[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 28040-28047]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    DREAM ACT IS AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mitchell). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, I very much appreciate the 
privilege to address you here on the floor of the United States House 
of Representatives.
  Having sat here and listened to the discussion that was presented by 
our gentlemen from the Carolinas and talking about the drought in the 
Southeast, I am quite interested in the map that they have laid out for 
us to see.
  Coming from an agriculture State and district myself, I will say I 
have significant empathy for the drought plight in that part of the 
country. That huge area of bright red tells me how tough it must be 
down there where it hasn't rained very much in a long time and gives me 
a sense before how long it will be before you can see green again in 
your part of the country, Mr. Etheridge. We have lived through that in 
past years, and I can tell you, it goes deeper than just looking at a 
picture. It goes to the very lives of the people you represent.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I remember when we went out to South Dakota and through Iowa and how 
tough it was when it was dry. I will always remember with my good 
friend, Jerry Moran, we flew into Kansas last year to do a hearing on 
the ag bill. Lo and behold, when we flew in, it was raining like the 
dickens. I said, ``Jerry, you have been talking about how dry it has 
been for so long.''
  He said, ``Yes, and all of a sudden we got plenty of water.'' 
Hopefully we will get back there, but you do understand. Thank you for 
your help. I think this is an issue where we have to pull together and 
help. I thank you for your leadership and help on the Agriculture 
Committee, too. I appreciate that.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And I thank you. We will work together on this 
issue. There is nothing your producers can do when it doesn't rain. 
Perhaps we can have a hearing down there and it will bring rain like it 
did in Kansas.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. That would be great. Thank you.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to express those sentiments, 
but I come to the floor tonight to discuss a different subject matter.

                              {time}  2045

  The subject that I've chosen to discuss tonight is the Dream Act, and 
I do so because a vote on cloture is scheduled on the floor of the 
United States Senate tomorrow sometime, I believe, in the afternoon.
  The DREAM Act, Mr. Speaker, you will remember is an act that's been 
pushed for several years here in the United States Congress and also 
pushed at the State level. What it is about, it is a bill with a 
wonderful name, and once you read through it and think about the 
ramifications, it's not such a wonderful bill. It has actually meant 
the demise of a number of public figures. People who have served in 
this Congress, people that have served in the State legislatures and 
people who have aspired to serve in this Congress have found themselves 
enamored by the wonderful name, the DREAM Act, but also trapped up in 
and captured in the pitfalls of the reality of what's behind this DREAM 
Act.
  So, Mr. Speaker, if you will permit, I will describe what the DREAM 
Act does, and that is, it provides, let me say it this way, an 
opportunity for in-state tuition discounts to go to people who are 
otherwise unlawfully present in the United States, usually younger 
people that have graduated from high school. It gives them in-state 
tuition discounts, or allows the States to do so, and then gives them a 
conditional legal status in the United States provided they enter into 
college or enter into the uniform services, not always our military, 
but some type of uniform services.
  This sounds good over the top of things, but it works out to be this: 
it defies a current Federal law. In fact, it has to amend a current 
Federal law, a law that's been defied by at least 10 States, and it's a 
law that was in the 1996 Immigration Reform Act, sponsored by now-
ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas.
  This legislation in 1996, current Federal law, Mr. Speaker, prohibits 
a State and institutions of higher learning from granting residency in-
state tuition discounts, breaks on the costs of the education, to 
students who are unlawfully present in the United States, that's a nice 
word for illegal aliens, Mr. Speaker, unless those universities and 
those States that set that policy grant that same tuition discount to 
all students who are lawfully present in the United States wheresoever 
they might reside.
  So let me just draw an example, being from Iowa. Let's just say, for 
example, that there is a student that grows up on the east side of the 
Mississippi River and a resident of Illinois who wants to go to college 
at Iowa State University. And if Iowa had the DREAM Act as a policy, 
and they defeated it in the State legislature a couple or 3 years ago, 
actually let it die in committee as I recall. But if that student who 
grows up and goes to a high school in Illinois, a resident of Illinois, 
chooses to go to college at Iowa State, they will pay an out-of-state, 
nonresident tuition of about $16,000 a year; and by the way, a resident 
of Iowa will pay about $6,000 a year. So not quite three times as high 
if you're a nonresident student.
  And by anecdote, I can tell you that in California the numbers are 
comparatively about $3,000 a year to go to school at a California 
institution if you're a resident, and I believe it's about $23,000 a 
year if you're a nonresident. You pay that kind of premium if you come 
from out of state to go to school in-state. Each State sets their own 
policies. These numbers aren't hard; but, conceptually, they're 
accurate numbers, Mr. Speaker.
  So the out-of-state student, the nonresident student, pays a premium 
to go to college at an institution in a State

[[Page 28041]]

that they're not a resident of. That's been a longstanding practice so 
that the State can encourage, foster, and subsidize the education of 
their residents in the hopes that they have highly educated students 
that will stay at home and grow the economy of the State that pays the 
taxes to support those institutions of higher learning.
  But that's a little too convoluted, Mr. Speaker. I'll just say that 
States want to help their own residents. So they've set these policies, 
and that's why it costs more money to be an out-of-state student going 
to school in another State than it does to go to school in your own 
State, a longstanding practice.
  The DREAM Act turns that all on its head, and for illegal alien 
students who have come into the United States in violation of the law, 
whom if ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were to be required 
to deliver this in-state tuition discount, let's call it a voucher, 
it's not, it's a discount, but if they had to deliver it in the form of 
check or a voucher and if ICE had to deliver that, Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement, they would be compelled to pick up that 
prospective student and send them back to the country from which they 
came so that they could be legally residing in their home country.
  That's the law, Mr. Speaker, and the Dream Act turns this on its 
head. It grants people who are here illegally, all the way up to age 
30, if they will enter into a school and start their studies on a 2-
year study program or if they will go into the uniform services, not 
necessarily our armed services, then they get conditional residency or 
conditional legal status in the United States. And then, if they keep 
their nose clean, they get a green card which is lawful, permanent 
residence, and it's about 5 years to citizenship. And the formerly 
illegal immigrants have access then to all the chain migration tools 
that anyone else has who comes here legally for those who have 
respected our laws.
  Now, that means they can bring in their siblings. It means they can 
bring in their children. It means they can bring in their parents, and 
that whole chain migration can start over and over again.
  We had a chart that was put together on the chain migration that 
comes with the policy that's there that's called family reunification, 
and it looks like about one legal immigrant can bring in about 277 
family members by the time you go out through the chain of the family 
tree. That would also be true for an illegal immigrant who would be 
granted amnesty under the DREAM Act.
  So in-state tuition discounts, amnesty for illegal aliens, put this 
bill, this bill that if the cloture as has been filed and if it 
successfully passes tomorrow, then the Senate will go to a vote on the 
DREAM Act. If they do that and the House should take up the same bill 
and then the President should sign it, you will have illegal aliens who 
will be sitting in desks in the institutions of higher learning within 
our States studying, going to college at the expense of the taxpayers 
and at the expense of the Federal taxpayers because we do appropriate 
funds that go into these institutions.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, there are only so many desks in a 
classroom. There are only so many slots in our institutions of higher 
learning, and that's why we have admissions requirements. That's why 
you apply and you put in your grades and all of the other 
qualifications that are there, and very tough decisions are sometimes 
made by these universities to allow people to come in and study there 
or to cut them out.
  You will remember some high-profile cases. For example, the 
affirmative action cases at the University of Michigan and at the 
University of Michigan Law School. There are only so many desks that 
are available. Imagine granting an in-state tuition discount to someone 
who came across the border and into the United States illegally and 
someone who is getting a $6,000 education, when the student sitting in 
the desk right next to them is a United States citizen, naturalized or 
born in the United States, whose mother or father has served perhaps in 
Iraq or Afghanistan, who has perhaps been killed over there to defend 
our freedom, and that poor student without a father or a mother has 
given their life for our freedom is paying out-of-state tuition prices 
to go to school at their preferred institution, sitting in a desk next 
to someone who is unlawfully present in the United States and would be 
deported if it weren't for this DREAM Act that grants them amnesty.
  Now, that sets up a friction in this society, Mr. Speaker, that's 
illogical. It's irrational. It rewards the wrong thing, and in the end, 
it would not be tolerated by the public if they begin to understand 
what this really means.
  The Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff's DHS, under 
this DREAM Act would not be able to go in and use any of the records; 
and so if they want to protect this society, if they want to go in and 
apply the law, they can't even look at the records that are there that 
are part of the data that's compiled to grant this supercitizenship to 
people who are eligible for deportation. And I say supercitizenship, 
Mr. Speaker, because this supercitizenship path, by the way, grants 
more rights, special rights to illegal aliens to go to school in our 
institutions of higher learning at a tuition discount.
  For example, if you have a legal alien, someone who has applied for a 
student visa or has lawful, permanent status, lawful permanent 
residency here in the United States, a green card, and they're going to 
school at an out-of-state institution, they have to pay the out-of-
state tuition rate. If someone comes in from Korea or Guatemala or 
let's say Russia, Poland, comes into the United States legally, student 
visa or under a green card, maybe even in a path to citizenship, and 
they have a residency in New Jersey, they can't go to school in New 
York with an in-state tuition discount, and they sure in the world 
can't go to school in California for $3,000 because they'll be 
considered an out-of-state resident and they will be.
  That's the way it is for American citizens, both naturally born and 
naturalized. That's the way it is for people who have followed and 
respected and honored our immigration laws, whether they're on a 
student visa or whether they're here on lawful permanent residency, a 
green card. They all have to follow the laws of this country, and they 
all have to pay the going rate that reflects their residency of their 
State.
  And consider, Mr. Speaker, if you will, consider the children of 
military families, whether or not they've lost a parent in this global 
war on terror. Those children move around a lot, and some of them don't 
qualify necessarily for the in-state tuition discount maybe anywhere, 
and they would be paying a premium as a son or a daughter of our 
military veterans, sitting next to a desk of someone who before this 
act would be passed today will be unlawfully present in the United 
States, subject to deportation who would end up getting a discount for 
the tuition.
  This is the bill, Mr. Speaker, that the Senate proposes to bring up 
tomorrow with their cloture vote; and if they vote cloture, and we'll 
have this debate on the floor of the United States Senate, and you're 
going to be able to, Mr. Speaker, look across over to the Senate and be 
able to evaluate the set of values that the United States Senate brings 
to the table and this set of values that produces supercitizenship, 
superaccess to citizenship for illegals.
  I recall some of the debates that we've had here on the floor of this 
House. Discussions and speeches, I should say, rather than debates; and 
I recall how easy it is for some of the Members to look at this and 
conclude, well, this is the DREAM Act, and why would we want to punish 
kids who are simply here unlawfully? Can't we give them an education, 
and isn't that a better thing? Yes, if your view is that simplistic, 
Mr. Speaker, if that's all the view is, isn't it better for the kids 
that would be beneficiaries of this? The answer is yes.
  But we could grant in-state tuition discount to every kid in this 
country, and in my State it would cost several hundred million dollars. 
The State legislature is not willing to do that. The

[[Page 28042]]

current law is, if you grant that in-state tuition discount to students 
who are illegal, then you grant that same discount to everyone in the 
United States, wherever their residency might be. And so all of those 
students that are paying out-of-state tuition, that $16,000 in Iowa, 
would end up getting the $6,000 annual education as opposed to the 
$16,000 education. A $10,000 premium that's there that's levied against 
all of those students that come from other places around the country 
and the world would all be level down to $6,000.
  They can do that today if they choose, Mr. Speaker; but they will not 
do that because the boards of regents and the State legislatures across 
this land don't want to take the financial hit. They don't want to 
level the premium. They don't want to give this kind of benefit to all 
American citizens. They don't want to give this kind of benefit to the 
sons and daughters of our military. They don't want to give this 
benefit to those who are legally emigrating here into the United 
States. And they don't want to give this benefit to those who are on a 
path to citizenship here in the United States provided they're not 
residents of the institution in question.
  No, sir, Mr. Speaker. This is all about special right, special 
treatment for people, for students that are unlawfully here; and the 
numbers break out to be something like this. A million, more, we don't 
know. There's not a cap on it, but the best estimates say more than a 
million; and we know that when you grant benefits, it attracts more 
people. And there will be people that will come into the United States 
illegally and present themselves to go to college at a tuition 
discount, and they will say, oh, yes, I've been here that 5 years or so 
that the Senate bill requires that I'm here; and by the way, I have 
these falsified utility bills and rent canceled checks and things of 
that nature that say that I've been here so I meet the minimum 
standards. Give me that tuition discount, too.
  That's the view and the strategy, the special extra citizenship 
rights that come with it for more than a million people. And we know 
also, Mr. Speaker, that whenever you open the door up and you count the 
numbers, the numbers get greater, not smaller. Ronald Reagan said, what 
you tax you get less of; what you subsidize you get more of.
  And we are here talking about opening the door to subsidizing 
significantly a two-thirds discount, a 66 or 67 percent discount, on 
college tuition for people who are eligible for deportation.

                              {time}  2100

  I think it's breathtaking how far they are seeking to reach over in 
the United States Senate. I think the people understand this. I think 
they understand that this is a super amnesty plan. Whatever your heart 
says, can we just please engage our brains for a little bit and think 
about what this means; what it means if we give in-State tuition 
discounts to people who are unlawfully present in the United States, 
those who, as I said earlier, if ICE, Immigrations and Customs 
Enforcement, had to deliver the paperwork that said here is your 
tuition discount, they would be compelled to pick these students up and 
send them home again. Some of these students up to the age of 30 are 
taking advantage of the soft heart of Americans.
  So extend this on out, what's the motive? Some is driven by the 
churches, I understand. I appreciate the ministry that they provide. 
You know, I am a strong proponent and adherent to the values that come 
from our churches and the good movements in America that come from the 
pulpit. But if the churches from America believe that we should be 
providing in-State tuition discounts for those people that the law says 
need to be sent home, can you please pass the collection plate. Don't 
come here to Congress and ask that we squeeze that out of the sweat of 
the taxpayers, because they are the ones in the end that pay the price, 
and the American citizens that won't have a desk in a classroom, 
because that desk is already filled by somebody who gets a cheaper rate 
than they can get.
  There is only so much room. There are only so many benefits. We can 
help in the foreign countries better than we can open our doors here 
for an unlimited amount of people coming in. When we undermine the 
integrity of our immigrations system, when we do so, we take away the 
options that are constitutionally bestowed upon this Congress. The 
Constitution directs us to set the immigration policy here.
  I recognize that we have a legal and appropriate right to deal with 
acts like the DREAM Act. We ought to shoot it down. We ought to vote it 
down. We should defeat it. We should not let it slide its insidious 
policy across the halls here between the Senate and the House of 
Representatives. It should not be passed.
  In fact, the Senate has three times here in the 110th Congress, three 
times just this year, voted to defeat the DREAM Act because they 
understood the political repercussions from the American people who 
understood what amnesty is. This bill grants amnesty. This bill says, 
it says that if you are here unlawfully, if you are subject to 
deportation, but if you apply for this DREAM Act and apply to go to 
school, under a super discount, we will give you conditional lawful 
status here in the United States. That's amnesty. It's also a path to 
citizenship, and it opens the door for family reunification, the chain 
migration that we talk about. It does all of those things. That's 
amnesty.
  Amnesty, to define it for the benefit of those who have heard a lot 
of different definitions, the consistent definition of amnesty that 
addresses this is the definition that we have used in the Judiciary 
Committee over and over again. In our debates as we mark up immigration 
bills, in our hearings as we cross-examine the witnesses on 
immigration, to grant amnesty is to pardon immigration lawbreakers and 
reward them with the objective of their crimes, to pardon immigration 
lawbreakers and reward them with the objectives of their crimes. That's 
amnesty. That's what the DREAM Act does. That's what's moving, that's 
what's cooking, that's what is shaking over in the Senate.
  By the way, the beneficiaries of this act don't have to finish their 
college education. All they have to do is engage in it for a couple of 
years. That starts the ball rolling. As I said earlier, they don't have 
to serve in the military; they just have to serve in the uniformed 
services. There are many holes in this act.
  Let me take this, if I can, back to another subject matter that's 
associated with this, and that's the subject matter that also threatens 
to find its way into legislation that we expect will be moving in the 
United States Senate, and that's AgJOBS. AgJOBS is a bill that grants 
amnesty to people that are unlawfully here that are working in the 
agriculture industry, people that are picking lettuce, as Senator 
McCain has so well illustrated. And the AgJOBS bill says if you have 
been here for 5 years and you apply under this AgJOBS, we will grant 
you a lawful status here in the United States. That also is amnesty.
  The AgJOBS bill that looks like it's most likely to emerge in the 
United States Senate gives a path to citizenship, provides immediate 
lawful presence here in the United States, a path to citizenship, a 
reward to immigration lawbreakers, a pardon to immigration lawbreakers 
and the reward of the objective of their crime, which is, we presume, 
in most cases their objective was to get jobs here in the United 
States.
  I would point out that the low-skilled jobs here in the United States 
have the highest level of unemployment. It's not the other way around. 
There is no statistical data that supports that this country is starved 
for low-skilled workers.
  When we look at the low-skilled workers, the unemployment rates go 
over 10 percent, well over 10 percent. American citizens are being 
bumped from jobs, those jobs. Low-skilled, undereducated American 
citizens who were born here and naturalized here are being bumped from 
those jobs by illegal aliens who are taking those jobs cheaper.
  Of course they can. In fact, they have to, because some of the job 
market

[[Page 28043]]

they can't compete in, in the legitimate part of the job market. So 
they all come in and work cheaper, but on the other hand they don't 
have the risk of liabilities that go along with steady employment like 
a citizen does with a regular address who has the obligations to make 
their contributions to the Federal Government, to the State government 
and to the local government.
  It's not to say that many of the illegals don't pay taxes, but here 
is where it comes to me this way. Someone who presents a Social 
Security number, that's often someone else's, and sometimes it's just a 
made-up number. They then have been consistently hired to go to work 
through a number of different professions; most, I will say, many of 
the professions. They will often record the maximum number of 
dependents with the H.R. team that's there for the company so that they 
get the highest amount of take-home pay and the least amount taken out 
for their Federal and their State income tax in the States that have 
income tax, and that's almost all.
  If you have someone come in, and let's just say they are making $10 
an hour, and let's say it's 40 hours a week, and it's simple math, and 
I am just doing it as I stand here, so that's $400 a week. The 
withholding that would be there for the State taxes at $400 and for the 
Federal tax at $400 a week, if you would claim a number of dependents, 
let's just say six or seven or eight, you are already in the category 
at that kind of wage where you wouldn't have any withholding for 
Federal income tax, you wouldn't have any withholding for State income 
tax. You would still have to pay the payroll tax, Social Security, 
Medicare, Medicaid.
  That gets sacrificed to the no-match Social Security file, of which 
there are hundreds of thousands of no-match Social Security numbers on 
record. The deposits that go in on those keep growing in the Social 
Security trust fund. Now, that's a whole different speech, but the 
sacrifice is made on the part of those illegals who are working on an 
assumed Social Security number, not their own, obviously. They 
sacrifice the payroll taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid 
because it's cheaper to do that and it's possible to do that.
  Their take-home pay is their gross earnings minus the payroll tax, 
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, 15 percent of that, half of 
that, and the employer matches the other half, but no withholding for 
Federal and for State.
  I get from the parking lot of some the companies that I represent the 
check stubs from these workers. Americans will pick them up off the 
parking lot where they get torn off and left in the wind to blow. I 
have manila envelopes full of these that have been kind of crinkled up, 
walked on, a little muddy, a little dusty. They are like an accordion 
in a manilla envelope.
  I take those out and look through them. Check stub after check stub, 
not a dollar withheld for Federal income tax, not a dollar withheld for 
State income tax. Of course, the payroll tax has been paid. At least 
the names are not on those check stubs, and I don't recall if there are 
Social Security numbers on them. That's the kind of thing that's going 
on all over the country.
  The taxes that are paid from sales tax, the contributions that go to 
property tax, yes, there is a tax contribution, but there is a tax 
evasion that's there, and it's obvious. To turn in no-match Social 
Security numbers and go to work under those standards is a standard 
practice. The AgJOBS component of this is amnesty. It does grant a 
pardon to immigration lawbreakers, and it does reward them with the 
objective of their crime, and it rewards an industry that's grown more 
and more dependent upon illegal labor.
  You know, I understand that when you have got a crop in the field, 
you need to get that crop out. When you plan for this, you have to also 
plan for the labor. I also recognize that there has been a growth in 
the labor-intensive agriculture in this country, because there has been 
an easy and a steady and a ready supply of cheap, illegal labor to come 
in and do that work in the fields. So it's inhibited us from developing 
the machinery that we might otherwise develop to more mechanically 
plant the crop and harvest the crop and maintain that crop during the 
growing season and to transport it.
  If the labor is cheap, you are not going to develop those things, you 
are not going to do the bioengineering that has been done with the 
tomato plant that makes it mechanically harvestable. I can make a more 
clear example that would be something like this.
  I have a constituent, whom I have great respect for, that is a very 
modern agriculture producer. I believe he has at least a 16-row planter 
that he puts the crop in with in my part of the country. I also 
understand that he has bought land in Brazil where they raise cotton 
and soybeans. When I ask what kinds of chemicals he uses to control the 
weeds in the cotton, he says, ``I don't use any.'' I said, ``Well, how 
can you raise cotton without herbicide?''
  Well, he says, ``I have 96 people, each with a hoe, that go down 
through the rows of cotton that hoe that cotton. When they get down to 
the other end, they turn around and they come back to the field in a 
different row.'' Ninety-six people paid $3 a day cultivate that cotton 
with a hoe.
  Now, the only thing that has changed in that technique since the dawn 
of agricultural time was we have a metal hoe instead of perhaps a bone 
or a wooden hoe. That technology that has been there has been there for 
hundreds and hundreds of years. It hasn't moved an inch.
  Same kind of thing down through those rows of cotton, chopping cotton 
with a hoe. That's what's going on from the same operation where you 
have a man who is a very modern person with the most modern equipment 
in the upper Midwest who markets his grain and does his purchases, 
very, very astute, on the Internet, professional in his field, very 
well respected, active in the professions that had to do with the ag 
industry. But when the economics dictate that you can hire 96 people 
with a hoe for $3 to $4 a day and it's cheaper than putting a machine 
out in the field where you put a man on the machine and you buy the 
fuel and provide the repairs and you have to buy some spray in order to 
kill the weeds in that cotton, when the math works out that stoop labor 
is cheaper than mechanized labor, that tells you something about what 
happens when labor is cheap. It slows the growth of our society. It 
slows the development of our society. It inhibits the development of 
our technology and puts us in a situation where we actually de-adopt 
the technology. You park the 16-row planter, that's only figuratively 
speaking, and you put the people in the field with the hoe. That's 
literally happening. It's not just happening there; it's happening on 
thousands and thousands of farms in the areas in the world where labor 
is cheap.
  Our idea here in the United States is we don't have enough cheap 
labor. I would look back through history and challenge anywhere over 
here on the other side of the aisle to rise and ask if I will yield, I 
would be happy to yield, if you can give me an example, if you can give 
me a single example of a society, a culture or a nation that has failed 
or collapsed due to a lack of cheap labor. I would submit it's the 
other way around. Societies have been undermined from within because 
they didn't have enough higher education or technological background to 
keep up the paces or keep up with the times.
  If you look at the States that are highly educated and highly 
skilled. They have the highest income, the highest average income. They 
have the highest household income. They are the most prosperous people. 
And this Nation should be about raising the average annual productivity 
of its people.
  So one might submit, what are we going to do for the labor, how are 
we going to harvest, how are we going to harvest that lettuce if we 
don't have enough people who are willing to go down and pick that 
lettuce? How are we going to do the celery? How are we doing to go into 
the peppers, the strawberries, the tomatoes? We have that a little more 
mechanized now. How do we do all of that?
  If everyone woke up tomorrow morning in the country where they can 
legally reside, not ICE doing their job,

[[Page 28044]]

but if just miraculously that magic wand, poof, caused that to happen 
where Michael Chertoff didn't have that job any longer of providing the 
transportation to send people to a legal country, if that happened, 
what would then happen to the economy of this Nation?

                              {time}  2115

  And I hear scare stories coming out of the Wall Street Journal, out 
of Wall Street, out of, I don't know how to describe the words here, 
kind of a nouveau aristocracy in America that seems to think somehow 
they have a birthright to cheap labor and a birthright to somebody to 
take care of their lawn and their garden and their mansions, and that 
they will raise their children in a gated community and send them off 
to an Ivy League school, and so they'll never really be burdened by 
this growth of the lower class that they are promoting, and they think 
they have a birthright to that.
  But I would submit this: That's not what America is about, Mr. 
Speaker. The strength of America has been an ever-broadening middle 
class, a middle class that's ever been more and more prosperous. We 
don't want to shrink this middle class. We don't want to suppress their 
growth and their improvement. We want to broaden the middle class and 
we want to lift it up.
  And by the way, we don't want to expand the middle class, Mr. 
Speaker, from the ranks of the upper middle class. We want to expand 
the middle class from the ranks of the lower class. But for the first 
time in the memories of living Americans today, and maybe for the first 
time in the history of this country, we are seeing the lower class 
expand, the middle class shrink and the aspirations of middle-class 
Americans diminish.
  Now, if we look at young people that grow up in Middle America that 
decide a college education is not for me, I just want to get my high 
school degree and go to work at the plant, punch the clock and earn a 
pretty good wage, maybe earn a living wage, and go home and take care 
of my family, my kids, play ball with the kids, cut the grass, go 
fishing, take time off on the weekends and live this life of this 
American Dream, buy a modest house and pay for it, send the kids to 
college if they want to go. Does any child that gets that high school 
degree and doesn't aspire to a higher education have a hope of being 
able to do those things in today's economy, Mr. Speaker? And I'll 
argue, it can be done. It's unlikely that it will happen, because the 
wages of the lower skilled and lower educated have been so suppressed 
by the ranks of illegals and unskilled lower skilled illegals who have 
come into this economy.
  And I'm hearing from the people on Wall Street and in the Wall Street 
Journal that this country can't survive economically if we don't have 
that 12 to 20 million people to do this work that ``Americans'' won't 
do. All work Americans will do, and there's not a job in this country 
you can't find an American doing it. Americans are doing all kinds of 
work in this country.
  But here's the magnitude, and that is, there are 6.9 million working 
illegals, by the statistics that are put out by the people that do this 
analysis. That's 6.9 million out of about 12 million. That's the 
standard numbers we've been working with. I think it's more than 20 
million, but this proportion works out in any case.
  Out of the 6.9 million working illegals, that's part of, that's 4.7 
percent of a work force that is 142 million. So 4.7 percent of 142 
million, and if you do the math I think it comes out to 6.9 million. 
That's how many working illegals we have. Okay. That represents 4.7 
percent of the work force. But they're only doing 2.2 percent of the 
work, Mr. Speaker, because we measure the annual output under the gross 
domestic product of our workers.
  And because those who are here unlawfully working in this economy 
are, on average, lower educated and lower skilled, their production, 
even though they're 4.7 percent of the work force, is only 2.2 percent 
of the work, Mr. Speaker. And so if you have a work force that's doing 
2.2 percent of the work, and let's just say it's a factory that has 
1,000 people in it, everybody working diligently, and that factory does 
all their work in an 8-hour day, and you went to work as the CEO at 
7:30 in the morning, sat down at your desk, and a memo hit your desk 
that said you're going to lose 2.2 percent of your work force today, 
they're not showing up.
  Now, say that's at 7:30, and yet you need to meet your production 
quota by 5:00 that night when everybody clocks out. They clock in at 8. 
They clock out at 5. They need to get 1,000 widgets made that day, and 
you have to figure out how you're going to solve that problem as a CEO 
when 2.2 percent of your work doesn't show up. And I'll submit, here's 
the answer. Any CEO can figure this out easily. They'd sit down and do 
the math and say, well, we've got to get our production up. So people 
aren't going to show up till 8:00, that's all right. When they get here 
at 8:00 we're going to let them know that we're going to cut their 
coffee break in the morning by 5\1/2\ minutes. We're going to cut their 
coffee break in the afternoon by 5\1/2\ minutes. That adds up to 11 
minutes out of the 8-hour day; 11 minutes out of an 8-hour day is 2.2 
percent of the overall day.
  And so the illegal work force in America, if you look at the United 
States as one huge macrocompany, and if that work force just stopped 
producing for that day, you would be losing 2.2 percent of that day's 
production. If we did all of our work in this country in an 8-hour day 
instead of a 24-hour day, that's 11 minutes out of 8 hours. And if it's 
a 24-hour day, you've got about a little over 3 minutes out of each 
shift is all that it amounts to.
  I can't be convinced, Mr. Speaker, that this economy would come to a 
screeching halt if that happened to gradually drift away from us 
because the administration began gradually enforcing the law. I can't 
think that it's a cataclysmic event that would be, that would come 
falling down on this economy. I can't think it would slow us down. I 
believe, Mr. Speaker that we would recover in a heartbeat from that 
kind of a transition.
  And that's presuming, Mr. Speaker, that that 2.2 percent of the work 
force that's being done by illegal labor is all essential work. And if 
we look across at some of that work, some people are taking care of 
lawns. Some garden. Some are cleaning the houses. There's work out 
there that we could find a way to recover from. Like somebody said to 
me, oh you want to enforce a law, but who is going to flip your steak? 
Who's going to cut your grass? Well, Mr. Speaker, I cut my own grass, 
and I flip most of my own steaks, and if I had to flip every one of my 
steaks to preserve the rule of law in America, I'd be very happy to do 
that.
  That's really the essential pillar here that we're talking about with 
the immigration issue in the United States, and that is, what are you 
willing to do to preserve the most essential pillar of American 
exceptionalism, the rule of law? Are you willing to cut your own grass? 
Are you willing to flip your own steaks? Are you willing to shorten 
your coffee break up for a little while, by 5\1/2\ minutes, morning and 
afternoon, or 3 minutes a shift out of a 3-shift day if you're working 
24/7? Are you willing to do those things? Would you notice the 
difference if you didn't? Would the nonessential work in the United 
States shrink if we didn't have economical illegal labor to do that 
work?
  Mr. Speaker, if you bring me 100 people that will work for a dollar 
an hour, I guarantee you I can figure out a way to make a living with 
that. I can find a way to put them to work where they're going to 
return four, five or six or seven or $8 an hour to me. And so the 
cheaper labor gets, the more demand there is. And yet we have people 
that are considered otherwise to be wise, economic gurus who seem to, 
well, I will say just flat advocate that we should set the immigration 
flow into the United States, legalize all of those who would want to 
come here, legalize every willing traveler, Mr. Speaker, as long as 
there's a demand for their labor.
  And I will submit that the more labor there is, the lower the price 
will be. The lower the price there is, the more demand there will be. 
Labor, Mr.

[[Page 28045]]

Speaker, is a commodity like any other commodity in that the value of 
it is determined by supply and demand in the marketplace. Labor is a 
commodity. Corn, beans, gold, oats, crude oil, you name it, Mr. 
Speaker, you name it, they're all commodities. And the value of those 
commodities are determined by supply and demand in the marketplace. 
Corn's up, beans are up. Can't get the cotton out of the field, I heard 
in the previous Special Order. It's not worth bringing it out I guess 
if the price is that low, according to Mr. Spratt. But the value of 
labor will be determined by the supply and demand, what the market will 
bear.
  And so if we flood this economy with low-skilled labor, as we have, 
we will see unemployment rates in the lower-skilled ranks, the lower-
skilled jobs go up, as we have. Unemployment rates of over 10 percent 
in some of the lowest-skilled jobs. Those rates go up. And that 
shouldn't be a surprise to any of us.
  But it might be a surprise to some of the elitists who have a 
different view of this country than I have. I grew up in Middle 
America, small town and rural America, a place where we understand the 
value of hard work, a place where our parents, our grandparents, our 
ancestors, if they were here in this country long enough, goes back 
always to drive a stake out in the ground and homestead the land and 
make your living out of that and start your business and grow your 
community and your family and your churches and work with your 
neighborhoods and make this place a better place than it was when you 
came, and earn that with the sweat of your brow, and work hard, but 
work smart and build for the future generations.
  That's the roots that I represent from the middle part of America. We 
respect hard work. We respect honesty. We respect integrity. We respect 
the values of faith and family. And yet we are sons and daughters of 
immigrants. And, in fact, I remember walking into a community building 
in one of the small towns that I represent, and this is a very German 
community. There were about 400 to 450 people in there for a benefit 
auction for a friend of mine. And I began to ask the question, how many 
people in here grew up in a German-speaking home or else their parents 
did? It was almost everyone in that building, and yet they fly the 
flag, they are some of the most self-sacrificing patriots this country 
has produced. They understand these American values and they understand 
the rule of law. They came here legally. They have great pride that 
they have adapted themselves to the American society and culture and 
prospered and handed to their children and their grandchildren the 
things they dreamed for their children and grandchildren, but in a 
society that was not just intact with the rule of law with respect for 
the rule of law, but one that was actually strengthened by their 
adherence and respect for the rules and for the law.
  And here we are, in my opinion, the central pillar of American 
exceptionalism is the rule of law. If we don't respect the laws of this 
country, then what foundation have we?
  And I will always make the argument that our rights come from God, 
and that they're passed through the hands and the minds of our Founding 
Fathers who, I believe, were guided, they were guided by God to put 
down for us the parameters of this free Nation to be a guiding light 
for the freedom for the world. And who are we to trail in the dust the 
golden hopes of men if we aren't willing to defend this rule of law, 
this rule of law that preserves our property rights, our freedom of 
speech, religion, press, assembly, all of the freedom from double 
jeopardy and the list of all of those rights that were in the Bill of 
Rights. Who are we to trail that all in the dust because what, because 
we have an emotion that overcomes our intellect, because we've severed 
ourselves from the thing that we've inherited from the Greeks, the age 
of reason.
  We've lost our reason and lost our way if we believe that a good name 
for a bad bill supersedes the rule of law. The DREAM Act is a good 
name. I wish I'd thought of that. I'd have stuck it on something too, 
only it would have been a good bill underneath the title. This is not a 
good bill under the DREAM Act. This is a bill that directly undermines 
the rule of law. It rewards law breakers, Mr. Speaker, and when we do 
that, we can't hope to sustain the rule of law in America any longer. 
If we have 12 million, 20 million people who are granted amnesty, maybe 
under the DREAM Act it's only a million for starters. That will grow, 
and the chain migration will grow from that, and your one million could 
conceivably and I don't think literally it could happen but it could 
conceivably go out to more than 200 million.
  That's how the stats map it out. And we know that's pretty unlikely 
that it would go that far. But if it's one million people going to 2 
million or 3 million under the DREAM Act and we grant amnesty there, 
and then we have the AgJOBS component of this that grants amnesty to 
people who are here illegally, working illegally for about 1.5 million 
for starters, and then, we work with this myopic idea that if there's a 
demand, that must indicate how many we need, even though the more cheap 
labor you have, the more demand there will be for more cheap and 
cheaper labor. And it makes a simple economic equation. The unions used 
to understand this, Mr. Speaker. They used to understand that they 
wanted a tight labor supply. And so I'll go back to that.
  But the DREAM Act is a bad bill that grants amnesty for a million or 
more people that would do the chain migration for their families, 
attract more, and more would be signed up.

                              {time}  2130

  By the way, there is no cap on this. There is no deadline. The way 
this bill is written, applications for in-State tuition discounts, 
special super citizenship rights for illegal aliens goes on and on. It 
never ends. It isn't that just the people that are here right now 
today, but it's the people that would forever apply. So the number 
clearly is over a million. And 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, we know 
how these things go. It always gets out of hand. It's 1\1/2\ million 
under AgJOBS, those who have been working illegally in our fields. But 
that 1\1/2\ million is for starters and it goes on and on. And when we 
get to the full amnesty package that the Senate three times has voted 
down now and now wants to give us the components of their amnesty plan, 
their comprehensive amnesty bill, one bitter pill at a time, things 
that have bad bills with good names, slip them to us one at a time, put 
them in a package into the Senate and send them over there in a must-
pass bill. Plan that strategy, and as this amnesty number grows from a 
million under the DREAM Act, 1\1/2\ million under the AgJOBS piece to 
the next component and the next component and the next component of 
amnesty, and we end up granting, as the Senate advocated, a 
comprehensive amnesty plan to not 6.9 million or 12 million, but 
everyone who is here illegally right now. That number some say is 12 
million. I think it is more than 20 million. We grant amnesty to them, 
and they will do as those recipients of the 1986 amnesty bill did. They 
will be the strongest advocates for another amnesty plan.
  And if you will notice, no one here in the House of Representatives, 
Mr. Speaker, and no one over across the Rotunda to the United States 
Senate has said, well, this comprehensive amnesty plan is an amnesty to 
end all amnesties. They haven't said that. First, they are still in 
denial about it being amnesty, and yet not one of them will define 
amnesty unless they have found a way to define it around where their 
bill is exempted, but it isn't an objective definition. They won't 
stand up and tell you to grant amnesty is to pardon immigration 
lawbreakers and reward them with the objective of their crimes. But 
those 12 or 20 million would be advocating the same way that the 1 
million who were to be the recipients of the amnesty to end all 
amnesties in 1986 that turned out to be more like 3 million who were 
the recipients of the 1986 amnesty. They were advocates of more 
amnesty. They say, well, that's been good for me and it's been good for 
my family, so we need more of

[[Page 28046]]

that. And all of them who advocate for more amnesty are undermining the 
rule of law.
  And they are a smaller number by comparison. It started out by being 
1 million. It turned out to be 3 million or more. The 2 million 
difference was mostly fraud, counterfeit documents, people that came in 
here and took advantage of the sympathetic nature of the American 
people. And so with 3 million advocates for amnesty, 2 million of them 
beneficiaries of fraud, and 1 million were actually the target of the 
1986 amnesty bill that Ronald Reagan at least had enough integrity to 
declare it to be the amnesty bill to end all amnesties, they have been 
advocates for more amnesty.
  Imagine what 20 million beneficiaries of an amnesty would be. A mass 
lobbying group for family reunification, chain migration. Bring in your 
unlimited number of family members directly in here under that path and 
then have them all. Not just those who received amnesty but those who 
were beneficiaries of the chain migration from those who received 
amnesty. They turn into the tens of millions and perhaps more, maybe 
more than 100 million and on up who have little respect for the rule of 
law, who have been rewarded for breaking the law, who have now come to 
believe that if a law is inconvenient and enough other people don't 
respect and honor that law, eventually Congress will capitulate and 
change the law to accommodate your behavior.
  That is no kind of a Nation to have; not when you have a Nation like 
this Nation, the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world. We are 
beneficiaries of the sacrifice and the vision of our Founding Fathers, 
and we are charged with defending those values and handing this country 
over to the next generation in better condition than when we found it. 
Not worse. Not digressing into anarchy where the law is disrespected 
and where it has no value and no teeth. Not turning us into a class 
envy society. Not turning us into a society where we are pitted against 
each other, a society of victimology. Not that. Not a society where we 
point our finger at people and call them names rather than make an 
empirical argument. We need to be rational human beings. We're the 
beneficiaries of the Age of Reason in Greece where they actually built 
a culture around the idea that they could think rationally and connect 
their thoughts in a rational fashion and defend the conclusions that 
they had drawn by the sequence of the deductive reasoning that got them 
there. That is a foundation for our science, the theorem, the 
hypotheses, a number of other approaches to Western thought that was 
founded in the Greek society 2 and 3,000 years ago that found its way 
across through Europe and had a pretty good stay in France during the 
Age of Enlightenment. And as the Western civilization, the core of it, 
the dynamic moving force rolled out from France in the Age of 
Enlightenment over into the United States and arrived here at a time 
when we had a continent that was just begging to be settled, full of 
natural resources, and a free enterprise economy with property rights 
and low and sometimes no taxation and low and often no regulation, and 
we had a people that set about the manifest destiny to settle this 
continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean and did so in record 
time, in an historical blink of an eye. We were able to do many of 
those things because we had also learned the talents and the skills and 
had built within our culture that ability to deductively reason.
  And today we have people who emote, people who feel. We have college 
professors who teach their students never say anything except ``I 
feel'' or you can say ``I believe,'' but if you say ``I think this,'' 
your thoughts can be challenged, but your feelings cannot. So I feel, 
and then someone will tell you I feel we should pass the DREAM Act. I 
feel we should pass AgJOBS because I feel for the beneficiaries of this 
program. And, by the way, I feel that we need more cheap labor in this 
country, and I feel that food would be more expensive, and I feel that 
there is work Americans won't do, and I feel we ought to bring people 
in here or those who came here in here and legalize them because they 
will do the work that Americans won't do. So in the end, even though 
there isn't any data out here that supports my irrational feelings, I 
just feel this, and therefore you ought to follow my feelings.
  How can a Nation, Mr. Speaker, how can a Nation meet the challenges 
of this global, modern 21st Century if we are going to be guided by 
these feelings that trump rational thought and empirical data?
  I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that one of the foundations, one of the 
pillars of American exceptionalism, the central pillar is the rule of 
law, but one of the pillars is this culture, this unique American 
culture was the recipient of the work of the Age of Reason from the 
Greeks and a recipient of the enlightenment from Western Europe and 
primarily from France that came here at the dawn of the Industrial 
Revolution with all the natural resources. And we grew this Nation, 
yes, on a Christian-Judeo foundation, a work ethic, called a Protestant 
work ethic until they found out that Catholics did pretty well with 
that work ethic too. We understand some of the things that made this a 
great Nation. But letting our feelings rule our thoughts is not one of 
those pillars of American exceptionalism. That is an example of 
American intellectual weakness, that we can't confront these issues 
with our minds, with our reason, with our data, because with that data 
we can see where this can take us.
  The DREAM Act, the act that grants in-State tuition discount to 
people who are eligible for deportation. Now, I just cannot rationally 
get to a conclusion that that is the best way that we can spend 
taxpayers' money or send a message to the broader society. I believe we 
need to adhere to the rule of law. I believe we need to stand on the 
rule of law, and we need to enforce the rule of law. And it needs to be 
respected by the States, the States like California and Kansas and 
about eight others who have decided to defy the Federal law and grant 
in-State tuition discounts to illegals within their State institutions 
but charge out-of-State tuition premiums to the residents of other 
States who might want to go to UC Berkeley or the University of Kansas 
or a number of other schools within those two States and eight other 
States that are defying Federal law. And we are still taking this 
through the courts. And the DREAM Act, Mr. Speaker, invalidates all 
lawsuits that have been brought forward to enforce the Federal law 
which establishes the requirement that these States grant the same 
tuition discount to residents of other States that they might to 
illegal aliens in the desks in their own schools in their own States.
  AgJOBS, another amnesty plan. AgJOBS says if you worked in this 
country and worked in agriculture, worked for the preponderance of, and 
that is my word, not the bill's word, 5 years, we are going to grant 
you provisional legal status here in the United States. Legal status 
under the DREAM Act, legal status under the AgJOBS act. You add them 
up, and by their numbers, that's 2\1/2\ million who get amnesty. They 
won't call it amnesty, obviously, Mr. Speaker. But we know those 
numbers would be significantly larger.
  And then when one grants the special status, the special conditional 
legal residence in the United States to these people, what's the 
argument to deny it to anyone else? What's the argument to deny a 
reward of the objective of their crimes to all who have broken 
immigration laws except perhaps those who are convicted felons and 
those who have conducted themselves in otherwise abhorrent fashion?
  This is irrational, Mr. Speaker. The American people often don't 
understand what this legislation is. That's why there is such a 
concerted effort to strategize on how we name a bill here in this 
Congress, how this bill is named, because that is all that people hear 
is the name of the bill. They don't get to read it. Most Members don't 
read the legislation that comes through this place. But the public 
doesn't read the bill, and if they did,

[[Page 28047]]

they don't really have the opportunity to examine the components of it. 
So to critique the legislation, they have to rely on somebody else. So 
the practice is give it a nice sounding name, and then when I do my 
press conferences and talk to the press, they will ask me, Here's a 
list of one, two, three, four, five really nice sounding pieces of 
legislation. You voted against all five of them, Mr. King. Why did you 
do that? And my answer is it is a nice sounding title, but it is a 
horrible bill. And you will see that happen often, especially since the 
gavels have changed hands in here in the 110th Congress, Mr. Speaker.
  So I reiterate to you and to the people that are overhearing this 
conversation that we must draw the line. We need to pick up the phones 
and call the United States Senate again. We need to shut down their 
telephones in the switchboards in the United States Senate and tell 
them we don't want a DREAM Act. We need that killed in the United 
States Senate. We need to cease this amnesty. We need to preserve the 
central pillar of American exceptionalism, the rule of law.

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