[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 21]
[House]
[Pages 29219-29221]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                IRAQ AND AMERICA'S IMMIGRATION POLICIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
half the time until midnight as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And again, I appreciate the 
privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker, and in turn, address the House 
of Representatives.
  This has been a huge week here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. We processed a lot of legislation this week. Much of 
it has been legislation that has been in the works for a number of 
years. And I think what I will try to do is maybe unravel this coming 
backwards across the way we passed it and work my way back into the 
legislation a little bit.
  But I want to take up first the immigration reform and point out that 
in this debate that we heard today in this resolution that came 
forward, which was H. Res. 612, the continuous message from the other 
side was about being anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant.
  But it confuses the difference between an immigrant and an illegal 
immigrant. In fact, I know of no one in this Congress that is anti-
immigrant. I know of many Members of this Congress that are pro the 
rule of law.
  And that is the distinction that we need to draw the line with. And I 
take us back to where would be if we went back even 10 years, but say 
go back 25 years, in a time when we did not have very much illegal 
immigration. It was a smaller percentage of our overall population; it 
was smaller in numbers, smaller in percentage, and it was not a very 
significant problem. It was something that was somewhat manageable back 
then.
  And back in that period of time, if we had been able to control our 
borders

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and watched as we needed more employees in certain sectors of the 
economy, we would have seen a number of things happen that would have 
resolved this need that we keep hearing from business about labor.
  They say that if we deported all of the illegals, our economy would 
collapse, and we cannot get along without them when perhaps 4 percent 
of our workforce in America is an illegal workforce. And if we lose 4 
percent and retain 96 percent, I cannot believe that this resilient 
country could not find a way to bounce back from that and accommodate 
the difference.
  So I take us back 25 years and ask, what would we do if we respected 
the rule of law? What would we do if we had borders that were 
controlled? How would we adjust to demands in a growing economy if 
illegal labor, cheap labor that pours in from overseas just were not 
available?
  What if the United States of America, instead of being a large 
portion of an entire continent, what if we were an island? What if you 
drew the line on the 49th parallel on the north and our southern border 
on the south and envisioned the United States sitting out alone where 
illegal labor does not flow across our borders just because of the jobs 
magnet but in fact has to find an expensive way of transportation to 
get across a broad ocean?

                              {time}  2330

  Think, for example, of a country like Australia that finds itself in 
that kind of a circumstance. I take you back to a policy that they had 
up until 1971. Actually, they did not have a very good name for it. 
They called it White Australia, and some would be embarrassed about the 
name for that now. But that was the phrase that they used to describe 
their immigration policy, which is they were advancing the idea of 
European descendents populating the continent of Australia.
  In fact, I graduated from high school in 1967, and I remember during 
those years that I was in college, I saw advertisements come from 
Australia saying this is a great place to move to. We really need you 
to come down here. There is a wealth of opportunity in Australia. And I 
thought about it. And so that advertisement that was there was because 
they needed more people to grow their economy.
  In about 1971, they gave up on this mission to some degree, and they 
changed their policy to allow immigrants to come in from Southeast 
Asia. Now, how does this work politically? We can learn from these 
lessons here in the United States of America, and that is that it was 
big business that wanted the labor to come in, and it was labor unions 
that wanted to keep the labor out because they understood something in 
Australia as far as back as 1971 that there was a law of supply and 
demand.
  That law of supply and demand seems to be missing from the rationale 
of the people who oppose enforcement of our rule of law with regard to 
immigration. They do not seem to understand that when we have an 
oversupply of labor, that drives the price down and that labor is a 
commodity, like where I come from, corn and beans or cattle and hogs, 
or gold or oil if you come from another part of the world, or currency. 
It fluctuates in the marketplace according to supply and demand.
  So the island, or I should call it the large continent, and it 
actually is, the large continent of Australia did not have that option 
of being able to run open borders and let millions come in to drive 
their wage price down. They actually had to fight the politics out 
inside Australia and adopt a policy that brought in immigrants from 
Southeast Asia and other parts of the world to fill their labor supply. 
The pressure got great enough that they came up with an economic 
solution.
  Well, I submit, Mr. Speaker, that in the United States of America, 
had we respected the rule of law, had we controlled our borders, the 
pressure would have been brought politically to do the things necessary 
to bring in the amount of labor in a legal and a rational fashion.
  We would have done some other things, too. Some of these sectors of 
the economy would have seen their wages go up, and they would have 
decided they could not afford to pay those kinds of wages; so they 
would have gotten innovative and they would have used technology. We 
use robotics today. We use a lot of different techniques to cut down on 
the amount of labor we need to produce a product. We would do more of 
that if labor were higher. We would be more innovative. When labor is 
lower, we are less innovative. In a country where labor is cheap, they 
do not have much innovation at all. So the pressure of high wages would 
drive technology, and that would replace some of the labor, and that 
labor that could be replaced by more technology would then transfer to 
places where labor could not be replaced as well by technology.
  Another thing that happened, and is a little joke here in Congress 
the last couple of days, is Southern California ran out of Okies that 
went there to do that hard work from the Dust Bowl. They did. They went 
over there and they were willing to do the hard work and work in the 
fields. They were glad to get in anywhere where they could get a job. 
But they transferred themselves from Oklahoma to California for the 
opportunity.
  I take you to an article that I read in the Des Moine Register maybe 
10 or 12 years ago, and it was about a section in Milwaukee that was 
six blocks by six blocks, 36 square blocks, and in that section for 
every single dwelling that was there, there was not a single male head 
of household that had a job and was working. And as I read through the 
article, I tuned myself to the ear of the writer, who said that it was 
too bad that they lost their jobs in the breweries in Milwaukee. The 
automation that came in so they could make beer with a lot less labor 
caused the good jobs that were there, some of them, to disappear. That 
caused people to be laid off. And so they went back to their homes and 
sat inside their homes, and when they went around to do the interviews 
and to survey, 36 square blocks, not a single working male head of 
household.
  The people had come up from the South, from the gulf coast, from 
southern Mississippi, Alabama, down in that region, moved up there for 
those good jobs. They went up to access the good jobs in the breweries 
and other types of industry that was up there in Milwaukee; and they 
raised their families there and then, in a matter of a generation or 
two, found themselves laid off, and their children or their children's 
children could not get jobs in the breweries the same way that they 
had. So they sat in their household and did not go somewhere to find a 
job.
  We know why that is. And that is in one of the better States with 
regard to welfare reform. But it is because the safety net of welfare 
had become a hammock for everyone in that entire 36-block area. They 
totally missed the point, though, that the same people's predecessors, 
that this was the progeny of their predecessors who had transferred 
themselves all the way from the gulf coast to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for 
what? For a job, Mr. Speaker.
  And now we look at this economy in the United States as if labor 
cannot be transferred from one region to another to fill the demand. So 
there is a demand for some 5,000 roughneck workers out in the oil 
fields in Wyoming, in that area, that I happened to read an article on 
just yesterday; and we have got 15 to 18 million workforce sitting 
there unemployed in the United States of America, and we want to do a 
guest worker/amnesty plan for 11 million illegals in this country. What 
country in their right mind would pay 15 to 18 million people not to 
work and then bring in 11 million, or I would say closer to 22 million, 
people who do want to work at a cheap rate? That does not make economic 
sense, Mr. Speaker. And that is one of the supply and demand rationales 
that I would like to point out with regard to the immigration policy.
  So if we were a rational Nation, if we were a Nation that did not 
have this convenience of opening up our borders and allowing the 
illegals to come in, we would have done these things: we would have 
transferred labor from one part of the country to another; we would 
have squeezed down the welfare

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so that some of the people, and, in fact, I would like it if most of 
the people, would get up and go to work. That would be two things.
  And the third thing we would have done is what Singapore is doing 
right now. They are advertising to their people, saying have more 
babies. What is wrong with a fertility plan? That is a natural way to 
replace labor. Those three things would have happened within our 
borders, and then within our borders we would have been under political 
pressure to negotiate a rational immigration policy that was legal.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I object to the idea that we would bring in third-
class people. People who come to America, I want them to have a path to 
citizenship. I want them to access the American Dream. I want them to 
do it the legal way.
  So we have addressed this immigration issue, and I actually did not 
come to the floor to talk about immigration, but it sparked me when I 
listened to the gentlewoman from Texas.
  I came to the floor to talk about another subject matter, and that is 
the subject matter of Iraq. We have made significant progress there. 
This is a day of celebration. The reports are continuing to come in 
from the aftermath of the closing of the polls of their December 15 
election. And the ink is fading on my finger and on the fingers of many 
of us here on this floor of Congress who have in solidarity dipped our 
fingers in ink. And it helps me, when I see my finger, to look at that 
and remember what they have all done, risked their lives to go vote, 11 
million strong and more. The most people ever to vote in Iraq, the most 
purple fingers ever maybe anytime in the world.
  So today we brought a resolution to the floor of the House of 
Representatives, Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 612, and that is a resolution to 
honor the troops, to declare our dedication and our unshaking will to 
see this through to a final victory in Iraq. And this resolution was 
written in a clear fashion, in a rational and a logical fashion. And we 
had a debate on this floor.
  And Member after Member from the other side of the aisle came down, 
and they said, I honor and support our troops and request an open 
debate on the Iraq war on the House floor. Member after Member after 
Member: I honor and support our troops and request an open debate on 
the Iraq war on the House floor. One Member said, In opposition to our 
policy in Iraq, he also requested an open debate on the House floor.
  Well, we had an open debate on the House floor. I do not know why we 
had 20 or so Members or several more come down and say they honored and 
respected our troops and requested an open debate on the House floor, 
because that was what we had scheduled was an open debate on the House 
floor. We had the debate. The question after I heard that I had was 
when I saw the vote go up on the board. If I were a soldier in Iraq, if 
I were in a military uniform, ready to put my life on the line for this 
country, and I saw this vote, 279 in favor of the resolution dedicated 
to victory and support of a free Iraqi people, 279 in support; 109, 
sadly, against, Mr. Speaker. Thirty-four voted present and 12 did not 
vote at all. So I add those up and come to over 150 who said they did 
not commit themselves to a full victory in Iraq. For whatever reason, 
they said they want an honest and open debate. Every of them that came 
to the microphone said, I honor and support our troops. I wrote the 
quote down. They were using the same script, I believe.
  And I point this out: that you cannot honor and support our troops if 
you oppose their mission. There was a clear opportunity here to support 
their mission in Iraq, to stand with them. This Congress voted to 
support their mission before the President ever ordered them into 
battle, and yet they still seek to pull down this effort.
  Also, a number of Members in that debate said the Republicans and the 
President will not define victory. All they want is a deadline, a date 
certain, by which American troops will be out of Iraq, and accused the 
Republican side of the aisle of not being willing to define victory.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I would submit this: the other side of this argument 
dare not define victory because if they do, then they will lose their 
ability to raise the bar and make it harder and harder and harder to 
meet their standards.
  So I will stand here and define victory this evening. And this is a 
victory that will fit this war and it will fit every war throughout 
history, every one we know and every one that we will see and every one 
that our posterity will see. The definition of victory, Mr. Speaker, is 
when the losing side realizes and acknowledges that they have lost. 
That is what this effort is about. And if we could have gotten Saddam 
Hussein to stare into the barrels of a few tanks and decided that he 
had lost, that would have been the end of the war. We would not have 
had to send troops into Iraq. But they had to be convinced that they 
were losing, Mr. Speaker, and that is why we sent troops there is to 
convince the other side that they had lost.
  Yet we have people over on this side of the ocean standing here on 
the floor of the United States Congress, seeking to convince our 
enemies that we cannot win and that the enemies cannot lose. That is, 
Mr. Speaker, undermining our effort and undermining our troops. And yet 
some of the same people come to this floor and say, I honor and support 
our troops and request an open debate on the Iraq war on the House 
floor.
  We had an open debate. They voted against the resolution. And I will 
tell you, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot honor the troops and 
defy their mission. They go together. You must honor the troops and the 
mission together. They are integral and they are one and the same.

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