're an immigrant. All of us are descended from immigrants. This is a 
good thing. We're not here bashing immigrants. If we didn't have 
immigrants, we wouldn't have a country. We love immigrants. What we 
love also is the rule of law. We believe in the rule of law.
  That's what this Chamber is. In fact, this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, is 
surrounded. There are medallions above every door in this Chamber, and 
those medallions have the faces of lawmakers over the time of recorded 
human history. Each one of these is a silhouette, and they contributed 
to the rule of law by adding to the certainty for mankind--for good 
rules and a good society that we can live under. In this Chamber, many 
of the American people may not know that our motto, ``In God We 
Trust,'' is written above the stand, Mr. Speaker, where you're standing 
today just above the American flag. Just opposite from ``In God We 
Trust'' is a lawmaker unique among all of the lawmakers in this 
Chamber. That lawmaker is Moses. Moses faces the Speaker, and you'll 
note, Mr. Speaker, that Moses is the only lawmaker who has a full face.
  Why would that be? Why would Moses be given a status different than 
all of the other lawmakers in this Chamber?
  Mr. Speaker, I believe it's for this reason. I believe it is because 
of the great English jurist Blackstone, who is the mentor to the 
Founders of this Nation. Blackstone wrote that English common law and 
all of law in England is based upon the foundation bedrock of the Ten 
Commandments as given through Moses, and Moses is the full face--the 
most important lawgiver--because all of the law you see, all of the 
subsequent lawmakers down throughout the recorded annals of human 
history rest on the foundation of law and the rule of law as given by 
Moses and as given by God--according to the holy Torah and to the 
Bible--to Moses, and all of law descends from there.
  Why that history lesson? Why that lesson on talking about law and a 
lawgiver while we're in the middle of talking about immigration?
  It's because, right now, Mr. Speaker, the Senate bill and also the 
proposed House bill, the so-called DREAM Act, are premised upon the 
condition that people who came into the United States by breaking the 
law would receive an unparalleled benefit, much more so than the 
benefit of those who come into America legally. How many people come 
into America legally every year? It's shocking. People think we're not 
allowing people in. A million people a year, Mr. Speaker, are allowed 
into the United States legally. They go through the process, and they 
become American citizens, and we applaud. I have been to naturalization 
ceremonies, proudly welcoming individuals in.

                              {time}  2130

  Today I was in a cab just before I came over here. A man from 
Pakistan was thrilled to be an American citizen. I shook his hand. I 
said, I'm so grateful that you're here, and I'm grateful that you came 
into our Nation legally. I'm grateful. Welcome. We're happy you're 
here.
  I married a family of immigrants. My in-laws came here through the 
legal process. Why is this important? It's important because we as a 
Nation of laws must observe those laws. Now we're looking at changing 
that status by rewarding people who broke laws and putting them at the 
head of the line in front of people who stood by the law and did 
everything they could to follow the law to become legal citizens.
  If you look at every nation in the world and their immigration 
policy, and if you look at the numbers of people of every single nation 
of the world--remember, Mr. Speaker, the United States is not the most 
populated country--there are more people in China than there are in the 
United States, and yet the United States is such a generous group of 
people, we allow more legal immigration in one year than the rest of 
the world. Every country of the world combined, we allow more legal 
immigrants, a million people a year.
  Yet we still have 4 million people on a waiting list doing everything 
right, trying to come into the country legally. So why, I ask, Mr. 
Speaker, would we put to the front of the line lawbreakers, people who 
decided we're not going to pay attention to the law to the lawgivers of 
history, to Moses who gave the original Ten Commandments? We're going 
to break this law in this body where law is made; we're going to break 
this law. And for some reason this body would choose to benefit those 
who broke our laws? I say no, because the real problem with 
immigration, Mr. Speaker, is that we need to keep it legal and make it 
legal. That's why our very first consideration and only consideration 
should be complete border security first.
  Border security for America first. Why? Because amnesty for illegal 
aliens is incredibly expensive. The estimate, Mr. Speaker, is $6 
trillion of additional debt for our children, $6 trillion in 
redistribution of wealth with amnesty for illegal aliens. Nearly half 
of that number, Mr. Speaker, shockingly would be for retirement 
benefits for illegal aliens. So while you and I and millions of 
Americans have been working and paying in over the decades to Social 
Security and to Medicare, while we've been paying in and while people 
who are baby boomers like myself are just about at that time to draw 
down on our Social Security and our Medicare benefits, now we

[[Page H5045]]

would open the door wide, we would benefit and grant citizenship, a 
legal protected status, and immediate access to Social Security and 
Medicare, ObamaCare, Medicaid, 80 different means-tested welfare 
programs. Why would we do this? Is it because we have an abundance of 
money that's overflowing from our Treasury and we have absolute no idea 
what to do with it? I don't think so. Just in my brief time in 
Congress, we have doubled the national debt. That's one bill, 
essentially full-on amnesty, perpetual amnesty, with no means of 
deportation ever, with no border security ever. That's the fake bill 
that is coming out of the Senate.
  What is the House of Representatives looking to take up? It is a 
different bill. It's called the DREAMers bill, and we're all told that 
what we need to do is get behind this effort to reward instant 
legalization status to children of illegal aliens. I want to put this 
on the floor for the American people. The children of illegal aliens 
very well may make up the largest subset of illegal aliens in the 
United States, but we need to recognize this is fake, back-door 
amnesty.
  This isn't feeling sorry for kids or trying to deal with people 
through no fault of their own who are here in the United States 
illegally. This is what we're talking about. We're talking about 
millions of individuals who would be given instantaneous legal status. 
But it isn't just the children, Mr. Speaker. Because they would be 
given amnesty, they would immediately have the right to apply, and it 
would be granted, for their parents to have legal permanent status.
  We aren't just talking about millions of kids, Mr. Speaker. We're 
talking about all their parents, too. So take all of the kids, and then 
double the number for their biological parents. Then, if there is a 
waiting period--let's say 5 years until they get their full legal 
status--then the parents can apply for legal status for their parents. 
And it goes from there. Very likely what we will see is a family 
reunification, chain migration, and rather than tens of millions of 
illegal aliens, some have estimated as much as over 100 million 
additional illegal aliens would be given amnesty in addition to the 
generosity of every year.
  Why is this important? Again, because we hate immigrants? Absolutely, 
1,000 percent no. That's not true. Number one, the rule of law. We need 
to observe the law. Number two, dealing with our debt and with the 
cost. It costs a fortune to have illegal immigration. Here's the third 
reason: it's because we will never solve this problem. You see, all we 
will have done, Mr. Speaker, is made sure that we will increase this 
problem, and we will have it with us forever because we will have 
ongoing perpetual amnesty.
  I would like to ask to join me right now, my fellow colleague, 
Representative Steve King from Iowa, who has been essentially the 
leading voice on this issue in Congress, talking about making sure that 
we, the American people, recognize what we're going into.
  You see, we had the ObamaCare bill. The former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 
said we had to read the bill to know what was in it. It's a travesty. 
It's bankrupting America. Also, with the so-called DREAM Act, which, 
let's face it, it is three-quarters of the cost of the terrible fake 
border security bill in the Senate. So you've got this terrible full-on 
amnesty bill in the Senate. Mr. Speaker, the DREAMers bill takes you 
three-quarters of the way to the full-on amnesty bill. So when you take 
these two bills and you put them in conference committee, you can have 
either 100 percent amnesty or you can have 75 percent amnesty. When you 
split the difference on that, where are you? You've got amnesty. That's 
the problem, Mr. Speaker. It's a fake, no-border security, but it's a 
total authentic, nearly 100 percent amnesty bill.
  I'd like to ask Representative Steve King to speak to that now as I 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for yielding, 
and I appreciate the delivery you make and understanding in driving 
this issue. If a few of us don't stand up and drive this issue and 
remind, Mr. Speaker, that the American people observe what we do here--
and they are thoughtful, they're intelligent, they're analytical, and 
they understand the history of this country, and they don't want to 
have somebody feed them a line. They want to know the squared-away 
truth. That's why I dig down into a bill like S. 744, the Gang of 
Eight's bill in the Senate, and take it apart and analyze it and put it 
back together and come down with this conclusion.
  From the beginning, I called it the Always is, Always Was, and Always 
Will Be Amnesty Act. The reason I say that is because you'd have to 
just kind of have a little bit of license with our grammar. But if you 
is in America, you get to stay. If you was in America, you get an 
invitation to come back. And if you ever get here, you always will get 
to stay here. So it's the Always Is, Always Was, and Always Will Be 
Amnesty Act.

  If that doesn't trip your biblical trigger, then I can describe it 
this way in more secular terms. It is the Perpetual and Retroactive 
Amnesty Act, which means it was on forever and it also invites the 
people who have been deported in the past. It says, We really didn't 
mean it. If we deported you in the past, it was by a mistake that we 
didn't realize because our President hadn't been elected yet, and he 
hadn't decided that he was going to violate his constitutional oath and 
grant this executive edict that's called the ``Morton Memos'' that 
legalizes the people that are here.
  I would remind you, Mr. Speaker, that we had 400,000 people that were 
adjudicated for removal in this country, and the President issued an 
order and used our precious resources to go back and comb through the 
records again, and that directive said, Look at them on an individual 
basis. The reason they do that is because they claim they have 
prosecutorial discretion. If they deal with individuals, then they 
cannot enforce the law. But If they have to put it into classes of 
people, then they know that they don't have prosecutorial discretion 
from a legal point.
  So they use resources to comb through those 400,000 names of people 
to find ways they can waive the application of the law. That's amnesty 
by executive edict, and it's using resources to grant that. It didn't 
matter that they were young or old. If they hadn't committed a felony 
and been caught at it, or if they didn't commit and been caught at 
these three mysterious misdemeanors, they were going to get the 
application of the law, which was removal. They were just waiting for 
their final removal order, and so the President believed that he had 
the constitutional authority to grant this amnesty.
  Now, this was just the precursor to the balance of the Morton Memos, 
which are the DREAM Act lite, so to speak, this executive edict for the 
DREAM Act. And it then sets up four categories of people, generally 
young people, but now we see, according to the Gang of Eight's bill, 
age up to 35. If up to age 35, if you want to test that you came to 
America, say, before your 16th birthday or your 18th birthday, 
depending on which policy you want to take--now, it really wasn't your 
fault; it was your parents' decision.
  Well, it reminds me of a long shirttail relation who found himself in 
jail on Christmas Eve, and his father decided he would bail him out and 
bring him home for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Christmas dinner, and 
take him back to the jail where he belonged again. When his father 
showed up, let me say this uncooperative son was so resentful that he 
said to his father, It's not my fault, Dad, it's your fault because you 
controlled everything. You controlled my genes and you controlled my 
environment. I didn't control either one. I'm a product of nature and 
nurture, and you are the one who produced the nature and nurture; 
therefore it's your fault that I'm in jail. I can tell you what his 
father said: You can stay in jail if you think it's not your 
responsibility and think it over.
  Well, I heard this new theory come in the committee here just 
yesterday, I guess it was, that young people can't form intent. I 
wondered about that. That was a bit of a new theory for me. We do 
prosecute intent in this country and we prosecute intent of juveniles.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, Representative King 
had stated that in the committee they were told that young people could 
not form intent. And my question would be, under the proposed DREAM Act 
that we have looked at so far,

[[Page H5046]]

we're looking at that from age zero to 35. These people would be given 
automatic amnesty from being an illegal alien. Then, of course, we know 
their parents would immediately be able to come in as legal permanent 
residents, as well. So my question would be: Do we consider that you 
are not legally capable of forming an intent when you're age 35?
  I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady for yielding, as that is my 
point.
  We know that young people can form intent. That's why we discipline 
them at a young age; 2-year-olds get a little discipline because they 
have intent; 3-year-olds have a little more intent, and they get a 
little more discipline. By the time they get to be 7 or 8, they are 
actually disciplined. So I think that's an argument that moves us off 
the target. Regardless of whether they have intent when they're 1 day 
old, 1 week old, 1 month old, 1 year old, or 10 years old, whenever 
that time comes, when they become of age and they realize that they're 
unlawfully present in the United States, the law requires that they 
remove themselves. It's just the law. So we expect them to accept this 
responsibility, whether it was the intent that they had when they came 
in or the intent that they have to stay tomorrow. If we don't do that, 
then we've absolved a whole class of people from a responsibility and 
rewarded them with the objective of their crime.
  These are the things that trouble me. If we destroy the rule of law, 
an essential pillar of American exceptionalism--we could not be a great 
Nation without the rule of law. If we destroy that even in the narrower 
version of immigration or the even narrower version of the DREAM kids, 
if we do that, then it expands into all people that are here illegally 
because age is the only difference, and you cannot draw a bright line.
  Furthermore, then you have expanded the amnesty throughout all 
immigration, and you've destroyed the rule of law. And if we can't 
restore it in this time, since we've been struggling to do so since the 
1986 Amnesty Act, we could not restore the rule of law with regard to 
immigration for all time. And we could therefore, then, not control 
immigration in this country any longer, only by trying to keep people 
out by barriers at the borders. But we then couldn't enforce the law 
against anybody that got in.

                              {time}  2145

  Can you imagine, turning over the immigration law in the United 
States to everybody but those who are in America? If you're not in 
America, you get to decide immigration law; and if you're in America, 
you don't get to decide immigration law. That's what we're dealing 
with.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Thank you so much. One thing that I wanted to mention 
as well, in speaking with one of the experts, Mr. Speaker, Robert 
Rector from the Heritage Foundation, we asked him: What is the average 
age of the average illegal immigrant into the United States? He said it 
is age 34. Isn't it a coincidence, Mr. Speaker, that the legislation 
being proposed is to grant amnesty to anyone 35 or below. And again, 
they would instantaneously be able to apply for legal permanent 
residence for their parents, and it would be granted automatically.
  So we are talking not about a tiny subset. We're talking about a 
tremendously huge subset. But here's the other identifying feature that 
Mr. Rector had said: the average age being about 34, the average 
education level being something less than 10th grade. Now, that's not 
to make fun of anyone that they don't have the education level, but I'm 
talking about the impact now not on the illegal immigrant, I'm talking 
about the impact on the American people, on American citizens who are 
senior citizens, American citizens who are in the working age 
population, and also the young people who will shoulder the burden for 
all of the debt that is being handed to them right now.
  I'm thinking also, Mr. Speaker, about the fact that when an 
individual comes into this country and they have less than a 10th grade 
education, the statistics bear it out, Mr. Speaker, according to 
Heritage Foundation, that those individuals over the course of their 
lifetime are revenue consumers. In other words, they take more out of 
the United States Treasury than they pay in.
  And so if we allow the DREAM Act, which is three-fourths of the way 
amnesty, which is backdoor amnesty, for all practical purposes full-on 
amnesty, if we allow that, we are bringing into this country legally 
tens of millions of individuals who would be taking out of the Treasury 
at the worst possible time--when we have pensions to pay, when we have 
health care to pay, when we have education to pay for, police, fire 
protection. And the estimate is that we're looking at over $30,000 a 
year in annual subsidy, direct payout for the average illegal alien 
that's coming into the United States.
  Now, they do pay taxes. They might pay about $10,000 in taxes, but 
they are a net minus. They are a cost to the Treasury of about $10,000. 
Why is this important? Because we are talking about people. Yes, we 
are, Mr. Speaker. We're talking about American people, American senior 
citizens who worked their whole life for their Social Security and 
their Medicare and who are nervous about the fact that we are going 
into bankruptcy.
  And yes, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about people all right. We're 
talking about the American worker, 22 million of whom can't find full-
time employment. And now we have James Hoffa from the Teamsters Union 
who wrote a letter this last week, and he said, Mr. President, what's 
wrong with you? Mr. Speaker, he said we worked hard for a 40-hour 
workweek, and now the new norm is 30 hours a week or less, and no 
benefits package. So where's the jobs? Where's the wages? Where's the 
benefits packages? Are the jobs all fleeing to illegal aliens that 
we're making legal? Or are we going to think about our senior citizens 
who are Americans who fought and bled and died for this country, for 
the workers of this country, and for the people that we are about to 
hand the baton to, the next generation, who are going to take over this 
country?
  I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady.
  I think we have some intelligent and some responsible Members of 
Congress that probably haven't contemplated something that I'm about to 
say. I hear them talking about they're okay with increasing the 
workforce, especially in the low-skilled categories because they 
believe that agriculture needs laborers and food processing needs 
laborers. I hear that from agriculture and I hear that from food 
processors, too. But here are the facts. The double-digit unemployment, 
the highest unemployment levels that we have, are in the lowest skilled 
jobs.
  So when you go into double-digit unemployment and the low-skilled 
people are in oversupply, you have to believe that labor is a commodity 
like corn or beans or gold or oil, and it is determined by supply and 
demand in the marketplace. And if you have an oversupply of people that 
are willing to work in unskilled or underskilled jobs, then the wages 
go down and get suppressed.
  An example would be like this. In the packing plant in the town where 
I was born, people that worked in the packing plant 25 or perhaps 30 
years ago made equivalent to the salary of a college-educated teacher 
working in the same town, and they could raise their family and pay for 
a modest home. Those children would have an opportunity to go to 
college, if they chose, and they could live a happy life by punching 
the clock and going to work every day and cashing the check and paying 
the bills.
  Today, people working in the same plant are making about half of what 
the teachers are making; and the teachers aren't overpaid in that 
community, either. That's what we're dealing with. The difference is 
that the people who used to work in that plant 30 years ago, they're 
not there anymore. But people who came to work in the plants have been 
recruited from foreign countries and put into that workforce, and there 
has been such an oversupply that they've driven the wages down--supply 
and demand.
  So why would we as a Nation, when we have an oversupply of people who 
are willing to do low and unskilled work, and the wages are suppressed 
and the unemployment rate is up, why would we go out and legalize 
another 11

[[Page H5047]]

or 22 or 33 or 44 or 55 million people? Why would any nation do that? 
Why would a nation that has 100 million people of working age that are 
simply not in the workforce decide we don't want to pull those people 
to work, we're going to let them collect the 80 different means-tested 
welfare benefits, and instead we're going to go over here and import 
tens of millions of people to do this work, then realize that you've 
got a double liability here because people working in the lower skilled 
jobs can't sustain themselves in this society with the wages that 
they're getting because they're suppressed by oversupply. And on the 
other side of this, you've got these 100 million people, a lot of them 
are drawing from the public Treasury and we're paying them not to work. 
You put that all together, we've got a double liability here instead of 
a double asset.
  I spent part of my life in the trucking business. We always say we 
want a payload both ways. We don't want to go empty two directions. We 
want a payload both ways.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. That's true.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't think that we can underscore enough the fact 
that when we are looking at the DREAM Act, people think we are talking 
about a very small group of people. This is a large group of people, 
and we're talking about amnesty, three-quarters of the way of amnesty. 
So the Senate bill is 100 percent amnesty for all illegal aliens in the 
United States. The DREAM Act is three-fourths of the way toward full 
amnesty. It isn't just children. We're talking about 35-year-olds, with 
the average age being 34 of an illegal alien, and we're talking about 
them having an immediate ability to make their parents legal.

  So the $6 trillion cost is pretty darn close with the DREAM Act as 
well. Again, just realize politically what happens here. We're looking 
at 100 percent amnesty in conference committee with three-quarters of 
the way amnesty in conference committee. Does anybody think we're going 
to have anything less than full-on 100 percent amnesty and no border 
security.
  I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I think the gentlelady has described it very 
accurately. We have to be very careful what vehicles get sent over to 
the United States Senate that could eventually be turned into a 
conference report.
  I know that we have an assurance that it's not going to be such a 
thing, but we also know that there are things that come up that 
surprise us. So I ask people that are advocating for different pieces 
of legislation that would come off of this floor, paint for me the path 
through which enforcement legislation could get to the President's desk 
without amnesty attached. And even if it did get to the President's 
desk with the best enforcement model that you could imagine, that 
amnesty attached, the President would sign it and he wouldn't enforce 
the law; he would just grant the amnesty.
  I had a statement that I would like to introduce into the Record just 
for clarity purposes. And I want to say that I appreciate the 
gentlelady coming down here and leading on this event here tonight and 
taking such a strong voice. We have a great country still, and we can 
be a greater country yet, but we must reanchor and reestablish 
ourselves to the principles and the pillars of American exceptionalism. 
We cannot do it without holding the rule of law intact.

                      [From the Associated Press]

            Mexico Children Used as ``Mules'' by Drug Gangs

                            (By Omar Millan)

       Tijuana, Mexico.--Luis Alberto is only 14 but has the 
     wizened gaze of a grown-up hardened by life. He never met his 
     father, worked as a child, was hired by a gang to sell drugs 
     and then got addicted to them. In October he checked into 
     Cirad, a rehab center west of this border city that handles 
     about 500 drug addicts at a time, a fifth of them younger 
     than 17.
       ``They brought me here because I was using and selling 
     `criloco,' '' Luis Alberto said, referring to 
     methamphetamine, the drug of choice for 90 percent of 
     adolescents in detox because of its low cost and easy 
     availability.
       Luis Alberto is just one of an increasing number of young 
     people being used as ``mules'' to ferry drugs across the 
     border into the U.S. or sell them in nearby Mexican towns, 
     said Victor Clark, an anthropologist who studies drug 
     trafficking.
       ``Minors are cheap labor and expendable for organized crime 
     in an area where there are few job opportunities or places 
     for recreation, and where the distribution and consumption of 
     drugs have grown fast,'' Clark said.
       Mexican authorities say they are aware of the problem, but 
     there are no official figures on the number of adolescents 
     detained for selling or distributing drugs because the law 
     forbids keeping criminal records for minors.
       The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that 
     between 2008 and 2011, the number of youths aged 14 to 18 
     caught trying to cross the border between Tijuana and San 
     Diego to sell drugs has grown tenfold. Lauren Mack, 
     spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego, said 19 minors were 
     arrested in 2008, 165 in 2009, 190 in 2010 and 190 again last 
     year.
       Most of them were high school students who carried drugs, 
     usually methamphetamine or cocaine, hidden in their bodies or 
     in their cars, Mack said.
       Clark said similar things are being seen all along the 
     border, at Mexican cities like Nogales, Ciudad Juarez and 
     Reynosa. ``It's growing at a worrying pace,'' he said.
       Officials at drug rehab centers across Tijuana estimate 
     that of the approximately 500 adolescents now undergoing 
     treatment, about a tenth of them are like Luis Alberto, not 
     only addicted to a drug but also used by cartels to sell it.
       Luis Alberto, whose last name cannot be published because 
     he is a minor, said he started selling drugs about two years 
     ago in a neighborhood of east Tijuana along with other minors 
     who were hired by ``a boss.'' He made about 200 pesos ($16) a 
     day, which he says he spent on food and drugs.
       ``Between me and my friends we sold about 40 packets a day. 
     My boss kept 1,100 pesos (about $88) per packet and the rest 
     was for us. Sometimes there were about three or four packets 
     left over and we just divided them among ourselves,'' he 
     said.
       Sometimes the drug bosses used the children as lookouts in 
     case police or soldiers approached, he added.
       Mexico's cartels have also employed children for their hit 
     squads.
       In what may be the most shocking case involving a youth in 
     Mexico's drug war, a 14-year-old boy born in San Diego and 
     known only as ``El Ponchis'' was arrested in December 2010 in 
     central Mexico and told reporters he had been kidnapped at 
     age 11 and forced to work for a cartel. He said he 
     participated in at least four beheadings.
       The number of youths 18 and younger detained for drug-
     related crimes in Mexico has climbed from 482 in 2006, when 
     President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive against drug 
     traffickers, to 810 by 2009. The latest available numbers 
     indicate 562 youths under age 18 were arrested in the first 
     eight months of 2010.
       In Tijuana, officials grew aware of the growing involvement 
     of young people at the end of 2008 as more and more youths 
     turned up at drug rehab centers and told their stories, said 
     Jose Luis Serrano, director of the El Mezon rehab center.
       Serrano said that on average 70 adolescents come to his 
     center each month with addiction problems, and about a tenth 
     of them have also worked in the drug trade.
       Jose Ramon Arreola, director of the department for children 
     and adolescents at the Cirad center, has seen a similar 
     trend. ``There are a lot of drugs on the street; anybody can 
     tell you how easy it is to get some,'' he said.
       Serrano said drugs became extremely cheap by the end of 
     2008, with methamphetamine easily available and selling for 
     about 15 pesos (a little over $1).
       Due to increased border vigilance, ``it became harder for 
     the drug traffickers to cross the border into the U.S., and 
     they started paying their employees with merchandise, which 
     the employees then had to distribute along the border. That 
     was when we noted an increase in teen drug use, mainly 
     crystal (methamphetamine),'' Serrano said.
       According to the National Survey on Addictions, Tijuana has 
     Mexico's worst methamphetamine addiction problem. The Tijuana 
     Psychiatric Institute says it has about 22,000 meth addicts.
       Serrano and Arreola point to outdated laws as one reason 
     gangs have recruited young people to help push drugs. In Baja 
     California, children under 17 can be jailed for no more than 
     seven years even if they are convicted of serious crimes such 
     as murder, violent robbery or involvement in a drug cartel.
       Tijuana was one of the first cities to which Calderon sent 
     troops to fight the cartels five years ago, yet hundreds of 
     kilos of drugs still arrive each week for local consumption 
     or for sale in other cities, military and police officials 
     said.
       The Sinaloa cartel, considered Mexico's most powerful crime 
     organization, is mainly responsible for bringing in heroin, 
     cocaine and marijuana, said Gen. Gilberto Landeros, the 
     military official in charge of Baja California. Other gangs 
     from Jalisco and Michoacan bring in mainly methamphetamine, 
     he said.
       ``We are fighting the supply but not the demand, and as 
     long as there is demand, there will be people producing and 
     distributing the drugs,'' said Jose Hector Acosta, director 
     of the treatment department at the Youth Integration Center, 
     an organization that has been treating drug addicts for 37 
     years.
                                  ____

       John: ``A moment ago you mentioned the issue of amnesty 
     here, and this seems to be a big sticking point in the House 
     on what to do moving forward. Would you describe amnesty as 
     anything that allows people who are

[[Page H5048]]

     in this country illegally for any amount of time, for any 
     reason, that if those folks are allowed to gain full 
     citizenship you would define as amnesty?''
       SK: ``That's pretty close, John, I mean you know I defined 
     it as a pardon and a reward for immigration lawbreakers 
     coupled with the reward of the objective of their crime. I 
     think that your definition's very close to that of mine.
       That doesn't mean there aren't groups of people in this 
     country that I have sympathy for, I do. And there are kids 
     that were brought into this country by their parents 
     unknowing that they were breaking the law. And they will say 
     to me and others who defend the rule of law ``we have to do 
     something about the 11 million.'' And some of them are 
     valedictorians--well my answer to that is--and by the way 
     their parents brought them in. It wasn't their fault. It's 
     true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians. They 
     weren't all brought in by their parents.
       For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out 
     there that they weigh 130 pounds--and they've got calves the 
     size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of 
     marijuana across the desert.
       Those people would be legalized with the same act. And 
     until the folks that want to open the borders and grant this 
     amnesty can define the difference between the innocent ones 
     who have deep ties with America and those who have been, I'll 
     say have been undermining our culture and civilization and 
     profiting from criminal acts, until they can define that 
     difference they should not advocate for amnesty for both good 
     and evil.''

  Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa, and I am 
grateful that he is putting into the Record the pillars of American 
exceptionalism. That is our Nation. Again, what we are concerned about 
is America first; the American people first; American jobs first; 
American wages first; American benefits first. And unfortunately, a 
study came out in April from Harvard that said illegal aliens have 
contributed to a loss of income of $1,300 a year. Let's not drive that 
number any further. So I am very grateful to have had this opportunity 
to discuss this with the American people this evening.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

         What Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants Will Cost America

         (By Jim DeMint and Robert Rector, Heritage Foundation)

       The economist Milton Friedman warned that the United States 
     cannot have open borders and an extensive welfare state. He 
     was right, and his reasoning extends to amnesty for the more 
     than 11 million unlawful immigrants in this country. In 
     addition to being unfair to those who follow the law and 
     encouraging more unlawful immigration in the future, amnesty 
     has a substantial price tag.
       An exhaustive study by the Heritage Foundation has found 
     that after amnesty, current unlawful immigrants would receive 
     $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay 
     more than $3 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes. That 
     leaves a net fiscal deficit (benefits minus taxes) of $6.3 
     trillion. That deficit would have to be financed by 
     increasing the government debt or raising taxes on U.S. 
     citizens.
       For centuries immigration has been vital to our nation's 
     health, and it will be essential to our future success. Yet 
     immigrants should come to our nation lawfully and should not 
     impose additional fiscal costs on our overburdened taxpayers. 
     An efficient and merit-based system would help our economy 
     and lessen the burden on taxpayers, strengthening our nation.
       A properly structured lawful immigration system holds the 
     potential to drive positive economic growth and job creation. 
     But amnesty for those here unlawfully is not necessary to 
     capture those benefits.
       We estimate that when those who broke our laws to come here 
     start having access to the same benefits as citizens do--as 
     is called for by the Senate ``Gang of Eight'' immigration 
     bill--the average unlawful immigrant household will receive 
     nearly $3 in benefits for every dollar in taxes paid. The net 
     annual cost is $28,000 per unlawful immigrant household.
       Given the U.S. debt of $17 trillion, the fiscal effects 
     detailed in our study should be at the forefront of 
     legislators' minds as they consider immigration reform.
       Already, illegal immigrants impose costs on police, 
     hospitals, schools and other services. Putting them on a path 
     to citizenship means that within a few years, they will 
     qualify for the full panoply of government programs: more 
     than 80 means-tested welfare programs, as well as Social 
     Security, Medicare and Obamacare. The lifetime fiscal cost 
     (benefits received minus taxes paid) for the average unlawful 
     immigrant after amnesty would be around $590,000. Who is 
     going to pay that tab?
       Our government is now in the business of redistribution. As 
     Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist at the American Enterprise 
     Institute, has pointed out, federal transfer payments, or 
     taking from one American to give to another, grew from 3 
     percent of spending in 1935 to about two-thirds of all 
     spending in 2010. Adding millions of unlawful immigrants to 
     U.S. programs will have a massive negative fiscal effect.
       Our findings are based on empirical research and reflect 
     common sense. Unlawful immigrants have relatively low earning 
     potential because, on average, they have 10th-grade 
     educations and low skills. Heads of households like that, 
     whether from the Midwest or Central America, will receive, on 
     average, about four times as much in government services and 
     benefits as they pay in taxes. Adding millions more to 
     bloated welfare and overburdened entitlement programs would 
     deepen the fiscal hole our country is in.
       In addition to costing taxpayers, amnesty is unfair to 
     those who came to this country lawfully. More than 4 million 
     people are waiting to come to the United States lawfully, but 
     our dysfunctional bureaucracy makes it easier to break the 
     law than to follow it.
       Our cost estimates are in some ways very conservative: The 
     $6.3 trillion figure does not factor in the waves of unlawful 
     immigrants who could pour into this country hoping for 
     another future amnesty. As scholars at the Heritage 
     Foundation and elsewhere have explained, the comprehensive 
     immigration bill being considered in the Senate differs 
     little from previous empty promises to secure our borders and 
     enforce immigration laws on the books. When amnesty was 
     granted under a similar plan in 1986, there were about 3 
     million unlawful immigrants; now we have more than 11 
     million.
       Instead of forcing through a complicated, lengthy bill, 
     Congress ought to advance piece-by-piece immigration 
     solutions that enjoy broad support and build trust with the 
     American people. We should move to streamline our legal 
     immigration system, encourage patriotic assimilation to unite 
     new immigrants with America's vibrant civil society, fulfill 
     promises to secure our borders and strengthen workplace 
     enforcement.
       We are proudly a nation of immigrants. People the world 
     over are attracted to the United States because we are a 
     nation of laws. Granting amnesty to those who broke the law 
     and putting them on a path to citizenship would be unfair, 
     would encourage more bad behavior and would impose 
     significant costs on American families.

                          ____________________