[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4844-4851]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Clarke). 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. Welcome to the Speaker's chair and the gavel of the 
United States Congress. It is a big and important thing to serve in 
this place, and it is always an honor to walk down here on the floor. 
It is absolutely an honor to be seated there in the Speaker's chair 
that has seated so many esteemed colleagues on both sides of the aisle. 
And the kind of leadership that has come from there back through 
history, the halls and the floor here echo with their influence, and 
the destiny of America has absolutely been redirected by that seat and 
by that gavel, and will continue to do so. And I very much look forward 
to continuing to work in this capacity.
  I come to the floor this afternoon, Madam Speaker, to raise an issue 
here and carry on a discussion that is the most intense discussion item 
across America. And I would challenge anyone to walk into a coffee shop 
or a place of work or anyplace where Americans gather to talk about the 
issues of the day, and you don't have to change the subject, just stop 
and listen, ask a question and see what comes up first. Maybe the 
weather, maybe a sports team.
  But when it shakes down to it, Madam Speaker, and we have talked 
about all of the amenities and the niceties and the general discussion 
topics that don't have a lot of substance but carry on the day, in the 
end, in America we get down to one of two subjects, and that is either 
the global war on terror on which Iraq is a principle battleground, or 
it is immigration. And sometimes it is both.
  And having just come back from another trip to the border last week 
about now a week ago, and having been flush full of the things that I 
learned down there, I am compelled to come here to the floor, Madam 
Speaker, and raise the issue and begin to examine this subject and 
topic a little bit more.
  We have now, for about 3 years, had an intense debate and discussion 
on immigration, and there are those of us here in this Chamber, in 
fact, this House of Representatives last fall voted to build a double 
fence/wall on the southern border, and laid out the distances, the 
locations and the distances from those locations. And, when calculated 
and totaled up, it becomes clear that Congress has mandated, the House 
and the Senate has mandated that there be 854 miles of at least double-
walled fencing, a double fencing or a double fencing and wall 
constructed upon our southern border in priority areas, Madam Speaker. 
And last week, I went down to review some of the beginnings of that 
construction.
  It also establishes a mandate that the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, Mr. Chertoff, will establish interlocking cameras and other 
technology along the border, and he has until May 31 of this year to 
complete the construction of the interlocking technology according to 
authorization of the Secure Fence Act, and another year to complete the 
construction of the double fencing and that 854 miles of that priority 
area. And then, with the exception of an area at Laredo that is 15 
miles, that are 15 miles of either side of Laredo, and that those 15 
miles can be constructed in the 2008 construction season on up until 
December 30 of 2008, that is the congressional mandate, Madam Speaker.
  That is the mandate that was passed by a significant majority here in 
the House of Representatives, and a mandate that was passed by a vote 
that I do remember in the Senate that was 80-19. It was bipartisan, 
obviously. It had very solid support. And the reason that it had such 
solid support is this physical barrier that is mandated by Congress and 
signed by the President, bipartisan mandate, House and Senate, Madam 
Speaker; these physical barriers or these pairs of physical barriers, 
double fencing and walls, are something that is not an administrative 
decision; it is not something that is necessarily prone to human 
failure or human error or human lack of will to enforce. If you put 
those barriers in there, they are going to do some good regardless of 
whether there is anyone there that is maintaining and manning and 
guarding them or not, which, of course, we need to do.
  And any kind of a structure that we put in place must be maintained, 
it must be guarded, it must be manned. It needs to have sensors on it. 
But these barriers will allow our Border Patrol officers and other 
backup enforcement officers that we have to be able to respond in a 
more effective fashion. And if they are going to defeat the barriers, 
it will take time to do that. And if they trip the sensors, and they 
should, that will give our Border Patrol officers an opportunity to 
descend upon that site and make the kind of arrests that are necessary 
so that the word gets out that there are areas of this border at least 
that you had better not try to cross.
  Now, this area in San Luis, Arizona is just south of Yuma. It is a 
community on the U.S. side that is as far southwest as you can get on 
the border in Arizona. This is a location that has had some rather 
permanent steel wall right on the border that has been there for some 
time, and we have added to that. Now, this permanent steel wall, this 
is a steel landing mat, interlocking landing mat that is welded 
together along that border, is being extended in both directions from 
San Luis. And I reflect also in hearing the remark from the gentleman 
from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) that we need some 200,000 welders by the year 2010 
or 2012, I forget which exact year that was.
  I have heard those kinds of cries for help before, and I have lived 
through those deadlines, and we always seem to come up with the number 
of people we need to do the job that is necessary. One of the things we 
do is we just simply pay people what it is worth and they show up to do 
the job. But if they

[[Page 4845]]

are short about 6 or 7 welders in 2010, they can get ahold of Secretary 
Chertoff who picked up a welder down there and welded some of that 
steel wall together right on the border of San Luis, Arizona. And that 
also was the case with Senator Johnny Isakson, Senator Ben Nelson, 
Congressman Mike Pence. And I am not sure, that is the ones that I saw, 
there were probably others that also lended a hand, as I did, to weld 
some of that fencing and wall together. It was more symbolic than 
production, but symbolism does matter in this business, and it helps 
encourage the people that are down there building those barriers.
  And particularly, our National Guard that are down on the border, 
approaching 6,000 strong, they freed up at least 500 on-line slots for 
Border Patrol agents that can be up-front patrolling. And they are 
constructing fence and wall with the time that they have down there on 
the border. Their morale seems to be good. They act like they believe 
in their mission. I believe in their mission. I am encouraged by the 
fact that they are there, hands on, building, constructing, putting 
barriers in place, because this Congress mandated and the President 
signed, however unenthusiastically, he did sign the authorization of 
the Secure Fence Act that mandates 854 miles of double fence wall on 
our border.
  And then, after the mandate and the authorization, the authorization 
which is the mandate, then we heard continually from the critics across 
the country, well, you will never fund it. And if you never fund it, 
then it will never be built. So it was only, the allegation that it was 
only the part of Congress to just simply make a promise that we didn't 
intend to fulfill. And I heard that criticism all the way through the 
campaign season to November 7 and all the way beyond that well into 
December, and I have heard smatterings of it since then and questions 
that come from the media. And at some point last month, Congressman 
Duncan Hunter, who is the ranking member of the Armed Services 
Committee and former chairman, and a real leader on this fence on the 
border, and I and several others, did a press conference. Actually, it 
was Duncan Hunter and myself on that particular press conference. And 
we talked about how this fence will be built and needs to be built and 
must be built, and it is a congressional mandate.
  And I pointed to the line item in the appropriations bill that funds 
the Department of Homeland Security, and their overall appropriation is 
34 point something billion dollars. And in that 34 point something 
billion dollars is a line item for double fence and wall and the 
technology that goes with it, the interlocking cameras and the other 
devices, and some of them now are ground based radar, funding for all 
of that to the tune of $1,187,000,000 and change.
  Now, that is the line item that has been appropriated. That money 
goes to only one thing, and that is securing our border with either 
technology or fence, and then the necessary support that it takes to 
get that done.
  We followed through, we mandated 854 miles of fence and wall, double, 
and we have appropriated $1,187,000,000. Now that is probably not 
enough to complete the whole 854 miles, but, Madam Speaker, it is a 
great start. And we have given a great start here in Congress and 
created this inertia and provided the mandate, and now the Department 
of Homeland Security working with the National Guard has got a 
beginning.
  I won't say they have a great start or that they have even a good 
start, but they have a beginning. And it is great to have a beginning. 
We are able to do hands-on on the beginning. It is a triple fence there 
south of Yuma in San Luis.
  So as I ask the question, Madam Speaker, of how effective are these 
barriers that we are putting here in place, the answer that I get back 
down there is: In that area they had interdicted 2 years ago 138,000 
illegal border crossers in that area. And, since October, they had 
interdicted 15,000. Now, that is not quite apples to apples. You have 
to calculate it out so much per month, but you get the idea that it has 
been about two-thirds effective at this point. And as I ask the 
question, has anyone come through the area where we have this triple 
fence, this 12-foot high steel wall made out of landing mat steel, the 
16-foot high steel mesh wall. And that is about 100 feet apart, and 
then as you come into the United States going north, then there is a 
10-foot high chain-link fence like a school playground fence with about 
three or four bars on top, barbwire. Shorthand in Iowa as barbs.
  And there, they said that maybe about three people had gotten through 
that area. And upon further questioning, one or two through the 
waterway, one or so around the end. Had anybody defeated the area where 
it is triple fencing? And the answer was, they will defeat anything we 
build. They will find a way to get over, under, or through it. And, of 
course, then the follow-up question is: Has anyone defeated it yet, 
this fence we are looking at? And the answer is no. To date, no one has 
gone over, under, or through the triple fencing that is constructed 
there south of Yuma at San Luis.
  Now, I would like to hold that record intact. I don't know that we 
will be able to hold it intact, but I think it is important to note 
that that fencing has not been defeated yet. And, that as long as 
illegal border crossers have an option to go someplace else to go 
around, they are not going to try to go over, under, or through. And 
that will be the case as long as we have a fence that doesn't extend 
the full length of the border. Now, it is possible for us to supplement 
those areas where there isn't a lot of concentration of pressure on the 
border with technology, with ground-based radar, with interlocking 
cameras, with a quick response force, with teams that can go out and 
pick people up in the deserts that have 25 miles to walk to get 
anywhere where they can pick up any transportation mode once they get 
across the border. So we can use some of those kinds of methods, too, 
until it becomes inefficient in that approach and we have to go back to 
extending the fence, extend the wall, give the people on the ground 
some tools to work with.
  But continually, Madam Speaker, I get this answer when I ask our 
Border Patrol about the effectiveness of structures like fences and 
walls, and that they need more boots on the ground. And the answer is 
always: Whatever you will do to fencing, there are places where we need 
to do it in urban areas. We don't need to do it in rural areas. This is 
their answer. And, we always need more boots on the ground. That is the 
answer. The answer really isn't to build structure or to build wall.

                              {time}  1700

  Well, I take issue with that philosophy, and I do so because of 
looking at it from a bit of a different perspective. That bit of a 
different perspective comes along like this. If we were to award 
contracts to companies and pay them according to the level of 
efficiency of being able to stop all human traffic coming across their 
sector of the border, stop all contraband from coming across their 
sector of the border, force all products, all contraband, all people, 
legal or illegal, through the ports of entry, that is our objective. 
That is what the laws that are established here in this Congress are 
about is forcing all that traffic through the ports of entry.
  In fact, that is what the law presumes that they go through a port of 
entry. So anything we do to direct traffic through the port of entry is 
the right thing to do. It has been a piece of wisdom for this country 
for a long, long time, well over 100 years. Yet we have people that 
argue well, no, we should just leave the border open, leave it 
unmarked. I plead sometimes, can't we at least string up a number 9 
wire and mark the border, so if you are out in the desert you don't 
wander across into another country.
  There are miles and miles and miles of our southern border that are 
not marked in any way whatsoever, not a wire, not a post, not a fence 
are not a road, not a wall, certainly, and not a double fence, and not 
a virtual fence, virtually nothing is there. In fact, literally nothing 
is there.

[[Page 4846]]

  If you go into some areas of New Mexico, when they laid out the 
border, the border is marked by a concrete pylon that is about 5 feet 
high, poured on a base, about this big square, 5 feet high, tapers up, 
and has a little insignia on it that says this is a border. That 
concrete pylon will be standing on a ridge line, and then if you look 
way down the border, you probably cannot see it from the naked eye, 
miles away. Over on the next ridge line will be another concrete pylon, 
and that is another mark for the border.
  I will say that I think many people have crossed through that area 
and never known that there was a mark for the border because they 
didn't know where too look. These pylons, these markers were set up 
back in those old days with an old brass transit, with whatever power 
they had to set the cross hairs up, dial it in and look down range and 
then give the motion to the fellow on the other end, who did not have a 
walkie-talkie, did not have much optical equipment, but simply hand 
signals.
  Go ahead, drive your stake in here. We will put the pylon there. That 
is good enough for this border. But that is all we marked it with, is 
just concrete pylons from ridge line to ridge line, and there is not a 
barrier, obviously.
  So, if I were a contractor, and I were given the job to, say, guard 
10 miles of border, and if the benchmark are for the amount of money 
that I would be paid for that job would be the amount that we are 
spending on the border today, that being $8 billion to protect our 
southern border, and that amounts to $4 million a mile, let's just say 
I were in the business of guaranteeing border security for 10 miles 
across the desert, and I went in and bid that at the going rate of $4 
million a mile.
  Well, that would mean the Federal Government would pay me $40 million 
a year to guard that 10 miles of border. Now, what would a rational 
person do if that were their job to get 100 percent efficiency? If they 
had a contract, the amount of that contract would be deducted by the 
number of failures that you have?
  Let's just say the average crossing of interdictions last year across 
our southern border, 1,188,000. I mean, that was the number reported by 
the Border Patrol of border interdictions, that many fingerprinted and 
returned back to their home countries. Perhaps 155,000 of them were 
other than Mexicans. Most of the rest were returned back to Mexico.
  That many fingerprinted, you could divide that out, and I have not 
done the math. But you could figure out how many came through each mile 
on average, and then determine that if your mile was successful, we are 
going to pay you at your $4 million. Or if your 10 miles were 
successful, we will pay you at your $4 million a mile. If you didn't 
let anybody through, you are going to get to keep the whole $40 
million, this year, next year, every year that you have the contract.
  We would be getting far more for our money than we are getting today 
for the $4 million a mile that we are paying and the $8 billion that it 
costs us to guard that southern border. I can tell you that I would go 
down, and I would bid my 10 miles or whatever link it was that I 
thought I could manage and handle.
  Then I would look at my contract for $40 million, and I would think, 
you know, for about $1.2 million a mile, I could build a concrete wall 
on here. I could put double fencing in. Maybe by the time I added 
interlocking cameras and some sensors and some interlocking ground 
radar, I may be even up to even $2 million a mile to build my double-
wall fence with interlocking cameras and sensors. Now what do I have to 
do to make sure that no one gets through my 10 miles of border?
  I would simply have to sit back and watch my monitors, have somebody 
that is out there ready to respond if anybody does get through, but 
monitor the situation, and we can monitor into Mexico. We can monitor 
when they get over, if they should get over the wall, in the United 
States, and do a quick response and interdiction.
  I don't think you are going to spend a lot of money out of the 
remaining $30-some million. I may have to back up here, for 10 miles, 
if you built 10 miles, and you invest it all together up to $2 million 
a mile, then you have $20 million invested in that 10 miles. But you 
have a $40 million contract every year.
  Then you have got $20 million to work with in order to hire personnel 
to drive around in Humvees and react, respond, interdict. I would 
submit that you could hire a helicopter for that 10 miles and do that 
if you needed to guard it that way. There is plenty of money left over 
to apply the labor and the patrolling and the maintenance for the 
fencing that would be necessary.
  In fact, it would be minimal. It would be minimal. It would take far 
less labor, far less manpower, far less equipment, to monitor a border 
that has sealed barriers, barriers. Some of those barriers, to date, 
have not been breached by anyone.
  That is far more effective than simply an open desert that will allow 
people to run through, drive through, ride through on a motorcycle or a 
horse or a donkey or a Humvee or an ATV or walk or run, daylight or 
dark, winter, well, not much winter down there, but in rain, when it 
rains, or in a sandstorm when the wind blows. I will be far more 
effective to put the barrier in place.
  Yet when I ask the question of the Border Patrol, be it the union or 
be it the representatives of the Border Patrol and the administration 
themselves, their answer always is, we can take some structures like 
some fences in urban areas, because that gives us more time to react 
when they jump the fence, but it is going to take more boots on the 
ground.
  I have tried and tried in hearings to ask the question in a way that 
I can get an objective answer, what do we have to do so it takes fewer 
boots on the ground? I will pose this question this way, and that is, 
if we created an impermeable curtain that could not be cut, it could 
not be torn, it could not be penetrated, but a magic kryptonite 
impermeable curtain that would go from all the way up to the heavens 
all the way down to hell, and all the way, 2,000 miles from San Diego 
to Brownsville, if we could hang that there on the border, couldn't be 
penetrated, couldn't be cut, couldn't be gone over, and it couldn't be 
dug under, how many Border Patrol would it take then to patrol the 
border? I would submit that answer then becomes none except for any 
place where we would have ports of entry.
  I hope I have illustrated the logic of why we need to build a fence 
and a wall. This Congress understands it. They voted overwhelmingly to 
support it here in the House of Representatives just a few months ago, 
and the Senate, as slow as they are, to be proactive. As much as they 
like to let the hot coffee cool in the saucer of the Senate, they also 
moved, and three times they had votes on the floor last year to put a 
fence on the southern border. My very liberal Iowa Senate counterpart 
three times voted to put a fence on the border, and that vote in the 
Senate was 80-19.
  Yet I am watching the undermining that is taking place on the part 
of, to some degree, the administration. Also the chairman of the 
Homeland Security Committee is using his chairmanship to undermine 
current law. I am watching the undermining that goes on the part of 
some of the Democrat candidates for the presidency and people who 
essentially don't appear to believe in American sovereignty.
  Well, something that we need to simply know in America is that you 
have to make a decision if you are going to be a nation. If you are 
going to be a nation, and I will submit that over the last 200 years, 
the most successful institution of government has been the nation 
state. Can you imagine going to something other than the nation state?
  Can you imagine going to the city states that we had at the beginning 
of the industrial revolution when Machiavelli wrote his books, and when 
the cities became the center point of government and control, and 
everything revolved around the cities? What happened was that common 
languages sprung up, and they began to be formed and shaped by the 
people that had

[[Page 4847]]

trade in commerce and travel in a common region. As the languages 
defined themselves, the borders of the nations also defined themselves 
along the lines of language.
  There came from that, the nation states, a common belief, a common 
history, a common form of communications currency, language, tied 
people together. They voluntarily moved together and established the 
nation states. Of course, the nation states have changed and shifted 
over time.
  We have tried to create unnatural nation states. Yet here in America, 
we came together in these 50 States of the Nation State of the United 
States of America, and we are unique in all of history. We are unique 
because what we have done is we have welcomed people from all over the 
world.
  Let me point out that we continually hear the statement America is a 
nation of immigrants, and it is stated to us over and over again, as if 
because we are a nation of immigrants, then therefore we cannot have a 
rational immigration policy that is designed to enhance the economic, 
the social and the cultural well-being of the United States of America.
  No, we simply have to open our borders, because immigrants came here 
and helped build America. If some is good, more is better. If some from 
anywhere is good, more from anywhere is better. That seems to be the 
logic and the rationale.
  I would submit there is a lot more to building an American 
exceptionalism than simply saying we are a nation of immigrants and 
that is all we need to know about this subject matter. No, this is a 
very deep, very complicated subject matter that ties together 
everything we know about history, everything we know about human 
nature, everything we know about sociology and biology, and the common 
sense of geographical origins that come along, and the commonalities of 
language, common interests, those things all tie us together.
  But what we have done here in America, founded a nation upon the rule 
of law, perhaps I will get to that a little bit later.
  But we are tied together by a common language. That is something that 
is not unique to the United States, a common language has defined 
nation states from the beginning. When we get away from the common 
language that fractures the nation state, and you become squabbling 
minorities that are bickering against each other, forming and shaping 
ourselves in ethnic enclaves and pitted against each other because one 
side of this aisle believes in rights of group rights and victimhood.
  The other side of the aisle over here believes in individual rights 
and personal responsibility and the commonalities of equal justice 
under the law.
  But the things that tie us together are a common history, common 
experiences, common goals, a common cause. But we couldn't understand 
those things if we didn't have a common language. This great experiment 
of America has been founded upon a common language. This common 
language ties us together.
  Then as we look across the vitality that we have within this country, 
this American exceptionalism that I mentioned a little bit earlier, you 
would be thinking in terms of where did this American exceptionalism 
come from? Why do we have it here, and why is that vitality nonexistent 
in many of the other countries that were donor countries to the United 
States in the form of the immigrants that they sent to us over the 
years, over the 200 to 300 years that we have received, accepted and 
welcomed immigrants into America?
  I would look back at that and think about my oldest ancestor that we 
can trace back, at least on my mother's side of the family. One of them 
would have been a gentleman by the name of Samuel Powell who came here, 
and he was a Welshman who came over here in 1757 to become an 
indentured servant.
  He landed in Baltimore. He had nothing. He pledged to work for 7 
years to work off his passage to the United States. So he worked in the 
stables to work off his passage. This gentleman was kicked by a horse, 
crippled for life. We know that as there is a little hardbound book 
about it.
  Still, through the course of his lifetime, he was the father of 17 
children, and those descendents fanned out across the country, and they 
added to the vitality of America, as many of the children of immigrants 
and the children of immigrants have.
  But there was something in the vitality of Samuel Powell, that 
vitality that is a component that exists within many, many of, and I 
will say most of, and perhaps almost all of those who come to America. 
That vitality gives them the courage and the confidence, the fortitude 
and the adventuresome spirit to get on a ship with everything that they 
have, mortgage their future for their passage, and come here to reach 
for their dreams in the United States of America.
  That vitality that gave them that courage and that confidence, that 
boldness of spirit was like a filter that skimmed the vitality off of 
the other civilizations and cultures around the world. As they got out 
of Ireland and Sweden and out of Germany and out of Italy, and as they 
came from other places around the globe and came here, and certainly 
out of Scotland and England as well, and this goes back to our history 
100 years ago, as they came over here, they brought that vitality with 
them. Often we saw that vitality within them, and we identified that as 
a national characteristic that came from the country that they came 
from.

                              {time}  1715

  One of the questions that I ask in my district, I have a wonderful 
Dutch region in the northwestern part of my district there in Iowa, and 
it is idyllic communities that are the best combination that anyone 
could ask for, the absolutely ideal combination of churches to banks to 
bars in a community. Plenty of churches and a lot of capital in the 
banks and just a few bars, not hardly any. And their quality of life, 
and it is strong, and the young children grow up and they expect to 
build their future in those communities. They are not taking that 
diploma and going somewhere else in the world to cash it in for the 
biggest paycheck they can get. Some do. Many come home. Many stay home, 
rebuild and build their lives there and have their children there, 
raise their parents' grandchildren right there within the same 
neighborhood. That is an ideal circumstance that they have.
  And I ask them, how is it that you have got such ideal communities 
here in the Dutch areas of Iowa, and I go over to Holland, and there 
they have abortion on demand, euthanasia, they have prostitution, they 
have legalized drugs. They have one of the most liberal countries in 
the world, one of the most permissive, but yet one of the most closed 
societies in the world where you could never go over there and become a 
Dutchman. And yet so many things that they do permit in that very 
liberal society are things that we would reject in our communities, and 
I have listed some of them. Why is it then that we have such a 
wholesome, rich community in an area that I have described in western 
Iowa, and we have the different environment in Holland entirely, and 
especially in the communities like Amsterdam? And their answer to me, 
with only a little bit of sense of irony is, well, the good Dutch came 
here.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I tell this story because it identifies the source 
of American exceptionalism. The good Dutch came here. So did the good 
English, so did the good Spanish, so did the good French, so did the 
good Norwegians and Swedes and Germans and Irish and all the way down 
the line. Western Europe were the first big donors to this American 
society that we have here. And we have also picked up a significant 
amount of exceptionalism and vitality from our neighbors to the south.
  And so I want to point this out and emphasize in a very serious way 
how important it is that we be smart and we be careful with our 
immigration policy and understand that we are defining an immigration 
policy that should enhance our economic, our social and our cultural 
well-being here in the United States of America in a selfish way. Any 
nation state should have

[[Page 4848]]

that kind of an immigration policy. It should be promoting them. They 
should be building their future, whatever country they might be.
  We need to do it here. We need to set this American destiny on a 
glide path that soars way beyond the aspirations that I hear here in 
this place and that I even hear out in the streets of America where 
there is more optimism than there is here in this Congress, Mr. 
Speaker. We need to set our destiny and control it from here, and we 
have got to have a vision, we have got to have a dream, and we need to 
understand the foundations of what has made us great as a Nation. And 
we need to be looking for new things, new principles, new ideas, new 
tools that might, just might, supplement the time-honored tradition and 
principles and tools that were gifted to us from God through our 
Founding Fathers that are the foundation of this great Nation.
  But American exceptionalism is one of them. The foundation of the 
rule of law is another one, Mr. Speaker. And in spite of all of the 
things that we read about in our history and so much of the glorious 
past and some of the marginal, shameful events that took place in our 
history, this Nation has been a Nation that has been grounded on, built 
upon, rooted in and a pillar of which is the rule of law. The rule of 
law is sacrosanct in America. And when we set aside the rule of law, it 
diminishes us all. It erodes everyone's constitutional rights when 
someone else is given a pass by the law. And so if we are allowed to 
drive down the highway at 70 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone, 
and if we pass the Highway Patrol, and even if they happen to pull us 
over and they say, well, you know, everybody breaks the law, so I am 
not going to write you up on this 70 in a 55 zone, then pretty soon 
everybody drives 70, and they will push it up to 75. If they don't get 
a ticket at 75, then they may go 80. They will drive as fast as they 
can until they get scared. Then they will slow down a little. That is 
human nature, and we have known that from the studies on our highways. 
But too low a speed limit breeds contempt for the rule of law, but 
enforcement of any speed limit breeds respect for the rule of law.
  The same is so with our immigration laws, Mr. Speaker, if we have 
immigration laws that are not enforced, or the foundation of this rule 
of law is it applies to everyone equally. So if our immigration laws 
are not enforced equally to all people in this country, then also it 
breeds contempt for the law. And if we allow the contempt for the law 
to be bred, then it undermines the rule of law, it undermines this 
Constitution, and it weakens the rights of individuals.
  This Constitution I carry in my pocket all days. I have sworn to 
uphold this Constitution, and I will do so. It is an oath that I take 
seriously, and, in fact, in spite of some of the news that has come 
down here, that we don't swear in to the new Congress on the Bible, 
some of us do bring our Bible down here and do swear in on the Bible, 
and we take that seriously, as did George Washington. And some of us, 
in fact, all of us, should add ``so help me God'' when we take that 
oath.
  But this Constitution is the foundation for our law. And, in fact, it 
is the descendant of the Declaration of Independence, the foundation 
for our law. It is the framework of justice in America writ large. It 
is the framework of government in America writ large. And we need to 
adhere to the language that is here and the intent that is here and the 
original text that is here in this Constitution, Mr. Speaker.
  And I continue to intend to do that, and I am sworn to uphold this 
rule of law. And so when I go back to my district, and we have had a 
finally, at long last, a Department of Homeland Security raid on some 
of the meat packing around my neighborhood, within the adjoining States 
and within the State of Iowa, and about 1,282 individuals were picked 
up and loaded up, and charges were brought against many of them for 
immigration violations and also for fraudulent documents and document 
theft. When that happens, and there were truckloads of hogs that were 
stacked up waiting to go into the packing plant, and there wasn't 
enough labor there, and actually the plants were temporarily shut down. 
The hogs had to stay on the trucks. There were a few that were lost. 
Most were not so badly treated. That is one of the elements we don't 
talk about so much. But also families were affected, children were 
affected, and we have debated across that.
  But when I go before the pork producers and they say, we need to have 
people in these packing plants to process our livestock, we have got to 
have a market for the livestock that we raise, we have got to make sure 
that they can harvest on the days they are supposed to be, and that 
meat can be processed, packaged and delivered to the meat case so we 
have got a continuous supply and a continuous flow of our product, 
however urgent they sense that to be, however focused they are on the 
problem that is in front of them, and remember, people have a tendency 
to look at the world through their straw. It is rare for us to step 
back and look at the big picture and try to add up all the components, 
or look at the world through somebody else's eyes, let alone look at 
the world through everybody else's eyes if we would could possibly do 
that. And that is partly my job is to ask people to look at the world 
through somebody else's eyes.
  And so as they say, we need that labor, we can't be shutting down 
plants because of illegal labor, we have got to find another solution, 
that is no solution. I ask them, point blank, I understand how 
important this is to your industry, but are you willing to sacrifice 
the rule of law in America to be sure that it is convenient, and that 
you don't have to go out and recruit for labor someplace other than 
outside the United States for people that will come into the plant?
  Wouldn't you rather maybe pay a couple bucks more an hour and hire 
people that are already here, hire some of the 30 percent of America 
that are high school dropouts; hire some of the 69 million people in 
America that are simply not in the workforce, but are of working age?
  We only have about 6.9 million working illegals in America, Mr. 
Speaker, and we have 69 million nonworking, not in the workforce, 
Americans. So wouldn't a logical Nation just look around and say, well, 
let's try and hire? First we would go hire some of those folks that are 
on unemployment. And we are not at a historically low unemployment 
level. That was 1.3 during World War II. And I recognize that was all 
hands on deck. But still we have quite a ways to go, and we can drop 
more than 3 points before we get down to the levels of unemployment 
that we had during World War II. But that is not enough to fill the 
gap. And if we take the people that are on welfare now and that are 
hirable, and maybe if that is half, and that might be a lot, you put 
those together with those that are unemployed. If you take the 4.4 
percent unemployment and take that down to 1.3 percent, World War II 
levels, and then reach in and hire half of those that are on welfare 
and put them to work, you still don't have enough people there to 
replace the 6.9 million working illegal immigrants in the American 
workforce. But where you can find them is to go into the 69 million 
nonworking Americans that are not in the workforce, many of whom are 
presumably healthy and can be hired.
  And the answer that I get when I propose that is, well, they aren't 
in the right place. They don't live where we need them. They are not 
sitting there next to the job. And so therefore, we should what? Let's 
go 2,000 or 3,000 miles away and go get some people out of a different 
country and bring them here, against the law, to replace the need for a 
workforce that you could replace if you just simply went someplace else 
in America and put some people in a car, on a bus, on a plane or on 
Amtrak and send them down there.
  I mean, I can give you an example, Mr. Speaker. When the raid came in 
on the Swift and Company at Marshalltown, Iowa, and they picked up 
about 90 workers there, so presumably there were 90 jobs that were open 
at that moment, there was a couple, an

[[Page 4849]]

African American couple, from down in the Dallas area that loaded up 
and drove from Texas all the way up to Marshalltown, Iowa, went to the 
H.R. office at Swift and Company and said, we would like to have a job 
working here processing this meat. We drove a long ways to get here, 
and now we would like to resettle to Texas, to Marshalltown, middle of 
the winter, Texas to Marshalltown for those jobs.
  That kind of answers the questions that there are jobs that Americans 
won't do. At least there is a personalized example of it, Mr. Speaker. 
And statistically there are many. But the argument that the people 
aren't in the right place doesn't hold up. In fact, the Okies weren't 
in the right place in the '30s, and they loaded up the things that they 
had, like the Clampetts in a way, and went on off to California and 
built the economy out there, and they must have been pretty good 
because the economy blossomed in California after the arrival of the 
Okies. And so people can be transferred for labor.
  There was a mass migration from the American South to the industrial 
areas in the Northern States that took place also about that era. And I 
recall that as that migration took place, we saw concentrations of 
African Americans moving into the industrial cities. Detroit would be a 
good example of that. Cleveland would be another good example of that. 
They came and they took the jobs and went to work. They were good-
paying jobs. They did their jobs, and they raised their families there. 
And some of those young people went off to college, became 
professionals and moved off. Others went back and went to work in the 
same plants that their parents did.
  But I recall, Mr. Speaker, reading an article in the Des Moines 
Register some years ago. They had gone into Milwaukee and picked a 36-
square-block neighborhood in Milwaukee, and it was a neighborhood that 
was totally inhabited by people or descendants of that migration from 
the gulf coast Mississippi area that came up into Milwaukee to take the 
brewery jobs that were good-paying jobs then. Now, that was back in the 
'30s, and now, by this time, oh, about the turn of the last millennia, 
I will say, maybe 1998 or '99, they surveyed those, every house in that 
36-square-block area. There wasn't a single working head of household 
in all homes in that 36-block area. And the article was full of lament 
as to why government couldn't figure out a way to move some jobs up 
there to Milwaukee and establish those jobs close enough to the people 
that lived there that didn't have work that they could then have jobs 
again.
  Well, how did government fail the people that are sitting in that 36-
square-block area, 6 blocks by 6 blocks in Milwaukee? How did 
government fail was the focus of the article. And, Mr. Speaker, I will 
point out that government didn't fail. It never was government's job. 
It wasn't government that moved them from the gulf coast up to 
Milwaukee in the '30s, and it wasn't government that moved the Okies 
from Oklahoma to California in the '30s. It was the promise of jobs 
that relocated people. They did it on their own.
  I mean, after all, that is how the illegal immigrants got here, 
wasn't it? Billboards in Mexico. People migrated up and took the jobs. 
People move for jobs. I have done it. Many of us have done it. In fact, 
most of us have done it. And to imagine that Americans can't relocate 
to take a job is a pretty weak position to take if you are going to set 
the direction for the destiny of America.
  But the rule of law, the rule of law is a pillar, it is a foundation, 
it is essential. And we are embroiled in a central debate here in 
America on this rule of law.
  Now, the Senate will be introducing legislation next week that will 
be comprehensive immigration reform. That is White House language for 
we are going to take some people that are here, and we are going to 
give them the path to citizenship. And you are going to hear an 
argument and a debate about what is the right, the just, the true, the 
appropriate path for us as a Nation, a compassionate Nation, yes, a 
Nation that cares about all people, not just within the borders of the 
sovereign State of the United States of America. We care about the 
well-being of people all over the globe.

                              {time}  1730

  No Nation has been generous as the United States of America has been. 
We have provided more resources for more people. We have sacrificed 
more lives for liberty and freedom. We have poured more treasure out to 
the rest of the world than any nation in history by any model or 
comparison that anyone can create or come up with or convolute, for 
that matter. And yet we are being accused of being a cold hearted, 
unkind Nation because we have an obligation to control our borders so 
we can define ourselves as a Nation.
  And I will argue that if we give amnesty to the people that have 
broken our laws and who are in violation of our laws and unlawfully 
present here on the soil of the United States, if we grant them 
amnesty, we have kicked aside the rule of law. We have knocked the 
pillar out, the foundational pillar, from underneath this great citadel 
of the United States of America. And if the rule of law is gone, what 
then holds up our values here?
  What then supports this Constitution that I have put back in my 
pocket, Mr. Speaker? How do we argue ever again that there is a 
foundation that exists that we should adhere to the rule of law, that 
we should respect and protect and defend it, how could we, if this 
Congress granted amnesty to law breakers in America, gave them a free 
pass at the encouragement and behest of the White House and the 
administration, who are focused on this, at the encouragement of the 
left wing liberals in the United States Senate that are advocating for 
open borders because they know they can count the masses of illegals 
whether they are here legally or not, whether they are ever allowed to 
vote or not, they know that it provides representation here on the 
floor of the United States Congress.
  There are Members of this Congress that won't need more than 30,000 
votes to be re-elected or elected to this Congress. They are the ones 
that represent districts that are full of illegal immigrants that are 
counted in the census for reapportionment purposes. So my 600,000 
people, where it takes over 100,000 votes to get re-elected in my 
district even in a nonpresidential year, has less representation per 
capita, the citizens in my district have less representation per capita 
than the citizens in the districts that have high concentrations of 
illegal immigrant population, because we draw the lines around about 
600,000 people.
  And if there are 400,000 illegals in a single district, that means 
there are only 200,000 citizens. And if they go to the polls and 
register and vote, that means there might only be 50,000 of them that 
will actually vote that are of the age to vote and that will take the 
trouble to do so. That is a gross distortion of the intent of our 
Framers, and it is clearly a distortion of the concept of our 
Constitution and it is a distortion of the understanding of equal 
representation that the taxpayers and the citizens of America expect 
from us. We need to address that. But before we do that, we are going 
to need to address this amnesty issue, this amnesty question, that will 
be before the Senate shortly and expecting to come over here to the 
House some weeks or months after that.
  What is amnesty, Mr. Speaker? Well, it is a simple question for a 
person from my perspective. If you have a law and the law exists and 
someone breaks that law, if you reduce or eliminate the penalty for the 
law that they have broken after the fact, you have provided them 
amnesty, whether you do it en masse in a group or whether you do it as 
an individual. I guess as an individual you could call it a pardon. I 
will say amnesty is a mass pardon for people who have violated an 
existing law for which there is an existing penalty, and if that 
penalty is eliminated or reduced, then that is amnesty.
  Now, that is not a hard concept to understand. Something that I think 
the vast majority of the American people will understand. I am very 
confident that Ronald Reagan would have

[[Page 4850]]

understood. He signed an amnesty bill in 1986. It was one of only about 
two or three times that that great man let me down. But at least he had 
the clarity and the conscience to say this is an amnesty bill. He 
called it an amnesty bill. He signed it, and he also said, and we 
expected, that there would be enforcement of existing laws. And what 
happened from 1986 was the enforcement of existing laws diminished 
gradually over time to the point where in 2005 only three employers 
were sanctioned for hiring illegal employees. Only three.
  Now, in this virtual world, I call that virtually no enforcement in 
the workplace. Virtually none. In fact, when I went down and welded on 
the fence, I really wanted a virtual welder and a virtual welding rod 
and a virtual hood so that I could weld some of that virtual fence that 
I think will only virtually stop people in the end if we don't have the 
manpower in there to do the job. And I think we have to put up literal 
barriers to get this done and we can't rely on virtual anything because 
we will virtually go through a lot of semantics, linguistic semantics, 
to be able to reach our political goals, but the subject matter and the 
efficiency is what we need to be after here, the rule of law.
  Amnesty. There can be no amnesty, and that is where this fight will 
turn. That is where this debate will turn. That is where it is going to 
turn in the Senate, and I said last year that those that supported an 
amnesty bill will be marked with the scarlet letter ``A'' for 
``amnesty,'' and they will be held accountable by the voters in the 
ballot box. And the House and the Senate heard that call and the threat 
and the danger of those that came close to losing their jobs over there 
and the ones that are worried about it in 2008. And yet I heard we lost 
people here because they were for border control, and it is interesting 
to me that those couple of Members, only two that I can think of, were 
very strong on border security lost elections last fall. Their 
opponents, the ones who defeated them, also were advocating for strong 
border enforcement and employment enforcement in the workplace.
  So I don't think there is a case that anyone lost an election because 
they were for border security. I think there were those that were 
jeopardized because they came late to the subject or they didn't 
understand the conviction of it. But most, if not all, made some 
commitment at some level that they are going to support it. Stop the 
bleeding at the border. Get it under control. Push all traffic through 
the ports of entry; all human traffic, legal and illegal; all product, 
both contraband and legal product, through the ports of entry we should 
support that in this Congress unequivocally.
  There should be no effort to undermine that and there should be no 
effort to create a scenario by which we can turn a blind eye to illegal 
crossings on the border. That is something that is sacrosanct that all 
of us should agreed to. And I would challenge anyone to stand up now or 
later, and I would be happy to yield: Do you oppose the idea that we 
secure our borders and seal them so that all traffic will go through 
the ports of entry? If anybody wants to oppose that, I will be happy to 
yield. I don't think that is going to happen. That is number one.
  Number two means we have got to enforce our employer sanctions, and 
employers have to understand that if they are going to knowingly and 
willfully hire illegals, then we are going to have to knowingly and 
willfully, with our enforcement mechanisms, go in there and punish the 
employers that have a business plan that is premised upon the hiring of 
illegal labor. And that happens all over this country.
  I am watching it happen and it is permeating us more and more, and 
our resistance is breaking it down more and more. Do we have an amnesty 
plan for employers that are paying corporate income tax off the profits 
that they made off the backs of cheap labor at the expense of America's 
middle class? This middle class is forever shrinking because we are 
growing an upper class. The elitists believe they have a right to cheap 
labor, the servant class, as they see it, whether they admit it or not, 
and the growth of this lower class, this servant class that is coming.
  No nation ever failed because of a lack of cheap labor. Can anybody 
look back at history and name a single nation that didn't have enough 
cheap labor; so their economy collapsed? I would say none. It has never 
happened in all of history. But many nations have descended into a 
squabbling cacophony of minorities that couldn't get along, that didn't 
have a sense of nationhood, didn't have a sense of common history, 
didn't have a common language, didn't have literacy skills or job 
skills but simply pulled the whole system down and put pressure on the 
social services.
  The wait that is there, we are growing our lower class, that class 
that the elitists see as a servant class, and we are growing our upper 
class because of the prosperity that comes really from the Bush tax 
cuts that we have had for 2001 and 2003. And as this growth continues, 
the upper class grows, they think it is all to their credit. Now, they 
earned a lot of it. They got their education. They invested their money 
wisely. They worked hard and smart and they made money, and I am glad 
they are building their million dollar mansions. Maybe one day an older 
used one will be a good place for me to spend my retirement. I am happy 
for them.
  And they will move out of a modest home so someone with a more modest 
income can move in there. It is a natural progression. But they have no 
right and essentially have no birth right to cheap labor to enrich 
them.
  America has been about expanding the middle class, making it broader 
and making it more prosperous. And this immigration policy, or, I 
should say, a lack of enforcement on this immigration policy, is 
shrinking the middle class, compressing them so they can't make the 
upward mobility, and it is narrowing the middle class because these 30 
percent of the high school dropouts that don't have a high school 
education and a greater percentage that don't have a college education 
as a cumulative total at least, those people are dropping off into the 
lower class too.
  And where are their opportunities, Mr. Speaker? Where do they go to 
get a job? How does someone with, say, my background, only the age of 
17 or 18 or 19 or 20, get started in where my life has been, in the 
construction business? If I had walked out on the pipeline at age 19 
and asked for a job to swamp on the bending crew so I could run 10 
miles a day in the dust with a hard hat on my head and get thrown 
around on the end of a piece of pipe in August going through the 
cornfields, they wouldn't give a job to a kid today, some blue-eyed 
white kid that walked up there and wanted a job, because there would 
already be some people there who had arrived in the United States that 
were cheap illegal labor that would work cheaper and give them less 
trouble and those that wouldn't have a workers' comp claim because they 
would be afraid they would be deported. There wouldn't be an 
unemployment claim. They wouldn't be any unemployment, any workers' 
comp. There wouldn't be any lawsuits. They would either show up on time 
or somebody else would show up to take the job.
  It is a lot less trouble to work with people that are living in the 
shadows because they are afraid that the spotlight will come on them. 
And so you have a meek, docile labor force, and an employer that is 
making a rational decision with his capital is going to go that route. 
And we have enabled it here in the United States of America, and now we 
have become dependent upon a pretty good size supply of illegal labor. 
And every day that goes by, another person, another company figures out 
a way to make some profit off of the illegal population that is here in 
the United States.
  And I feel a little guilty that I sold my construction business to my 
oldest son because he has to compete against competitors who will be 
knowingly and willfully finding that avenue to hire that cheap illegal 
labor, and he has to find a way to be more efficient so he can compete 
against them because he is going to follow the law. I know he will 
follow the law. That is the way he

[[Page 4851]]

is raised, that is the way he believes, and that is his conviction. 
Those that follow the law are at a disadvantage today because they are 
being undermined by people who premise their business on hiring illegal 
labor.
  And here we come to the financial institutions that are issuing 
credit cards to people that don't have a Social Security number. What 
an outrageous thing, to see large banking companies decide they can 
find a way to turn a profit and undermine our immigration laws in the 
United States and essentially provide another avenue that is going to 
encourage people to continue to break the law, come here, stay here.
  But amnesty, Mr. Speaker, is a central question that is before us. 
Will we uphold the rule of law or will we kick the pillar out from 
underneath the United States of America? Will we stand on the principle 
of no amnesty no time for people who have come in here illegally that 
we will uphold the rule of law, we will enforce it? And the people who 
are going to advocate for amnesty, and it will be coming out of the 
Senate and it is coming to this floor in here in the House of 
Representatives sometime within the next few months, that path to 
amnesty needs to be a trail of tears.
  And that is a trail of tears that needs to be created by people on 
the streets of America, in the homes, in the backyards, in the schools, 
in the churches, in the workplaces. They need to get on their phones. 
They need to get on their e-mail. They need to call their Members of 
Congress. They need to write letters to the editor. They need to call 
the talk radio shows, write articles and get them printed. They need to 
gin up their neighbors. They need to come to the streets and stand up 
for the rule of law and oppose amnesty and put that scarlet letter 
``A'' for ``amnesty'' and brand those that stand up for amnesty here 
because if you stand for amnesty, you are opposed to the rule of law, 
and there is no other way to measure this.
  And you can't say to someone you are going to go to the back of the 
line. They are not going to send them to the back of the line. That is 
not in the heart or the head of the White House. It is not going to 
happen. Those that are here illegally, the only way they could go to 
the back of the line would be to have to go back to their home country 
and get into the line behind the people that are legally in the line 
from their home country. No one has advocated that, Mr. Speaker. That 
is not going to happen. They don't want to disturb the lives of the 
people who came here to live in the shadows. They want to offer that 
they come out into the sunlight and grant them a path to citizenship. 
And if that isn't a blatant definition of amnesty, I have no idea what 
is.
  But there is actually a serious discussion about how we could make 
them pay a fine. We could penalize them by making them learn English.
  Penalize them by making them learn English? I think that should be a 
privilege and a goal because that will give access to the American 
Dream. But if you are here as a criminal, and there is an objection to 
that term, but if people have come into the United States illegally, 
then they have violated a criminal misdemeanor for illegal border 
crossing, unlawful presence in the United States, and that is 
punishable by deportation. That is the punishment that needs to be 
there. There can't be anything less. And to have them pay a fine of 
$1,500 when a coyote is going to charge $2,000 to $3,000 for a trip 
into the United States just says, well, the path to citizenship is for 
sale for $1,500. If you can scratch up the scratch to do that, we can 
give you a path to citizenship.
  And the United States Senate and a lot of the liberals here in the 
United States House would say, Fine. Here is your green card. Here is 
your path to citizenship. Forget about that part about breaking the law 
and getting your reward for breaking the law, but be a good citizen 
otherwise. How can anyone who is given a reward for breaking the law 
and gets to go to the front of the line, how can they respect the rule 
of law?

                              {time}  1745

  How can anyone who is given a reward for breaking the law and gets to 
go to the front of the line, how can they respect the rule of law? How 
can it be when you get stopped for speeding, if they give you a ticket 
to speed, or if you get arrested for robbing a bank and they say, well, 
okay, but we are going to give you amnesty, take the loot and go, be 
happy; but just forget that one time we didn't enforce the law on you, 
and so for now on respect the rule of law? Madam Speaker, it does not 
work that way. That is not the nature of humanity. Humanity is going to 
follow this path of least resistance; if they see an opening, they are 
going to go. And if they have an opportunity that we give them, that we 
grant them, they are going to take it.
  And not only they will have contempt for the rule of law, a million 
back in 1986, that turned into 3 million because of the phony 
identification and the corruption in the Reagan amnesty, they and their 
descendants and their friends and their neighbors, almost all of them 
believe that amnesty is a good idea because they were the beneficiaries 
of amnesty; just like a bank robber that gets to keep the loot thinks 
robbing banks is a good idea and will go back and do it again if he 
runs out of money.
  Now, think about doing that with 12 million or 20 million or, by the 
numbers that came out of the Senate the last time, 66.1 million would 
be legalized by the Senate version. That would be the cumulative total 
of all who were naturalized in the United States in all of our history.
  I thank you for your focus, Mr. Speaker.

                          ____________________