[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.
____________________