[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 7, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H971-H972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           LEGAL IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Faso). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Rice) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank 
the minority leader, Ms. Pelosi, for her plea on behalf of the DACA 
recipients. She certainly showed great passion and stamina.
  I do wonder, however, why she is so concerned now. This is not a new 
problem. All of these people who qualify for DACA today had to be here 
by the year 2007. They were here illegally in the United States during 
those 2 years when Ms. Pelosi served as Speaker of the House and Harry 
Reid was the leader of a supermajority of Democrats in the Senate and 
Barack Obama was President, yet she took no action then.
  They could have passed a law, rather than having President Obama sign 
an illegal executive order, and given the DACA kids a pathway to 
citizenship, but I guess it wasn't a priority then.
  Last month, my home county, Horry County, South Carolina, settled a 
claim brought by the United States Department of Justice. It seems the 
Department determined that Horry County wasn't doing enough to 
accommodate students who couldn't speak English.
  One would think that wouldn't be much of a problem in South Carolina. 
We are a long way from our southern border. But as it turns out, 
according to the Horry County independent newspapers, 5,511 out of the 
44,700 students in Horry County Schools spoke English as a second 
language only. That is 13 percent of the student body in Horry County, 
South Carolina.
  So the school system agreed to pay a claim by paying $600,000 to 
accommodate those students who couldn't speak English. My constituents 
back home certainly have sympathy for all children--including the DACA 
children--but before they resolve this DACA issue, they have one 
condition. They want the flow of illegal immigrants stopped first, and 
so do I.
  Thirty years ago, we gave amnesty to millions of illegal aliens on 
the promise that we would stop the flow of illegal immigration. Yet 
here we sit again. Well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, 
shame on me.
  I am willing to try to find a solution for the DACA folks, but first 
we have to stop the flow. President Trump has made an offer to resolve 
the DACA issue. I think it is quite reasonable. He has laid out a 
good framework: number one, secure the border; number two, end chain 
migration; number three, end the visa lottery.

  Personally, I want to add to that list a legal obligation on 
employers to check the immigration status of the people they hire. This 
system called E-Verify is already required in many States, including 
South Carolina. If E-Verify is required and enforced, it will end the 
practice of coming here illegally for a job.
  In return, under the President's proposal, 1.8 million DACA 
recipients--which is almost three times what President Obama had 
proposed--would be granted legal status, but no special pathway to 
citizenship. They would go to the back of the line like everyone else. 
DACA recipients are illegal immigrants. Presumably, they were brought 
here as children by their family members who, presumably, were also 
here illegally.
  But I would like to focus here for a few minutes on legal 
immigration. You have to differentiate, and people confuse the two. You 
see, our legal immigration system is quite complex, and most Americans 
are unaware of the details. But, Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out 
a few things that are really important for the American public to 
understand about our legal immigration system.
  We accept 1.1 million legal immigrants per year. I would like to 
refer to this chart for a minute, which I know is hard to see on TV, 
but as recent as the year 1970, we were accepting 200,000 legal 
immigrants per year. That number passed 400,000 in about 1980. You can 
see this big spike. That is when President Reagan promised us that, if 
we would make the people who were here illegally legal, we would secure 
this border and we wouldn't have a problem again.
  But you see what has happened now, this is legal immigration. It has 
gone up and up and up to the point now where we are accepting almost 
1.2 million legal immigrants per year. If you add on top of that the 
hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming in that number is 
much higher than this. This is only legal immigration.
  Mr. Speaker, at 1.1 million legal immigrants, there are people who 
stand up here and say that we are hard-hearted if we don't accept every 
illegal immigrant who gets across our border. But the numbers say 
otherwise. The numbers don't lie.
  We are very open to immigration. We still go by the motto on the 
Statue of Liberty. We accept people from all over the world, 1.2 legal 
immigrants a year. And look at this slide, Mr. Speaker. This is a 
representation of the top 10 countries in the world that accept legal 
immigrants.
  You will notice on the far side, here is the United States. This is 
as of the year 2015. We accepted 1.051 million legal immigrants. The 
next closest was Germany at 686,000. We are almost twice as much as the 
next one. And if you add the next five together, we are still more than 
they are.
  So anybody who tells you that our immigration system is hard-hearted 
is simply ignoring the facts. It is baloney. We have the most open 
system of legal immigration in the world, by far.
  Most countries base their immigration system on merit. Ours, on the 
other hand, two-thirds of our legal immigrants come in based on chain 
migration. The criteria is extended family, so we end up importing a 
lot of people that have low education and low skill sets.
  Most countries say, look, we want to use or immigration system to 
become

[[Page H972]]

more competitive, to make our economy thrive, to lift not only the 
immigrants, but the people who live here. So what they say is, if you 
have a skill set or an educational background that we need, then you 
move to the front of the line. It makes perfect sense. It makes sense 
for the immigrant. It makes sense for the economy of the country. It 
makes sense for the people who live there.
  Ours, on the other hand, is based on chain migration. So does that 
make us more competitive or less competitive?
  Mr. Speaker, look at this slide. The top slide here--this is from the 
Center on Immigration Studies--shows that immigrants, our legal 
immigrant families, families headed by a legal immigrant in the United 
States, 51 percent of them get some type of social safety net benefit; 
51 percent, as compared to 30 percent for the average family. The head 
of household is a native-born American. Fifty-one percent of the people 
that we are bringing into our country under chain migration end up 
relying on our social safety net.
  Mr. Speaker, I have to ask you, it is only common sense. Do you think 
that makes us more competitive or less competitive? Don't you think 
that drives up our deficit, Mr. Speaker? Don't you think it takes 
resources away from people in this country already that need it?
  The bottom of this slide represents the amount of dollars from our 
social safety net that are taken by immigrant families versus Native 
American families. You can see the average immigrant family getting 
benefits gets an average of $6,200 a year in benefits, while the 
average family headed by somebody who was born in America gets $4,400 
in benefits.
  So it is very easy to see, Mr. Speaker. It is common sense that using 
chain migration in the visa lottery to determine two-thirds, 65 percent 
of our immigrants, 800,000 people, the result is that we bring in 
people with a low education, a low skill set that end up relying on our 
social safety net and, in fact, make our country less competitive and 
take resources away from folks at the bottom end of the scale here in 
America that need these resources.

                              {time}  2015

  I believe our immigration system is broken. The President believes so 
too. He has said:

       I want a bighearted deal for the DACA kids.

  Leader Pelosi is also very concerned about the DACA kids obviously. 
So we have areas of agreement, and I am glad we do. I look forward to 
an agreement that takes care of the DREAMers, secures our borders, and 
moves us to a modern, merit-based immigration system like every other 
developed country has that lifts our economy and at the same time lifts 
opportunity for all Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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