[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 22 (Wednesday, February 7, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H530-H533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    OUR GREATEST EXISTENTIAL THREAT RIGHT NOW IS THE BORDER PROBLEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. LaMalfa) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, indeed, I spoke a little earlier about 
how we seem to have hopped from self-made crisis to self-made crisis in 
this Chamber, in this Capitol, in this town, whether it is by 
legislative action, executive action, or bureaucratic action, but what 
the American people are suffering from most is government caused.
  It really isn't a condition of weather or nature or even so much our 
adversaries around the world--and those are all factors and they all 
can be factors--but they pale compared to crises that are, indeed, 
caused by the actions of the government in Washington, D.C., in my home 
State, and so many of them right there in Sacramento.
  We are talking energy. We are talking fiscal. We are talking a 
business climate that is hampered by unreasonable regulations. We are 
talking about things as simple as women and girls' sports. Why should 
that be complicated? Yet it is.
  And the one that is probably the most difficult and the greatest 
existential threat right now to our country immediately is the border 
problem. This porous border has been made that way pretty much since 
day two of the Biden administration. It certainly wasn't perfect before 
that, but my hat's off to President Trump in his term for trying as 
much as he can to do something about it, by building the wall, 
continuing to build the wall, repair old sections of the wall. He met 
resistance just about every step of the way.
  Indeed that infrastructure makes it so much easier and simpler for 
our border personnel to be able to track who is coming across the 
border and basically funnel them to the areas where border entry can be 
properly processed with a plan in place, with rules in place, with laws 
in place that would make that expedient and actually beneficial to our 
country, and also less harmful to those that would wish to come here, 
to immigrate here, to seek jobs, to seek citizenship, what have you.
  In an orderly society, we need to have control of the border and 
invite people to come be part of what this country has to offer. That 
is what immigration used to be many decades ago. It slipped away from 
us.
  We hear all day long, oh, the immigration system is broken. Well, it 
is broken because it is not being enforced. Now, we could add to the 
laws that we have in the books there and refine them, such as the 
interpretation of asylum which is wide open these days. Asylum used to 
be more reserved for people that were being subject to abuse by a 
regime in the country they lived in. They would be subject to much 
persecution, religious persecution, political persecution, what have 
you.
  We understand that. We saw that in World War II and pre-World War II 
in Europe with what happened to the Jews there. The United States 
didn't act quickly enough in that situation, but at least we understand 
what asylum should look like. What we have now is basically people 
presenting themselves at the border, if they are not just sneaking 
right past, and saying a few magic words to the personnel and then they 
are taken into custody temporarily, given a number and maybe even a 
fictitious name, and allowed to move on through.
  I have been to that border. I have witnessed what that looks like. 
Indeed, we have buses going back and forth patrolling the border not to 
keep the border closed or enforced, but picking people up so they can 
sooner get them to processing centers. We are paying for that. It is 
like a giant welcome wagon that has been turned into such by this Biden 
administration.
  Now President Trump, as I said, tried really hard to get a handle on 
this, and improvements were made with several hundred miles of new, 
strong border fence and repaired old fence. Also, the border personnel 
felt like we appreciated them. We appreciated their jobs. We 
appreciated the effort they are making.
  Nowadays, I think they are just completely overwhelmed, and I can't 
imagine the morale is very good when they are basically told that they 
are to be part of running the welcome wagon and just letting people in. 
We hear anecdotes about them welding the gates open where they are, 
actually in Texas. Are you kidding me?
  The State of Texas through their own National Guard has been making 
efforts to control parts of their border there, putting up wire and 
other measures that will help control some distance on their border.

                              {time}  1300

  You have the Biden administration threatening them and bringing 
lawsuits against them, and who knows, maybe even a confrontation with 
Federal troops versus Texas National Guard at some point in order for 
the Federal Government to be tearing down the barrier in order to 
preserve our border and have some semblance of order instead of the 
chaos that has been introduced and exacerbated by the Biden 
administration.
  How does this make a lick of sense to anybody, to tear down the 
barrier that,

[[Page H531]]

indeed, the Federal Government should have built up to begin with?
  Now, let's talk about the barrier itself a little bit. We are not a 
country that is going to completely close it off. We welcome legal 
immigration. I shouldn't have to say that. It has always been who we 
are. Legal immigration, one that goes through process, one that our own 
people, our own government decides how many people we want to have 
enter under the different programs, under the different categories, how 
many should we have this year apply for citizenship.
  That number is way up from what it was five, six decades ago where I 
believe the stats are somewhere around 800,000 or 900,000 new legal 
immigrants, new citizens per year as I think I have it, whereas the 
number might have been around 200,000 back 50 or 60 years ago. It is a 
dramatic increase of us welcoming legal citizens over that time.
  Others that would apply for work permits, education visas, travel 
visas, different categories. All we ask is that you follow a set of 
rules. Go through a process. That is not unreasonable.
  I always liken it to when you leave your home, most likely you 
probably lock your doors on your house. Maybe you even set an alarm. 
Maybe you have a fence around your house, your property. Is it because 
you hate your neighbors, because you hate somebody else that might come 
by? No, it is because it is your security, it is your responsibility.
  There are people who are going to be led into temptation. Look how 
many packages get stolen off front porches because the deliverer just 
leaves it there. I guess that is the agreement. That is rampant these 
days. What if that door was unlocked? The same people who are bold 
enough to steal packages off your front porch wouldn't have any 
hesitation to go inside and clean you out at well.
  Look what they are doing to retail stores while clerks and employees 
helplessly watch them cart off phones and watches and whatever other 
merchandise they can get while their corporate edict is don't dare talk 
to them, don't follow them with a camera, don't get their license 
plate. Heaven knows you wouldn't want to try to detain them in any way, 
as we see more and more of the corporate world become spineless in 
controlling the chaos.
  We see this affecting mostly our very large cities, which politically 
tend to be the blue cities, Democrat-controlled mayors and city 
councils, supervisors, like that. They have chaos like hasn't ever been 
seen in this country when you talk about crisis. Part of this is soft 
on crime, part of it is soft on border, soft on what they call 
immigration. This isn't immigration, it is an invasion.
  Immigration would imply that there is a legal process to it. Again, 
we still welcome legal immigration to this country. We always have. 
That is the part that gets caught up in the blatant misinformation 
placed out there, because Republicans want to have order. They want to 
have something that will preserve the sovereignty of this country and 
preserve all the infrastructure within it.
  I mean, when you look at the cities here, take New York City, where 
they are filling up community centers and school rooms and gyms and 
national parks with--they use the term ``migrants.'' A migrant is a 
euphemism. This is an illegal immigrant invasion. They are getting 
angry because people are bussing them in from Texas, Florida, and 
wherever else. The border States are overloaded. California, which I 
represent a part of, is one of those border States along with Arizona, 
New Mexico, and Texas. Truly, though, it ends up pretty much all of our 
States in effect are border States because you have the Biden 
administration flying these folks around the country and placing them 
wherever they see fit.
  It is interesting to see. They squawk about maybe the Governor of 
Texas and Florida and some others bussing them to their city where they 
proclaim they are a sanctuary city, we welcome you, we want you to come 
in, as the Governor of New York and the mayor of New York City have 
claimed in the past, and then are backtracking on now because the 
numbers have finally caught up to them even though they have been 
warned and warned and warned by those of us who can see what that is 
going to look like.
  Why do we put in place people who allow a system like this to happen, 
to foster a system that is so, indeed, broken as it is? We have the 
laws. We have the rules, and we even passed in this House a good piece 
of legislation, H.R. 2, to refine those rules.
  You hear people saying: Oh, you Republicans are full of hooey on that 
because you say, on the one hand, enforce the laws you have, but on the 
other, why do you want this new law to come in? Well, because they are 
not doing the job. Asylum needs to be refined, it looks like.
  Now, if you had a different administration that was on the side of 
the American people and on the side of enforcing the law, you could 
probably interpret asylum as it was originally intended, for those who 
indeed are facing a crisis due to an oppressive government.
  However, no, it has been interpreted to be just pretty much wide 
open. Our border is a sieve. When I visited the border, you see people 
coming through a coyote process or paying people big money, otherwise 
their lives might be harmed by the coyote system they have down there, 
the cartels.
  I saw pretty nice people coming across. There were families and such 
like that. These aren't bad people at heart. They are breaking the law, 
but when you leave a great big green light there saying come on in, I 
guess I can't blame them, but the people you are talking about aren't 
necessarily persecuted by a government in such fashion but, more, they 
are seeking economic opportunity. Nine out of ten or more are seeking 
economic opportunity, seeking a job, seeking the promise.

  You hear the Democrats, you hear people in the media saying: All they 
want is to come and seek a better life. Well, sure, but the life of 
this country, the lives of the citizens who are already here, those who 
came here legally, came here properly, and those who have been here, 
born here as citizens, they are paying the freight on all this because 
you are bringing folks in who haven't been brought up in the American 
way, haven't been educated in our ways, probably don't speak the 
language in many, many cases, may not even have a skill to bring so 
that they can self-sustain themselves and their family.
  It will be maybe low-skilled labor that probably won't pay their own 
way. That is chaotic, and that is not how our immigration system used 
to work. One hundred years ago, however many decades ago, you had to 
offer something that is going to strengthen our country to be an 
immigrant here.
  Now, again, we will hear, oh, that is so closed minded, it is so 
oppressive and so hateful because that is the only play they have. They 
keep going to the well on that, call it xenophobia or racism or 
whatever. No, the greatness of this country is in its process, in its 
Constitution, in its stability and people who respect that and uphold 
that, uphold the Constitution, uphold the laws.
  The lawlessness we are seeing at the border, as untold numbers are 
coming across daily, I am glad to see this idea that was coming from 
the Senate on an immigration bill has pretty much lost any momentum 
because, at a minimum, according to the pieces I am reading on it, 
5,000 people would be allowed across the border per day before they 
take any action on it.
  Now, let's say you are a retailer, all right? You are seeing all the 
break-ins and the rip-offs and the looting going on. What if you had a 
rule in your city that said we have to let five thieves in per day to 
your retail center and they can fill up their bags as much as they 
want, but on the sixth one we will go ahead and start enforcing on it. 
We will call the police, detain, whatever.
  What kind of crazy idea is that, as well as so many other holes that 
are in this package?
  The first place we start: enforce the border, finish building the 
fence so that our border personnel are not so overwhelmed and put them 
back to their real jobs of not just processing people as fast as they 
can and turning them loose in our country, which maybe they will show 
up for an asylum hearing in 8 or 10 years and become so entrenched in 
the country illegally that you can't find them or you can't deport them 
if you wanted to. That is part of

[[Page H532]]

it. That is part of the chaos that is being fostered.
  Where I represent in California, which indeed is a border State, I 
represent the north end of it, which is about 600 miles from the border 
itself, but we see the secondary effects of illegal immigration, it 
keeps growing. When I say ``grow,'' it is literal because what we have 
in part of my district and some of the southern California districts as 
well is a proliferation of illegal marijuana grows, many, many acres of 
them.
  There are hundreds of greenhouses that our rural counties are just 
overwhelmed trying to deal with. There has been a passive response by 
the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the 
Biden administration, and our own California administration led by 
Governor Newsom with soft-on-crime policies.
  This changes the landscape of a rural community, having all these 
marijuana grows and the cartels and all the filth that comes with 
that--the environmental damage, the people who are abused. Sometimes 
even slave labor is involved with people captive out there because 
nobody knows who they are, where they are, let alone having a permit to 
build these facilities or take the water from somewhere else in order 
to have the marijuana grow.
  Today's marijuana, which is a much more powerful product, brings with 
it the whole litany of gang activity as this product is moved up and 
down, in my area, say, Interstate 5, but all over the West, all over 
the country even.
  Illegal immigration has a lot of side effects. The marijuana 
proliferation, as I mentioned, of course the fentanyl is coming across 
the border and infecting and destroying so many lives. It goes on and 
on and on because this administration and our own Governor in 
California, that administration, continue to foster this lawlessness, 
soft-on-crime, soft-on-border policy that is doing us so much damage 
and is probably the biggest problem we face along with our massive 
deficit and the crunch that is coming from that.
  I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) to talk more 
about that. I greatly respect him and the work he has done on this area 
on the border. He has been very diligent on putting this out in front 
of the people and pointing out what a crisis this is to our country and 
its existence.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. A 
week ago, I stood at this microphone and talked about five stories that 
I think the mainstream press has left uncovered or undercovered. I 
always felt that under our Constitution, we have three branches of 
government. Now we are in a lot of trouble. When I think of the three 
branches of government, I think which one would disappoint our 
forefathers the most. I think it would be the judiciary, which doesn't 
have an adequate respect for the U.S. Constitution.
  Our Constitution also presupposed an active press corps doing a good 
job of informing the public of the issues of the day. I don't think 
these issues have been adequately covered. One more time, I would just 
like to touch upon what I believe are five key issues that have been in 
the news but undercovered by the press.
  The first one is what is going on at our border. In December, we hit 
a new all-time high of the number of people crossing the border and 
staying in this country. That was 370,000. Sometimes the press and for 
whatever reason some of my colleagues talk about the number of contacts 
with Border Patrol. They do not talk about the number of people let in 
the country. The 370,000 is easily the highest amount we have had in a 
month. By point of reference under the prior administration, the number 
let in per month in the final year would vary from 5,000 to 20,000 
people a month.

                              {time}  1315

  We are now increasing by a factor of about 18 to 1, and it creates 
the biggest threat to the future of our Republic that is out there.
  In addition to the 370,000 people crossing the border, all of which 
will be schooled here, all of which, as promised in his election bid, 
will receive free medical care. By the way, I should point out that 
many Americans don't get free medical care. They are either uninsured 
or have $20,000 deductibles.
  No, our President has promised the new immigrants here free, 
unlimited healthcare. With those people come, depending on the month, 
8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors.
  We do not allow 7- or 8-year-olds to wander around the country if 
they are born here. We are now getting, depending on the month, 800 to 
1,000 unaccompanied minors, obviously a recipe for human trafficking, 
obviously a recipe for being mistreated, being allowed to work in 
factories all hours.
  The administration has not done anywhere near an adequate job of 
keeping track of these folks and where they are.
  They have intentionally said they are not going to be giving out DNA 
tests so that if somebody wants to be a sponsor and claims to be an 
uncle for little Missy, we have no idea whether that is true or not.
  Depending upon who is doing the counting, we have lost somewhere 
between 30,000 and 80,000 of these unaccompanied minors somewhere in 
the country.
  For a press corps that in the past had concerns about families being 
broken up, that only happened for a couple of weeks at a time and only 
when it was absolutely necessary. Here we have tens of thousands of 
young children without either parent, possibly never seeing them again.
  It is a story that ought to be talked about, and there ought to be 
graphs on the front page of every newspaper in the country that we are 
now letting in 370,000 people.
  It should also be more accurately covered the number of people who 
are dying of preventable overdoses in narcotics. We are over 100,000 a 
year.
  I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war, where there was great 
concern as we lost 57,000 American servicemen over 12 years. Madam 
Speaker, 57,000 American servicemen over 12 years--over 100,000 people 
killed every year by illegal drugs crossing our southern border.
  I think the mainstream media ought to do more to point this out. If 
people die in a murder, if people die in a car accident, it always 
makes the local pages.
  This is far more than the number of murders plus car accidents every 
year, and we ought to do a better job of educating the public about the 
number of people dying in any individual county. That is an 
underreported story and will result in the end of America.
  We do report that there is currently a war going on between Hamas and 
Israel, and it has been reported that that war was started 100 percent 
by Hamas, which stormed across the border, raping women, cutting the 
heads off of little children, killing over a thousand people.
  I think some members of the American public believe the reason this 
war began is that, in some fashion, Palestinians were being mistreated 
by being adjacent to Israel. This is not true at all, and it has been 
underreported what a potentially good situation one had prior to this 
war if one lived in Gaza.
  During the initial horrific invasion, some people may have noticed 
that some of the people killed were from Thailand. Other people may 
have noticed that some of the people who were held hostage were from 
Thailand. I don't think the mainstream media has done a good job of 
explaining why that was. It is because if you lived in Gaza or near 
Gaza, there were all sorts of good jobs that were made available by 
being at or near Israel.
  It recently appeared in the paper that up to 25,000 people from 
Ecuador wanted to move to Israel to take these jobs. These jobs are 
better jobs than almost anywhere else in the Arab world. Indeed, why 
would people from Ecuador or people from Thailand come from halfway 
around the world to live in Israel? Because it is a wonderful place to 
live; people are well paid; and even though you are leaving your family 
behind, it is a highly desirable life.
  I think if one considers the number of people from other parts around 
the world who are coming to Israel to work, one would realize that the 
case that Hamas has made to society as a whole, that they were a put-
upon minority, disappears. It shows 100 percent of the sympathy in the 
current conflict or the beginning of the conflict should stand with 
Israel.
  Israel right now is looking to put forth agreements with other 
countries

[[Page H533]]

of people who want to come and take jobs, many of which used to be 
taken by Palestinians. People from the Philippines and people from 
Vietnam are also going to be coming to Israel because of the huge 
economic progress that is made by the Jews in Israel as they have taken 
a land that was considered almost entirely a wasteland 60 years ago and 
turned it into one of the most modern countries in the world.
  I will also point out that Israel is a very tolerant country. In Gaza 
itself, run by the Palestinians, they would not have any Jewish 
temples. In Israel proper, there are over 400 Muslim mosques, which 
operate and are allowed to operate by the Israeli Government.
  I think if we are going to educate the American public about what is 
going on in this Hamas-Israel war, we have to let the American public 
know how many people wish they could come to Israel to work.
  The next issue--and I talk to people about this all the time when I 
go back home, and we will talk about it again--is the attitude of the 
new head of the Joint Chiefs, General Brown, toward his diversity 
initiative.
  Now, traditionally, America has gotten where it is by being a 
meritocracy, and people advance whether they are good or bad. Of all 
the parts of society, the part of society that had better never cease 
to be number one is our American military.
  Nevertheless, the head of the Joint Chiefs has publicly said he wants 
to reduce the number of White male officers from something in the 60 
percents down to, I believe, 42 percent, 44 or 42 percent.

  Again, this is a fundamental change in the way the military has 
naturally done things. They want to operate like a little second-rate 
community college in which they are more concerned about race or where 
people's great-great-grandparents were born than about making sure we 
have the right person for the job.
  I think this is something that should be discussed more, even though 
General Brown has been confirmed, and finding out what exactly is being 
done in achieving this goal.
  On a subcommittee that I am fortunate enough to chair, we had a 
hearing on this topic. We found out that there is a perception, which 
probably is true, that people who are White are treated poorly. As a 
result, we are not meeting our recruiting goals because White people 
are realizing, perhaps accurately, that they are going to have a hard 
time in the military.
  When it comes time to be promoted, they are going to be viewed 
hostilely. I think that is something we must look at more.
  The next thing to talk about is that we have tax credits that are 
benefiting the wealthiest developers in our society. We are expanding 
the use of those credits under the tax bill that I voted for because of 
other good provisions and the tax law passed a couple of weeks ago.
  I personally think the low-income section 42 tax credits are the 
worst in the tax code. They give money to well-heeled developers. They 
are allowed to have 70 percent of their building paid for by the 
government, a lavish subsidy in which the already wealthy members of 
society become wealthier still.
  Finally, I would mention the prayer breakfast we had a week ago, 
which is something else that has been understated. We will talk about 
that next week.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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