[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10590-10593]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NEW IMMIGRATION LAWS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for the remaining time until midnight as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for allowing me to be here 
tonight and for allowing me to address this House on an issue that I 
feel is probably a life-changing issue to the United States of America. 
It is a life-changing issue for what is somewhere estimated to be 
between 11 and 15 million people who have entered and are living in 
this country illegally. And it is a life-changing issue, I think, for 
every American.
  As we are in a time of concern about national security and great 
expenditures on homeland security, we have got a crisis on our border. 
I am not going to go too much in detail about this crisis, because 
anybody that turns on the television these days can see pictures of 
hundreds of people storming past our border patrols on our southern 
border as they leave Mexico. Most of those pictures come from Arizona.
  In the last about 9 months, I have visited the Texas border on three 
occasions. Twice I went down to Laredo and visited with the border 
patrol and all those persons involved in immigration in the Laredo 
section of the Texas border. This past weekend, I went with the deputy 
whip, Eric Cantor, down to El Paso, and with other members of a 
congressional delegation, to discuss the issue of what is going on in 
the El Paso sector of the Texas border.
  We have got an estimated 16,000 people crossing our border every 
night or every day coming into the United States. These are 16,000 
people most of whom are not caught and most of whom are entering this 
country, for what purpose we know not, Mr. Speaker. We can't presume 
that every one of them, as has been just a moment ago described, are 
poor impoverished workers coming here looking for a job. Many of them 
are. But we don't know who these people are, and we don't know why 
these people are here in every instance, because we have done nothing 
to inquire as to their purpose or who they are or what they are coming 
up here for because our system has been overwhelmed.
  We are now going into conference, the House and Senate, with our 
colleagues over in the Senate, on two versions of what we think needs 
to be done to address the issue that is facing this Nation right now on 
immigration. I want to propose to this House and to the Members of this 
House that we have already addressed many of the issues in 1986 in a 
bill, that I am aware the Speaker here tonight was involved in.
  Mr. Speaker, I have looked at that. I have actually gone out and 
pulled up the law and looked at what we are operating under today, and 
I find it is very curious that there is a lot of very good enforcement 
procedures in this bill, the 1986 bill. There are things in that bill, 
if they had been done and done correctly, we would not be addressing 
this massive intrusion across our southern border.
  But what has happened? What reason has this gone on? My whole point 
of this speech here tonight is to say it is time for us, I think, to 
slow down and address a life-changing issue in detail and see where the 
system has been overwhelmed in the past and make sure that we don't 
make the mistake that I think democracy makes a lot in the legislative 
process of taking something, sticking a bunch of new patches on it, and 
hoping it will solve the problem. Patches on an old used tire almost 
inevitably start to leak at some point in time, and then rupture, and 
the tire goes flat.
  I think when it comes to immigration laws, it is time to buy a new 
tire, not just put in a patch tube or stick patches on the tire. We 
need to look at our immigration laws of this country from top to bottom 
and in a very businesslike and studious manner, come up with solutions 
for the problems that are going to face the people that I have 
described here tonight.
  There is estimated, as I said, 11 to 15 mile people that have come 
into this country. The other day we were on the border in a place where 
there was a triple fence and a ditch at our border.

                              {time}  2330

  A very interesting aside, it was explained to us in El Paso, the 
construction of that fence and ditch, which has been there now quite 
awhile, but when that was put up, street crime in El Paso dropped so 
substantially that El Paso went from one of the worst street crime 
cities in the Nation of a population of over 500,000 and less than a 
million, to today, after construction of the fence, street crime in El 
Paso, Texas, has improved so drastically it is now the third safest 
city of that size in the United States. And that is clearly reflected 
by everyone in law enforcement in that town as a result of 17 miles of 
fence in the populated area of El Paso.
  So the proposals for fencing that the House bill has, for instance, 
fencing in the populated areas, have an effect on the lives of the 
people that live in that city. The people who go to work, take their 
kids to the park, to school, are safer in El Paso, Texas, because of 17 
miles of fence.
  Now about 60 people a night still try to cross that fence. They catch 
most of them.
  In the conversation somebody asked: How many didn't you catch? They 
said that would be speculation, and they weren't going to speculate 
because that wouldn't be proper. One of the comments behind me was we 
know somewhere between 11 and 15 million they

[[Page 10591]]

didn't catch. That is what we have to look at as we look at this thing.
  The system we have today has totally failed. It can be blamed on 
every administration since this bill was passed that they did not 
either provide the resources or the bureaucrats were overwhelmed by the 
problem; and when overwhelmed, just did not address it. Or addressed it 
in a minimum amount.
  Now, I think by that experience that we have had, and we learn from 
experience, we should know that overwhelming the system will cause the 
system to shut down and not work. The Senate bill, I would propose the 
things that we have heard, and unfortunately I have not been able to 
get a copy of what they are proposing yet, but I will be back on this 
House floor to discuss it when I get it, but some of the things that 
they are proposing, and with all due respect to the Senate, I would 
like to say that I do not think they have thought out some of the 
things that they have done here.
  If we have a system that cannot process effectively, that clearly has 
not processed protection of our borders for people trying to come into 
this country illegally, how can we take that system and dump between 11 
and 15 million people into that system to try to come up with an 
amnesty for them? How can we process them with the people we have in 
the immigration department? If it is overwhelmed today, how can we dump 
that many people in the system and expect it not to be overwhelmed 
tomorrow?
  If the idea that you might get amnesty increases our border crossings 
from the approximately 2 to 3 million people that were dealt with 
during the Reagan administration to the 11 to 15 million people that 
are here today, how can processing those people and the additional 
waves that will come across without border security, how can the system 
but be overwhelmed by that process?
  The citizenship issue is very interesting. Americans who are 
qualified to be in this country legally are making application for 
citizenship, are finding unbelievable delays in the processing that 
goes on through our immigration department so that they can meet the 
qualifications of citizenship. In fact, some of that processing is as 
much as 6 years behind.
  In the San Antonio office, those trying to bring people into this 
country legally are finding delays from 18 months to 10 years to bring 
people into this country legally. Background checks, which we have 
about 200 to 250 cases in my office alone, requesting background checks 
on the process of bringing someone to this country, in the San Antonio 
office we have been told they are processing 1998, 1999 and 2000 cases. 
This is 2006. So in the best-case scenario, they are 6 years behind; 
and in some cases they are 7 and 8 years behind.
  How can that system do background checks on 15 million people or 11 
million people that are currently in this country to make sure that 
their background is such that they should be allowed to remain in this 
country and be American citizens? How can that system even take 2 to 
300,000 people in a guest worker program and do the background check 
processing to make sure that the people coming in as guest workers are 
safe for our American citizens? Even that number, what will that do to 
the background checks being required?
  And let's not forget that we also require that every person wishing 
to come into the United States as an immigrant must have a medical exam 
to make sure that they are not bringing communicable diseases or other 
illnesses into this country that we want to prevent from coming into 
this country. Without even going into the possibility of a pandemic if 
there should become an avian flu pandemic from the avian flu virus, and 
it is estimated there could be the death of 200 million people as a 
result, let us just look at the fact that the World Health Organization 
has told us that there is a strain of tuberculosis in Mexico and South 
America that right now we can't cure with our existing drugs to stop 
tuberculosis because it has mutated to a point we cannot cure this form 
of tuberculosis.
  How do we know about the health of these people that are here and 
those people wanting to come here in the program that the Senate has? 
We have to know. If we have to know, we have to process them. If we are 
already overwhelmed, how are we going to be able to meet the demand 
that is going to come to the system?
  What do we know that happens when we overwhelm the system? We know 
nothing happens when we overwhelm, and we remain with the status quo.
  I would argue that is the result of what happened to what was a good 
bill in 1986. When I go to Texas and I am addressed by many members of 
the press, they ask me what about making these people's behavior 
illegal.
  You know, Mr. Speaker, maybe I am a little different, but I kind of 
grew up in a system when you talked about the law, you checked the law 
to see what is in it. I found, and you will hear that being in the 
United States illegally, in other words they have caught you after, and 
they can't identify that you came across the border illegally, that is 
a civil process and has a process for removal. But what you do not read 
is if you are caught coming across the border, it is an illegal 
process. It is illegal to enter the United States in any form or 
fashion without proper identification.
  First crossing carries a possibility of a fine and up to 6 months 
incarceration. But normally and properly, most of these people are just 
removed.
  Harboring an undocumented alien under the bill we are operating under 
now carries a fine and imprisonment of up to 5 years.
  Alien smuggling carries a fine and imprisonment of up to 10 years. 
Any crime that causes serious bodily injury or places the life of 
anybody in jeopardy, and that includes the person being transported, it 
carries a penalty and fine of up to 20 years' imprisonment.
  If criminal smuggling or harboring results in the death of any 
person, the penalty includes life in prison. This is the law today, 
right now what is on the books.
  Felony charges punishable by fines and imprisonment of not more than 
2 years are applicable to reentry. So if you have come in once and you 
have been caught and documented and you are caught reentering, you can 
get up to 2 years in prison or jail.
  Reentry after a previous nonaggravated felony or three misdemeanor 
entries or convictions results in a fine and imprisonment of up to 10 
years.
  So those who say, why is the bill that the House passed wanting to 
criminalize this activity, we are not criminalizing the activity. It is 
already criminal. We need to make ourselves very clear. Having evidence 
that you crossed the border illegally, acceptable, provable evidence, 
which is basically catching you doing it, can result in the penalties 
in the various categories that I just read. This is illegal behavior. 
Let's not kid ourselves about what this is.
  What have been some of the solutions we have come up with that are 
overwhelming the system? One is removal by deportation. You know, one 
of the things that I think is of most concern to people when they hear 
about it is what they call in the immigration business, in the border 
business, OTMs, people from other than Mexico.
  Let me stop right here and say this because it is a question that 
comes from my Hispanic counsel, and I want to say that everything I am 
saying about the southern border I also agree with on the northern 
border. Just recently, very recently from the time I am talking right 
now, we found a major terrorist cell planning major attacks in Ottawa, 
Canada. There are bad guys to the north of us, and there may be bad 
guys to the south of us.
  When we are talking about this, we are talking about illegal 
immigration, whether it be from Canada or Mexico, comes in on a ship or 
airplane. It is anyone who violates the law and overstays their welcome 
and hides out and is of concern to every American citizen that is here.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to realize that putting a patch on a system that 
already works, and that patch includes the possibility of dumping 
between

[[Page 10592]]

200,000, 300,000 people, or up to 15 million people into an overwhelmed 
system, is basically going to result in the same results we have had 
since 1986: nothing is going to get done.
  Now I would argue to this House that I believe there is a great 
degree of experience and intelligence in both the House and Senate; and 
well-intentioned people on both sides of the aisle, if given the 
opportunity to study in detail and look where the holes are, without 
knee-jerk reacting and being in a hurry, we can come up with a plan and 
the resources necessary to implement that plan so we can actually do 
what we are setting out to do, and that is protect our Nation from 
intrusions across our border and protect the sovereignty of the United 
States and deal fairly and equitably and compassionately with the 
people who are involved in this behavior.
  Mr. Speaker, let me make myself extremely clear. I do not intend to 
support nor do I support rewarding illegal behavior. I spent 20 years 
of my life punishing illegal behavior as a district judge in Texas. And 
those people who know the county I come from, Williamson County, know 
that Williamson County judges and juries punish severely criminal 
behavior. Maximum sentences are fairly well the norm in the county that 
I come from.
  So I certainly am not going to change careers to Congress and start 
rewarding criminal behavior.

                              {time}  2345

  And I am very concerned that some of the things that are coming to us 
in the Senate bill are rewarding criminal behavior, especially as you 
compare it to those people who are fighting this broken process of 
coming in here legally, because they are going to get to have sneaked 
across the border, hid out long enough that they get in line for 
citizenship, in some form or fashion, whatever delays and punishment or 
fines or back taxes or whatever you impose upon them, they are still 
getting a reward for criminal behavior.
  So I think as we design a system we need to take that into account 
and realize that we can do and deal with these families and these 
people compassionately. We can make commonsense decisions as to how to 
handle, for instance, the problem of children who are born to a family 
of illegals who are now American citizens and how we would deal with 
that. And common sense would say that would take special categories and 
special dealings. But Mr. Speaker, my experience in Texas, and I think 
the experience of anyone who has lived in a State where this issue has 
been for my entire life. This is not something that I have been dealing 
with, as some States have, for the last 8 or 10 years. In the State of 
Texas, the issue of illegal aliens coming across our border has been 
with us since my birth, and so we are very familiar with these people 
and we know, many of them are great people, God-fearing people who work 
very hard. And I am proud to say that I have worked side by side 
building fence with people who I knew were illegal immigrants. And I 
will tell you they are hard working good people, the ones that I have 
encountered. This has nothing to do with being against those people. I 
am against rewarding illegal behavior.
  I have talked about some of the things that will overwhelm the 
system, the processing of amnesty, the processing of this ID card which 
we can do, and I agree we can do, but the processing in the present 
system will overwhelm it. The process of the whole guest worker program 
and what it takes to get the people properly documented so they can do 
this is going to require a tremendous amount of additional work on 
those who are in charge of that system. And are we providing for them? 
Are we going to be ready for that? Can we deal with that? We are not 
ready for that. We have got to address that more in detail.
  The background checks, I can't tell you how far behind that is going 
to get, but it is going to get 10 or 15 years behind. The health checks 
should be and necessarily need to be required.
  Some of the provisions that really have upset people back in Texas 
that I have talked to, and let me say, I have not talked to a single 
person, and I have talked to a bunch of them, that live in Texas that 
aren't completely overwhelmed by the Senate version that has been 
passed and just totally against it. One example is, I understand the 
Senate has a provision for retroactive Social Security payment to 
illegals.
  Now, you tell that to Texas teachers, or for that matter, Federal 
employees, who don't get their Social Security by the nature of their 
retirement, that they are going to reward people who broke our laws on 
multiple occasions by giving them retroactive Social Security. I am 
telling you, I have got some teachers that are fighting mad about that 
issue in Texas. And I think if the Federal employees, which make up the 
vast majority of the people who are in that hole that don't get their 
Social Security, will also be very concerned about the fact that we are 
offering to give people who broke our laws Social Security, when people 
who have abided by the laws, at least in their opinion, feel like they 
have been deprived of money they paid into the Social Security system.
  You know, when you come in here legally, there are some things you 
have to do. My wife is a legal immigrant to the United States and now 
an American citizen, so no one should ever accuse me of being anti 
immigrant. I married one. I have four children with one, four living 
children with my beautiful wife.
  My district director is married to a Canadian. They have two 
children. It took us 18 months to get his wife from Canada to Texas, 
doing it legally. Now, she could have hopped in her car, with that 
blonde haired, blue eyed, almost golf pro from Canada, she was probably 
one of the top amateur golfers in the country, a scholarship athlete at 
a university in the United States and went back home and had her 
children, and now we had to get them out of Canada to be with her 
husband in Texas. It took us 18 months. And she cannot work at all by 
agreement for a year. And then she can apply to possibly go to work, 
but maybe they won't let her work for the next year. She has to 
register and reapply every year annually to maintain her status in the 
United States. This is a person whose background check showed she never 
even had a parking ticket in her life, much less anything. But the 
background check took forever.
  A person who flew from Northern Saskatchewan to Montreal to have her 
interview with the Immigration Department and flew back. She went 
through all the hoops to come in here. She is denied employment for a 
year. She has to register every year. She is required to have a sponsor 
who will stand up and say they will be responsible for the expenses 
that she might incur so that she will not be put on the welfare system 
of our country.
  And yet, people who come in here illegally are taking advantage of 
every program that is out there, including an overwhelming of our 
hospital system. You know, we all would like to have free medical care 
in this country, but there are some who have it, and many of those 
people are not citizens of this country. And there is a something out 
of whack on that, Mr. Speaker.
  And let me say, I want to preface all this by saying, I am 
compassionate for the people that are here and I care about them. And I 
think this system so overwhelms our system, what the Senate is 
proposing, that it is going to overwhelm these shy people. And let me 
tell you, most of them are very shy and staying in the shadows because 
they know they are here illegally. And if anything is too much for 
them, I do not expect them to participate.
  I will also tell you, Mr. Speaker, having talked to many illegal 
immigrants about where they come from, what they are here for, there 
are many of these people that didn't come here for citizenship and 
don't care to get it. So citizenship is not going to be a plum that 
brings them out of the shadows.
  The fact that the Senate has put a provision in on prevailing wage 
shows that they really don't understand why people have hired these 
folks from Mexico and from Honduras and Guatemala and Nicaragua and all 
points

[[Page 10593]]

south. If they needed to hire somebody for prevailing wage to pick 
fruits in the central valley of California, if they were going to pay, 
if the pickers intended to pay prevailing wage, which by every 
interpretation of the 22 Federal contracts that I have worked on as a 
lawyer in my lifetime, and at least the five cases that I can recall 
that were before my court, prevailing wage, no matter whether you 
mention Davis Bacon or not, is presumed to fall under the provisions of 
Davis Bacon and the rulings made by the Labor Department as to which 
each region has as prevailing wage.
  And believe me, Mr. Speaker, minimum wage is not there. I can tell 
you that anywhere in the valley, Rio Grande Valley you can pour a slab 
for minimum wage. But if you are under a Federal contract, you will pay 
at least three times what you can pour any slab for in the valley, 
because the Davis-Bacon Act and the prevailing wage provision requires 
that kind of expense.
  So, by putting that in there, right there, there are going to be a 
lot of people that say I don't want any part of that because I am going 
to lose my job if my employer is required to pay that kind of wage to 
me. So I will stay right here. And if they do try to get that wage, I 
think, unfortunately, there are people, even with employer sanctions, 
that are still going to be looking for that next wave of illegal 
immigrants to come across our southern border.
  So, with all these problems, I would like to propose to this House 
that we consider doing this right. All these issues as to the people 
that are already here illegally, and the people that are coming across 
every night, and the people who would be willing to come over here as 
part of a work program, all of these issues need to be, we need to step 
back and look at all the holes that is in what we are proposing today 
and try to figure out how we can put together a system that will really 
work to solve these problems.
  So I propose that the House bill and those Senate provisions which 
enhance border security that are in the Senate provision, Senate bill, 
should be what we pass out of conference to this floor to be voted into 
law today. And I would also propose, Mr. Speaker, that in that bill, we 
give a pledge, you can call it a contract with the immigration 
community, that we will expedite a study and solution that works, that 
doesn't overwhelm, that has the resources to make this whole system 
work over the next 12 to 18 months as a dedication of this House to fix 
this problem correctly, not 2 weeks debate in the Senate, and put 
patches on a leaking tire.
  Mr. Speaker, if we will calm down, defend our borders and address 
each of these issues in an appropriate order to come up with sanctions 
for employers and means to identify these people that have a valid 
reason to working and a valid card, some kind of biometric thing, if we 
will create those things, and as we do it, say, and how is this system 
going to work and maybe we have to do something else to make that 
system work. Does it take an FBI agent to do every background check? I 
think that is a question that needs to be addressed.
  I think there are a lot of questions that are coming up in what I 
would consider a rushed decision to judgment on immigration, and we are 
still leaving the base of what we call legal immigration totally and 
completely unworkable. And many of our work visa programs that we have 
in this country that want to bring this some of the technical workers 
that we really need here are overwhelmed also to the point where they 
become unmanageable for the people involved.
  With this, I propose, Mr. Speaker, that we think hard about giving a 
pledge to the American people and to the immigrant community that we 
will work out a workable system fair to Americans and fair to those 
people that are here. I don't know what it will be. I have ideas. There 
are many great men and women in this House and in the Senate who have 
good ideas too. And we can study those ideas, bring in experts, get the 
real numbers, know what the real problems and the real solutions to 
these problems, slow down and do it right because, Mr. Speaker, if we 
don't do it right, nothing will change in the immigration policy of 
this country, and nothing will change on our borders. And that is a 
fear that I, quite frankly, do not think the American people are 
willing to live with.
  And finally, Mr. Speaker, with all those thoughts about immigration, 
you and I know, as I know you well, you are very concerned about the 
security, the homeland security of this country. And Mr. Speaker, all 
of that has to be planned in here so we know who is coming and who is 
not and who we didn't catch and how to hunt them down so the terrorists 
and the people who would do us harm or just the common criminals who 
come here to steal, rob, rape, pillage and whatever they plan to do, we 
know them, we can find them, we can incarcerate them, we can give them 
a fair trial like we give everybody that is inside the continental 
United States or subject to our jurisdiction and deal with them 
properly. But the unknown is intolerable.
  So Mr. Speaker, I realize the hour is late, and the reason I am here 
late is because I think this message is so very important to the 
American people. Let's pass border security and let's make a proper 
effort to come up with a solution to these problems, not a patch.
  And with that Mr. Speaker, thank you for being here with me tonight 
and thank you for the late hour.

                          ____________________