[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 126 (Thursday, July 25, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7451-H7457]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I have a three-part series, and I would like 
to open at this moment and yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Perry), my good friend.
  Mr. PERRY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for 
offering me just a moment to talk about something that is very 
important to me.
  Madam Speaker, I rise today at a time when the United States and the 
international community must step up efforts to combat money 
laundering.
  Money laundering is a critical source of funding for terrorist 
organizations and drug cartels like the ones that my good friend from 
Florida might be talking about tonight. These are drug cartels and 
other organized crime rings. It is used to disguise profits from or 
financing for illicit activity.
  Money is moved in a variety of ways across borders and through the 
global financial markets to evade detection by law enforcement--global 
financial markets just like ours. While exact numbers can't be 
determined, estimates suggest that annual sums of money laundering are 
in the trillions of dollars--trillions.
  Money laundering facilitates a broad range of serious underlying 
crimes, including the financing of North Korea's and Iran's nuclear 
proliferation networks and the activities of terrorist operations. 
Money laundering also plays a significant role in drug, human, and 
wildlife trafficking.
  In today's world, money launderers rely on both new and old methods. 
The crime is conducted through shell companies, bulk cash smuggling, 
gambling, cyber-related methods, and investments in mobile commodities, 
including things that you might not think about, like gems and real 
estate--yes, real estate.
  For example, we have recently seen a rise in money laundering through 
luxury real estate purchases. Some people come to me and say there is a 
housing crisis. Well, when money launderers are inflating the cost of 
housing by laundering money through overpaying for a property, that is 
a problem for vulnerable populations in the United States. These real 
estate purchases happen in major U.S. cities as well as international 
cities like London and Dubai.
  Madam Speaker, money laundering threatens political stability, 
democracy, and free markets around the globe, and we must take steps to 
counter it right now.
  I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding to me.


                    Honoring the Memory of Rosewood

  Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I am entering into the second phase of my 
Special Order.
  Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Rosewood and 
reflect upon the tragedy that happened in 1923.
  Rosewood was a small, rural town in my district. It is in northwest 
central Florida, in between Otter Creek, Chiefland, and Cedar Key. It 
was built around the pencil mill and turpentine industry. It was a 
mixed town of Blacks and Whites.
  In 1915, it had a population of approximately 355 people. The town 
had started to become segregated. The neighboring town of Sumner was 
developed at the time and was primarily White.
  In January of 1923, a young White woman claimed that a Black man had 
assaulted her. The accusation started a riot, ultimately resulting in 
the burning of the entire town and the death of countless members of 
the Rosewood community.
  Within hours of the violence starting, many survivors fled to the 
surrounding woods, where they hid and waited for a rescue train that 
was sent there to take people out of the area of violence.
  At the end of the week, only one building remained standing, and to 
this day, the death toll is still unknown, and no buildings remain.
  The story by the young White woman was found to be a lie. She was the 
Black man's lover. Her significant other beat her, and she lied and 
blamed the young Black man to save face.

[[Page H7452]]

  The Rosewood massacre, which occurred just outside of my district, is 
one that went nearly forgotten for over 60 years because of the 
destructive nature of prejudice and hatred caused by the survivors who 
lived in fear, rarely sharing their stories, even with families and 
close friends.
  I firmly believe that in order to learn from our history, we have to 
make an effort to remember it. We should memorialize these events, and 
that is why we put up plaques. We put up markers or statues, lest we 
forget it, and within a generation or two, the mistakes of the past are 
repeated because the next generation will grow ignorant of the 
struggles of the past.
  When the stories of Rosewood first started recirculating in the 
1980s, it brought in a new level of awareness to the State of Florida 
and the understanding that we, as a society, cannot be complacent in 
senseless acts of violence. It even inspired a movie in Hollywood to 
illustrate the ugliness of the past hatred and the violence.
  Violence and prejudice have no place in our society, and we have a 
duty to ensure that this type of tragedy never happens again.
  Today, in Rosewood, a marker stands just off the highway 
memorializing the town that never returned. Survivors and their 
descendants have shared their stories, hoping that Rosewood's memory 
would not be erased.
  One of these is a constituent of mine, Ms. Lizzie Jenkins, who has 
been working on this tragedy for the last 25 years. Her goal and ours 
is for individuals to remember and to never forget the hatred, the 
racism of the past, and to honor those who suffered in the past so 
future generations do not repeat the pain, suffering, and mistakes of 
the past.
  She has a dream to accomplish this, and that is to create the 
Rosewood Museum.

  Madam Speaker, it has been almost a century since the Rosewood 
massacre. By remembering and learning from this tragedy, we can work 
towards a future full of acceptance. Knowing Ms. Jenkins, I can 
confidently say that there will be a Rosewood Museum.


              Solving the Problem at the Southwest Border

  Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I would like to move on to the third portion 
of my Special Order. We are going to talk about how to solve the 
problem at the southwest border and how to move beyond border security.
  I just listened to an hour of people ranting and putting blame on 
this President for the hatred, the racism he has caused. I heard the 
Member on the other side talk about the ban on Muslims.
  We can't move forward and fix things if we use false narratives. 
There was not a ban on Muslims. President Trump put a ban on countries. 
In fact, they are the same six countries that President Obama put a ban 
on and recommended to put a ban on. There was never a ban on Muslim 
countries.
  I went to Indonesia on a codel, a bipartisan one, and there was a 
Member of this Congress from the other side who asked the Indonesian 
Prime Minister at the time: What is the sentiment in a Muslim country 
about a ban from our President--President Trump at the time--about the 
Muslim ban that he has placed on there?
  He knew good and well that President Trump didn't ban Muslims in this 
country. He put the ban on the same six countries that President Obama 
did, but there was no complaint.
  I bring that up just because, if we are going to solve the problems 
of this country, one that this body--look at it. It is empty. There are 
two Members of Congress in here, and they have been complaining--I am 
sorry. I stand corrected, Madam Speaker. There are three Members of 
Congress.
  But if we are going to fix this problem, it is going to take more 
than three of us. I am sure everyone agrees. They sit there and they 
give great speeches about how it is tearing our country apart. The 
President is tearing our country apart. What a shame this is, the 
hatred, the vitriol that is coming out of the White House, how people 
are being taken away from their families, and there are no toothbrushes 
or diapers, or they are sleeping on floors.
  I am just glad the other side is acknowledging that there is a 
crisis, but for the first half of the year, there wasn't a crisis. They 
refused to say there was a crisis.
  There was a Special Order here last week, and my good colleague, Mr. 
King, was here. We had other Members, and we had pictures from 2014 
when President Obama was here. It was funny because my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle were railing about the crisis in 2014.

                              {time}  1930

  There have been times in this body when the Democrats had the 
majority in the House, the Senate, and the White House. There were 
times, and I was there, when the Republicans had the same majority, the 
House, the Senate, and the White House.
  It saddens me because this discussion about our having to fix these 
things, when both parties were in control, they didn't do it. What 
really saddens me is I see people using political opportunities for 
their next election. I heard a lot of that tonight. There were no 
solutions in that.
  We talked for an hour last week about the crisis at the border, the 
situation at the border, and the atrocities at the border. The drug 
cartels are profiting from this. We stay as a divided House. I implored 
President Trump--and I will do it again tonight--that he needs to call 
Congress back in session when we reconvene tomorrow, and I would do it 
every time this body goes on a break until we fix our border security 
and until we come up with an immigration bill.
  I want to move into what I really want to talk about. In order to 
move forward, we have to have solutions. I have been here for 7 years, 
and I have seen ``comprehensive'' come up in healthcare, and I have 
seen ``comprehensive'' come up in immigration. What I have learned is 
that when you put ``comprehensive'' in front of a cause, it doesn't 
happen. It is political speak that says it is not going to happen 
because the room becomes divided, and everybody uses it as a political 
tool for the next election.
  What I want to do is, instead of trying to do comprehensive 
immigration reform, I want to focus on a small bite of the apple.
  We have a proposal. We have legislation that we are working through 
the House in a bipartisan manner. We have shared this with over 40 
Members of Congress in a bipartisan manner, and we have shared this 
with the Senate in a bipartisan manner. It is a guest worker program.
  The bill will be a guest worker program. There will be three silos, 
agriculture, hospitality, and construction. These are all positions 
that, in general, are in the lower-skilled fields. They are not rocket 
scientists, and they are not engineers. These are the skills that we 
need in our labor workforce for agriculture, for food security, for 
construction, and for our hospitality. In the past, we have not had a 
good program for people to come into the country legally and stay in 
the field that they have decided to work in.
  This bill will be under a banner, but there will be three separate 
bills. The first bill will be a guest worker program for agriculture, 
and that is what I would like to focus on tonight.
  America has the lowest-cost food of the industrialized world because 
our farmers can produce so well. But they can't benefit from that if we 
don't have the workers willing to go out and work in the fields.
  I was a person who, at the age of 15, worked in produce. We loaded 
trucks. The produce came in from the farm, and we loaded the produce. I 
did that to work my way through college. Yet, today, people said that 
domestic people, Americans, won't do that work. I disagree with that, 
and I think we put a stigma on that.
  In order to fix this, we have to have a labor solution, or our 
farmers won't be able to keep farming. The goal of this bill is to 
create a dependable, reliable workforce. The way this program would 
work is it would be in two phases.
  The first phase is that we create a prescreened pool of workers 
before they come into the country. We will have a relationship and an 
agreement between country A and our State Department.
  If we pick out a country, Guatemala, the Guatemalan state department 
will have a relationship with our State Department. When a person 
applies, he becomes what we call the applicant. The country he comes 
from will verify the person's date of birth and their residence. Then, 
they will verify that this

[[Page H7453]]

person has not been involved in violent crimes, drug activity, or gang 
activity.
  Once they apply, that information goes through the Department of 
Homeland Security. They do a background check. They do it on their 
international database, and they do it on the domestic database. If 
that person clears the database, then that information goes to the 
USDA. We moved the agriculture labor workforce from the Department of 
Labor to the USDA, where it can be better monitored to fulfill the 
needs of agriculture.
  That person does not come into the country until a job is open. The 
employer in this country, an agriculture producer, still has to 
advertise for domestic help. When that position is not filled, the 
producer can ask for that worker to come in. That worker comes in under 
the agreement that they are going to work in the agriculture sector.
  They have to be a minimum of 18 years of age. It is not chain 
migration. If they have family members who want to come in, they, too, 
can apply, but it applies to them individually.
  Once they get accepted into the program and come into the country, 
they become a participant. At that time, they get issued a guest worker 
identification card that we call a GWIC card. That GWIC card will have 
15 digits in there for security. In addition, it will have the initials 
``AG,'' designating that that is an agriculture worker permit.
  When the worker comes in, they now have been allowed into the country 
legally. The work permit goes on for 5 years. That means they can stay 
in this country for 5 years at a time. They have to work a minimum of 
75 percent of the year in agriculture, but it allows them to move back 
and forth to their host country seamlessly because we have an agreement 
between two countries.
  The person can travel around the country to work a seasonal crop. In 
Florida, our citrus harvest is done usually by mid- to late June. That 
would allow that worker to go from that farm up to New York, Maine, or 
Washington State to work crops. He also has the ability to go back 
home.
  That permit is good for 5 years at a time. He can renew 4\1/2\ years 
into it, and he can do this indefinitely. There will be a cutoff age. 
We are recommending approximately 50 or 55 years of age. There is a fee 
of $2,500 for that.
  The second part of this program will be dealing with the people here 
who came in illegally. Our proposal would allow a person to apply to 
this program under the understanding that the Federal Government is not 
here to deport them. The Federal Government is here to give them a way 
that they can get into a program and have legal residence here.
  During that period of time, when the applicant is applying, there 
will be a waiver over that person, meaning that he won't be deported. A 
background check will be done. If DHS says this person is okay, then he 
can enter this program. If that person has minor violations--a fender 
bender, didn't return a book to the library--he will have a period of 
time where he can get straight with the legal system.
  Upon completing that, he enters into the guest worker program and 
becomes a participant. He, too, pays a fee of $2,500. That is to go for 
running the program. In addition, there will be a fine for coming into 
the country illegally. What has been proposed is approximately $1,500 
to $2,000 for the first time they apply to the program.
  Every year a person renews, 4\1/2\ years into this program, there 
will be a $2,500 fee, and that is subject to change as the times 
change.
  As a person comes into the program, they get issued the guest worker 
identification card, which is called the GWIC card, and that will be 
embedded biometrics. We gave the list to the DHS to pick out what they 
think is necessary from facial recognition pictures, DNA, fingerprints, 
and retinal scans, all that they can choose from. We asked them to put 
enough of those biometrics in there so that card is secure.
  In addition, it will have a 15-digit code that will be a hack-proof, 
secure card. As I said, there will be the initials ``AG,'' designating 
that person as a guest worker in this country in agriculture.
  He is allowed to get a driver's license. If he passes the test in a 
State, then he will get a guest worker driver's license. It would not 
be used for voter registration. It is something to give that person a 
driver's license so that he can work on a farm.
  If that person who is here illegally gets accepted into the program 
and has a family who came in with him illegally, as he is applying to 
the program, there is a waiver over his family. If he gets accepted 
into the program, or they get accepted into the program, his family is 
also good to stay in the country for 5 years at a time, provided the 
participant renews 4\1/2\ years into it.
  If his children came in illegally, then they are protected until the 
age of 18, at which time they have to make a decision to apply to one 
of the programs. There will be three sectors. It will be agriculture, 
hospitality, and construction.
  At that point, again, as I said, that person can move around the 
country. They can work crops wherever they choose. They can go back 
home knowing they can get back into this country.
  E-Verify will be a component of this, and it would work such that, as 
a person enters the program, their data is already in DHS. When they go 
to start their job, the employer puts their smart card, the GWIC card, 
into a reader. It identifies the person, a positive identification. We 
have eliminated probably close to 100 percent of the fraud that occurs 
with the current system.
  We request that the individual worker has to check into a Federal 
office on a monthly basis. Every town in America has a Federal office, 
either a courthouse or a post office. Part of the $2,500 fee goes to 
pay for the equipment in there. It would be inexpensive equipment. It 
would be the same equipment that we use when we go to do a retail sale 
like at a big box store. You put your card in there; it reads it; and 
it tells DHS and USDA where this person is.
  The employer also is required to use E-Verify. This will be seamless 
because he is pulling people out of a pool who are already prescreened 
and who are in the E-Verify system. They go through this system.
  E-Verify will become mandatory once we get 75 to 80 percent of the 
expected population that we need in our guest worker fields. At that 
point, all employers will be using the E-Verify system.
  The beauty of this system is that we have given a portal for people 
to come into this country legally. We have given them a way to stay in 
this country for up to 5 years at a time. Then, we give them a way that 
we can monitor bad players who sneak into the country or employers who 
are hiring people here illegally that suppresses the wages of domestic 
workers.
  If an employer hires people outside of the system once it is 
mandatory, when they get caught, it is a $2,500 fee the first offense, 
per offense per individual. If it is a repeat offender of an employer, 
then that fine will go up, and they are subject to jail time.
  The beauty of this is if a worker leaves a guest worker program in 
either agriculture, hospitality, or construction, and they try to work 
in a different sector and are found out by the people who are doing the 
inspection, they have given up their right to stay in this country on a 
guest worker program.
  The things that we hear back about that is that people voluntarily 
enter this program. They have agreed to work in agriculture and 
agriculture only or one of the other sectors. If they work outside of 
that, they have agreed that they have broken that. This is a policy 
that is self-policing when people get found out.
  For the people who choose not to enter any of these programs, they 
are here illegally, and they will be dealt with according to the laws 
on the books.
  We are asking to have sequencing done on this, and the first part of 
that is we have to agree on border security. It is interesting because 
I hear this fight over border security, but when I go on trips and talk 
to my colleagues on the other side, they always tell me that they agree 
with border security and that we have to have border security. If we 
agree to it, let's do it.

  Again, this body is empty other than us three. I think the President 
should call us back. Let's get border security.

[[Page H7454]]

Let's get this done, Madam Speaker, so that we can move on to the next 
thing.
  We have to have enforcement of the laws on the books. We are 
providing a guest worker program for the majority of the people whom we 
need in our labor force for lower skills.
  The third part of the sequencing is that we can deal with Dreamers 
and DACA down the road. We can't do that until we do border security 
and have a way for people to come into the country legally, to work in 
this country legally, and to take that group who came in illegally and 
put them in a legal process.
  Madam Speaker, this is something we have shared with probably close 
to 60 people in a bipartisan manner. We have shared this with 
agriculture groups from all over the Nation, from California to Maine, 
New York, Washington State, Florida, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and 
from every sector in agriculture, from dairy to pine, timber, fruits 
and vegetables, citrus, and fruits and nuts. Everybody tells us this is 
the most commonsense reform they have seen.
  We have shared it with ranking members of different committees on the 
Democratic side. They said this is something they plan to help support. 
I am excited because of the bipartisan nature in the House. We have 
shared this with Senators, and the Senators are working with us to make 
this happen. Our goal is to make this happen this Congress.
  We are looking for people to go to our website, https://
yoho.house.gov, to get more information. We have a short video that 
covers this.
  If we do nothing, we are going to have a repeat of the last 30, 35 
years, when Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 3.5 million to 4 million 
people.

                              {time}  1945

  This body has sat there and argued and blamed the other side for 
inaction or blamed the other side for hatred and racism or blamed the 
other side for wanting to give everybody amnesty. If we do nothing, 
this problem will grow and grow and divide this Nation more.
  This is the time to act, and I would hope people would come back to 
Congress over the break and let's get something done.
  Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I yield to 
the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), my good friend, to say something.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Yoho) for yielding to me, and I appreciate very much the work that 
is done by Dr. Ted Yoho here in this Congress.
  I would like to have the Members know, Madam Speaker, that Ted Yoho 
gets up every day and grinds away with an eye towards making America 
great again and putting us in the right place. And I recall a meeting 
that he called together here, kind of an off-campus meeting about how 
we are going to save America from a Congress that doesn't seem to want 
to look to the horizon, let alone over the horizon.
  There is a lot of common sense that has been put together in this 
immigration policy, and I want to carefully evaluate all of the 
components of it. I know that we are in discussions right now about how 
it might even be improved a little bit, but I am open to this 
discussion, and I think he has brought up some very important points.
  I will add one that I hope can be incorporated into this, to take the 
E-verify mandatory piece of this and expand it into a bill that I have 
had before this Congress a number of years. It is called the New IDEA 
Act, and it would work actually seamlessly with what has been described 
here tonight in that I incorporate the language in it, which is this:
  When an employer--we put together a committee, a three-way team, the 
IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland 
Security, and require them to work together for the cause of enforcing 
immigration law and, in addition to the penalties that have been 
suggested here, deny the deductibility of wages and benefits paid to 
illegals.
  I would give the employer safe harbor if they use E-verify, but if 
they are then using illegal labor, the IRS, in a normal audit, not an 
accelerated audit, then would come in, run the Social Security numbers 
and identifying information of the employees who are listed in the tax 
forms through the E-verify program.
  If they can't be verified, the IRS then could deduct the wages and 
benefits paid to them, remove it as a business expense, which puts 
those dollars, wages, and benefits paid to illegals into the gross 
receipts where they show up as net income. That makes it taxable.
  When we first did this math, it would be, if you would take a $10-an-
hour illegal and deny the deductibility of that under the old tax 
policy, it would take us to a $16-an-hour illegal. We also would have 
interest and penalty, and there is a 6-year statute of limitations.
  Madam Speaker, I got to this conclusion by asking the question: What 
agency, what department is most respected, and maybe even most feared, 
by the American people?
  Since I have been drug through audits a few too many times, I will 
tell you that the business people, the employers in this country, they 
don't want the IRS looking into their books, and they don't see that 
they can negotiate much of a compromise with the IRS.
  So I think giving a 6-year statute of limitations on that, you 
accumulate that liability, and it makes it far more likely that 
employers will voluntarily go in and clean up their workforce. That is 
something that, had that been done years ago, we wouldn't be in the 
situation we are in today.
  The labor situation that we have, it is a bit more complex down in 
the southern part of the United States than it is up in the heart of 
the heartland where I am. And that is that we seem to be able to find 
the people to climb in the tractor, in the combine, or in the trucks 
and get our crops in the ground; we get them back out again; and it is 
a little smoother up that way.
  The labor situations that we see in places like Florida and 
California and Arizona, all those States, and many more in particular, 
that is a different kind of a situation.
  What I would suggest, though, is that temporary workers be required 
to be bonded. I introduced legislation to do that, and I hope that is 
something we can discuss, as well, is incorporating it into this 
proposal.
  I pointed that out to the President in a meeting in the Oval Office 
sometime back. He seemed to respond very favorably to that suggestion. 
I pointed out that he actually has the authority to go forward with a 
bonding program now. And so I noticed that, a few weeks later, he 
issued an order that directed the executive branch to do the research 
and put the pieces together so that they can activate a bonding 
program.
  But think of it this way: Whether you are going to be a guest worker 
in the United States or a visitor to the United States, you need a visa 
to come to America to do that.
  So when you apply for that visa, you post your credit card, just as 
if you walked into a hotel and they say: Your room is paid for, but we 
need a credit card so we can hold for any incidentals that might come.
  You post that credit card on your visa application to temporarily 
come to America, and if you go back under the terms of the visa, then, 
fine, the hold is released on that credit card; but if you overstay 
your visa, then that credit card is charged for that fee, and that fee 
goes into an enforcement fund in order to enforce the immigration laws 
we have in this country.
  We need the rule of law restored in the United States of America. No 
place, in all of our law, is it less respected than it is in 
immigration law.
  And as I listened to some of the rhetoric over here on the floor 
tonight, it still is breathtaking to hear how intentionally the terms 
``legal'' and ``illegal'' immigrant are conflated so that the very 
meritorious legal immigrant who respects our laws, that meritorious 
legal immigrant is conflated into the same term with the one who has 
disrespected our laws. The one who has disrespected our laws gets 
assigned the same merit that exists for those who respect our laws and 
want to come to America for an opportunity to succeed and to prosper.

  But I make another point, Madam Speaker, that I don't hear in this 
dialogue on immigration, and that is that America has a unique vigor. 
We have a unique vitality. We have a can-do spirit. And a lot of that 
vitality, vigor, and can-do spirit comes from the legal immigrants who 
have had the aspiration to come to America.

[[Page H7455]]

  And I would say that, if there is a family of 10 siblings, boys and 
girls together, if one of them has the ambition and the eagerness to 
respect our laws and come to the United States, the one who chooses to 
self-select to come here is going to be the one in that family who has 
the most ambition, the most vigor.
  That is one of the reasons why America is a can-do country, because 
we have gotten that quality of people who self-selected as legal 
immigrants to come to America.
  So I appreciate the gentleman's work on the immigration policy, and I 
look forward to examining all of the language there and have an open 
dialogue on this. But I also applaud the very diligent effort that has 
gone forth on this issue and many others.
  Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding.
  Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), 
for the things he stands for. He is just a true patriot who loves 
America.
  The gentleman brought up a great point. The current system allows 
people to use the Social Security number. So you can come into the 
country. You get issued a Social Security, or people will eventually, 
as they come in, gravitate and get on an I-9 form.
  They will use a fraudulent or a fake ID number, Social Security 
number. They are a dime a dozen out there. There are people, 
counterfeiters, out there doing that.
  What happens is it gums up the system. It is like an accounting 
nightmare, and it creates confusion for the people who are supposed to 
regulate this. So it gets to a point where they can't even track the 
people because there are so many fraudulent numbers.
  Where there is confusion, there is inertia, and that is why nothing 
gets done. And I think you look at the current system, because it is 
not workable.
  The H-2A was designed for seasonal agriculture workers, but we do not 
use it that way because it is not enforced. They are supposed to come 
in for 10 months, and then they go home. But the current system is you 
can get a waiver, and that waiver can go on for 3 years. And if it is 
not enforced, they forget about the waiver and they just kind of fall 
into the society, and nobody knows where they are at.
  The beauty of this system is there is an identification number. We 
are proposing 15 digits in length, with the designation of ``AG'' in 
there, agriculture, plus the smart chip in there that has the 
biometrics.
  So we separate guest workers from the rest of the population. So we 
have a database of just guest workers that will be a lot easier to 
track. It will be a lot easier to know where people are.
  As people have to check into the system, the onus is on the worker. 
They can check in at their place of employment. They can check in at a 
post office. They can check in at a Federal courthouse. And so it is 
going to be easy for people to stay compliant.
  If they are not in compliance with checking in, they will have a 
grace period. They have to become compliant. If they are not compliant 
after a period of time, they are subject to deportation.
  One of the things we talked about is what happens if somebody creates 
a deportable felony, and that would be something like, maybe, vehicular 
homicide from a DUI, which we have seen too many of those in the news. 
They would be subject to deportation.
  If they are here with a family that they came in illegally, they got 
accepted into this program, if that were to happen, they have put their 
family at risk of deportation.
  I don't like that part, but it is also that we need to look at the 
other side of that.
  We have allowed people to come into this country to be a guest 
worker.
  I have had the experience of being a veterinarian, practicing for 30 
years, in large animals. We dealt with cattle farms, dairy farms, horse 
farms, people who did row crops, fruits and vegetables. Just name a 
crop, and we have pretty much dealt with it.
  I have gotten to a point where I talked to a lot of people who were 
here as migrant workers, and I sympathize with them. Heck, I was still 
working on the farm. That was one of my ambitions of going to vet 
school. I wanted to be outstanding in my field, and I wound up being 
outstanding in everybody else's field.
  But we got to know the immigrant, and we got to a point where we 
could ask them: Are you here legally or illegally?
  They were so honest. They say: I came in illegally.
  And I even asked them: Did you pay a price to come in?
  They said: Yeah, $2,000, $5,000, $8,000. And it shocked me that 
people were paying.
  And this was probably 12 years ago, 11 years ago.
  And I would ask them: Do you want to become a citizen?
  And it would amaze me how many of these people said: No. I just want 
the opportunity to come here, make a living, and go home.
  So one of the impetuses behind this was let's create a system where 
people can come, fulfill the need we have, and fulfill the need they 
have.
  I have stayed in touch with some of these people. They have made 
enough money to go back home, create a farm of their own, and they 
don't have to come back. But they will refer people into the system.
  So if we can streamline that and make it easier for people to come in 
when we have border security, they can come in the legal way. There is 
no need to sneak in.
  If we can take that group that came in illegally and they move into 
this, the ones that know they probably don't have a bad record, they 
have moved into the system.
  So we can start cleaning up this mess.
  And the gentleman and I just shared the analogy of working cattle. 
When we have all of our calves, we sort out the ones over here: the 
males over here; the females over here.
  So it is a way to sift through the problem we have. If we do nothing, 
the problem is going to grow.
  The H-2A system right now, one of the flaws with that, as I said, it 
was supposed to be a 10-month program. People come in. Our producers 
are paying $1,200 to $2,000 to get a person into the country for the 
permit, to get them the transportation and all that. When they come 
into the country, about 25 percent of the people that come in on an H-
2A abscond. They go off the grid, and the producer can't get people to 
come back that they have hired to work and they have made that 
commitment.
  With this system, that person will have that ``AG'' designation. The 
H-2A program will have the ``AG'' designation, and with the H-2A 
program, the goal is to make it a 10-month seasonal program. After 10 
months, you go home. You have agreed to that. If you only want to work 
16 weeks, you work the 16 weeks and go home.
  So it gives flexibility to the worker. It gives flexibility to the 
producer. It creates food security for us because this is something we 
need. And we get rid of the adverse wage effect and we go to the 
prevailing wage, which usually is about 115 percent above minimum wage.
  But as you and I know, people who work in agriculture, and if they 
are picking crops or shipping stuff, they are making $250 to $300 a 
day. They work their tails off because they are appreciative of the 
opportunity they have, as you said, because they want to live their 
dream. And they may become a citizen down the road.
  There is no citizenship with this. It is a way for people to come in 
and work. We get rid of the touchback provision of Bob Goodlatte's bill 
last year, and that comes from feedback from our dairy folks and other 
industries: I need year-round workers.
  A touchback does not work, because we have had these people who have 
been in here illegally for 5, 10, 15 years.
  Let's work together as Americans to solve a problem so that we can 
sift through this and end people coming in illegally.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman if he has any other thoughts 
that he would like to add, he can feel free.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Yoho), and I would add that, one of the things that crosses my 
mind, as I talk and listen here this evening, is that the Social 
Security numbers, multiple uses of a single number--it might even be 
all zeroes, and all zeroes might be used a thousand times in America, 
or more.

[[Page H7456]]

  So I hear these stories, and some of the employers will say: Well, we 
have followed all of the laws that we are required to follow.
  But common sense isn't something that we hold them accountable for, 
apparently, and so the Social Security Administration, under Barack 
Obama started issuing no-match letters.

                              {time}  1800

  No-match letters used to go out to say this Social Security number 
that you are using isn't a match. Then it should go to the employer, 
too, and I believe it used to.
  I understand that the Trump administration may be picking that back 
up again and issuing the no-match letters, but that is not where it 
should stop. That is where it should begin.
  Mr. YOHO. The gentleman is exactly right. I have had producers call 
me. When I was in the district, they brought that up, the no-match 
letters. They are in a tizzy.
  If we go back prior to President Obama, there were no-match letters. 
This is what is wrong when you have bad policy. When you get rid of a 
program or a requirement that is working, people get complacent. They 
are like: Hey, I don't have to match up to Social Security, so there is 
no reason for me even to apply legally.
  Then, when you try to reinstate it, you get angry people, and it gums 
up the system again.
  That is why, if we have a good system in place, there is no reason to 
back away from it because this will be a policy that will live beyond 
you and me.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. In 1986, when the Amnesty Act was signed by Ronald 
Reagan, there was a requirement that each employer would have I-9 
documents that would be filed.
  As soon as applicants came in, we took a copy of their information. 
We took the I-9 documents. We kept them in our files carefully. Any 
individual who came in and applied, we had the right file, expecting 
INS--Immigration and Naturalization Services, at that time--personnel 
to be at our door anytime, poking through all of our records, which 
records are probably still sitting in my archives somewhere.
  That was going to work. They believed it was going to work. What 
happened was, slowly along the way, the ACLU filed lawsuits, and people 
kind of ducked and dodged. They found a way to rationalize a way around 
it until they got around to: Well, as an employer, I can't be required 
to make a judgment call. If I am looking at a picture of someone, I 
can't be sure that that is the face of the person who is in front of 
me.
  They would make the presumption that was best for their business 
interests rather than best for the law enforcement part of it.
  Then, if ICE doesn't show up when the no-match letters come through, 
because they are not cooperating with the Social Security 
Administration to go through those records when it is very probable 
that when a Social Security number is being used maybe in 10 places, in 
10 different towns, you can't get to 10 jobs simultaneously. It should 
make sense that nine or at least eight of those are phony. They ought 
to go in and identify those employers and employees and, if there are 
law violations, bring charges against them.
  That hasn't been happening for years in this country. It needs to 
happen.
  This component that you proposed looks to me like it is an 
improvement, to segment off some of this, but I still say we need to go 
into the Social Security no-match and fix that.
  Mr. YOHO. I think that is a great thing. That is something we do need 
to go into. Then, we need to have the alternative.
  The gentleman brought up a good point that I have experienced, too, 
talking to our producers. If you get an I-9, which is the form to apply 
for a job, if there is a Social Security number, if you question that 
and don't hire that person because you think it is not legal, he has 
the right to sue you, and he will win. If you don't question that and 
hire that person, the Department of Labor or ICE shows up. They are 
going to fine you for hiring a person that you didn't verify.
  It is a mess. How did we become the great country we are with such 
a--I was going to say messed up system, or something like that.
  This is not rocket science. This is a simple program, and there is a 
commonsense reform.
  One of the things I didn't bring up, and I think the gentleman had 
asked me about this, is that the ID number is also a tax number. Taxes 
will be taken out of that.
  That is why I don't want Social Security associated with it, because 
Social Security denotes benefits, that if I am paying this, I get 
benefits. Those are not tied here. Money that goes in will go to other 
resources.
  What we are proposing is that we are going to make a requirement that 
each person who comes in as a guest worker has to have a catastrophic 
health insurance policy. If you come in here and drive a car, you have 
to have insurance. This will be something that we are sitting down with 
the insurance companies about. We have a pool of about a million people 
who are going to need some form of catastrophic health insurance.
  The other thing we are proposing is, if they are here legally, and 
they have a guest permit to work here, we go to direct primary care. 
These are companies around the country--it was amazing. I went and 
visited one. If you are between the ages of 18 and, I think, 25 or 30, 
your monthly cost for your health insurance is $25 a month--$25 a 
month. If you want blood work, it is $40 a month in my town. If you 
want an MRI, it is $250. That is affordable healthcare.
  The beauty of this is the employer can bring in a group of people. He 
can get direct primary care for a small amount of money. We will allow 
him to deduct that cost. Then, there is catastrophic health insurance.
  We have covered health insurance. We have covered driving insurance. 
We have covered a way for people to come in. We have given them a 
number so that we know where they are. They are not gummed up in our 
Social Security system.
  We have started to separate into different silos or categories and 
envelopes where they should be so that there is rational thought to 
this.
  The gentleman brought up rationalizing. I shouldn't have used that 
word. Rationalizing is to make rationale a lie. That is used too often 
up here.

  We want to make commonsense reforms to have a program that works for 
the immigrants, works for our employers, and works for our Nation.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I wanted to add another piece to 
this. This is an observation that I think applies across this country 
and a lot of places today.
  Some of my constituents made a practice of going out through the 
parking lot at the packing plant and picking up the check stubs on 
payday that were dropped down on the asphalt. Then, they stack a bunch 
of them up, put them in a big manila envelope that would kind of spring 
like an accordion, and mail it off to me.
  Here it comes in my mailbox. What is this? There is no letter, no 
message, no return address. Just my address on there and all these 
check stubs with no names on them.
  But the withholding, it tells me, is zero, zero, zero. No State 
withholding. No Federal withholding.
  What that tells me is that we have a lot of people who are working 
unlawfully in America, that when they apply, they claim the maximum 
number of dependents, so there is zero withholding at the wage scale 
they have for Federal income tax or State income tax.
  Yet, they still say they are paying taxes. Well, yes, there is sales 
tax. I suppose, in the rent, you are paying a share of the property 
tax. Some of those things are taking place. But that is another place 
the system is gamed by using Social Security numbers.
  I am hopeful that the gentleman has zeroed in on a way to address 
that.
  Mr. YOHO. We have. That is the beauty of the system. We get rid of 
all that. It is not a Social Security withholding. It is going to be a 
tax. It will be a guest worker tax, and money will be taken out.
  As I said, as I have shared this with Members in a bipartisan manner, 
they get excited about it. Our producers get excited about it. Industry 
gets excited about it.

[[Page H7457]]

  Let's work to finally be the Congress that says that we fixed this 
problem, and let's make the American people proud and make our Nation 
safer.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________